How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death is "haunted by humans"?

International Baccalaureate Extended Essay
Group 1 English (Category 1)
Death and Colour in The Book Thief
How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death
is "haunted by humans"?
Candidate Name: Latifah Sat
Teacher: Ms. Joann Ranson
School: Victoria Shanghai Academy
Candidate Number: 0052
Center Number: 002634
Session: May 2014
Word Count: 3994

Abstract

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief tells a chillingly heart-warming story of a German girl who
steals books to survive in the Second World War. In a twist of story-telling conventions, Zusak has
“Death” narrate the story in a non-linear, non-chronological style, which is also what captivated me
to further explore this book. It is impossible not to notice throughout this 554 page novel the
innumerable references to colour by the narrator. Duality between the themes of human brutality
and goodness arise, both of which appear to have a link with colour. In an attempt to develop this
connection, the research question arose:
How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death is “haunted by humans” in The
Book Thief?

In order to answer this question, an in-depth analysis of the novel was required. Being a
relatively new book, there was a limited amount of secondary sources available for reference, hence
I relied heavily on primary research. I examined links between Death’s narration in the novel,
Zusak’s discriminatory use of colour through the narrator, and the implications of these colours. I
divided my research into three sections: how colours influence Death’s own emotions, how he
applies these colours to situations he observes, and how he employs them in characterization.

Through my investigation I concluded that Zusak has selectively used a substantial range of
colours prominently in The Book Thief to strengthen the persona of Death, and to accentuate the
disposition of characters. This culminated in a verdict that humans are prone to fluctuating between
brutality and goodness, which happens to be what haunts the character of Death, thus confirming
my research question. Zusak utilizes colour to a great extent to demonstrate the notion that his
narrator, Death, is woefully haunted by humans.
Word Count: 296
2

Table of Contents
I. Introduction 4
II. Death’s Emotions and Colour 6
III. Death’s Mastery of Colour 8
IV. Humans and Colours (from the
Perspective of Death)
13
V. Conclusion 18
VI. Works Cited 20
3

I. Introduction

According to Skelton (2003), “Great literature – ‘Literature’ with a capital ‘L’ – makes use
of death for its own purposes.” 1 This is certainly true of Markus Zusak’s 2005 historical novel, The
Book Thief. In a twist of convention, Death is more than just a personification, he is a genuine
character who has a fixation with colour, especially the colour of the sky upon a death. He sees
more colours than humans can understand, highlighting a disparity that can be translated into his
fear of humans. This disparity is worthy of investigation, raising the question: How does Markus
Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death is “haunted by humans” in The Book Thief?
Findings will reflect insights of unpredictable human nature during the Second World War and how
Death is traumatised by what humans do to each other.

Death’s narration is complex; in the context of the Second World War, he chronicles his trips
from Munich to Stalingrad, collecting the souls of millions who have fallen. However, he also
singles out the stories of individuals who are less significant to the progress of the war but are
wholly affected by it. Such individuals include Liesel Meminger, an illiterate nine-year old girl who
is put in foster care after her kommunist parents disappear, and those around her, such as the Jew
hiding in her basement and her best friend with perfect Aryan physique. As a child, Liesel
encounters Death three times when someone nearby perishes. Death is everywhere, busily
witnessing all acts of horror and inhumanity, collecting souls from gas chambers and becoming an
extremely reliable narrator.

At the end of the novel, years after the war, Death meets Liesel for the last time. Dying of
old age, Death reveals to her and the reader that he is actually “haunted by humans” (554). His
4
1 Skelton, John. "Death and Dying in Literature." Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. N.p., 2003. Web. 25 Aug. 2013.
<http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/9/3/211.full>.

statement poses the notion that humans are all tyrannical and brutal creatures, a claim worthy of
debate. This is ironic because in the usual sense, humans are haunted by Death, yet it is inevitable
that they will meet each other, since humans are mortal, and Death has to “collect” their souls.
Despite mutual avoidance, they are fated to encounter. To emphasize the reality of Death being
haunted by humans, the connection between Death’s emotions and colour is analysed, as well as
how he weaves the craft of colour in his narration and portrayal of characters. Both Death and
colour are two wholly inseparable elements and author Zusak himself states,
“When I think of Death, I hear the voice, and then I see the sky, the earth,
the trees and all of us. It’s why I wanted Death to talk about those things in
terms of ‘who,’ like ‘the sky who was wide and blue and magniﬁcent.’”2
5
2 Stillman, Heidi. "The Book Thief - Interview with Markus Zusak." One Book, One Chicago. Chicago Public Library,
Spring 2012. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://www.chipublib.org/eventsprog/programs/oboc/12f_book/
oboc_12f_interview.php>.

