Stealing Back the Words

It has taken me a long time to read Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief.” I can take the evil and stupidity of WWII Germany only a few pages at a time.

The orphaned Liesel Meminger is saved by the books she steals. But in the midst of great evil and the loss of everyone dear to her, Liesel despairs. “Why did they [words] have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this. Without words, the Fuhrer was nothing… What good were the words?” [Page 521]

But the book is really about how Liesel steals the words back from Evil, from Der Fuhrer, who stole them first.

Evil and stupidity use the words, yes, to try to justify themselves, but they are just words. They are not the Word, and so they cannot survive.

Older people have been around long enough to know the difference in the ways words are used. Like Liesel, our job is to serve the Word by stealing the words back from Evil.