Author: Brianna

Salvador Dali’s surrealist art Metamorphosis of Narcissus depicts the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was in love with his reflection but could never embrace it and died of frustration.
I think Dali has depicted Narcissus as an egg with a new flower growing through it to show the beauty that has plagued his mind because of his obsession with himself.
The flower is called the narcissus, that symbolises rebirth and new beginnings.

Salvador Dali’s Death Tarot Card shows the relationship between Death and New Life. The cypress tree with the skull has been cut at the trunk, representing the trees death in order to make room for the blooming new life of the rose.
The cypress tree is commonly used as symbols in history. They point towards the sky making them be associated with heaven, immortality and hope. However, the tree can also symbol mourning, shown by the dark cloaked figure of death bowing to the Cypress tree. The Cypress tree is a reminder of life and death.
The swallow in the background


La Muerta translates to A death or death. XIII is the number 13 in roman numerals and typically #13 it is the card of death.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/novel-ambition-20131118-2xpu0.html

Markus Zusak’s mother, Elisabeth Zusak ( Nicknamed Liesel)

But she vividly remembers that time the bombs fell across the road and the little girl and her grandmother died. She remembers when the cuckoo would sound on the radio, the cue for everyone to get out of bed and go to the air shelter – “either die or run” – her foster sister carrying her hairbrush and hair curlers. She remembers when the boy next door ran out of the house to take bread to a parade of Jewish prisoners and was whipped for his compassion. “That was the most tragic thing, you know, it was the most terrible thing anybody could witness.”

Around the kitchen table his mum would tell the kids about her “rough as guts” foster mother, and the bombs coming down “and the ground being covered in ice but the sky being on fire.

Rough as guts foster mother would become Rosa Hubermann.

In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, the significance of words is emphasized through personifying them and showing their impact on Liesel Memingers life.

Zusak uses personification of words to emphasize the power of negative words in Liesel’s argument with Isla Hermann, by showing how words can injure someone, “The injury of words, Yes, the brutality of words… Cuts had opened and series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin, All from the words”
The words were personified to show how Liesel’s words were physically hurting Isla and creating imaginary injuries as she hurled her hurtful words at Isla. Zusak did this to make the reader realize how our actions, even if not physical, can have the power to hurt someone and cause damage.
Another way that Zusak showed the importance of words through personfication was when Liesel began writing her story in the book that Isla gave her.
“She also gave her a reason to write her own words, to remind her that words had also brought her to life”. This line shows how Liesel’s journey from learning in the basement to reading her stolen books and to eventually writing her own story gave her something to focus on during the testing times of Nazi Germany and “brought her to life” not literally but figuratively. Liesel discovered who she was and she was no longer “the book thief without the words”
Zusak personified words to have’ brought her to life’ to show how humans are able to find something to use as a coping mechanism when facing troubling times, by showing that Liesel used words as a way to weather the horrors of the war in Germany and how it was impacting her life.

Another time, when the importance of words is shown through personification, is near the end of the book, when Liesel’s words ‘saved her life’. When Himmel Street was bombed, Liesel was writing in the basement and the only survivor from Himmel Street. “She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life”. Liesel was not literally holding onto words, but she was holding on to her black book that contained her words and her story. Her words meant that she was in the basement and safe from the bombing, and the only survivor from Himmel St. This is the second time in The Book Thief that words saved a life. In WW1, Hans wrote letters instead of fighting and was the only survivor from his ‘platoon?’. Zusak is emphasizing the power of words by using them to save Hans and Liesel’s lives.
Zusak personified words in the Book Thief to show how words gave Liesel purpose in life and a means to manage the horrors of Nazi Germany and words also became the thing that saved her life. This shows Liesel’s complicated relationship with words and the impact they had on her life growing up during the war.

Zusak personifies words in order to elevate their meaning in the text and show the reader their importance and effect on the main character, Liesel Memingers life.

Maybe add in Liesels quote ” The Fuhrer wouldn’t exist without words”?
Add in the theme of how words save lives ( saved Hans from WW1 , saved Liesel from the bombing)

In Max’s story The Word Shaker, ‘great forests of words” were planted by the Führer in order to signify how he was able to use words to control a nation. Under his rule, the German people were manipulated and controlled into believing what he was telling them, thus Zusak used words to show that “It was a nation of farmed thoughts”
This makes it easy for the readers to understand the power that words have on the world

The irony of Markus Zusak’s emphasise on words is that he is using words to show their importance.

The irony of this is that The Book Thief is just a series of words strewn together by Markus Zusack, but similar to how Liesel uses words to discover herself and create her own story, Zusak has used words to create a story for us.

