Kay's Bookshelf

Reading the last few pages I actually cried. I don’t cry that often (at least not when reading books) but this time I did, that is how attached I got to some of the characters, that’s how intense Mr. Zusak’s writing can be (and no, that’s not a spoiler; as I see it both good and bad things happen at the end, and both sets of them made me cry just as hard).

When the story begins Liesel is a nine years old girl that is brought by her mother to live with foster parents, so that she’ll not starve. She is to live on Himmel Street (Himmel = Heaven in German), with a wardrobe-shaped woman with a foul mouth and a quiet man with silver eyes. Perhaps not the greatest premise in the world, and at first I was a bit nervous for Liesel to have to live with these strange people. Little did I know how wrong I was, as a hundred or so pages later “these strange people” ended up being my most favorite characters of all. I won’t write more about them ’cause I don’t want to spoil anyone’s pleasure in discovering them for themselves :)

The relationships between the characters are the very cornerstone of the story: the community in Himmel street is a tight knitted one, everybody knowing each other and is friendly (or not, in some cases) towards other people. As time passes, the dynamics change, the relationships evolve, and by the time the book ends I felt in the middle of them, knowing them the way I did, with their faults and hopes and moments of despair. I even cared for Frau Diller, the Hitler devotee, or Pfiffikus, the guy whose foul mouth was worse even than Rosa Hubermann’s, Liesel’s foster mother. I did not liked these two, they were the characters I least related to, I least enjoyed reading about, and yet I cared for them as part of their community, the one built around Liesel and her books.

A few words about the narrator too: Death (did you guess it?) is diligently doing its job. He is perpetually at awe when it comes to humans though, and in these circumstances his finding Liesel’s journal is a Godsend. He (is Death a he or a she?) reads it and re-reads it, trying to make sense of it, trying to read between the lines, trying to catch a glimpse of what it’s like to be human, particularly in those troubled times. In Death’s own words, this is what he most struggled with:

“I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race—that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”

I found the writing style to be quite interesting especially when it came to the way the story was told. Death doesn’t care about suspense so he always discloses the outcomes waiting to happen in the near future. However he is fascinated by the chain of events that resulted in the said outcomes, and this is what he pays attention to, this is what the story is actually about. It was an interesting experience, as usually people (or at least I) read books in order to find out what happens next; this one I read and read in order to find out the “why” and the “how” of what I already knew would happen (in a way it reminded me of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children where the narrator did something similar, as he kept disclosing now and then events that were to happen in the near future, taking away the element of surprise but getting me all the more interested in the “how” part).

Mr. Zusak’s take on death and afterlife is only vaguely mentioned in the novel. There is Death, of course, that comes and takes the souls. There is also God, cold and far and not answering questions. And that is it. I understand the reason for that, of course, as the “what happens after” part is not central to the story in any way, quite the opposite (delving in too many details about it would have perhaps alienated some of the readers), and yet while reading I very often discovered I was fairly curious to know more about Death’s actual job, so to speak. OK, he comes, takes souls away, and then, and then?

What I liked most: The imagery the author used, hands down. There are so many instances of what I liked about it that I cannot even begin to list them all. Here are two quotes chosen at random from the ones I loved (and definitely not the best, but the imagery I loved is there):

The mayor’s wife opened the door and she was not holding the bag, like she normally would. Instead, she stepped aside and motioned with her chalky hand and wrist for the girl to enter.
“I’m just here for the washing.” Liesel’s blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann’s feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy.

As in this second quote, it often seemed to me that the author enjoyed playing with the very idea of “word”, turning something that by definition is only a sound in a visible, tangible thing that some people interact with. Quite a novel idea (at least for me) and very well put into practice too. Years from now, were I to remember one thing only from this novel I’d pretty much bet this one would be it.

