A Seven-Sided Die

While we were doing the in-class writing yesterday, I noticed that in the chapter "The Gamblers" there were different events, each starting with the side of a die. When I began to think about why there would be dice in the story, I connected the dice with the thought of a random outcome of events. I believe that the only reason that the dice are there is to show the random turnout of all of the events happening to Max Vandenburg in his life. For example, he is a Jew. From that point on, many things could have happened to him which were happening to others. But, he took a chance to go into hiding and managed to escape many bad things that were happening for the time.
The dice also reflect Liesel's life. It was all just a chance that she ended up going to a foster home without her dead brother and meeting Max and Rudy.
I think that the reason that the dice are in this book is to show that life is all just a chance and that anything could happen to anyone, especially in Nazi Germany at this time.