Death
” I studied the blinding, white snow sky who stood at the window of the moving train. I practically inhaled it, but still I wavered, i buckled, i became interested in the girl”- Metaphor of the sky
” A small soul was in my arms”
“I clearly remember that my breath was loud that day” – Surreal
“A packet of souls”- Surreal

I wanted to stop, to crouch down. I wanted to say ‘Im sorry child’. But that is not allowed” – Death feels emotion towards a human, How is this possible or allowed
“The cemetery welcomed me like a friend”
“Like most misery, it started with happiness”
“And it would show me, once again, that one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death”
“I guess humans like to watch a little destruction.”
“I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men. They are not. They’re running at me ” – soldiers running towards death
“In the darkness of my dark beating heart” – Personification
You see? Even death has a heart” – Personification
“Three examples, if nothing else, will give you the ashen taste in your mouth that defined my existence during that year.”
“So many humans, so many colours”
“There are soft, coal coloured clouds, beating like black hearts”
“For me, the sky was the colour of Jews”
“Please believe me when I tell you I picked up each soul that day as if it were a newly born, I even kissed a few weary poisoned cheeks”- Personification . Death convincing us he is good
Sometimes, I imagined how everything appeared above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye” – Aryan race
” I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race- that rarely do I ever simply estimate it”
All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Memimger and tell her the only truth I truly know… I am haunted by humans” – The Book Thief addresses the corruption of the human race by addressing a traumatic time that happened in the world, the Nazi Holocaust.

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. Its his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry” – about Rudys death

Liesel Meminger- The book thief
Death saw the book thief 3 times
1. WHITE – When her brother died
2. BLACK – Years later at a plane crash
3. RED- After Himmel St is bombed

“A girl made of darkness”
” When I recollect her, I see a long list of colors, but its the three in which I saw in her flesh that resonate the most”
“The book thief had struck for the first time the beginning of an illustrious career”
Words : “She was the book thief without the words”
“It’s hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors but speaks them” –Liesel about Papa
“And another ten minutes, The gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through”
“Would the gates shut behind her or would they have the good will to let her back out?”
“A book was eating her up” – guilt of stealing from the fire?
“Whatever reason, they were huddled amongst the ashes, shaken. Survivors” – same as death sees human survivors but Liesel sees book survivors.
“The book was starting to burn her, It seemed to be igniting”
“How fitting it was that she was discovering the power of words”
“A girl treading water”
” The injury of words. Yes, the brutality of words”
Magical: “Immediately. Her brother was next to her. He whispered for her to stop, but he was too dead, and not worth listening to.” …” She shoved th boy down the steps, making him fall….Her brother holding his knee disappeared.
Words: “She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life” – Liesel was in the basement writing when the bombs hit. Words, her words, saved her.
Words: “The words. Why did they have to exist. Without them, there wouldnt be any of this, the Fuhrer was nothing.
What good were the words?
Words:” I was just so angry and afraid and I wanted to kill the words”
Words: ” She gave her a reason to write her own words, to remind her that words had also brought her to life”

Hans Hubermann-Papa
“He had already cheated me in one world war, but would later be put into another where he would somehow manage to avoid me again” -DEATH
“Liesel upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot”
” Hans Hubermann belonged to that 10%” – That didnt suppport Hitler
Words: “Each word fell away at its edged. It broke off and formed the next” – Leisel stole The Shoulder Shrug and it is of some importance ( “Something happened”
“The man was seeing something. He was watching it quickly. end to end, like a race, but it was too high and too far away for Liesel to see” – Surreal??
“His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do- the best ones”

Rudy Steiner– Friend
“Insane or not, Rudy was destined to be Liesel’s best friend”

Ilsa Hermann– Mayors wife
First introduced: ” standing fluffy haired and shivery in her enormous cold aired doorway. Always silent. Always alone. No words. Not once”
“The shadows hands were in is coat pockets. It had fluffy hair” – Isla saw Liesel steal the book of fire.
“If it had a face, the expression on it would have been on of injury”
“A broken woman”
“Something like the imagined breath of a corpse” – surreal
“She looked so vulnerable in the monstrous doorway”
“She stood with a delighted crookedness. A smile appeared to have paralyzed her lips”
“The mayors wife bruised herself again”- what does this mean??
“She usually paid more attention to what was next to her, at something missing” – her son
“He is nothing new in this world, He was my…”
“Isla Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph”
Words: ” 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”

Max- the struggler, a Jewish fist-fighter
“Hans Hubermann. Again, he spoke to him, to the distant stranger. He pleaded. Please
“When death captures me, the boy vowed, he will feel my fist on his face, I quite like that. The stupid gallantry. yes. I like that a lot” –
Personification Death is naive.

The way Zusak describes Germany at this time in history.

” It was a nation of farmed thoughts”

Colour
Prologue- “In which our narrator introduces himself the colours”… “First the colours, then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least I try”
This may be significant in the novel because it makes us think that the narrator of the book sees colour before seeing ‘humans’, implying the narrator isn’t human. I think this is referring to seeing an ‘aura’ of someone, which is an inhuman quality. I think the colour red will be used to represent death, violence and love, and will be the colour around people who have passed??

