How to Concentrate & Changing vs. Ruining

Page 388 of TBT greets the reader with the cold open arms of Frau Holtzapfel's. The reader must act fast and accept the greeting because F.H. will not hold her arms opened much longer. For F.H. to ask Rosa if Liesel will read to her, when the two women have a known rivalry, seems outrageous. Also, while Liesel is reading, and at times before and after she is reading, F.H. treats Liesel very rudely, again showing her nerve. The only time when F.H. really softens is when Liesel "heil Hitler"s when she sees the pictures of F.H.'s sons. Perhaps family is F.H.'s weakness, and her jealousy overcame her. F.H. never had a husband, so maybe she was jealous that others at least had husbands and maybe even full families. I know she and Rosa had an ongoing fight about an unkown subject, but F.H. seems hostile to everyone in Molching.

In my section today, we talked about the character of Death. Specifically, though, we talked about Death's occasional childish sound to its voice, and the fact that Death might change form/begin taking on the attributes of his infatuations. It is evident that Death is obsessed with children, which might account for his narrating like one. "They were going to Dachau, to concentrate" (388). Death tells the readers that the Jews were headed to Dachau so they could concentrate. Only a naive child or clueless adult would not know the real meaning of "concentration camp". Death is talking about Liesel's thoughts at this point, so could it be possible that this is what she is thinking? Well, she is 13 and a half, and in the middle of all of it, so I would think that she would know better than that. She understood why she could not tell anyone about a Jew in her basement, so why would she think that the Hubermanns were merely protecting Max from concentrating? Perhaps Death is adding a little dry, black comic relief, after the heavy topic of the air raids. Perhaps Death is taking on the attributes of a child.

"Two weeks to change the world, and fourteen days to ruin it" (388). Death tells us that the preceding sentence is what Liesel later wrote in the basement. Because we have read to page 400 at least, we know that Liesel's world is ruined when Max has to leave, fourteen days later. Liesel takes the view of most children when tragedy strikes their life: she blamed herself. In no way was it Liesel's fault that Max had to leave, so she should not have written that she had fourteen days to ruin it, because she didn't ruin it.

When you are doing good, it always seems that there isn't enough time, and although two weeks and fourteen days are equal amounts of time, two weeks sounds like less time because there are two vs. fourteen, even though we know that each week is worth 7 days. There isn't enough time, it seems, for Liesel to change the world for one lonely old lady, only 2 weeks! But there is an eternity to ruin her own world, as it seems when you are experiencing something displeasing. As mentioned earlier, Liesel begins to change the world, one air raid, one person, one book, one word at a time. And she only has two weeks to do it.