Mark Reads ‘The Book Thief’: Chapters 55-56

In the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth chapters of The Book Thief, the inevitable bout of terror, fear, and destruction begins its arrival in Molching, threatening to tear apart the family at 33 Himmel Street. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Book Thief.

Well, it had to happen sometime, right?

CH. 55: THE SOUND OF SIRENS

Just the name of the chapter alone set me on edge. I knew what it meant, what it referred to. The sirens announcing the dropping of bombs. I suppose this book has been building slowly to what we read in these two chapters and what will inevitably take up the remainder of the book. The second great world war is now coming to the front steps of 33 Himmel Drive.

I want to say that I’m glad that Zusak never portrays the bombs falling as some sinister force, as if the perpetrators are evil entities bent on destroying German citizens just for the hell of it. On the flip side, he also doesn’t ignore the terror and doom that these bombings wrought on the citizens of Germany. I mean, it’s a tough line to skirt, clearly, and so far, he’s doing a fine job of being realistic without being unfair to the history of it all.

So much of what’s frightening in these two chapters is how the terror relies almost solely on sound. Sound actually ties in a bunch of what happens, as well, starting off with it. Hans uses some of the money from his extra painting jobs to buy the family a secondhand radio so they can hear news about any raids before the sirens start. Unfortunately, things start off with a lack of sound, as no one wakes up until the sirens go off in September.

Very much like the chapters where Max is nearly found during the NSDAP inspections, reading through the two bombings was an exercise in restraint. Last time, I read through so quickly just to see if Max was found that I missed a lot of great stuff Zusak stuck into that section. I had to read it a second and third time just to catch what I did, so I made point that if this happened again, I would try to slow down and read every word.

YEAH, THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I blazed through these chapters in maybe five minutes, and, at the time I’m writing this, I’ve now read these chapters four times. Part of it is because I know I didn’t hold in a single moment aside from the beginning and the end the first time around, but what happens specifically in chapter fifty-six is just….good lord. Ok, STOP JUMPING AHEAD, MARK. GOSH.

Moving back to the first “bombing.” Hans wakes up Liesel and the family starts to head out when Rosa stops them, heading down to the basement instead.

Max edged out from behind the paint cans and drop sheets. His face was tired and he hitched his thumbs nervously into his pants. “Time to go, huh?”

Hans walked to him. “Yes, time to go.” He shook his hand and slapped his arm. “We’ll see you when we get back, right?”

“Of course.”

Rosa hugged him, as did Liesel.

“Goodbye, Max.”

I completely believed that this would be it, that this was when they’d all say goodbye to Max forever. Even though it’s not, there are so many small, heartbreaking moments like this littered throughout these two chapters that feel like epic goodbyes or grand statements of terror and loss. I’d like to chalk that up to Zusak’s matter-of-fact tone, the way he uses these abrupt sentences to state reality to us, and we know we can’t argue with it. It’s just the way it is.

And so the Hubermanns and Liesel quickly exit the house, moving along to their designated bomb shelter, along the way observing the procession of fear that strings along Himmel Street, people clutching whatever possession were deemed the most important and allowed to survive the inevitable destruction that was to come.

Papa, who’d forgotten everything–even his accordion–rushed back to her and rescued the suitcase from her grip. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what have you got in here?” he asked. “An anvil?”

Frau Holtzapfel advanced alongside him. “The necessities.”

YEAH THIS WOULD TOTALLY BE ME. I’m sorry, my records are totally necessary, Hans, and I have to take my Hogwarts LEGO set because it’s basically limited edition, and I could probably sell my seven inch collection later for, like, a million dollars, and look, I know they’re heavy, but it’s the FULL collection of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, and the artist commentary really accents the whole thing.

Ok. Right.

Six houses down, the three arrive at their designated shelter, lucky enough to get a deep basement that fits twenty-two people. The amount of people simultaneously adds a bit of comfort to the situation and accents the terror of it all, too. Liesel notices this after joking with Rudy; she’s able to get a read on the people in the basement and in that tiny place, it’s hard to hide your fear. Even though there are those more afraid than her mother, Liesel knows that she’s not seen Rosa like this before:

Rosa rocked back and forth, ever so gently. “Liesel,” she whispered, “come here.” She held the girl from behind, tightening her grip. She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Liesel could not make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips.

