The+Book+Thief+film+trailers

Take a look at this film trailer (though it's the book we are studying.)
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= “HERE IS A SMALL FACT = = You are going to die. = = = = Of course, an introduction. = = A beginning. = = Where are my manners? = = I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You…know me well enough…” =

= Relax. It’s your teacher here, Mrs. Reynolds, quoting from ‘Death and Chocolate’, the first chapter of the Prologue to Markus Zusak’s novel, **//The Book Thief.//**=

Below is the link to an existing Wiki created by teachers from Freyberg’s English Department. I have invited you to join this Wiki, so that we can all use the treasure trove of resources. If you have not received this invitation, make sure you request one, and I will accept your request. I have modified some documents on the Wiki below, e.g. added an extra Style document labeled 'Language Gems'. This is an extension of 'Little Gems', but includes page number references to fit the Black Swan edition copies some students are reading.

So, get your spades and start digging: =http://thegrade-diggershandbook.wikispaces.com= Below are notes collated from our class discussions on the significance of the books acquired by Leisel, and the one she herself wrote - the namesake of the novel we study. I urge you to go beyond these notes and read the comprehensive notes on the Books within books within books page in the grade-diggershandbook wiki.


 * The Significance of the Books Acquired by Leisel**


 * ==== Stolen ==== |||| ==== Gifted ==== ||
 * ==== Title ==== || ==== Context, significance and symbolism ==== || ==== Title ==== || ==== Context, significance and symbolism ==== ||
 * ==== The Gravedigger’s Handbook ==== || ==== Pocketed when she spotted it in the snow near her brother’s new grave. It represents her loss and deep grief, and somehow her effort to keep hold of him. It is black with silver writing on it, the colours of death. Death interrupts the narrative to give “The Book’s Meaning: The last time she saw her brother… The last time she saw her mother.” This is the book from which she will learn to read, and from which she will recite a passage about burial to Sister Maria, causing humiliation and triggering a violent burst of aggression later. Leisel will suffer from survivor’s guilt, with images of her brother’s death haunting her through anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances / night terrors. ==== || ==== ‘Faust the Dog’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ ====

‘The Mud Men’
|| ==== Christmas gifts from Hans Hubermann, paid for out of rolled cigarettes. The books symbolise the goodness of humanity – love, selflessness, and generosity – attributes shown by Hans in spades. ====

A gift for her 12th birthday
||
 * ==== The Shoulder Shrug ==== || ==== This book she retrieved from the pile of Jewish books being burnt by the Nazi soldiers, on the Fuhrer’s birthday 1940. On this day her innocence was lost as she figured out that Hitler was responsible for her mother’s suffering and her brother’s death: ‘It was anger and dark hatred that had fuelled her desire to steal it’. This book, blue with red writing and a red cuckoo on the cover, symbolised anger at Hitler’s treatment of particular groups, including her mother, who was ‘unfindable’: ‘Did the Fuhrer take her away?...I hate him”. The book also symbolises the Holocaust and extermination of the Jews. By stealing it, Leisel shows reckless defiance and courage. The metaphor, ‘Beneath her shirt, a book was eating her up’ is darkly humorous, especially as smoke was rising out of Leisel’s collar’. In terms of the Holocaust, this is an example of Zusak’s giving Death’s voice a tone of bathos. ==== || ==== Mein Kampf and The Shadow Man. ==== || ==== Mein Kampf – transformed by Max into a palimpsest, with the words of Hitler bleeding through the white-painted pages of the new book written especially for Leisel – The Shadow Man. Symbolises the way Hitler’s words cannot be erased, no matter how people try to forget them or cover up their message of hatred against Jews. The irony is that this gift is over-writes Hitler’s autobiography, and his justification for his actions. The second irony is that the copy of Mein Kampf was hollowed out and used to hold the key to Max’s deliverance from one form of incarceration to another – the cellar below the Huberman’s house: ‘Of all the things to save him.” In a sense the hollowed book resembles a coffin, so continues the motif of burial, apt in terms of the novel. Mein Kampf means ‘My Struggle’, so fits Max in every sense. ==== ||
 * ==== The Whistler ==== || ==== The Whistler – starts with a murder, a stabbing. It has a grey cover and a black imprinted title – colours indicative of the difficulty of her life. ====