II. Death’s emotions and colour

Death finds solace in colours to escape the reality of his job.3 While he does not view the
physical act of dying as cruel or objectionable, he “can’t stand to look at...those perpetual
survivors” (15). Colours serve as an escape from his existence, which is composed of chasing after
rash humans intent on murdering each other for selfish means. After collecting each soul from the
dead, he glances at the sky. Every death is accompanied by a colour, in increments:
“I deliberately seek out the colours to keep my mind off them, but now and
then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling amongst the jigsaw
puzzle of realisation, despair and surprise.” (15)
Death perceives surviving humans the way humans may perceive death: with fear and nausea. The
colours are, as he calls them himself, a “distraction” (15). Being Death, his job is a horrible one,
with misery lurking around every corner. He understands that death for humans is a form of release
from Earth, but cannot stand seeing the “leftover humans” (15). A jigsaw puzzle, something pieced
together by logic, represents a systematic procedure. That survivors have to suffer is inevitable, just
part of the process of life. The word “crumbling” suggests a domino of destruction. Once triggered,
it is impossible to control. This domino symbolism is seen later in the novel when Rudy, to his
dismay, is enlisted to a school for perfect Aryan boys. Discomfited by their “realisation, despair and
surprise”, Death draws his melancholy attention to the most readily available source of colour: the
sky.
6
3 Sheahan-Bright, Robyn. Notes for Reading Groups: Markus Zusak - The Book Thief. Sydney: Pan Macmillan
Australia, 2005. Print.

When Death has a point to make, he makes it clearly and obviously, regardless of the
sensitivity of the topic. One of the first things he says in the prologue, in text set apart in bold, is:
“Here is a Small Fact: You are going to die” (13)4
His is a straightforward character and blatantly honest. His verses are epigrammatic, as Anna Leach
(2007) says, “Markus Zusak's Death is an odd prose stylist: mixing a kind of calculated clumsiness
with fresh surprising turns of phrase.”5 This non-linear style of narration highlights the concept of
fate and inevitable human behaviour.6 Through Death’s mixture of first and second person narration,
his connection with the reader is more intimate, possibly contributing to his being more assertive
about opinions, especially on his field of expertise– colour:
“White is without question a colour, and personally, I don’t think you
want to argue.” (16)
Death is confident in his knowledge of colour and expressing himself through colour. His
confidence in this trade allows him to be able to express his emotions, and the emotions of the other
characters through it.
7
4 This quote appears in bold in the original text
5 Leach, Anna. "The Book Thief." Culture Wars. Institute of Ideas, 20 Mar. 2007. Web. 22 Aug. 2013. <http://
www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-03/zusak.htm>.
6 This style by Zusak is also reiterated in his 2002 novel The Messenger.

III. Death’s mastery of colour

As the narrator, Death uses colour to portray the emotions of a scene; it is as though colour
is a part of his senses, such as sight and hearing is to us.7 He may not specify specific hues but
readers nonetheless can envisage the tone of the scene and sentiment of the characters involved.
This is usually done through observation of the current sky colour. When Death talks about the
night-sky after Liesel is forced by her foster mother to clean a neighbour’s spit off their front door,
he chronicles:
"Usually it was like spillage-cold and heavy, slippery and grey– but once in a
while some stars had the nerve to rise and glow, if only for a few minutes. On
those nights, [Liesel] would stay a little longer and wait...till the stars were
dragged down again, into the waters of the German sky." (51)
Thrice, Death parallels the colour of the sky with water with the words “spillage-cold”, “slippery”
and “waters”. Because water is transparent, the human eye perceives its colour as being whatever
object it is currently reflecting. For instance, seawater appears to be blue and green due to its
reflection of the blue sky and presence of water plants. Through its ability to exhibit a prodigious
variety of colours, it can be said that water is the most multicoloured instrument. Therefore, by
juxtaposing water with sky, Zusak paints the sky with infinite colours, attributing the characteristics
of water to the sky. In the context of the book, equating the night-sky to water means that the
situation of Germany, just before the start of the war, is reflected. The Nazi Party have blanketed the
nation in “grey”, symbolizing pessimism and dank hopes, while the stars are personified to be those
who challenge them. Liesel’s own parents are each one of those stars, with the “nerve to rise and
glow”. “Glow” implies light and the colour yellow, creating a spirit of warmth and reflects Liesel’s
8
7 Death also sees colour as a unit of time, “whatever the hour and colour” (25).

attachment to her birth parents. However, since these stars are “dragged down” and disappear, it can
be deduced that their brightness is fallible compared to the devilishly gloomy German sky. This
also, of course, reﬂects Germany’s road to destruction, as the sky is water.