That makes ME scared. It’s a moment where Rosa is probably intending to comfort Liesel, but she ends up doing the opposite. Maybe Rosa is just trying to comfort herself, too. Aside from the occasional slight talking from a few kids, specifically a brother and sister who start to pester each other, this entire first bombing scene is absolutely silent. Everyone is just waiting for the three alarms:

After ten minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of nonmovement. Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or pressure. Stillness was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and waited.

The silence is just too much for me. I’d want some sort of noise in this situation. (This is why I like the next time….oh christ, jumping ahead again.) The silence wouldn’t comfort me, but this specific shelter finds a different way to cope.

Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over.

Death also takes some time to comment on the situation in relation to the world at large, and I think it’s an interesting point that he makes:

Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?

I thought that this could quickly go down a problematic path, but Death qualifies his statement by specifying the Hubermanns and the children, suggesting that the whole war was awful for people on both sides. However, Death makes it a point to specify that while the war was difficult for many Germans, it was not the same for the Jews:

As if often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in the basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For these people, life was still achievable.

I’m glad this distinction is made so clearly, that the balance of power is not at all the same, that hiding in a basement implies survival, while the plight of the Jew in Nazi Germany did not.

After returning home when the three alarms go off, the three residents of 33 Himmel Street immediately head down to the basement, to see if Max is ok, despite that no bombs ever fell. When the find him, sitting on the floor with a weird face, he confesses that he did something foolish:

“I…” He struggled to answer. “When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the living room was open just a crack…I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds.” He had not see the outside world for twenty-two months.

My god, I didn’t realize he’d been in the basement for nearly two years straight. I actually think that if he was going to do this, during a bombing was probably the best time. Who would be out in the street?

There was no anger or reproach.

It was Papa who spoke.

“How did it look?”

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. “There were stars,” he said. “They burned my eyes.”

There it is, again, that thing that Zusak does, that way he lays things out so simply, and we just have to deal with them. IT HURTS SOMETIMES. Ugh, Max. Please survive. Please make it through this.

CH. 56: THE SKY STEALER

It’s not that much longer before the second raid comes, and unfortunately, it is not a mistake or a drill. The way that Zusak rushes narratively to get the trio of non-Jews into the Fielders’ basement suggests the urgency of the situation; he spends no real time setting things up. There’s no goodbye to Max (that somehow seems worse in hindsight), and once they all settle in to the basement shelter, Liesel knows that everyone is afraid. The children begin to cry, sensing their parents’ fear, and then the bombs begin to fall:

Even from the cellar, they could vaguely hear the tune of bombs. Air pressure shoved itself down like a ceiling, as if to mash the earth. A bite was taken of Molching’s empty streets.

How close were the bombs falling? I wondered. How close to the center of destruction was that house on Himmel Street? Would Max risk death yet again?

Rosa, once more, freaks both Liesel and myself out with her silent actions in the basement:

Although they were right next to each other, Liesel was forced to call out, “Mama?” Again, “Mama, you’re squashing my hand!”

“What?”

“My hand!”

She’s completely oblivious, and that’s scary, because Rosa is NEVER oblivious. NEVER. Good god.

Liesel….bless her heart. WE ARE TRULY ~SOULMATES~. As I said before, I can’t deal with unbearable silence these days, and if an awkward quiet fills a room or a moment, I’m the one these days who breaks it. Liesel does just there here, picking up The Whistler from her pile of books and reading aloud. It’s comforting to her and it breaks the awful silence in the room.

When she turned to page two, it was Rudy who noticed. He paid direct attention to what Liesel was reading, and he tapped his brother and his sisters, telling them to do the same. Hans Hubermann came closer and called out, and soon, a quietness started bleeding through the crowded basement. By page three, everyone was silent but Liesel.

She didn’t dare look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside. This, it said, is your accordion.

The sound of the turning page carved them in half.

Liesel read on.

This is a transformative scene for Liesel, a huge chunk of character growth plopped into an otherwise tense and frightening scene, and it’s a manifestation of her love for words being brought out as a form of collective comfort for the entire group. Liesel has shared her word love with Hans, with Max, with Rosa, and just a bit with Rudy. But now, all twenty-two people in the Fielding basement learn what Liesel is good at and they take comfort in the regularity of her voice and the flow of the words.