==== The book symbolises her life – full of ups and downs. She steals it back from the Mayor’s wife’s library, after rejecting it as a gift. The dark humour comes from Rudy’s wry comment, ‘You can’t eat books’. He says ‘Goodbye, book thief’ as they part, a title she is proud to wear. Late Oct 1940. She carried the book everywhere. ====

==== She read it aloud to Max when he lay sick in her bed. Therefore, the book symbolises survival – his and hers. Along with the feather Hans suggest she ‘give’ to Max. by describing it in words, the book’s words help him live. She was determined to read to the end, till he woke up. ==== ==== Later, this is the book she reads in the bomb shelter, keeping everyone distracted during the air raids. Then she reads it to the spitting neighbour, Frau Holtzapfel, distracting her from her anxiety about her sons. ==== || ==== The Whistler ==== || ==== This book has a chequered history – Leisel was first allowed to read it in on the floor in the Mayor’s wife’s library. ==== ==== Then she insisted Leisel take it as a gift, but she rejected it and threw it at her feet when she was given a letter terminating the laundry contract. The book symbolises betrayal, and Leisel instantly reacted to that, because in a way, both brother and mother had betrayed her, when he died and she abandoned her. She felt ‘this was the last hope, gone. This time, it felt like the greatest betrayal.’ She ‘hurled’ ‘spiteful and evil’ words at the woman, and threw the book down at her slippered feet. As she did so she heard in her head the disapproving whisper of her dead brother. ==== ||
 * ==== The Dream Carrier ==== || ==== This book was red, with black writing on the spine – a book about an abandoned child who wants to be a priest. She came by bicycle to steal it, climbing through the window at night. As she stole it, she ‘saw’ a vision of his bloodies knee from the shove of her own hand. This book too she read tyo Max: ‘It’s a new one, Max. Just for you.” She read it to ‘nourish’ him, as if she was a missionary. She still has nightmares, but tells Hans, ‘Everything is good.’ She goes to him shivering with fear from the dream, and wonders if Max has become her brother – a premonition of his death. ====

||  ||   ||
 * ==== A Song in the Dark ==== || ==== A green book with white engraved writing and the image of a flute on the cover – stolen again from the Mayor’s library, with a whispered thanks on the way out the window. ==== ||  ||   ||
 * ==== The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus ==== || ==== She felt good stealing it till she found she had been watched – the book was placed there on purpose for her to take. Somehow, it symbolised forgiveness. However, the letter inside from Ilsa Hermann showed that she was fully aware that Leisel had stolen the books, and why. She felt both gut and a thrill, as she tried but failed to apologise. Survivor’s guilt is mixed with a feeling that she did not ‘deserve to be this happy’. She wondered ‘Can a person steal happiness?’ ==== ||  ||   ||
 * ==== The Last Human Stranger ==== || ==== Two weeks after Christmas, another bike ride with Rudy sees Leisel steal The Last Human Stranger from the Ilsa Herman’ library. The book ‘protruded like a bone’ from the shelf, a fitting simile given the fate of so many Jews and others at this time in human history. ==== ||  ||   ||
 * ||  || ==== The Book Thief ==== || ==== This is the ‘small black book’ that is not a story, just lined paper. Frau Hermann gives it to Leisel, so she can write her own book. ‘You can certainly write. You write well, ’she tells her. So this book marks the point where Leisel has helped the Mayor’s wife to live. ==== ||
 * NEWS FLASH!!!**

I have also added a page to http://thegrade-diggershandbook.wikispaces.com entitled ' Narrative Features and Structure in The Book Thief'. This page considers Death as an interesting narrator, and looks at some structural features of the novel, including flash forward and flash back devices (prolepsis and analepsis), and the unusual textual interruptions that pepper the narrative (metalepsis). I have used a literary theory text by H. Porter Abbott, //The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative//, to support our exploration and help prepare you for Scholarship-type essay questions. Make sure you check out this page.