Death enjoys being implicit in his methods of describing the sky’s “multitudes of shades and
intonations” (14), which indicate the atmosphere of the scene. He has a habit of using the names of
objects to identify colours, and in the rare cases that he even does so, may be quite vague during
elaboration. He does not explain what the colours mean, only stating them, creating ambiguity and
allowing for different interpretations. Perhaps this is Zusak’s method of saying humans are different
and ﬂuctuating creatures, this unpredictability alluding to Death’s fear of us. He sees things in a
way humans cannot understand:
“Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the
sky was the colour of Jews.” (357)
Contrary to Hitler’s belief, Judaism is not a race, but a religion.8 So what exactly is the colour of a
Jew? In Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist, the Jewish character Fagin is painted red, having a “repulsive
face [that] was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair.”9 Red emphasizes his villainy and
outstanding status as an outsider. In The Book Thief, Death has amalgamated the word “Jew” with
the concept of death. To say that the sky is the colour of Jews is to say that the sky is the colour of
death.10 It is only through the ensuing descriptions of death and more of the sky that we can
decipher Death’s understanding of the colour of Jews. The sky turns from silver to grey to the
9
8 HNN Staff. "Are Jews a Race or a Religion?" History News Network. George Mason University, 26 Sept. 2011. Web.
09 Jan. 2014. <http://hnn.us/article/142041>.
9 Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Dodd, Mead &, 1941. Print.
10 On a side note, Death has dedicated a chapter, “Death’s Diary: The Parisians” to a group of French Jews in a German
Prison on Polish soil (hence the title). Zusak’s doing so highlights the transnational spread of Nazi fanaticism, implying
Death’s fear of the irrationality and brutality of humans.

“colour of rain” (358). Death says in an accusatory tone that “Even the clouds tried to look the other
way” (358) and denounces humans for killing their own people. “They were French, they were
Jews, and they were you.” (358) He is patently anguished by human suffering– limpid, glassy
suffering the colour of rain. As opposed to the abstruse Jew reference, snow is one of the more
human-understandable objects that Death borrows to allude to a colour. In the prologue, as Liesel’s
brother dies on the train journey to Molching, Death observes the sky colour and states:
"I studied the the blinding, white-snow sky who stood at the window of the
moving train. I practically inhaled it." (17)11
It seems quite explicit: Death is straightforward in describing the sky as white. However, it is
intriguing to see how Death says “white-snow” as opposed to “snow-white”, the usual word order
used to describe something to be “of a pure white colour.” 12 In Virgil’s Aeneid, swans and bosoms
are described as being “snow-white.”13 Alternatively, Death is saying that the sky is snow, like he
says the sky is water, and the snow happens to be white. Snow recurs in different colours
throughout the novel, especially in mentions of the war being fought in Russia, such as when he
describes the death of Robert Holtzapfel, Liesel’s neighbour’s son:
"There were hot hands and a red scream. Steam rose from the ground. The
sight and smell of rotting snow" (475)
Snow cannot rot, but Death uses this pure, white substance to be the antithesis to rotting bodies in
Stalingrad. These colours may range from anything like skin-peach to infected-green; Death
10
11 The word “inhales” appears italicized in the original text
12 Stevenson, Angus, and Christine A. Lindberg. New Oxford American Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.
Print.
13 Virgil, and Robert Fitzgerald. The Aeneid. New York: Random House, 1983. Print.

provides the basis for readers to use their imaginations. The brief use of alliteration with “hot
hands” (475) creates a hissing effect, and combined with the depiction of steam, exemplifies the
heat of pain amid the negative temperatures of Russia.