The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words–their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capitol letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. Is he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

This is probably the first time I’ve ever read someone vocalization the way I detach words from their meaning when reading aloud, and I do the same thing very, very often when I’m writing. Words, to me, have physical properties, and sometimes, when I have the chance to use two words that mean that same thing, I’ll use the one that looks the best. Writing has always been a very visual thing for me, both in terms of the images I want to create and in the words that fall to the page. Why do you think I bold and italicize so much? It’s a look, a feeling, to the way a word appears when my eyes grace it.

Seriously, to each of you who begged me to read this book…thank you. This is spectacular.

Only when the sirens leaked into the cellar again did someone interrupt her. “We’re safe,” said Mr. Jenson.

“Shhh!” said Frau Holtzapfel.

Liesel looked up. “There are only two paragraphs till the end of the chapter,” she said, and she continued reading with no fanfare or added speed. Just the words.

Just amazing. I’m at a loss for any more creative ways to describe this. It’s fascinating and revealing and is such a unique celebration of words. Funny that I feel so speechless.

As the adults thank Liesel on their way out of that cramped, word-filled basement, gracious that her voice was able to do what it did during that unbearable time, they all spill out on the street, anxious to see the damage done by the bombs. Surprisingly, they find their neighborhood untouched.

Back at 33 Himmel Street, in the other basement, Rosa beams with pride as she relates the story to Max about Liesel just did, and Max finds inspiration in the story:

As Liesel stood in a corner of the basement, Max watched her and rubbed a hand along his jaw. Personally, I think that was the moment he conceived the next body of work for his sketchbook.

The Word Shaker.

He imagined the girl reading in the shelter. He must have watched her literally handing out the words. However, as always, he must also have seen the shadow of Hitler. He could probably already hear his footsteps coming toward Himmel Street and the basement, for later.

They’ve survived, as Zusak points out, but these moments are clouded by a silent horror, a realization of an inevitable event that will soon come to sweep them away:

Max, Hans, and Rosa I cannot account for, but I know that Liesel Meminger was thinking that if the bombs ever landed on Himmel Street, not only did Max have less chance of survival than everyone else, but he would die completely alone.

A gutting, matter-of-fact end to a horrifying chapter. Zusak’s diction reminds us of the futility to fight this all, and the reality of the loneliness that Max, the basement Jew, would probably always live in.

Ugh.

About Mark Oshiro

Perpetually unprepared since '09.
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28 Responses to Mark Reads ‘The Book Thief’: Chapters 55-56

  1. mugglemomof2 says:

    but it’s the FULL collection of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, and the artist commentary really accents the whole thing.
    As if I didn't love you already!

    • ldwy says:

      Goodness gracious. Love Calvin and Hobbes so much.

      • mugglemomof2 says:

        My whole life I prayed to have a "Calvin" as a kid. My little one is a nut just like Calvin! Everytime she does something and I need to "stop" her I am secretly going "Yes! how hysterical" in my head. I just can't let her know that!

    • Joanie says:

      I've been eyeing that collection for a while. I need to ask for it for my birthday, haha.
      You stole my comment. XD

  2. @jessimuhka says:

    YEAH THIS WOULD TOTALLY BE ME. I’m sorry, my records are totally necessary, Hans, and I have to take my Hogwarts LEGO set because it’s basically limited edition, and I could probably sell my seven inch collection later for, like, a million dollars, and look, I know they’re heavy, but it’s the FULL collection of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, and the artist commentary really accents the whole thing.

    I always thought this would be me, but when the gas line in my stove broke a couple winters ago and I had to call 911 to get the fire department to come, I wound up standing in the common area with just my cat in her carrier and my purse. I would have been sad to lose all my stuff if the fire hadn't been contained so quickly, but it didn't even occur to me to take other things at the time.

  3. cait0716 says:

    First things first. When Max went up to look at the sky and was later described as the sky stealer, I immediately thought of Firefly. They can't take the sky from him, not completely. It made me happy and sad all at once.

    When you live in an area with lots of forest fires, you figure out the answer to "what you take" pretty early. I have a shelf on my bookcase with all my yearbooks and photo albums. The really irreplaceable stuff. Given five minutes, I would empty that shelf. Another five and I'd grab my computer and a bag of clothes and my teddy bear. Even though I don't live in a an area with high fire danger anymore, I organize my apartment this way. It would take me very little time to grab what I wanted and get out if necessary, or to tell someone else what to grab ("everything on the bottom shelf"). It's just how I was raised. Which sounds sad when I say it but was completely normal growing up.