Psst! ... there always //Shmoop// for extra support:

Check out the following –

Intro

Summary

Themes

Quotes Characters

Analysis

[]

=__A concise view of WW2 and Liesel Memminger__=



DISCOVER EPIC - open the door to databases that give us resources and supporting materials for many texts we study in English

…in this compelling story of a foster child's coming of age during World War II, Zusak alters and subverts the archetypal image of the basement, picturing it instead as a shelter, a home, and a setting in which words can provide salvation. When nine-year-old Liesel Meminger comes to Molching, Germany in 1939 to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, the couple's basement is converted into a make-shift schoolroom where Hans gives his foster daughter reading lessons…. …For Zusak's heroine, therefore, the basement is not only a sanctuary for words, but a setting which literally saves her life. During the course of the novel, the Hubermanns' basement also becomes a shelter for Max Vandenburg, a Jew hidden from the Nazis by the goodhearted Hans and Rosa. … …the basement actually becomes a place that Max "liked to call home" … …Max also transforms the Hubermanns' cellar into a setting for creative/political activity. He paints words and pictures on the cement walls, until the basement itself resembles a large, illustrated book. He develops a vivid fantasy of a boxing match between Adolf Hitler, "the champion of the world," and himself-"the Jewish, rat-faced challenger-Max Vandenburg" (251). Most importantly, Max becomes an author for the first time in his life, whitewashing the pages of Mein Kampf and then painting new words over the pages-literally erasing Hitler's language until it is "gagging, suffocating under the paint" (237). Max's underground writings-which include personal reminiscences, political commentaries, illustrated stories, and disturbing drawings-serve as his deepest form of self-expression and a means of surviving his ordeal. Indeed, for Max, the basement ultimately becomes a kind of writer's den or artist's studio… …The image of the basement as a refuge and a sanctuary for words is reinforced later in the novel through the portrait of the air-raid shelter in Liesel's neighborhood… …The fear in the basement dissipates, however, when Liesel begins reading aloud to the gathering. Her story distracts the adults, and the children are calmed by the sound of Liesel's voice. From then on, Liesel reads to her neighbors during every bombing raid--the words bringing comfort to all those present in the cellar. As Janet Maslin notes, //The Book Thief// is a figurative text whose story "unfolds as symbolic or metaphorical abstraction ("Stealing to Settle a Score with Life (New York Times on the Web 27 Mar. 2006. Aug. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/ books/27masl.html). Indeed, in Zusak's novel, the world of Nazi-dominated Europe can itself be seen as a vast basement-a setting of tragedy, evil, and unspeakable horror. Not only do we learn of the deaths of Liesel's family and friends when the Allied bombs hit Molching, but we witness the costs of war after one of the Hubermanns' neighbors is maimed in Stalingrad, and his wounded brother returns home, only to hang himself. We watch Max's march to Dachau along with other weak, starving prisoners and receive accounts of exterminations at Auschwitz, where "the sky was the color of Jews" (349). Through his portrait of the Hubermanns' basement and the telling of Liesel's story, however, Zusak presents his readers with a counterbalancing, hopeful message: that any basement-whether real or metaphorical-can be transformed into a shelter where goodness reigns; that any place of darkness and "walled-in tragedy" can be transfigured, in the end, by the extraordinary power of words. Susan Koprince, University of North Dakota Koprince, Susan Koprince, Susan. "Words from the basement: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief." //Notes on Contemporary Literature// 41.1 (2011). //Student Resources In Context//. Web. 25 May 2013. EPIC is a venture between New Zealand libraries and the Ministry of Education, giving schools free access to a worldwide range of electronic resources. Through EPIC schools can access databases containing thousands of international and New Zealand magazines, newspapers, biographies, substantial reference works, and images. EPIC lets you access up-to-date full text articles covering a huge range of subjects. Who can use EPIC? EPIC supports the teaching and learning in New Zealand primary and secondary schools. It is intended for use by principals and teachers, library staff, and students. Teachers, students, and library staff may also access EPIC from home using their school's password and username login. Please note that we require that a school's username and password are kept confidential to your school community and all users must abide by the terms and conditions of use.
 * From EPIC New Zealand, **** Search: Literature and the Arts **
 * Student Resources in Context: **
 * Search: The Book Thief **
 * ‘Words from the basement: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief’ **
 * Full Text: ** COPYRIGHT 2011 Notes on Contemporary Literature.
 * Source Citation **
 * NOTE: ** The user ID and password that is provided to your school for accessing the databases must not be published in any publicly available format. This includes school newsletters or any openly accessible website.
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 * (See your teacher for the login and password) **


