Personification In The Book Thief
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The Book Thief is a novel by Markus Zusak. It is a story told from the perspective of Death. Death watches the life of one particular girl living in Germany: Liesel Meminger. Liesel lives during World War II and she sees a lot of death. First, her brother dies and then her mother gives her up to be taken care of by the Hubermanns. Liesel steals books and learns many things from those books after she learns to read from her foster father. A bombing eventually kills most of Liesel's loved ones, including her best friend and her foster parents.
Personification is giving human characteristics to non-human objects. The purpose of personification is to connect the reader to the object. Readers are better able to connect with human characters and things with human characteristics than with non-human objects. So how does a writer get a reader to connect with non-human objects in the story? Personify them.
There are many examples of personification in The Book Thief but the most prominent, and important, example is personifying death. One of the unique features of The Book Thief is that the narrator is Death. Now death is a concept, not a person. But in The Book Thief, Death has human characteristics.
In this lesson, we discussed personification, or giving human characteristics to non-human objects, in The Book Thief. We discussed the importance of personification in various quotes from the book, and learned that the most important and prominent personification in The Book Thief is personifying death. Death is the narrator of The Book Thief and personifying death gives human characteristics to the concept of death, making it one of the main characters of the book.
The character of Death is really a personification of certain human traits that remain objective. I think Zusak needed Death to be accessible by readers yet set apart at the same time. Zusak uses Death as a curious "otherworld" sort of entity that is at times childlike with curiosity. Death is both enchanted with human nature and disillusioned with it at the same time. Zusak picks very neutral emotions and plays with them through his narrator.
The Book Thief is a successful book due to its original plot and unique writing techniques. It is a story about a young orphan during the Second World War and her journey. A distinctive feature of this story is that it is being narrated by a personification of death. At the mention of death it is only natural to feel uncomfortable. But Death, as the narrator, shows a variety of traits relatable enough that at times we even forget our fear.
Examine the use of hyperbole and personification in the prologue of the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. In this interactive tutorial, you'll practice identifying examples of hyperbole and personification within the text. You'll also learn how these two types of figurative language help authors convey their intended meaning.
In the novel The Book Thief we can find many examples of personification, a literary device used to give human characteristics to non human entities. The most important personified character is Death.
In Welsh Folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd is the escort of the grave, the personification of Death and Winter who leads the Wild Hunt to collect wayward souls and escort them to the Otherworld, sometimes it is Maleagant, Arawn or Afallach in a similar position.
Scandinavians later adopted the Grim Reaper with a scythe and black robe. Today, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal features one of the world's most famous representations of this personification of Death.[citation needed]
In the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent in Belgium, the personification of Death is known as Magere Hein ("Thin Hein") or Pietje de Dood ("Peter the Death").[10] Historically, he was sometimes simply referred to as Hein or variations thereof such as Heintje, Heintjeman and Oom Hendrik ("Uncle Hendrik"). Related archaic terms are Beenderman ("Bone-man"), Scherminkel (very meager person, "skeleton") and Maaijeman ("mow-man", a reference to his scythe).[11]
In the late 1800s, the character of Death became known as the Grim Reaper in English literature. The earliest appearance of the name "Grim Reaper" in English is in the 1847 book The Circle of Human Life:[18][19][20]
The 1960 gospel blues song "Death Don't Have No Mercy", composed and first recorded by Blind Gary Davis, portrays death as an inevitable and periodic visitor.[44] According to the musicologist David Malvinni, it "presents a terrifying personification of the instant, sudden possibility [of] death at any moment that could have come from the medieval era's confrontation with the plague".[45]
Nobel laureate José Saramago's novel features an anthropomorphised death as its main character, who insists that her name be written lowercase. She is depicted as a skeleton who can shapeshift and be omnipresent and has a scythe, though she doesn't always carry it. Her jurisdiction is limited to the imaginary country where the story happens and to the human species. It is implied that other deaths with jurisdiction over different life forms and territories exist, as well as an overarching death and/or god. The book deals with how society relates to death, both as a phenomenon and a character, and likewise how death relates to the people she is meant to kill and with loneliness and love.
Lady MacDeath is a Grim Reaper, the personification of Death who is responsible of going after all people whose time to die has come, although unlike a typical Grim Reaper, her body is not pictured as made of bones. She uses her sickle to kill people, by hitting them in the head, and then she takes their souls to the purgatory, for them to be judged and sent whether to hell or heaven (sometimes after much bureaucracy). She always carries a list with the name of the people she must kill on the day. Most of her stories feature a pursuit, sometimes punctuated with struggles faced every day by normal people. MaurÃcio de Souza says that the purpose of creating her is "taking death less seriously, while it doesn't come to us".
These scenes are parodied in the 1991 comedy film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, in which the title characters repeatedly beat Death playing a variety of family board games such as Battleship and Twister. Death goes on to accompany Bill and Ted for the remainder of the film as a major supporting character.[58] The scene from "The Seventh Seal" is also parodied in a one-act play by Woody Allen called "Death," in which the personification of death agrees to play gin rummy and loses badly, altering his plans to "take" his opponent.
Throughout the events of the film, the titular Puss in Boots is pursued by the terrifying black-cloaked Wolf, who wields twin sickles and announces his foreboding presence with haunting whistling. His sighting consistently evokes terror in the cat, following their first meeting in which Puss lost his sword to him and was wounded by a blade for the first time. Eventually, Wolf confronts Puss once again and reveals himself as the personification of Death. He states his disgust and anger at Puss's lack of respect for the concept of death and lack of value placed on his previous eight lives, as well as his intent to kill Puss once and for all. However, though he manages to partially disarm Death during their final duel, Puss acknowledges that he knows that he can never truly defeat him. Though Death is initially frustrated, he appreciates Puss's growth in character, and tells him to live his last life well and departs, a new respect forged between them.
The personification of Death or the Grim Reaper is the leading male role in the 1992 Viennese musical, depicting the titular Empress of Austria-Hungary's fictionalised life and her entanglements and obsession with Death.[60] Portrayals of Death varies between productions from androgynous to masculine, dressed at various times in all black or all white.[61]
The personification of Death appears many times in many different games, especially Castlevania and The Sims. Nearly all iterations of a "Death" or "Grim Reaper" character feature most of the same characteristics seen in other media and pop culture: a skeleton wearing a cloak and wielding a scythe. Darksiders II has Death as the player character.
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I am so predictable lmao, I will rave about Deathless whenever I get the chance! You need to read the book promptly, I love it so much! AND OMG TERRY PRATCHETT. I will never get over the fact that he is gone, I refuse to believe it, but I hope he met Death as he knew him! Sandman is amazing! The Book Thief I still have not finished reading but I shall post my review and ugly crying promptly when I do. AND OF COURSE *splashes creative juice aka sleep deprivation around*
Thank you so much for your kind comment Rachel! I am trying to savour the Discworld books so I have Pratchett books for the rest of my life. I would highly recommend Catherynne Valente as well. Thanks so much for stopping by!
The fictional historical story is from the perspective of an atypical narrator, compassionate Death. He points us to a young, lonely orphaned girl called Liesel, who steals books, learns to read, and finds comfort in words during World War II. The story follows Liesel, her foster family and friend Rudy when everyone is struggling to survive the glare of German Nazis. 2b1af7f3a8