quote: “In the darkness of my dark beating heart, i know. He’d have loved it all right. You see? Even death has a heart.”
Marcus Zusac uses language features to give us deeper knowledge in to the book the book thief. The quote “In the darkness of my dark beating heart, i know. He’d have loved it all right. You see? Even death has a heart.” this quote explain how death the narrator of the book thief is perceived to have human like features such as a heart which defies our previous image of death as being an evil dark being that has bad intentions. This use of personification in making death, the thing that people want the least, seem human gives us the image that death is not as bad as it is seen to be as it is perceived to have a heart. This gives deeper meaning to the text the book thief as it shows that death which controls the fate of the characters is described to be human meaning that death can gain feelings towards other characters. This is important to the text as death is growing feelings for lisle, this could change her fate and therefore the fate of the entire book as death will not want her to perish.
I like the work you’re doing here to develop your ideas. Especially because you’re working to develop an insight into why Zusak might have chosen to personify death and to give it these characteristics.
If Death is naiive, and if death (at least metaphorically) has a ‘heart’, what is Zusak trying to convey? I think there’s a question in here: if Death is not evil, where does Evil come from?