Opinion; Death Omniscience; Zusak's Writing

First, my thoughts after finishing the book- The Book Thief is a wonderfully sewn together book with a lovely but sad plot during one of Germany's greatest eras. The book may have had a slow start, but quickly picks up the pace (for me, at least). I found the ending most exciting of The Book Thief. It had me flipping to the earliest pages of the novel and re-reading the foreshadows with knowledge of chronology. I think the beginning is slow because the reader might not know what Death is narrating and because Death jumps from one event to the last, back to the first. Overall, in my opinion, The Book Thief was excellent and worth reading again.

Speaking of Death's narration, a quotation caught my eye and I thought about our class discussions about Death's omniscience. "[The others] I cannot account for, but I know [w]hat Liesel Meminger was thinking" (384). Someone posed a question in class about the level of Death's omniscience and at that point in the novel, the class didn't know exactly how over-seeing Death was. This quotation gives us more of a sense of Death's omniscience when he knows what Liesel is thinking. This makes me wonder if Death only has knowledge of Liesel's thoughts. Can Death know of children's thoughts? Can he see into everyone's brains? If Death can only know the thoughts of some people, how does he do it and why them?

On page 518, Death gives the readers a narration all the words that create a thought of Rudy in our minds. It reminds us of everything Death has told us about Rudy.

"Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily
assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon,
he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics
champion. He was [Liesel's] best friend. And he was a month from his death"
(518).

Zusak decides to end this lovely train of thoughts with a screeching, dark stop. I think Zusak wanted to emphasize Death's sorrowful thought that "[Rudy] didn't deserve to die the way he did" (241). The quotation summarizes for readers all the positive points of Rudy Steiner ever since Liesel met him. It is strong in connecting with emotion because (like we discussed in class today) drastic ups and downs produce a powerful impact on readers. The string of words persuade readers to feel sorrow and morose for Rudy as Death has displayed. The joys of Rudy's life are killed by death very literally as to how the quotation flows. Zusak has created a masterpiece of words with enough balance of life and death, joy and sadness, and reflection of both the past and the future.