I also liked the way Liesel’s conscience took in her mind the shape of her dead brother, with a grazed knee where he hurt it when she pushed him out of her sight when she did something she knew it was bad, and with a completely healed wound when she did something that put her conscience at ease. I very much enjoyed these particular scenes both because of the idea (once again, something new for me) but also because of the depth they had (Liesel had loved her brother dearly, and her pushing him off like that is a very relevant sign of the distress she was in at that particular moment). The intertwining between the two worlds — the imaginary one, where the brother now resided, and the real one, the steps that had hurt the (imaginary) brother’s knee was quite a treat to me too.

I also loved the way the author answered when asked about his inspiration for the book (full interview here):

“I thought of Hitler destroying people with words, and now I had a girl who was stealing them back, as she read books with the young Jewish man in her basement and calmed people down in the bomb shelters. She writes her own story –and it’s a beautiful story– through the ugliness of the world that surrounds her.”

A beautiful story indeed.

What I liked least: I very much loved it on the whole.

Recommend it to? Anyone. It’s written in a simple style and yet one that I tremendously enjoyed. It’s also one of my favorite books.

Written by the same author:
I Am the Messenger

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In a way I have liked Bruno a lot, as he is honest and cares about other people’s feelings, making him seem at times to be older than his nine years. An opinion which is sort of reversed when it comes to the people on the other side of the fence in general, and to Schmuel in particular, as Bruno behaves, when relating to them, in an unbearably childish manner (outrageously so in the scene where he is carelessly eating turkey in front of his friend). Perhaps his behavior is explainable by the fact he, with his young mind, couldn’t properly perceive what lied behind the fence (especially as Schmuel himself shields him from things). It is perhaps interesting to notice that the life on the other side even seemed attractive to Bruno in his simplicity: so many children to play with, and getting to wear comfy striped clothing all day long!

The style the book was written in is, I think, its greatest asset. Simple words in simple phrases, just as (probably) a child might think. The narration is shielded, no gory details, fit for children and a child’s point of view. Bruno notices things around him and tries to make sense of them as best as he can, but nevertheless he misses details (whatever cannot fit in his idea of the world is shrugged away). A whole other image is formed in the mind of a reader 50 years later — quite an accomplishment of the author I would say, his managing to give just enough details for the reader to realize what’s going on and at the same time few enough so as to keep Bruno (young, innocent Bruno) always guessing.

The book has been criticized by some, saying that it needs strong suspension of disbelief in order to be appreciated. For one, there couldn’t have been a nine year old kid wandering around in Auschwitz as children younger than 15 were either gassed or experimented with. Also, German children were indoctrinated about Jews from an early age so it’s not very probable that a nine year old son of a Commandant would have had no idea about who they were and what was happening to them. Some serious flaws indeed — which is probably why the book is subtitled “A Fable” and meant to be enjoyed as such. Which I did (mostly because I liked the style it was written in :) )

What I liked most: Despite the gravity of the situation Bruno’s thinking of the Fuhrer as “the Fury” (due to a mispronunciation) never failed to amuse me :)

What I liked least: The other mispronunciation, Out-With instead of Auschwitz. While I could imagine the Fury/Fuhrer thing all too easily (although I have no idea if they would sound alike in German too), the Out-With part seemed sort of unexplainable to me and bothered me throughout the book (I wouldn’t say it’s that big a deal though, to spoil a book that I otherwise liked).

Recommend it? Yes. Short and nicely written (albeit on a sad topic).

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While this is not the first book that details life in concentration camps, I was nevertheless shocked to find out about the Capos — some prisoners that enjoyed more rights than others, sort of guardians appointed from amidst the detainees. Thing is, these Capos were often more harsh and more brutal than the actual guardians, and this sort of gives me the creeps. I mean, they (the Capos) were in the very same boat as the other prisoners, they knew exactly what they went through daily… and then they act just as savage as the rest? Sort of painful to think about.

Actually, Frankl himself observes that in order to remain alive in a concentration camp one had to give up humanity shred by shred:

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles -whatever one may choose to call them -we know: the best of us did not return.

