The story in the book is recounted by a male voice called Death, who proves to be caring yet morose throughout the book. The storyline follows the character Liesel Meminger as she comes of age during World War II in Nazi Germany.
Liesel went to the home of her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, distraught and withdrawn after her brother’s death. Her younger brother died on a train to Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, on the outskirts of Munich.
While there, she meets a boy named Rudy Steiner in a football match while living in her new home. Anytime she wins, her friend Rudy will throw a snowball smack in Liesel’s face. Liesel settled into her new home quite well, and before long, she got exposed to the horrors of the Nazi regime.
I believe that the death of her only family member greatly disturbed her. She felt all alone in the world and was taken to a foster home. She was withdrawn and distraught in her new home and this was worsened by the fact that she couldn’t even read the book she stole at her brother’s funeral. Thanks to her new parents and friends, she adjusted.
The inciting incident in the book is the death of her younger brother, who died on a train to Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, on the outskirts of Munich. This shattered her world and she then she was taken to a foster home to live with the Hubermanns. While there, she meets a boy named Rudy Steiner in a football match while living in her new home.
The rising action occurs when Liesel arrived in her foster but was very withdrawn and not trusting of anybody. This came about partly because of the traumatic death of her brother and also because he couldn’t read. She stole a book at her brother’s burial but couldn’t read it.
With the decline in the German political situation in Germany, Jews were being killed more often, and her foster parents hid a Jewish man named Max Vandenburg. Her foster father, Hans, also taught her to read and write. Because he has developed a close relationship with her, he taught her how to read in her bedroom and later in her basement.
With death as a narrator, you will also notice some imagery and colors with the words, as well as some sections of sentences that set off events. All these come together to give you that clear-cut voice of loneliness that really locks the reader in. When you now hear that death is the narrator of the story, you prepare for an enticing read.
The climax can be seen when Liesel learns how to read and started reading to her friends. After her forster father, Hans Hubermann, teacher her how to read. This helps her to start reading book and she decides to steal more so she can have more to read. She also makes friends with people in her neighborhood and read to them.
When she realizes the power of reading and writing and learns how to share the written word, Liesel starts stealing books that the Nazi party wants to destroy and also writes her own story. She also started sharing the power of reading and writing with her friend, Max. By going to the mayor’s house to collect laundry for her foster mother, she starts a friendship with the mayor’s wife, Ilsa Hermann, who now allows her first to read books in her library and later allows her to steal them.
Death proved himself to be caring even gloomy throughout the book. The storyline follows the falling action when there was a bombing in Himmel. The bomb killed all her friends and family and she became disillusioned even as the sole survivor.
I love reading because it transports to different wonderful worlds. I believe the same thing happened to our protagonist. Being able to read was a changing point for Liesel because it helped to gain the power she felt she lacked.
One of the novel’s highlights is when Hans offered bread to a weak Jew who was among a group of Jewish prisoners led through town to the Dachau Concentration Camp. This action drew the anger of others in the town and made Max leave the Hubermanns’ home soon after because he feared the repercussions that Hans’s act would attract suspicion on their household. As punishment for this act, Hans’s application to join the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which has been withheld for a long time, is now approved, and he is drafted into the army as punishment for this act.
However, his job consists of cleaning up the aftermath of bombings on the German home front. Much later, Liesel sees Max among a group of prisoners and joins him in the march. She did this despite a soldier’s order to step away, so she was whipped as punishment.
The denouement comes after some time, when Hans returns home; bombs are thrown on Liesel’s street in Molching, killing her friends, family, and neighbors. Liesel is the sole survivor because she was working on her manuscript in the basement during the raid. The workers who were searching for survivors and also cleaning up the scene take Liesel’s manuscript along with the rubble, but Death, the narrator, saves it. Liesel is harbored by the mayor, and his wife, Ilsa Hermann as she was devised. She refuses to clean off the ashes on herself until she walks into the river where her friend Rudy saved a book before saying her final goodbyes.
After the war in 1945, Liesel works in the tailor shop owned by Rudy’s father when Max comes, and they enjoy an emotional reunion. Many years later, which Death refers to as “just yesterday,” Liesel dies as an old woman in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, among her family and many friends. Yet, she never forgot Hans, Rudy, Rosa, and her brother. When Death gets her soul, he gives her the manuscript she lost in the bombing in her old town. She asks Death if he reads and understands it. Death answers that he has read but is unable to understand the duality of humanity.
