{"id":324,"date":"2011-05-03T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T14:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=324"},"modified":"2011-05-02T21:12:51","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T04:12:51","slug":"mark-reads-the-book-thief-chapters-77-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/05\/mark-reads-the-book-thief-chapters-77-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Book Thief’: Chapters 77-78"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth chapters of The Book Thief<\/em>, there is not a human alive that was even remotely prepared for this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Book Thief<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well.<\/p>\n

PART TEN<\/strong><\/p>\n

the book thief
\n<\/strong>featuring<\/p>\n

what the fuck<\/p>\n

CH. 77: THE END OF THE WORLD (PART I)<\/strong><\/p>\n

HOW CAN THERE BE ANOTHER PART AFTER THIS<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, I offer you a glimpse of the end. Perhaps it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to soften the blow for later, or to better prepare myself<\/em> for the telling. Either way, I must inform you that it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN<\/strong>. Are you suggesting she dies, Death? But\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.you said it was going to be Rudy Steiner! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand this. What the hell is going on?<\/p>\n
* * * A SMALL, SAD HOPE * * *
\nNo one wanted to bomb Himmel Street.
\nNo one would bomb a place named after
\nheaven, would they? Would they?<\/strong><\/p>\n
What the hell????? WHAT. WHAT. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. What are you doing, Death?<\/p>\n
The bombs came down, and soon, the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower to the ground.<\/p>\n
In short, Himmel Street was flattened.<\/p>\n
Houses were splashed from one side of the street to the other. A framed photo of a very serious-looking F\u00c3\u00bchrer<\/em> was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. But I knew something he<\/em> didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. All while people slept.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I seriously don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand this. Why did Death lead me to believe that Rudy was the one to die at the end of this? What is he talking about in regards to Hitler? What does he know? What does Death<\/em> know? I am so confused, everyone, I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T LIKE THIS FEELING.<\/p>\n
Rudy Steiner slept. Mama and Papa slept. Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller. Tommy M\u00c3\u00bcller. All sleeping. All dying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!!?!?<\/strong> NO, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS. No, I refuse to believe it. No, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do this, THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE. Oh my god, what. What. What. WHAT THE HELL.<\/p>\n
Only one person survived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
YOU DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN MEAN THIS METAPHORICALLY, MARKUS ZUSAK. You literally<\/em> just killed off nearly the entire cast of characters in this book IN ONE PARAGRAPH<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
I seriously had to stop at this line. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read for nearly five minutes, as I tried to process the unbearable information just shoved in front of me, and I could feel tears forming, though my brain felt numb. They were all dead. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do<\/em> that, I though. THIS BOOK WAS DEPRESSING ENOUGH.<\/p>\n
She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence settled itself in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there, somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The world has ended for Liesel Meminger. It makes sense now. She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to die to have her life ended. She just has to lose EVERYTHING THAT HAS EVER MATTERED TO HER<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even. I just cannot. This hurts too much.<\/p>\n
* * * PASSED ITEMS, HAND TO HAND * * *
\nBlocks of cement and roof tiles.
\nA pieces of wall with a dripping sun
\npainted on it. An unhappy-looking
\naccordion, peering through its
\neaten case.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Pieces of Liesel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, of 33 Himmel Street, of everything she held dear, now relegated to the term of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rubble.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Words can hurt, too.<\/p>\n
There was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully share their enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Earlier, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real. It actually happened<\/em>. They are dead. Fucking hell, this is brutal and bleak and somehow worse than everything we’ve gone through, worse than all the plot twists in the books I’ve read and wrote about. No fanfare, no majestic goodbye. Just robbed of life from the falling canisters. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it.<\/p>\n
Good god.<\/p>\n
Farther away, their bodies were laid out, like the rest. Papa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the Germans–Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even cry anymore. I did when Death first unceremoniously announced this new news, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m completely numb at this point. This is seriously awful. WHY DID I CHOOSE TO READ THIS BOOK<\/strong>. my heart.<\/p>\n
