“Heres a small fact, you are going to die”. This is the only certain fact we humans know. But we don’t know when. We as humans live in a shade of fear by death. We want to live a long prosperous life and death is the bullet that we are continually trying to dodge. We as humans view death as a monster. However, Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Thief uses the character Death to lead us to challenge these preconceptions. Zusak goes further showing us that we are the monsters that we write in our books and watch on our screens. Its surrealness of Death that exposes this.

Magical Realism is written and presented as realism to shine familiar light upon the reader so the text is convincing; However, it is undermined by the fact that it contains an unearthly element whitch takes it outside of our world. “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe“. The convergence of these two elements allows the reader to view the magical element in the world we know. Authors do this to make us rethink the reality of our society. This is because they place the magical element close alongside the overall meaning of the book so that the magical element that is too strange to believe forces us to see aspects of society that we have not seen before. It makes us see new colours. Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Theif uses the character Death to steer us in the direction that we are what we make other things out to be, including the bad things. Especially the bad things.

One of the applications of Magical Realism in Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Theif, is the challenge upon the reader’s preconceptions of death. Death as a character grows on us to be an honest character. After all, what does he have to hide. “I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result”. Death highlights the point that he is not violent whitch leads us to think, given that most deaths in WWII were from acts of violence, that he is not the reason for any death. He is not killing them because he is a result of our actions. Therefore this shifts the responsibility off deaths shoulders and onto ours. He sheds the light onto the page’s history such as the Holocaust and pushes the idea that these events were just a tragedy. They were not done by an almighty being. They were done by us.

Knowing we are going to die converged with the uncertainty of when our death is that gives Death power over our lives. So when we are faced with a character who is Death we naturally feel uncomfortable by his power; However, as Zusak leads through the pages we find that Death is not almighty powerful as we think. As aforementioned death is a result of our actions and Death is just doing his job. “Minute after minute, shower after shower…Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it was newly born“. This is regarding the mass number of Jews being gassed and ‘almighty’ Death who is sympathizing over their souls. Death treating their souls as newborn children also suggests that he is taking their souls reluctantly. He not only has to take their souls unwilling but he also has to stand by and watch all these people die. Death is contained in a crippling position. He doesn’t possess the power to stop what he sees. He doesn’t have the capability to take our souls away from us. He’s there to clean the mess. A mess created by monsters.

“Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it was newly born” Death sympathizing with souls also creates a compelling effect of empathy from the reader because if Death cares for the souls of something that’s not him, because he’s not human, then shouldn’t we as humans care? After all who would possibly want to take their newborn child away from this world? Perhaps this shows “Even Death has a heart“.
When we imagine a character playing Death we would often think of the black cloaks, skull replaced for a face. It would be betrayed in our society as a sinister character. But Zusak defies this. He leads us down a different road when the character Death confronts the reader. “You really want to know what I truly look like?… Find yourself a mirror while I continue”. Death lays on us that we see him every day. That he is a part of us. This is accomplished when he asks us to find a mirror and to find a mirror we must look at it. When we look into a mirror we see the light, our colours being reflected back to us. Death says the colours that we would see in the mirror are the ones of death. Death has seen and will see, every person who has ever lived, die. He is the most reliable source we have. Death doesn’t have a skull for a face. He doesn’t wear black robes because humans are the face of death.

“There is Death… On the surface: Unflappable, Unwavering. Below: Unnerved, untied and undone.” As each page is unfolded Death reveals his fears more and more. He unfolds the curtains that hides a monster. The extensive alliteration of the prefix un in draws our attention to his message he has only been hinting at. The message is that the things he has seen have put him on his knees. The ‘Almighty’ Death has been “undone” by our actions as humans. His final remark holds this. “I am haunted by humans” is Deaths final line that leaves us to grasp Zusak’s ideas of existence as humans. That although we write all these books with evil characters that we assume could not possibly exist in our world, they are actually a reflection of what humans can be like. The curtain does not hide a green beast. It hides a human face.

We as readers, after reading The Book Thief, now see the illusion that has been embedded in society. We are not running from a bullet shot by the universe. We are running from the bullet that us humans have shot. But we shouldn’t be scared by this bullet. We shouldn’t be scared of the monsters. Death will happen to us inevitably but its all the years and memory we live and create in the meantime that truly matters.