By illustrating the colour of the sky, Death can express his own emotions, in addition to
those of the characters he’s narrating for the scene. After more than a thousand bomber planes kill
five hundred people and leave fifty thousand more homeless in Cologne, Death expresses his
frustration at humans and war by coupling the sky with yellow and newspapers:
“By the time I was finished, the sky was yellow, like burning newspaper. If I
looked closely, I could see the words, reporting headlines, commentating on
the progress of the war and so forth. How I’d have loved to pull it all down,
to screw up the newspaper sky and toss it away. (345)
Yellow is an optimistic colour, but a “burning”, darker yellow “indicates an inclination toward
depression and melancholy...relates to the cynic.” 14 Death makes use of the word “love” in a
sentence permeated with abomination. Words, an important motif throughout the novel mostly
revolving around the characters Liesel and Max, are what brought Hitler into power. Death, in a
moment of overwork and vexation, desires to destroy these yellowing words. With colour, he
successfully discloses his alarm at the human capability of dropping bombs on each other, adding to
his sense of being “haunted by humans”.
11
14 Scott-Kemmis, Judy. "The Color Yellow." Empowered Yourself With Colour Psychology. Judy Scott-Kemmis, n.d.
Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-yellow.html>.

Death can interpret the meaning of colours better than humans. Colours could have acted as
a forewarning against evil, however, humans, being inferior to Death in his analysis of colours, do
not see impending chaos until it stared them right in the face.
“I hang suspended, until a septic truth bleeds towards clarity. That’s when I
see them formulate. They fall on top of each other.
The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick
soupy red.” (24)
When Death says “they” fall on top of each other, he is also obliquely referring to humans, hinting
at their savagery and self-demise. With red, white and black, Zusak refers to the most common
colours in war-related literature, such as in Moore’s revolutionary graphic novel V for Vendetta.15
This commonality implies how war is predictable, each with the same inhumane propensities. The
words “septic” and “bleeds” suggest a medical situation, where a diagnosis has been made on
human nature. The fact that Death has more insight to precursors of violence implies that he has
seen a lot of it before and may predict its happening again, giving another reason for him to be
haunted by humans.
12
15 Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. Washington: Vertigo, 2005. Print.

IV. Humans and colours (from the perspective of Death)

Death assigns colours to all major and minor characters and the observations of each
character’s colours are made through his narration.16 Zusak highlights the importance of outer
appearance, which is clearly significant under Nazi rule when ones appearance could determine
ones survival.

The way humans affect Death is most reflected in the protagonist, Liesel Meminger. In the
three times that he sees her, she “resonates” (24) in his memory in the colours white, black and red.
Liesel represents the devastating effects of the Nazi regime, because each time Death sees Liesel, he
is traumatized. She is one of those “perpetual survivors” (15) mentioned before, or the “leftover
humans” (15) whom Death is haunted by. Liesel is most important to Death because of her
inclination to steal and read books, some of which were prohibited. Perhaps this accounts for his
first description of Liesel:
“Her hair was a close enough brand of German-blonde, but she had
dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn’t really want brown eyes in Germany
around that time.” (38)
Through colour, Death conjectures Liesel as a conformer only on the surface with her visible
“German-blonde” hair. But her dangerous brown eyes show that within her, she is repulsed by the
state of Germany with their perverted book burning festivals. For instance, she has the indecency to
say, “I hate the Führer. I hate him” (121) in public. Her dark-brown eyes symbolize rebellion and
are also what drive the story forward, since events in the novel are based on what she witnesses and
writes in her autobiography (which Death reads). She rebels by stealing her first book, The
13
16 “So many humans. So many colours.” (318)

Gravedigger’s Handbook, learning to read it from scratch, then stealing more books. Stealing
becomes Liesel’s form of revenge on her government:
“How does it feel, anyway…[w]hen you take one of those books? It feels
good, doesn’t it? To steal something back.” (487)
Liesel has been robbed of her communist parents, her younger brother, her Jewish friend and almost
her foster father. Death judges her stealing in no way detrimental. Instead, he senses strength,
justice and resistance. Death sees virtue in this young human and is disturbed by her imminent
suffering as a survivor, of which he hints from the start. Liesel’s form of deﬁance could not have
been successful without the encouragement of her foster father.