The rescuers pull Liesel from the ruins of 33 Himmel Street, from the basement that held paintings and memories of Max Vandenburg, the lonely Jew, from the nights of books and accordions, from the cold drafts that caused sickness (or perceived to be the cause), from the place where Liesel began to truly write. Liesel ignores the men, who want to know how she knew to be in the basement when there were no air raid sirens, and she calls out a singular cry for her father.<\/p>\n
A second time. Her face creased as she reached a higher, more panic-stricken pitch. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Papa, Papa!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n
They passed her up as she shouted, wailed, and cried. If she was injured, she did not yet know it, for she struggled free and searched and called and wailed some more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My god, Liesel. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so sorry. I wish you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to see this and experience this. I wish I could just turn back the pages and none of this would have to happen.<\/p>\n
She was still clutching the book.<\/p>\n
She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What a tragic stroke of metaphorical coincidence. This book has been about the power of words to save a life, and now we see how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve literally done that.<\/p>\n
I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. I just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n
CH. 78: THE NINETY-EIGHTH DAY<\/strong><\/p>\n
How do you seriously read past this? How do you go back and try to read about the ninety-seven days before Himmel Street is destroyed? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all dead. I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T READ ABOUT THEIR JOY AND HAPPINESS.<\/p>\n
For ninety-seven days, which now seems like a few minutes in my head, things at 33 Himmel Street are about as close to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as they could be. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happiness and music in the Hubermann household. Hans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job in Munich is easy, and he even gets to bring home treats some days.<\/p>\n
On that ninety-eighth day, the Jews return to Molching, but this time, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re marched in the opposite<\/em> direction, heading to a local town to clean up after some unspecified incident that the army refuses to clean. (Actually, there may not be an event at all. In hindsight, this section also can read as if the city just needed<\/em> a cleaning anyway.)<\/p>\n
Just like Liesel here, my mind instantly jumped to Max Vandenburg. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so easy for me, as the reader, to drop myself right into Liesel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind, holding out the hope that Max will pass by so that I can know he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still alive, but also hoping I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see him because then that means he was captured.<\/p>\n
He was not there. Not on this occasion.<\/p>\n
Just give it time, though, for on a warm afternoon in August, Max would most certaily be marched through town with the rest of them. Unlike the others, however, he would not watch the road. He would not look randomly into the F\u00c3\u00bchrer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> German grandstand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
* * * A FACT REGARDING * * *
\nMAX VANDENBURG
\nHe would search the faces on Munich
\nStreet for a book-thieving girl.<\/strong><\/p>\n
WELL, SHIT. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alive? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a relief. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a huge<\/em> one, actually, especially after the liberal dose of tragedy I just read through. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s captured and that makes me have a million questions that I need answered, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just wait until later to see if Zusak answers them. However, I noticed that he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t arrive until August, months after the bombing. So is Liesel even in<\/em> Molching anymore at this point?<\/p>\n
Those Jews come through twice in ten days and Liesel does not see Max. Zusak, on the other hand, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t satisfied with just heaping all that tragedy on us without adding a little more, remarking that someone would be found dead before<\/em> those bombs destroyed Himmel Street:<\/p>\n
He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.<\/p>\n
The careless owner had left the door open.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
* * * JULY 24, 6:03 A.M. * * *
\nThe laundry was warm, the rafters
\n<\/strong>were firm, and Michael Holtzapfel
\n<\/strong>jumped from the chair as if it
\n<\/strong>were a cliff.<\/strong><\/p>\n
SERIOUSLY, PLEASE STOP THIS ZUSAK. Two scoops of tragedy IN A ROW? Oh my god, poor Michael. Poor Frau Holtzapfel!<\/p>\n
They had too many ways, they were too resourceful–and when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse.<\/p>\n
Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing.<\/p>\n
He killed himself for wanting to live.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I seriously don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how much more of this I can take. This story has become so bleak and painful, especially when my thoughts wander to some of those moments hundreds of pages away. Everyone is dead. Everyone<\/em>. I have never read a book that is so heinous<\/em> in the way it disposes its characters. Liesel and Max are the only two left alive, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even have hope at this point that either of them<\/em> will survive either. At the same time, this is a book about a nation embroiled in a global war. To ignore the death that came along with it would be disingenuous.<\/p>\n
