Personification in The Book Thief

Personification in The Book Thief
Category A: Prompt C 

           One useful literary device that Markus Zusak uses in his novel, The Book Thief, is personification. Death itself is personified in the novel, and the whole narrative is recollected by the omniscient collector of souls. While the unusual narrator would typically be feared, Zusak paints Death as a surprisingly compassionate individual that is especially sensitive to the various shades of color displayed in the skies. Death uses many surprising adjectives to describe himself that may strike the reader as contradictory to reality. For example, he calls himself “Agreeable. Affable…nothing if not fair” (Book Thief, 3). Death also reveals that he doesn’t really enjoy his work; it is stressful, and the “leftover humans” cause him despair.

            Employing Death as the narrator of the novel makes the topic of death and dying more accessible/understandable to the young audience for whom this book is printed. By stripping away much of the mystery and aspects of the unknown that surround death, young readers are more readily able to start grasping the complexities of death – which adults still grapple with – or at least are more readily able to talk with parents/teachers about questions or concerns they have. Personification is what allows these mysterious aspects to be stripped away – death is transformed from a remote idea, which many young readers may not have experienced personally yet, into a physical person that shares an intimate story with the reader.

            The personification of death also helps add cohesion to the story by allowing for an omniscient narrator. Death is able to traverse the globe and witness firsthand the horrors that Nazi Germany and WWII wrought on humanity. He can see all of the casualties and atrocities, regardless of which flag is being flown. The omniscient narrator is useful in providing insight into the thoughts and lives of our protagonists, especially Liesel, to whom the title refers.

            Finally, the use of death as a narrator makes the story of Liesel, the book thief, significantly more impactful. Surely our narrator has witnessed more death and history than any reader could imagine. Yet, it was the life and bravery of a young girl living under the oppression of Nazi Germany. Zusak could be suggesting that even death himself would be shocked by the atrocities of the Holocaust; or perhaps he is conveying to the reader the importance of remembering stories like these.