This “feelinglessness” installed itself little by little. It is perhaps worth noting that while at first Frankl (and the others) suffered when hit not only because of the pain but most of all because of the sheer injustice of it, in a few months’ time he ends up finding all the atrocious crimes around him as something that just is, something that does not shock, does not scare, does not impress in any way.

Luckily though life, not even the one in concentration camps, is not that bleak. The prisoners still had the part of them that enjoyed art and beauty very much alive. Albeit their art was rather grotesque (as obviously they had no access to real art, they had to improvise all sort of things), it was still art and made them forget their “frightful circumstances”. Also, a very important role in the fight for survival was humor’s (“It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.“). To me it seems like a very impressive feat, to be able to laugh in the midst of death and starvation — but people did it, and people kept sane.

While studying the behavior of the other inmates, plus (of course) his own feelings, Frankl has reached the conclusion that later had as a result the creation of logotherapy:

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

It is worth noting that there is no actual recipe for finding one’s meaning in life — everything varies according to a person’s temperament, surroundings and capabilities. That meaning can involve people (someone wanting to live to raise his kids, someone looking forward to being reunited to a loved one), or even things (wanting to finish a masterpiece, for example). In other words, it can be rephrased as a person setting tasks for himself and then fighting to fulfill it (the tasks, of course, being something very important to the person who chose them, nothing trivial like say “buy bread” or “clean the house”).

To keep the previous analogy, the role of logotherapist is to help a person find that task worth fighting and worth living for. As Frankl himself puts it:

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.

What I liked most: The book has some really thought-provoking ideas. One of my favorites was something along the lines of “the richer a man’s inner life, the happier that man is”. I have also liked this very much (and yes, I’m pretty certain I heard it before):

[...]everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

What I liked least: Frankl says that the term “logotherapy” comes from the Greek “logos”, which he says means meaning. I myself did not know “logos” to mean “meaning”, but something related to speech (which is why all through the book everytime I read about logotherapy I imagine some branch of psychiatry related to talking not meaning). I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia and here’s what it says there:

Logos (pronounced /ˈloʊːgɒs/) (Greek λόγος, logos) is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. It derives from the verb λέγω legō: to count, tell, say, or speak.[1] The primary meaning of logos is: something said; by implication a subject, topic of discourse, or reasoning. Secondary meanings such as logic, reasoning, etc. derive from the fact that if one is capable of λέγειν (infinitive) i.e. speech, then intelligence and reason are assumed.

Its semantic field extends beyond “word” to notions such as “thought, speech, account, meaning, reason, proportion, principle, standard”, or “logic”.

So, while obviously Frankl was correct in using “logos” with the sense of “meaning”, that is a bit far-fetched and I would really have preferred he had named his branch of “brain science” something else. A silly thing to say, I know, but that’s how I feel. Well, who am I to criticize anyway? :)

Recommend it? Yes. It’s not very long and it’s quite interesting.

Yet another quote I liked:

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past-the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized -and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

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They say that one can see the true face of a man when in extraordinary circumstances. That couldn’t be more true in Schindler’s case. As his wife states, he was a man who’s done nothing out of the ordinary either before the war or after. In time of peace he was nothing but a man passionate of liquor, a spender and a womanizer. As the author puts it, “He was fortunate, therefore, that in that short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who summoned forth his deeper talents.“. During those years he was reckless in his struggle for saving human lives, for providing better conditions to as may Jews as he could — so reckless that I couldn’t help fearing for him for a good portion of a book (although I knew, of course, that both him and his “Schindlerjuden” will get through the war unscathed). His courage in playing with the SS (his utter recklessness) are on the verge of incredible and the elements that differentiate him from any other Jew-helping person of those years — there were a lot of factory owners who made their Jew employees’ life more endurable, but no one that I know of took the risk Schindler dared to take.

You know, I have always thought Oskar Schindler a character too good to be true. Yet in this book I got to discover the man behind the myth — and the two were more similar than I thought they could be (speaking of which I have really liked the fact that Keneally warned the reader beforehand when a story people told about Schindler was not supported by evidence, so as to form an image of Schindler as close to the truth as possible — these cases were few and far between though; most of what’s told about Schindler is actually true).