Death describes the atmosphere in Molching on July 24, 1943 in a very interesting way: through disinterest. He knows from what Liesel wrote that screams filled the neighborhood when they discovered the body:<\/p>\n
I did not see Frau Holtzapfel laid out flat on Himmel Street, her arms out wide, her screaming face in total despair. No, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discover any of that until I came back a few months later and read something called The Book Thief<\/em>. It was explained to me that in the end, Michael Holtzapfel was worn down not by his damaged hand or any other injury, but by the guilt of living.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Holy shit, the name of this<\/em> book is the name of Liesel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book. I just sort of put two and two together and I think this is basically all the confirmation I need for how this novel is going to end. Death said Liesel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story lasts six months past Hans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return, and if he picks up The Book Thief<\/em> a few months after this, <\/em>does that mean he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to come to pick up her soul, too? I remember a scene he mentioned very, very long ago, about how he came upon the book he uses to tell this story. Liesel wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dead then, though, was she? She was running away and drops the book, right? (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ok with you discussing this as long as you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t explain the ending or anything beyond this.)<\/p>\n
Liesel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book provides the context for this that Death never knows, that Michael Holtzapfel had stopped sleeping:<\/p>\n
Liesel wrote that sometimes she almost told him about her own brother, like she did with Max, but there seemed a big difference between a long-distance cough and two obliterated legs. How do you console a man who has seen such things? Could you tell him the F\u00c3\u00bchrer<\/em> was proud of him, that the F\u00c3\u00bchrer<\/em> loved him for what he did in Stailngrad? How could you even dare? You can only let him do the talking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I actually think it was smart for Liesel not to try to compare the two, despite that maybe there was a chance it would actually have comforted Michael. It also seems that Michael was headed to this inevitable end anyway, not content to stand his guilt anymore.<\/p>\n
* * * MICHAEL HOLTZAPFEL–THE LAST GOODBYE * * *
\nDear Mama,
\nCan you ever forgive me?
\nI just couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand it any longer.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m meeting Robert. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care
\nwhat the damn Catholics say about it.
\nThere must be a place in heaven for
\nthose who have been where I have been.
\nYou might think I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t love you
\nbecause of what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done, but I do.
\nYour Michael<\/strong><\/p>\n
I mean, how do you even comment about this sort of thing? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had experience with feeling suicidal and I know, to some extent, what this feels like, but the context for me is different, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I vastly differentiate from this.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just heartbreaking. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as simple as that. This whole book is one giant set-up for the inevitable heartbreak.<\/p>\n
The neighborhood turns to one man to be the source of news and comfort, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a proper fit: Hans Hubermann. Frau Holtzapfel lost two sons in six months, and she reacts with the horror and the grief you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect from such a tragic occurrence:<\/p>\n
She said the name Michael at least two dozen times, but Michael had already answered. According to the book thief, Frau Holtzapfel hugged the book for nearly an hour. She then returned to the blinding sun of Himmel Street and sat herself down. She could no longer walk.<\/p>\n
From a distance, people observed. Such a thing was easier from far away.
\nHans Hubermann sat with her.<\/p>\n
He placed his hand on hers, as she fell back to the hard ground.<\/p>\n
He allowed her screams to fill the street.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weird, knowing that Himmel Street will be destroyed not long after this. I feel like we just saw the moment it was actually <\/em>destroyed, as Frau Holtzapfel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grief tears it all apart.<\/p>\n
I seriously cannot believe what this book has become. To say I was unprepared is not even close. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.jesus christ. What the hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth chapters of The Book Thief, there is not a human alive that was even remotely prepared for this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Book Thief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[23,46,45,44],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-book-thief","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-the-book-thief","tag-markus-zusak","tag-the-book-thief-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}