In The Book Thief, Markus Zusak illustrates the power of propaganda in the Nazi regime through the use of children’s naivety.
Zusak does this in order to make the reader challenge their preconceptions about the Holocaust and show how people chose to look the other way when confronted with evidence of what was happening in their own society.
Liesel and Rudy are employed as a tool to show how a society could allow itself to be unaware of what was happening. Readers, when encountering a story told from the point of view of children, will often accept the naive portrayal of the situation. This allows the author to present situations without the usual emotional loading, thus allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. This is a form of dramatic irony, where the reader maintains insight into the reality of the situation that the characters themselves do not have.
In the early stages of the novel, Liesel’s naivety is established when her lack of knowledge around her father and the dangerous labels he was given is shown. Liesel never knew her father and the only thing she did know about him was the label he had been given under the Nazi regime.
“It was a label she did not understand. Kommunist“.
Liesel was unaware of what being a Communist in Nazi Germany meant for her father, and would not understand it… “When she asked her mother what it meant, she was told it wasn’t important”.
In a society where evil things are happening to ordinary people, details are often withheld to protect others, and it was easy for people to turn a blind eye to the Nazi regime and its practices. Children are often considered to be naive and blissfully unaware of things that happen in society and for Liesel, this meant not knowing what being Communist was because the information was withheld from her. This meant Liesel did not know the reality behind the disappearances of Communists, Jewish people and other targeted members of society, whereas as readers, we do know the truth and we can see how a society could allow itself to be unaware of what was happening.
Through the use of Liesel’s naivety, Zusak illustrated how society could allow itself to look the other way when faced with the truth about their society.
Rudy’s naivety is established in a similar way to Liesel’s when Rudy did not understand why certain things were happening in society. This occurred after the Jesse Owens Incident. “Son you can’t go around painting yourself black, you hear?”… Rudy was interested and confused… “Why not, Papa?” “Because they’ll take you away”. “Why?” “Because you shouldn’t want to be black people or Jewish people or anyone who is… not us”
Rudy was unaware of the racial prejudices that the Nazi regime was built upon, and did not understand why being black meant being taken away because as a child he is not yet been exposed to the ……. of……..
Zusak utilized Rudy’s naivety to explore how by simply not telling people the truth can ………
Bit stuck now