Surprised or Puzzled? – Is there something that surprises you that does not appear to fit in the text? Explain why you feel this way. Discuss why something doesn’t make sense to you or why your views might be different from the author’s intended purpose.

At the end of The Book Thief, a bomb explodes on Himmel street and there is only one survivor. Of course, that is Liesel. All of her friends and family die including Hans Hubermann, Rosa Hubermann and Rudy. This whole part surprises me because there is normally a happy ending in these types of books about war and people surviving. However, this was expected a little bit because in real life there might not be a happy ending to a scary or sad war. Innocent people can die or get injured. I feel that this was a great way to end the story because it shows how wars end in real life and that they aren’t just made to make everyone happy and thankful in the end. During the epilogue, Max comes back from the Jewish camp and finds Liesel, which makes up for the ending with all of the death.

Something else that doesn’t fit the text to me is when Michael Holtzapfel killed himself. He lost his brother and knew how he felt, yet he still made his mother deal with that loss, even though he saw how broken she was last time. He died for the wrong reason,” Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.”(Zusak 503) That means that he felt bad that he wanted to live so he died, which doesn’t really make sense. However, since later in the book everyone dies from the bomb, it is most likely that he would have died then. I understand why the author did this, but I also don’t. He was trying to make the book realistic, but sad and it had that effect. However, in the end it was a good book, so I feel he made the right choice.