How did Marcus Zuzac employ features of Magical Realism to convey his ideas about human existence in his novel “The Book Thief”.

Magical Realism is a genre of books and movies, the books/ movies are mainly realistic or believable but they have a small surreal element to them. This is the factor that makes them not just realism but magical realism.

In the novel “The Book Thief” Marcus Zuzac incorporates features of magical realism to convey his ideas about human existence. He also uses magical realism to give us a new perspective on Nazi Germany and world war two.

One of the main ways Marcus Zuzac uses magical realism is by personifying Death. He does this for a number of reasons, one of which is to give us a new perspective on what causes people to die. Portraying Death as almost human changed my perspective on the cause of humans dying. It also made me realise that Death, who is often portrayed as the “bad guy” who kills for the fun of it, is actually a neutral character in this book. By personifying death, Marcus Zuzac shows readers that Death simply collects souls after people have died. Humans are still one hundred percent to blame for the terrible things that happened on both sides of World War Two.

In “The Book Thief” the character Death can be perceived by readers to be naive. He is perceived to be naive because although he has a conscience, he does not know what it is like to be human and to be truly alive. Death often does not understand human motives and thoughts. We can see an example of Death not understanding humans when he says: “I am haunted by humans” This is ironic because many humans are haunted by death. We know Death does not understand humans very well from this quote because if he understood humans he would not be haunted by them. Although humans perceive Death to be naive we often overlook the fact that no living human truly knows what it is like to be dead or to be death. The fact that many readers perceive Death as naive shows how cocky we are as a race and how little we really know. Death views humanity with a neutral perspective meaning he can see through human emotions to see what humans often cannot. All too often we dismiss his truths by saying things such as: Death doesn’t know what it’s like to be human, blatantly ignoring the fact that Death sees human existence for what it truly is, not just what we perceive it to be. I believe many readers cannot grasp this concept because they are too stubborn to admit that an external being could challenge our views on our own existence. That is why many readers perceive Death to be naive when they are the ones who are actually naive.

During The Book Thief Death often foreshadows events that will happen later in the book. One of the biggest events he foreshadows is Rudy Steiner’s death, two years prior to when he actually dies. “A small announcement about Rudy Steiner he didn’t deserve to die the way he did.” Death does this because he believes that dying is not a big deal. He shows us this in the quote when he says “a small announcement” when in our eyes being told Rudy Steiner, one of the main characters, is going to die is no small announcement. Death believes that the people who are suffering are those who are still alive. The reason Death foreshadows events such as Rudy Steiner’s death is to away the suspense and emotion that is created by not knowing if he is going to die or not. It makes the reader view Rudy’s death more from Deaths perspective. Death wants us to understand the lack of emotion he feels when he sees them die.

Marcus Zuzac uses Death in “The Book Thief” by to give readers another perspective on their own existence. This means readers can step back and view human existence as an onlooker with a neutral point of view, instead of trying to defend human actions automatically because they are human. At one point in “The Book Thief” Death says “it’s the leftover humans, the survivors. There the ones I can’t stand to look at.” Death cannot bear to look at living humans because he is constantly watching people murder and do terrible things to each other. Every second of every day he is seeing the saddest parts of people’s lives, not only the people who are dying but their loved ones watching. As humans if we saw that every moment of every day for almost eternity we would view the human race just as death does. As violent and selfish. Although death sees all this despair in the world he shows us that he is not like many humans who often only focus on the negative side of life. He proves this through taking an interest in Liesel and her book. “It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt— an immense leap of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.” Through this quote he shows us that he does believe there is a small glimmer of hope that human existence is worth it and Liesel and her book are a part of that reason.

Marcus Zuzac personified Death in The Book Thief to give us another perspective on human existence and he certainly achieved that. Personifying Death means that the reader can almost step back and observe the human race from a neutral standpoint. They can also possibly for the first time think about whether they believe human existence is worth it or not.