"The Book Thief": Nourishing the soul with words in the smoke of war

"Everything will eventually pass away, and only death will live forever."

Another story interprets this "three-body" line, and is quite grateful to the god of death, bringing the story of the 9-year-old girl Lizer out of the bombed German town to us, each character is very distinctive, in their own way to express love to relatives and friends.

The story of "The Book Thief" takes place in 1939, when Lizelle and her brother, who are already seriously ill, travel to a foster family in Munich, where the death of her brother and the sad face of her mother are Lizère's lingering nightmares. In the mottled basement of her adoptive parents' house, Lizel studied there and eventually escaped the terrible disaster. The adoptive parents gave the little girl a haven of peace, though not abundant, so that she could have a complete childhood like the other children on Hamil Street.

Although Lizel's enlightenment material was the Gravedigger's Manual, which was not suitable for children to read, books were far more important than food for this child who was eager for words. She "stole" books with hunger: in a bleak cemetery; in the spacious study of the mayor's wife; even in the raging fire of the Nazis. Nicknamed "book thieves" by death, she stole books but conveyed the hope of survival, to her Jewish friends who were dying hidden in her basement, and to her neighbors who were suffering the loss of their children. In the dark and cramped bomb shelters, adults who had been tormented like birds of prey by war huddled together, listening intently to a child's reading.

If war is the eternal black theme of literature, then World War II is undoubtedly the most intense stroke. The background of the story is cruel: tens of thousands of Jews have been discriminated against and even brutally killed, and millions of people have endured the pain of displacement and the fear of imminent death, but it is still a heartwarming story, and some of the pictures in the novel are touching:

Rudy jumped down the river in winter to help his beloved girl salvage a book; Papa Hans Hubermann sat on a paint bucket pulling a breathing accordion; when Max, a Jew who had been hiding in the basement for 22 months, shook his guts to open a gap in the curtain and saw the starry sky outside, he whispered, "The starlight burned my eyes"; the mayor's wife always left a snack in the study; Mother Rosa served Lizel a bowl of pea soup; Rudy went from a fruit-stealing thief to leaving bread for caught Jews on the road. The Muppet Bears are delivered to the dying enemy pilots; Lizel reads to them as the townspeople escape air raids; Rosa and the old lady next door spit on each other...

A lot of warm details show the joys and sorrows of the townspeople, taking me to follow Lizel's experience and heart path from the perspective of the god of death, from the beginning of my prejudice against my mother Rosa and the mayor's wife, to the end of the chapter when everything suddenly stops, only to realize that I have fallen in love with the people in that place like Lizelle.

Unlike similar subjects we have come into contact with in the past, such as "The Diary of Anne Anne" and "Schindler's List", they mostly cut from the perspective of Jews, indicting the death of the Jewish people under The Nazi rule and the crimes of war. The novel, on the other hand, starts from the perspective of the German people, depicting the good German people on Hamille Street: they are simple and pure, love peace and hate war, but they live on thin ice under the oppression of the political environment. The Huberman family, constantly plagued by hunger and poverty, risked their lives to cover a Jew in danger. The adoptive father refused to join the Nazi Party and broke through the Gestapo barrier to give a piece of bread to a frail Old Jewish man who was wandering the streets— he had no clear political views, and his idea was simple: The Jews saved my life, we are friends.

The author points out in the tone of death: "I constantly overestimate human beings and constantly underestimate them—I have hardly ever correctly evaluated them." I want to ask her, how can the same thing be so ugly and so beautiful, and the words and stories about it are destructive and at the same time shining? Perhaps what confuses death is that man is creating great civilizations while at the same time killing himself in a frenzy.

When I finished watching "The Book Thief", it was already late, the streets outside were bustling with traffic, neon flashing, such a life is very easy, very weak, we do not have to beg for tomorrow's sun, we can not because of the world's encounters and blood boiling, which may be a disaster for us.