The goodness and sincerity of Hans Hubermann haunts Death, who is aghast to witness how
humans lie on both extremes of the personality spectre. Like Liesel’s eyes, Hubermann’s silver eyes
are windows to his soul:
“His silver-eyed optimism was wounded and motionless.” (422)
Death attributes Hubermann’s optimism to his silver eyes, which are tormented by the fact that he
has given a piece of bread to a Jew in the street, resulting in his public beating and endangering the
life of Max.17 The fact that Hubermann would subconsciously help Jews proves how goodness is
innate in him, especially since he endures punishment for it. At the time of his death, Death says
that he “could see the silver through his eyelids.” (535) Silver deﬁnes Hubermann as a gentle and
wise soul in Death’s eyes who says that Hubermann’s soul is “light because…[they] have already
found their way to other places.” (535)
14
17 Max is the Jew Hubermann is hiding in his basement

Hubermann’s occupation as a house painter also protrudes his character in the eyes of
Death. A house painter is not an artist, he paints backgrounds:
“He had the ability to appear in the background, even if he was standing at
the front of a queue.” (40)
This shows he is the backdrop to the story, and since this is Liesel’s story, he is the backdrop to
Liesel, who adores him. He owns the identity of a true human, which haunts Death since he is not
accustomed to seeing both the good and evil of humans. He and Hitler are arch-rivals, representing
the poles of human nature, causing Death to be haunted by unpredictability.18 Another character
who exhibits a transformation in personality that reveals underlying kindness, “redeeming
humanity” is Rudy Steiner, Liesel’s best friend.

Rudy is described as having “gangly blue eyes and hair the colour of a lemon” (54), the very
sought after Aryan features. His character epitomizes the way Death is haunted by human goodness:
“How things changed, from fruit stealer to bread giver. His blond hair,
although darkening, was like a candle. She heard his stomach growl - and he
was giving people bread.” (446)
Again Death is haunted by the fact that humans can be so full of evil or so full of goodness. Zusak
compares the “fruit” (446) and “bread” (446) to represent the positive change in Rudy’s behaviour.
Bread, usually perceived as the main meal for the poor, equates to money, while fruit is less of a
15
18 As stated in the Waterstones Quarterly, “Markus Zusak excels in his portrayal of a fractured society where acts of
great kindness are still glimpsed, redeeming humanity from total despair.”

necessity. By giving up bread whilst hungry Death expresses Rudy’s selfless virtues, causing him to
be “like a candle” (446). Rudy is associated with a soft, glowing yellow light, representing
optimism along with rebellion. Death is incredibly remorseful that so good a person would have so
cruel a fate, demonstrating his horror of human fate:
“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He
steps on my heart. He makes me cry.” (535)
This is said by Death when he sees Rudy during the bombing of Molching. This “lemon
candle” (495) represents the irony of fate, since his physique is what the regime wishes to protect.
But due to the fated cruelty and randomness of war, he perishes insignificantly while asleep.19
Death proves himself to have a heart and to be capable of shedding tears.20 Melancholy human fate
and circumstance haunt Death.

Even minor characters only mentioned once have a colour assigned to them, further showing
how Death sees humans in increments of colours, and through it, their haunting brutality and
haunting goodness. When Liesel and Rudy spot a crash-landed British plane burning, they find a
man on the verge of death:
“The man, in comparison, was the colour of bone. Skeleton-coloured skin.
A ruffled uniform. His eyes were cold and brown - like coffee stains” (20)
16
19 According to Death, the tragedy is that if Rudy’s parents had let him go to the Nazi Academy, Rudy might still be
alive (and got the long-awaited kiss from Liesel).
20 Death specifies the difference between a human heart and his own: “A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The
human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time.
The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugliness and their beauty,
and I wonder how the same thing can be both.” (496)

The soldier’s “coffee stain” eyes represent something unwanted, or stale, reflecting Death’s attitude
towards war. Skeletons being associated with death, his skin seems to exemplify his predestination
to die in a wreckage. Death adds that this death occurs in a “charcoal” (20) “horizon” (20) while
“the greying light arm-wrestled the sky” (20). This use of personification is effective in portraying
the overbearing effect the combination of sky and colours has on Death. Arm-wrestling is masculine
and powerful, showing how Death is submerged by the colours of the sky upon a Death, protruding
the superior effect of colour over him.

Characters less significant to pushing forward the story line are also defined by colour. On
Liesel’s train ride to Molching, when her brother dies, one of the guards is described as being:
“The one with the juicy red face” (17)
His unwillingness to leave “the mother, the girl and the corpse” (17) on the winter ground is seen
through the colour red, representing care and concern. However, red is susceptibly ambiguous, and
could symbolize anger. Accordingly, this guard also “explodes” (17) at the stubbornness of his
colleague, allowing “red” to illuminate the duality of his emotions. As maintained before, Death is
discomfited by the binary implications of human nature, accentuated by his notice of this in even
the most minor of characters.

