Guten Morgen!It is interesting to read the varying reactions to these chapters. Some find the chapters on Liesel's life on Himmel Street during the war "uninteresting" and others find the details of her life so real - too real to read in one sitting.
Ella, yes, in several interviews the author relates that the stories came from his mother, who spent the war years as a
young girl in Germany - I assume that much of what we are reading is autobiographical.
As we move from chapter to chapter, we are are also moving forward inn time. We see Liesel growing up. We read of the increasing poverty, the hunger and the cold. And we also see that for some, conditions are worse. The priest is "fat," the Mayor and his wife live on in their big warm house on the hill. The Hubermann's continue to subsist on Rosa's meager soup which is shared with Max - and Rudy.
Ella, I'm still puzzling about the revelation that Rudy is going to die in two years' time. Death reveals this information so abruptly - I really wasn't prepared for this, were you?
***A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT***
ABOUT RUDY STEINER
He didn't deserve to die the way he did
What did the author achieve by this revelation? Will we start viewing Rudy in a different light now? Are we suddenly made aware that the war is going to affect these children on Himmel Street within the next two years? Liesel? Max? Do you see other another reason? Does Death know in advance when each will die? Or is the story told in hindsight and Death, so overcome with the memory, let's it slip out?
Andy, please help me, I am still hung up on the implications of a seven-sided die. I understand it means bad luck - but I can't visualize a seventh side. Don't dice just have six sides? The author describes each of the first six sides, which seem to me to deal with daily life on Himmel St. while the war is going on somewhere else - Max's haircut, dreams, painting pictures - but the seventh side (?) "is no regular die" - You've known all along it had to come...this small piece of changing fortune is a signal of things to come."
Jude - I read the
The Tin Drum so many years ago, (40?) I remember that it was set in Germany during Hitler's rise. I remember him as a sexually precocious little boy and quite defiant of authority - of German authority. I remember being more interested in this boy and in Gunther Grasse's writing, than in the reality of his environment. I think I'm going to pull it off the shelf and give it another try. I've had enough of Mein Kampf.