    The scenes in the basement are filled with so much tension. I love when Liesel starts reading. And I love the parallel to when she couldn't read in front of the class. She's come so far since then!

  4. ldwy says:

    What a sad thing to have happen. I hope your aunt has been able to start building a new home.

    I often think the photos of family all over my house would be the most impossible thing to collect (there's tons and they're all over the place) but at the same time one of the things I'd miss most if something like this were to happen to me.

    • cait0716 says:

      The fire happened back in 2000. They have rebuilt and replaced most things (the replaceable things anyway). It does make you think about what you should be prepared to grab (photos, photos, photos!)

  5. Ellalalalala says:

    I don't know how Max managed to tear himself away from the sky after just a few seconds. I don't know how he manages to keep it together at all.

    I can't stop thinking about how awful it would be to come out of that shelter and find the house destroyed – and know that there's an off-chance that Max is still alive, buried under the rubble. What on earth would you do? Throw self-preservation to the wind and just try and get down there to give him a chance? And if you were Max, would you try and dig your way out, knowing what the consequences would be on the outside? Brain. Can't even compute.

    • ldwy says:

      Man oh man, that second paragraph. So true. There's really just no good way to proceed in that situation. How horrifying.

  6. HieronymusGrbrd says:

    This all reminds me of my mother’s tales.
    Hearing the sirens.
    Running down the dark street to the shelter room. (When you don’t allow a single photon to escape your window, you definitely cannot have street lights.)
    A crowd in a cellar.
    Distant (and not so distant) explosions. In really bad cases, the whistling sound of falling bombs and then very near explosions.
    Whispers and cries.
    Lamps flickering, or darkness, when electricity was shut off.
    The worst was when somebody panicked in the dark.
    But the Luftschutzwart had a torch.
    At last, the sirens, signaling all-clear.
    Survived again.

    Like the Hubermann’s, the basement of the apartment house where my mother’s family lived, was not considered to be safe. But when the house eventually was hit, and they lost nearly everything they possessed, the sewing machine, stowed away in this unsafe basement, miraculously survived. (I’ve seen this pedaled, build into a cabinet, monster machine, when I was I child.) This was crucial, because for several years it was nearly impossible to buy clothes. So, when my mother had outgrown her gown, it was transfigured into a blouse, and a new skirt was made from a pillowcase (I hope it was prettier than Winky’s). Unfortunately there was only one needle left, and it had to be handled with great care.

    If this sewing machine could survive a direct hit, Max still has a chance. Right?

    But what would he do then? Good point, Ellalalalala.

    • ldwy says:

      I just wanted to say thank you, again, for sharing the stories of your family in Germany at the time. They lend a perspective we wouldn't be privy to otherwise, and I really appreciate hearing them.

  7. tethysdust says:

    The air raid scenes remind me of tornados when I was a kid. We'd hear the tornado siren, and my parents would bundle my brother and I into the bathroom (we didn't have a basement), put the two of us in the bathtub, and cover us with a mattress. My parents always sat together, next to the bathtub, and we would all wait. I remember passing the time talking to my brother about what would happen if our house got destroyed. It never was, though, thank heavens!

    If a situation like that were to come up now, I know I would grab my laptops, my iphone, and my e-book reader. I know I'm incredibly priviliged and kind of a technophile, but grabbing those few things would save: All my photos, All the locally stored work I've done in the past few years, All the stories I've ever written, All my games, all my music and my entire library.

    Also, now that the air raids have started, I'm afraid Rudy's going to die at any moment. And Max… I so desperately want him to be a survivor.

    • FlameRaven says:

      Indeed; I remember learning that we'd have to go into the basement bathroom if there was a tornado. A lot of times even if there were just bad thunderstorms we'd all go down there and I'd be huddled up with a book and a pillow. Fortunately, the closest we ever came was a storm about three years ago– a tornado hit our town, but it was about a mile north of our house. That was the scariest storm I'd ever seen. It started to get windy and I went out to put my car in the garage, and by the time I stepped out of the garage two minutes later there were buckets of rain. We couldn't even see the radar because the power went out immediately. Almost no one could sleep so I ended up sitting on the couch with my two younger sisters wrapped in blankets. Eventually they did go to bed, but the later half of the storm– when the actual tornado hit– was just eerie. Everything was dark but I could vaguely see the trees thrashing and I just knew that there was a tornado somewhere.