 * Literary Theories that apply to The Book Thief **

Existentialism involves the attempt to make meaning in a chaotic world. Sartre argued, "man makes himself." As a form of literary criticism, existentialism seeks to analyze literary works, with special emphasis on the struggle to define meaning and identity in the face of alienation and isolation.
 * Existentialism **

Definition of **existentialism** // noun // // [mass noun] // > ** History of Existentialism ** > Existential beliefs can be traced back to William Shakespeare. The popularity of the philosophy grew in the centuries following the famed writer, reaching its pinnacle in the twentieth century, after the period of romanticism. Existentialism grew from the catastrophic effects of wars and genocide. Between the first and second world wars, society needed help coping with feelings of nothingness and despair. Philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are credited as the first philosophers to write about existentialism before it became popular in the twentieth century. In fact, Kierkegaard is known as the father of existentialism. > The twentieth-century philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is credited with moving the existential movement to the forefront when he published the philosophic work //Being and Nothingness// in 1943. He also wrote fiction that advanced the philosophy, including //Nausea// and //No Exit.// Sartre's friend, Albert Camus, coedited the left-wing newspaper //Combat// until 1948. He, too, contributed to the existential movement through his writings. The philosophy was widely evident during the postwar years in literature and art, including the works of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the films of Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard. > ** Existential Themes ** > Overall, existentialism is the search for the meaning of life; what is it to exist as a unique person? Existentialists believe that the meaning of life is sought through individual choices, free will, and personal freedom. Neither scientific thinking—including psychology—nor moral thinking can fully explain what it is to be human. Existentialists unite under several common themes: > > Absurdity—Existentialists believe that life is absurd and has no meaning. Existentialists, therefore, seek meaning in an absurd world, trying to define their place and the reason they are here. Once an existentialist realizes that the world is an absurd place, this causes anxiety. An existentialist does not believe in the explanations offered by religion, science, or society about the reasons for human existence. > Alienation—Existentialists feel as if they have no place in the world; they feel like strangers in their own lives. Many existentialists feel a sense of depression because they realize that no one can help make sense of their existence; it is completely an individual quest. > Responsibility—Existentialists believe that it is a person's sole responsibility to find the meaning in his or her own life, to make choices about his or her life, and to accept responsibility for the decisions he or she makes in trying to find meaning. > Authenticity and individuality—A person must live as an individual and become his or her authentic self. Existentialists believe that reason, science, and religion deny individuality by forming guidelines and rules for living. A person may make the decision to live morally, however, thus successfully being one's self rather than fulfilling a role imposed by society. > Engagement—To find authenticity and true individuality, existentialists believe that an individual must be engaged in life; a person must exist and be part of the world around him or her. > Death—Existentialists believe death adds to the absurdity of life. A person spends his or her life trying to understand life's meaning and his or her place in the world, when in the end, the meaning does not matter because death is inevitable. This belief adds to the conviction that life is absurd. > From Student Resources in Context EPIC
 * a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
 * Existentialism is a twentieth-century philosophy more than a movement. It is the study of existence. In the nineteenth century, following World War II and the Great Depression, the Industrial Revolution peaked, and society turned to a way of thinking that focused on the role of the individual in control of leading a full and authentic life. As societal conditions changed, societies' ways of thinking changed, too.
 * Existential philosophy existed because of nineteenth-century philosophers and writers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Søren Kierkegaard. Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre is notable for being the twentieth century's greatest existential thinker and literary contributor. Other existential writers include Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Marcel, and Karl Jaspers. Existentialism also was evident in the theater—Samuel Beckett is most notable for his contributions, as are Chuck Palahniuk, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lynch. Many authors still cite existentialism as an influence. Post-modern beliefs have since pushed the philosophy aside in literature and the theater. Though existential inquiry continues today, as a cultural movement it is largely in the past.