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Book Thief Literary Devices (Symbolism ((((Paradox ((This is paradox due…
Book Thief Literary Devices
Similies
Diction
4."They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller."(274)
3."They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller."(243)
5."They navigated the branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the majority of onlookers had started to return to their own places. In there. Out there. In the forest."(450)
“ On the outskirts, they witnessed the first of the farms and the trees standing.” (284)
The diction allows the author to emphasize nouns and verbssuch as witnessed and trees. The specific word witnessed creates an emotional response in the reader.
6."You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue."(307)
1."Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye." (239)
“ ...the tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it.” (249)
”Hard times were coming like a parade” (358)
“His muscles felt like cake.” (251)
”The room tasted like sugar and dough and thousands of pages (459)”
"The light was like changing in blocks of shade." (287)
When this is said it is used to show how lifeless and empty rosas and hanns face was which is actually a really good comparison because the definition of a ghost town is empty or abandoned. This wordplay was clever it had kinda a morbin effect on the reader but a good one it was better than saying that she was better than just saying that their faces were plain or lifeless.
"Faces like ghost towns." (Page 417)
Metaphors
Litotes
1."Under the ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It sounds like the beginning of a joke: 'There's a Jew and a German standing in a basement, right?...' This, however, was no joke.” (256)
This is a litote because of the way it is portrayed as just a joke. If you think about it, the above quote does not seem like a joke at all, and more morbid than funny, which deserves more than “This, however, was no joke”.
"For the most part, through, it was a tale of anxiety, especially when it came to the voices in the kitchen and the dead-body dominoes."(pg.415)
“Papa’s lungs were full of sky” (437)
"When she and Liesel came out, he handed them his problem." (485)
“Beige colored skin. A swamp in each eye. And he breathed like a fugitive. Desperate and soundless.” (248)
”On the ropy cloud…” (249)
1.“Cherries of blood had grown into plums” (465)
This is a metaphor because he is comparing the color of michelle's bloody hands to the color of cherries or plums. Zuzac is trying to portray that there is so much blood coming out of her hand that even the blood itself is changing color which would be kinda boring if he just stated it the way i explained it.
Symbolism
Paradox
This is paradox due to the fact that it questions the morality of letting/forcing something live when it's not the best thing, it's like saying a patient in a hospital that went brain dead but is still on life support because his family does not what to let him they are forcing life upon a person. There was many ways that this line could have been written but using the word malice was really clever because it's using the word that means something evil with a word like life which is usually good thing has a really impactful affect on the reader it really makes you think if forcing someone live is an act of good or evil.
2.”The colder he became, the more he melted” (316)
1."What great malice there could be in allowing something to live"(250)..
3."You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue." (307)
3.“She laughed up at the coppery clouds, celebrating before reaching in and taking the mangled newspaper.”(247)
“Although the front and back pages were streaked with black tears of print, she folded it neatly in half and tucked it under her arm.”(247)
“Things like Rudy on a dais with three gold medals slung around his neck. Hair the color of lemons was written beneath it,”(444)
”Please, Max, just don’t die. He was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes” (316).
“Above me, the sky eclipsed-just a last moment of darkness[/blackness]-and I swear I could see a black signature in the shape of a swastika. It loitered...above,” (491)
What is happening when this is said is that max is lying unconscious while Leisel is sitting over him as he is dying it also explains how bad maxs condition is and when it says that he was just a snowman melting before her eyes it's sorta bringing her brother back into the picture he was the first snowman and the symbolism is that earlier in the book
Liesel created a snowman in the basement during Christmas. The snowman she created was a symbol to illustrate the delicacy of life and using max as the second snowman was a really good way to affect the reader and feel sadness along with liesel while everything is happening.
6.”She died in a suburb of Sydney… The sky was the best blue of afternoon. Like her papa, her soul was sitting up,”(455)
Parallelism
explanation
Synesthesia
”His eyes were louder than ever. They beat furiously in their sockets as he squeezed his injured hand and the blood rose through the bandage.”(487)
This one goes with synesthesia due to the fact that it plays with size and sound like here it says that his eyes were loud which can't be possible, what it really means is that he was angry and if you think about it when you think loud you think big and when your eyes are big it's usually because you are going through one of the more negative emotions which is what was happening in this part he was upset and saying that his eyes were loud was so much better than saying
1.”The room tasted like sugar and dough and thousands of pages.” (459)
4.
3.” This place was the real basement. This was the real fear.” (378)
5."Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words." (181)
This is a good example of parallelism the way that death has things worded was confusing at first i had the impression that she was actually hurt but she not it's just goes on to show that Liesel is different she had different views she special.
2.”So many humans. / So many colors.” (309)
"The minutes were cruel. / Hours were punishing." (250)
1.“They were stars,’ he said. ‘They burned my eyes.” (378)
Personification
Asyndeton
“When the job was done, a little severe in places, a little crooked in others…” (245)
In this part it seems like everything was rushed to be finished like it says in the quote above everything was a little crooked. So the asyndeton allows the author to list the way the job was done without interruption allowing the reader to read with a consistent flow.
1.“It began as a black feather, lilting, floating.” (337)
“She decide that he could best be summed up as a picture of pale concentration. Beige-colored skin. A swamp in each eye. And he breathed like a fugitive.” (248)
“His hands were cemented into his pockets” (374)
"The darkness stroked him." (Page 283)
4.“Liesel and Max were held together by the quiet gathering of words” (248)
The personification part for this one is the gathering part and it's just saying that the real reason the max and Liesel bonded was because of their reading and it's it's so much stronger to say the quote above than to say that they were friends because they like books.
“She envisioned the sight of her thieving hand reaching up, making the window rise until the book was felled. It seemed to surrender slowly, like a falling tree” (369)
"There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned."(321)
"Rudy looked down. A warped circle of mud grinned up at him. What might you be looking at? It seemed to ask"(259)
Zeugma
Juxtaposition
“For the book thief, everything was going nicely. / For me, the sky was the color of Jews.” (349).
2.”When Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held together by the quiet gathering of words. (248)
“He will soon own you, until it is he who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back, smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you'll be working for him at minimum wage while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets”(254).
In this quote he really repeats himself he's getting a point across and unlike some of the other devices juxtaposition is really straight to the point using repetition, leisel states multiple time that max is not going to be as happy as the rich man(hitler) and then she goes on to say if he's just going to stand for it and in the way that this quote war written couldn't have been written better or using any other device because this was meant to get a point across.
1.”Hans and Rosa Hubermann were arguing in the living room, even if it was much quieter than it used to be. Liesel, in typical fashion, was an onlooker.” (244)
“Liesel opened the door and her mouth simultaneously.” (248)
This is an example of zeugma because it's using the word opening as two different meanings one as in she’s about to say something and the second as in she is actually opening the door it kinda creates a type of drama for the reader which is exactly what a zeugma is supposed to do. If Z were to write this in another way it may have been less confusing but also less impactful.
1.“Her words were shoved back to Papa with the rest of the junk” (244)