      It made me nervous in college, not to have a basement, and I lived in several apartments over the years without one. I don't know what we'd have done if there had been a tornado. Fortunately we've got a basement now, and Indianapolis proper is less prone to major storms and tornados, but it's still worrying.

      If I did have to flee, I'd grab my laptop and external HD, mostly because they have the last 6 years of my art archived on them. I'd be sad to lose the originals (in files in my closet) but at least I'd have copies. Also my cat, assuming I could coax him out from under the bed. Anything else is not really super-important.

    • Lindsey says:

      I always get nervous when tornadoes come near where I live. I live near Houston, TX and I have never even been in a house that had a basement. I don’t know where we’d go.

  8. acityofdoors says:

    I think that The Sky Stealer has got to be one my favourite chapter of the book so far, hell I think that it's probably one of the best chapters I've read in a long time. One thing I have been loving about this book is the kind of synaesthesia-esq descriptions that Death gives to things and this chapter has some amazing descriptions like Liesel handing the story and the sound of a page turning carving them in half.

  9. tigerpetals says:

    The cat would go in my backpack if I could get him. Put laptop and iPod there, drive the dogs out.

    I have too many books to choose which ones I'd take right now.

    • monkeybutter says:

      I have so many that picking anything aside from Calvin and Hobbes to save would be impossible. I think I'd rather carry the cats than try to get them in a backpack or their carrier. Less of a chance that I'll get scratched up!

  10. shortstack930 says:

    Fires are my worst nightmare. I have 3 dogs, a guinea pig, a rabbit, a hamster, and a bunch of turtles. The dogs would probably be smart and run out the door but I'd have to throw the rest of them in a backpack together and hope they don't eat each other.

    • monkeybutter says:

      I had a lot of pets when I was a kid and I worried about the same thing. I think it's fortunate that I always had a dog whose first instinct upon hearing an alarm was to run for a person or the door. The rest of them, though…yikes.

  11. lilygirl says:

    This book. After numerous reads, discussions, book talks, I am still amazed at the perfect explanation of reading and writing. Then the execution of 500 pages and not a wasted or misused word. The moment of "that is a strange way to use that word" then the realization that it is in fact the most perfect word or turn of phrase ever. Not only design and structure but then an engrossing, soul hurting/soothing story. Everything is just perfect.
    The Book Thief always steals my enthusiasm for other books. It takes a long time to get back an appetite for new works. I cannot find satisfaction in any of the other books I am currently reading. Am always searching for a new phrase or word use and they are not there. UGH, I cannot use the phrase I want here, so I will go with, I am snared by this book.

  12. LH52184 says:

    I've had this thought before too. I've kept handwritten journals for 17 years. They're irreplaceable. Every memory, since the time I was 10, that I felt was worth writing down… And there are way too many of them to even think about "grabbing quickly" if there was a fire, or even to store in a fireproof safe (unless I wanted a whole wall of fireproof safe, lol, and that can't be cheap). I guess I will just have to cross my fingers and hope that I won't ever have to go through something like that. Either that, or I will be the person frantically chucking them out of a window before evacuating and hoping they survive the fall…

  13. widerspruch says:

    I love you and your love for books and words, Mark. Lots of times I don't know what to comment that isn't some sort of keysmash of a sort, but I always, always love and enjoy everything you have to say and how you say it ๐Ÿ˜€

  14. flootzavut says:

    I love the way Liesel reads aloud, too, and the description of the words as divorced from meaning. Sometimes even when I'm reading to myself I see words that way, not as a story playing as images in my head or anything. Anyway yeah. I'm with you and Liesel on this one, the words themselves, regardless of what they represent, can be magic.

  15. lindseytinsey says:

    It's so amazing how Liesel is able to read well with 20 people listening to her and in the beginning of the book she could barely read in front of her class. Well done Liesel ๐Ÿ™‚

  16. Gotcha says:

    /33 Himmel Drive./
    DON'T YOU MEAN HIMMEL STREET, MARK.

  17. Blog Hacked says:

    You could definitely see your enthusiasm in the paintings you write. The sector hopes for more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to say how they believe. All the time follow your heart.

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