The Book Thief

Book 2

“This girl was one of the few souls who made me wonder what it was like to live”

I read this book. The book thief. It comes under the ‘A popular book you’ve never read’ challenge. I saw it on the airport and figured I might as well make something out of it. So keeping my all time presumption All-famous-books-are-crap, I bought it. This book is a about a girl called Liesel, in Hitler Germany. The vast era of Hitler is overshadowed by this little girl who just wants to learn how to read, and in that journey of her learning how to read, I found myself learning how to see. I saw people. So many of them, in their ugliest forms. This post will be about how disappointed and confused I was after seeing all these men and women act.

The way the purity of this little girl engulfed me, I could not help but see the horrid, utterly horrid impurity that resided in the people around me, it may sound like I’m exaggerating but I’m not. They are so entwined within themselves and their little tricks and tactics and lies and covers that when someone finally sees through it, it makes you want to throw up. You know why it’s so shocking and horrible? Because these people who are so ‘entwined’ are none other than the ones you’ve seen your entire life. You’ve looked up to them.

Now, if these are the people that you’ve grown up with and loved then were you an idiot all along? Could you really not see who they were? Were they really this deceptive throughout? Is deception the only thing you’ve actually known? I refuse to believe that. Maybe that is the truth, maybe it really has been deception, but I can’t bring myself to believe the fact that my biggest idol was such a manipulator, so I turn to other option. Maybe that’s how people are supposed to be. Comforting, right? Maybe the whole concept of ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people is a façade that you can’t really fully divide. Maybe you can never really be a great person; like Liesel wasn’t when she beat the shit out of Tommy Muller.

You say you’re trying to understand who I am, that you’re trying to understand who I am, but then you also try to put me under one of the labels you created. It’s not your fault, it’s your conditioning. But that isn’t an excuse right? You can’t hide behind your conditioning and put your hands up. My first thought is my conditioning and the second pone is who I am. Look for who you are, not for who you’re supposed to be because as long as you don’t discover your true self I won’t be able to be who I am. What good is anything if the idea behind it is lost?

Labels, my friend, are the opposite of understanding.

So if you someday wish to understand who Hans Hubermann was, look for the nights when you can’t sleep, and then when you find yourself comforted by a sudden calm, you’ll now he’s there, when you see a man pass on bread to another man and when you see the same man play music, you’ll understand who Hans Hubermann was. He was a man of integrity and love. He loved what had become of his beautiful, screaming wife; and he loved his new adopted daughter, he was the man who taught a Seven year old to read, under the covers, every night, when she could not go back to sleep.   

Then he died.

A single misplaced bomb killed this musician. I cried, I did. I also cried when Rudy died but that was because I wanted to see where their friendship would go and how much these two could love each other. I cried for Hans Hubermann because throughout this entire story, he remained true to who he was. He played his accordion, painted his house, read with his daughter and loved his wife. The man had integrity that made me fall in love with him.

And then there is the narrator of this crazy book. Death.

It sounded way too pretentious for me to actually read the book. I figured I had once again found myself a book where the author tries so hard to be unique and different that it isn’t even fun anymore. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case here.

Death is a phenomenon, however here it was as if it the name of a character, the point of view was generalized and yet so specifically amazing.

I didn’t cry when I read that Rudy was dead, I cried when Death said,

He does something to me, that boy.

Every time.

It’s his only detriment.

He steps on my heart.

He makes me cry.

You see it’s not the fact that people die that makes you sad, it’s what they leave behind that makes you lament it.

I saw Shooting Stars, 5 of them. It was a second and it was gone. Almost as if didn’t happen, but it did. I didn’t wish for anything but it felt like a full circle somehow. I started my trip with a  bout of uncertainty, I felt like it was a privilege I did not deserve, on my way back when I saw these stars I realized that what I got wasn’t a privilege because it showed me real world somehow. The reality of people as I keep calling it, most of all it taught how to stay true to myself, to not let go of who I am and who I have always believed myself to be.

Because if not for yourself then who are you really really for?

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have.

It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch,

we are free.