Messiha 1

Peter Messiha
Mrs. Barnes
Honors ELA 8
22 September 2015
Book Thief Literary Analysis
Imagine what it would be like to lose family and trust for the the sake of safety. Some
things people take for granted; others have to sacrifice values and loved ones. In The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak, which is narrated by death, Liesel, a girl in Nazi Germany, loses her mother,
brother, and almost everything in order to survive. She is left by her original mother, her brother
died in front of her, and she lost her new family and friends. Jane,in The Face on the Milk
Carton by Caroline B. Cooney, also like Liesel, never knew her parents and lost her grandparents
trust so she could be safe. Her real parents are part of a cultist group,and to keep her from falling
under bad influences her grandparents act like her parents understanding that there could be
consequences for their decisions. Both Zusak and Cooney, in The Book Thief and The Face on
the Milk Carton, use plot, character development, and symbolism to imply the theme that
sometimes there must be sacrifices in order to achieve true safety and to survive.
Zusak and Cooney both use the plot to support the theme. Liesel loses everything as the
plot goes on. She first loses her brother, she watches him die. He dies because he was very sick
on the train ride to their new home. Zusak writes, There were two guards.There was one mother
and her daughter.There was one corpse(Zusak 7). The quote explains what Death sees when
came for Liesels brother. This is one of the many losses she has to deal with As the plot goes on
she loses her mother as well, the last person in her original family. She gains a very close friend,
Max, then also loses Max. Max leaves the Hubermanns, Liesels adopted family, after Hans

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Hubermann, her adopted father, gives bread to a jew. He runs away so the Hubermanns could be
safe. Max also loses his old life to be safe, even though eventually, he gets caught again. When
he gets caught he is taken to the concentration camp, Dachau. By the end of the book almost
everybody she has loved is dead and her home is ruined. Her best friend Rudy, her adopted
family, and everybody she has gotten use to all dead to a devastating night-time bomb. She also
loses her love for words, a love that has stayed with her since she started reading, The
Gravediggers Handbook. Zusak writes She dropped the book. She knelt. The book thief
howled (Zusak 14). The quote shows how after the bombs, the book thief didnt care about her
words only the memories of the people who shed their blood to satisfy the bombs. Caroline B.
Cooney also uses the plot to show sacrifice in her book. When Jane first saw her face on the
missing children section of the milk carton, she wondered what it meant. After a while, her
grandparents finally told her the secret. She finds out that she is not the girl she thinks she is and
her parents are not the people she thinks they are. Cooney wrote We tried everything to get
Hannah out. We took her on long vacations, we sent her to live with my cousin in Atlanta, we
tried traditional church. But she went to California to join the temple commune (Cooney 85) .
This quote shows how Hannahs parents suffer for her safety, so she does not have to go back to
the cult. Jane also loses her grandparent's trust but she learns to forgive them for not telling her
sooner. She forgives them because she knows that they did the right thing, but still feels slightly
betrayed.
Both authors also use character development to prove the the same theme. Jane develops
at a steady rate since she saw her face on the milk carton. She was forced to start thinking and
asking questions no child should have had to. Questions such as: Who are my real parents? Janie
also develops after finding out about her parents, but drastically. Cooney writes Had to write. It

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was like a druggie stabbing her veins (Cooney 142). This quote supports how much Jane
develops. It shows how she can not stop writing or thinking about New Jersey and her real
parents.This development shows that she suffered and even though she tried to cover it, her
development solidified her and her grandparents sacrifices. It is also evident that Liesel suffers
by the way she develops. Her first major loss, her initial family, made her develop as proved by
her unwillingness to speak to anyone, or do anything. Zusak writes When Liesel finally had a
bath, after two weeks of living on Himmel Street(Zusak 35). She refused to take a bath
because she was so overwhelmed by the loss of her family. She had other losses on the way
including the loss of her adopted father, Hans. When she lost her father she was overcome with
sorrow. Zusak wrote Rudy was not the same, he didnt talk. Mama was not the same, she did
not berate. Liesel, too, was feeling the effects (Zusak 425). She She was almost at the point
when she and Rudy went to kill the Fuhrer, but the bombing really made her explode. Her
suffering is also evident like Jane. The sacrifices she made and suffered are what sped up her
development.
Lastly the authors use symbolism to back up the theme. There are many symbols in The
Book Thief. One of the first symbols is, The Gravediggers Handbook. The book symbolizes her
brothers death. It also symbolizes the last time she saw her mother. Another symbol is Hanss
Accordion. The accordion signifies Hans to Liesel, and a promise to Hans. This is a sacrifice for
Hans because it is the last time he saw one of his best friends, and all his crew members died. It
is also a symbol of sacrifice for Liesel, because it signifies her adopted father to her, especially
after his death. Zusak writes, A man walked past with a broken accordion case and Liesel could
see the instrument inside (Zusak 534). This quote shows the accordion destroyed showing the
destruction the bombs set upon her adopted father as well. This is a sacrifice Liesel chooses and

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she lives, the sacrifice she makes is staying in the basement,writing and reading words.This is a
sacrifice because ultimately it forces to These are some of the many symbols of sacrifice in The
Book Thief. In The Face on the Milk Carton, the milk carton is a symbol of absent freedom and
having lost family. Jane had to lose her parents so she can be safe, even though she never knew
them. Also Janes parents have to give up their daughter because they did not want her to fall
under the same circumstance her parents did. Also the dress represents the fate of the kidnapping.
Her parents fate was being unable to leave the cultist group. Cooney wrote Hannah was
addicted to the cult the same way some people are addicted to heroin (Cooney 90) . The the
sacrifices that were made for Jane to be safe.
Although some might say that the character development the authors provide proves the
theme of overcoming sorrow, the character development better supports the common theme of
sacrifices must be made, for some, for safety and survival. Zusak writes Leaving people behind.
Coming here. Putting all of you in danger (Zusak 218). Max is saying, in this quote, that he is
showing all of the sacrifices he made so he can be safe. The quote better proves the common
theme because the character development bring to the table the suffering and sorrow of the
characters and their losses. They can be taken as overcoming loss, for example but they explain
better the sacrifices they pose.
Markus Zusak and Caroline B. Cooney prove the theme, that for some people there must
be sacrifices made for true safety and survival through plot, character development, and
symbolism. When imagining losing all of these things to be safe, many do not imagine of the
things of these two books. Being lied to about family, and having many people that are priceless
get blown up in a bombing. It is especially surprising because both the main characters are

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children in terrible times in their lives. Zusak and Cooney both make known that they understand
a deeper meaning to life through their books.

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Works Cited
Cooney, Caroline B. The Face on the Milk Carton. New York: Bantam, 1990. Print.
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print.