Death's Diary: The Parisians

“Summer came.

                For the Book Thief, everything was going nicely.

                For me, the sky was the color of Jews.” (Zusak, 349)

The passage, "the sky was the color of Jews" really stood out to me. The Nazis threw the Jews into a shower room, but they hardly ever let the Jews actually take a shower. Instead, the Nazis stripped the Jews of their clothing, and their dignity, put them in a big room together and gassed them. After the Jews were killed their bodies were thrown into the crematoriums. Death saw the colors of the Jews' spirits, finally being able to soar to heaven. He recalls what it was like seeing all of the dead souls in the section of the book called "Death's Diary."  He writes:

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries, their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed a distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the color of rain. Even the clouds were trying to get away. (Zusak, 350)

 

I never would have thought of Death being saddened by the loss of the people around him. It took me by surprise thinking that he was just as human as we are. I don’t think Death preferred life in the camps over anywhere else. If anything he wanted to get away from it as much as possible. I think Death envied the clouds because they could escape. He wanted a distraction. He wanted to get away from what he saw.

Works Cited

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.