After reading the chapter Sketches, I wondered about many things. The first thing that I was wondering about was whether Max hates only the Nazi party and the people who prosecute him, or if he hates all of the German people who do nothing while the Jews are being killed off. Clearly Max does not hate the Hubermann's, but after studying the two drawing that Max makes, I concluded that that Max does not hate the German people who do nothing, but he does feel angry that some people knew very well want was going on and never did anything to stop it. They did not stop the killing of the Jews because they were afraid of the consequences that would follow if they stood up for Jews. I believe Max feels this way because in the second drawing Max dipicts two people standing on top of dead bodies and never even wondering what happened to them or why they are dead. But Max also understands that the German people were not allowed to do very much. Max shows this view through the first of his drawings when he depicts Hitler not as a dictator, but as a conductor. I think that Max is trying to show how powerful Hitler really was and how many people just listened to him because he was so powerful.
The second question that went through my mind was why did Max make these drawing and what did he want Liesel to understand from these pages. My first thought was that Max was trying to show Liesel how powerful Hitler was and how many people never knew what he was going to do until it was too late. In the first picture Max is trying to show that Hitler just gave the people what they wanted and put them into a trance so that he could be able to do what he did without people questioning Hitler earlier. In the second picture, Max is trying to show Liesel how much propaganda Hitler and the Nazi party used to keep people looking towards the metaphorical sun and not looking "down" and seeing all of the pain and suffering that happened during Hitler's reign.
The third and probably most important question that I was thinking while reading the chapter Sketches was why did Zusak put these two pages into the book and what is the importance of the two pages in the rest of the book. I know that we have not read the end of the book so I know that this question is hard to answer, but I think that Zusak would not have put the two drawings into the book if they did not have some great influence on Liesel and the plot of the story. One thing I was thinking about was the fact that Liesel's idea and relationship with Max changed tremendously after she read the pages and Liesel is now scared of Max. Also even if she does not realize what the picture mean when she saw them, she would still have those pictures in her mind so she would be able to understand what is going on with Hitler and him killing the Jews faster if she saw the pictures then if she did not see the pictures
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Kent, I really enjoyed reading your post, and I believe that you made many good points in it; however, there are some points that you have made in your post that I would like to respectfully disagree on. In my opinion, the sketches that we see in this chapter are merely observations made by Max. They are not explicitly saying who he hates and for what reasons he hates them. I guess it is possible to say that the meaning one is able to derive from the sketches gives Max a good reason to hate the Nazis and as well as Germans in general, but he is simply creating visual and metaphorical representations of what is really going on in Germany in that time period.
ReplyDeleteIn the second paragraph of your blog you said that the first picture in this chapter is there to say that Hitler is "just trying to give the people what they wanted" and that is not necessarily the case. To me the picture says that Hitler is controlling the minds of the people without caring whether or not they agree with what is going on. In this picture Hitler is the "conductor" and therefore he is the leader of the entire country (in this case the country is the orchestra) and each person in the country must follow his ideals if they want to survive and fit in with the others. I also think that the second picture is mainly saying that the people of Germany have to or choose to ignore the suffering and prosecution of the other people, and the reason that they do this is because there really is nothing they can do about it and if they made any sort of a fuss about it they would be in the same situation.
As for the third point that you have made in the third paragraph, it is true that Markus Suzak rarely adds or refers to something in the Book Thief that is not important for one reason or another, but I think that the reason the pictures are there is mainly to give a different perspective on the entire situation. The main side that we see this situation from is the side of death, which is basically a nuetral and fact based position. We also see much of what is happening from Leisel's point of view, which again is very innocent and sees things as they are. Then there is Max's point of view. He knows how terrible things can get because he has been in all of the bad situations already. He is the one being persecuted, not just a bystander, so these pictures show the harhest and darkest perspectives that the reader can find.