The Book Thief Themes

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The Book Thief focuses on characters who are learning to love in the face of great hatred. There is also romantic love in the novel. Of course, it's an...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The title suggests that literature and writing will be an important theme of this novel. The Book Thief is framed by various other books, not the least...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The Book Thief is steeped in war. It's set primarily between 1939 and 1943 in Nazi Germany. Both the Holocaust and World War II are going on at this tim...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Death, The Book Thief's narrator, keeps us constantly focused on mortality. To be clear, this Death has nothing to do with why people die. Rather, he ex...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Identity is a tricky business in Nazi Germany, especially if you are Jewish. In order to stay alive, a Jewish person has to stay hidden, and being hated...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The Book Thief might challenge our ideas about crime and criminality. What if the laws of the land require its citizens to commit crimes against humanit...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) In many ways, Hitler's rise to power was made possible by... words. Hitler relied on mass communication technology to convey its message of hate and to...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) You'll notice suffering from page one of The Book Thief. Cold, hunger, emotional and physical abuse, guilt, the horror of the battlefield – all these...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The characters in The Book Thief exhibit great courage in the face of great adversity. It takes courage for the Hubermanns to take in Max Vandenburg, a...