Colour quotes:
The road of yellow stars- jewish homes

It’s hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors but speaks them”
A girl made of darkness”
” When I recollect her, I see a long list of colors, but its the three in which I saw in her flesh that resonate the most”
“The only thought that continually recurred was the yellow tear. Had it been dark, she r-ealised, the tear would have been black”
“The dark, the light. What was the difference”

“The sky was bleached bed sheet white each morning. All day long i carried the souls across it , that sheet splashed with blood”

A book of fire

Max’s dreams of Hitler
” In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of the enitre nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them-until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet…
He watched the next person climb through the ropes. it was a girl”

” There was also a rumour that later that day she walked fully clothed into the Amper River and said something very strange. Something about a kiss. Something about a Saumensch.”
The Amper River is where Liesel saw how much Rudy loved her, by jumping into the icy water and risking himself to retrieve her book.

The Kiss
” She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend Rudy Steiner soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty adn sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchsits suit collection”

Markus Zusak uses literary devices such as foreshadowing and irony to hint at or in this case literally tell the reader events in the future.
He uses the character of death to do this.
Some quotes to show this :

“Here is a small fact” “You are going to die”
Death says this right at the start of the book, on page 1. I think the reason Zusak does this so early on in the book, is to engage the reader from page 1, by saying something Ludacris like we are all going to die. It slaps some reality into us straight away, because it’s true. It also means that Death can foreshadow throughout the book and we get used to it.
“ Soon I will clap them together. Just give me a few pages”
Death says this about clapping Max and Liesel together as if he is holding them in each hand and can manipulate their fate and lead them towards each other.
“Then came the seventh side of the dice. Two days after Germany invaded Russia, Three days before Britain and the Soviets joined forces”
The seven-sided dice foreshadow reveals that the war begins just after Liesel and Isla have their falling out.
“ In September, they did not hear it as they slept. Either the radio was already half-broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying sound of sirens”
This foreshadowing reveals that in Liesel, Hans and Rosa’s next few pages, that the radio they bought to warn them of air raids fails them and immediately the reader thinks that they are bombed and die. When we keep reading this becomes true, but we are slightly prepared for it, so the shock of the event it lessened. ( Still cried though:))
“A book floated down the Amper River. A boy jumped in, caught up to it and held it high in his right hand. He grinned. He stood waist deep in the icy, Decemberish water. How about a kiss Saumensch?” he said. …. How about a kiss? How about a kiss? Poor Rudy”
Death foreshadows when Rudy shows his love for Liesel by retrieving her book from the river. Death reveals subtly that Rudy does not get his kiss from Liesel by saying “Poor Rudy” .

“A small announcement about Rudy Steiner” “He didn’t deserve to die the way he did”
This foreshadowing attempt is just cruel. It spoils the plot and reveals that Rudy dies and makes us start hanging on to every page that Rudy hasn’t died yet. Again, it engages us.

“Pre-emptivley you conclude, as I would, that Rudy died that very same day, of hypothermia. He did not.” …… ” He’d have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips”
Here Death literally reveals that Rudy did not die from the river, but is bombed 2 yrs later. He also revealed that he finally got his kiss from Liesel, which is very significant giving the fact that Rudy spent years loving Liesel.

“Of course, im being rude. I’m spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book. but of this particular piece of it” I have given you two events in advance, because i don’t have much interest in building mystery”

Listing:
a girl
some words
an accordionist
some fanatical Germans
A Jewish fist fighter
and quite a lot of thievery

There were two guards , There was a mother and her daughter. One corpse.

Metaphor:
“That was when a great shiver arrived… maybe it was just Europe again, breathing”
“The cold was climbing out of the ground”
“Liesels blood had dried inside her. It crumbled”
“A blank page face”

Describe at least one important object in the written text.
Explain why that object was important

In William Shakespeare’s, Macbeth, the object of blood is an important symbol that demonstrates Macbeth’s internal conflict because of his ambition. Blood is important in showing the conflict and the detrimental effects that ambition has on people who become corrupt by the temptations of ambition.

The symbol of blood first appears in the line “Or art thou but a dagger of the mind.. and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood” said by Macbeth as he battles with the idea of killing King Duncan. Shakespeare uses the symbolism of blood on the dagger to represent the internal conflict that Macbeth feels to the idea of killing his friend. The blood is foreshadowing the murder Macbeth will commit, and the hallucination of the dagger shows the effects that his dire and evil ambition is already having on his mental state, as he begins to deteriorate. The blood on the dagger is important to show the audience that even in the early stages of Macbeth’s venture down ambitions dark roads, he is already facing the consequences of his ambition, and witnessing what his ambition could drive him to do.

Following on from the bloody dagger, Macbeth’s hands are stained with the blood of King Duncan after Macbeth murders him.