Philosophy in the Book Thief
Posted on April 17, 2020 | By kdaniel24 | Leave a response
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, there are many questions raised about the topic of death. To quote the book, when a pilot is shot down over a suburb of Munich and killed, (this is from the perspective of death harvesting the pilot’s soul) “You see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch and eclipse when a human dies. I’ve seen millions of them. I’ve seen more than I care to remember.” (Pg 11). I think this quote is insightful upon the topic of what happens when living human is killed. However, it is a hard quote to pick apart and analyze. I, however, think it probably means that when a human is killed, it is truly a dark moment when a soul vanishes, as it is passing on from the world, but it also means that this world has been so filled with evil, corruption, brutality, murder, and death, that even death has seen so many people killed that it is disturbed and unable to remember all of the soul that he has harvested. This ties into to our world’s long history and how it has a reoccurring theme of death. It obviously offers the insight that brutality is horrific, and the past was a brutal time, as even death itself is disturbed by it. This shows that people must learn to bring more peace into the world. This theme is not local, but international and even connects to events that have happened hundreds of years ago. We must learn from these events and start to become a more stable and peaceful society, less concerned with power and control. However, this will not be easy, as humans are naturally ambitious. But in this new and developed world, the instinct of violence and ambition must be grown out of.
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