To Death, colours represent the finality and depth of human nature, which fluctuates
between good and evil so much that he is rigorously haunted. The worst part is that humans can see
it themselves, yet they let destruction persist:
“Find yourself a mirror while I continue” (317)
17

V. Conclusion

While examining the research question: How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate
how Death is "haunted by humans" in The Book Thief?, it has become clear that the extent to
which Zusak manipulates colour in the novel is incredibly expansive. Colours are determinants of
place, time and character, instigating a barrier between Death and humans, while also highlighting
the sadistic nature of humans, which is haunting to Death. Colours also reveal their capacities of
virtue, which is even more besetting due to its unpredictability.

It is established that the main cause of Death’s suffering is inherent ambiguity in humans,
reflected in Death’s own ambiguous portrayal of colours. Death also secures solace in colours,
which serve as an escape from his existence.21 His confidence and knowledge in colours allow him
to be able to express his emotions and channel the emotions of other characters through it. Colour
allows him to measure the atmosphere of a scene through the sky. Death provides the basis for
readers to use their imaginations. He expresses his heartbreak through colour, enhancing his sense
of being haunted. Moreover, Death judges the personality and fate of humans by assigning them
individual colours. If the investigation is extended, Zusak’s reflection of the psychological effect of
war on children through colour will be developed.

It is interesting to observe the prominence of the use of colour in a young adult novel like
The Book Thief, as one would not expect it to have such a wide-ranged, polychromatic presence in a
text about war, nor for it to have such a strong correlation with Death. While Zusak does include
common war colours in literature like black for death and red for violence, he freely exploits a
18
21 I use “existence” as Death is not alive in the way humans are. In fact, he is almost the polar opposite of some humans
observed in the novel. Despite being the narrator and a continuous presence throughout the entire novel, he is of an
unconceivable colour. Zusak never accounts for the appearance of Death, except a musing by Death that he finds the
interpretation of him holding a scythe as humorous. We know that he has arms with which he carries souls away. We
also know that he is referred to with the masculine “he”. Without colour, Death has no fate, highlighting the difference
in species between them.

larger scale of hues. Zusak may be mimicking the work of Kurt Vonnegut, the author of celebrated
novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which too is based in Germany in the Second World War.22 Vonnegut
uses colour imagery throughout the novel to strengthen imagery and emphasize important details.
Protuberant colours such as blue, ivory, black and orange are manipulated as adjectives to describe
people, things and events, much like in The Book Thief. Vonnegut and Zusak’s contemporary use of
colour contrasts starkly with the classical use of it, such as by Dickens and Virgil.

Zusak says that perhaps Death is trying to prove to himself through this story that despite all
the acts of horrors humans carry out, they are actually “worthwhile and worth their existence.”23
Colours are capable of explaining what cannot be expressed in words, which is why Death’s
narration is so important to our understanding of the novel. As the Age says:
“Brutality and beauty are everywhere. ‘Death’ is also.”24
19
22 Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five; Or, The Children's Crusade, a Duty-dance with Death. New York: Delacorte,
1969. Print.
23 Zusak, Markus. "The Book Thief - the Writing Process." Markus Zusak Speaks about the Writing of His Most Recent
Novel. Sutherland Library, Sydney. 4 Sept. 2007. Speech.
24 Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. Croydon: Black Swan, 2007. Print.

VI. Works Cited
Ardagh, Philip. "It's a Steal." Books. The Guardian, 6 Jan. 2007. Web. 07 Nov. 2013. <http://
www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jan/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview26>.
Byers, Caitlyn. "First Person Omniscience in The Book Thief, Part Two." Random Thoughts from
Caitlynville. N.p., 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 07 Nov. 2013. <http://caitlynbyers.com/2012/04/23/
ﬁrst-person-omniscience-in-the-book-thief-part-two/>.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Dodd, Mead &, 1941. Print.
HNN Staff. "Are Jews a Race or a Religion?" History News Network. George Mason University, 26
Sept. 2011. Web. 09 Jan. 2014. <http://hnn.us/article/142041>.
Leach, Anna. "The Book Thief." Culture Wars. Institute of Ideas, 20 Mar. 2007. Web. 22 Aug.
2013. <http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-03/zusak.htm>.
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How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death is "haunted by humans"?

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How does Markus Zusak use colour to illustrate how Death is "haunted by humans"?