A character worth noting is also Schindler’s wife, Emilie. He never treated her right and the couple would split about 10 years after the war ended, but during the war she was his very match. While she, as a woman, never encountered the risks Oskar took, she nevertheless did whatever in her powers to help the Schindlerjuden through the war — she cooked for them, she nursed them, etc., and I think lots of the Jews in Schindler’s factory owe their lives also to her careful nursing.

Leaving Oskar and Emilie aside, the book is a story about suffering. About hope (for the people in Oskar’s factory), but also about people who didn’t make it through the Holocaust alive, and the mind-bending tribulations of those who did. The moments that I have found the most frightening were some in the first half of the book, when the Krakow ghetto was raided repeatedly by the Nazi soldiers. There is a particular time when some people stand and listen to the megaphones announcing another raid and to the sounds of soldiers getting closer, and my mind can hardly contain their fright (or the fright I would have had in their place): of the horrors approaching, of the fact that these may very well be their last moments of normal life before going to a ghetto — or their last moments of life period. That part of history is truly a dark time, and I do know that this book is one that touches but little the many horrors that have passed. (I see that I use the word “horror” a lot; it is the single one that comes to my mind that I find expresses those happenings well)

This book has made me see some things from some new perspectives — for example, I have never thought about the way the normal, decent people of say Poland have regarded the brutality of what was happening around them. As the author puts it (on Schindler finding out about concentration camps):

“To write these things now is to state the commonplaces of history. But to find them out in 1942, to have them break upon you from a June sky, was to suffer a fundamental shock, a derangement in that area of the brain in which stable ideas about humankind and its possibilities are kept.”

On a personal note, I was amazed to find out the fact that Schindler has spent a part of his later years in a flat near the main railway station in Frankfurt. I myself have visited Frankfurt last year and have stayed at a hotel very near the main railway station — so it’s very possible that I have treaded the same streets he had treaded all those years before (at least metaphorically speaking as a lot can happen to the streets/pavements in more than thirty years). I feel sorry that I didn’t know that before as I am always very impressed when I happen to be in the same place as a historical character once was.

You know, at first I have thought of this book as a normal novel, and I have been a bit upset that it isn’t written as one — it is written as a documentary and as such it is hard to read at times and hard to relate to at others. At first I would have liked it to have, I don’t know, more dialogue, more things written about the people, perhaps the people’s feelings, not barely the things happening to them. On reaching the end I have understood though that this book isn’t meant to be read as a novel — it’s a testimony, from that time to ours, and as such it’s meant to be based on fact; the dialogues and description of people’s feelings could have only been inventions detracting from its truth.

What I liked most: In a way, what I have liked most (or what fascinated me the most — which is not necessarily the same thing) was the duality of Oskar. I have always thought that people are either good or bad, either moral or imoral. Oskar’s morality is… well, open to debate, as for example he never cared to hide at least from his wife the fact that he took mistresses. As the author once put it, “Just the same, the reflection can hardly be avoided that Amon was Oskar’s dark brother, was the berserk and fanatic executioner Oskar might, by some unhappy reversal of his appetites, have become.“. I cannot help feeling it was by a turn of chance, of incredible chance, that Oskar has been pushed, by some event, on this path rather than on any other that he might have taken (not that I want to debase his heroism or his humanity in any way). I’m probably mistaken.
Other than that, what I liked most (actually liked this time) was the fact that the author has been documenting a lot before writing this book: he visited places, he talked to people, he read documents, all that in order to have a book as close to the truth as possible, and I, as a reader thank him deeply for that. I have also liked the way the author follows the story even after Oskar and his Jews parted ways (this book focuses mainly on Oskar though, if you want to know even more of what happen to the Jews, their stories are told in another book written by the same author, Schindler’s Legacy)

What I liked least: Nothing. There is nothing to like least/not like about this kind of book.

Recommend it? If you’re interested in those years — absolutely!

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