Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

[privatemaladict]

I am currently on my third readthrough of The Book Thief. The first time I read it, over two years ago, a friend in Laos lent me her copy. I gulped down its 500-odd pages during a two-day cruise on the Mekong river, glad for the security of sunglasses when I reached the final chapters. It's rare for me to re-read any book I find so devastating, but

Comments

[avus]

This book seems fascinating. I'm going to check it out on amazon. I recall, Nat, that conversation about evil, that the more we dehumanize, the more we're likely to slip into evil. I'd like to add to that a favorite evil quote which I believe is a necessary compliment to this. I believe it's from David Michael Levin:

"The visibility of evil is always a mirror." That means, of course, any evil we see is an evil we, ourselves, are capable of. Spotting evil shouldn't promote a witch-hunt, but protective action and careful self-reflection.

Currently, I'm reading a book for a paper I hope will be published. It's by a Bulgarian, Tzvetan Todorov who discusses, via survivor testimony, the presence not only of evil but also of good in Nazi & Soviet concentration camps. Todorov calls my above point, that it "implies a never-ending questioning of the self."

I'm going to indulge myself in reviewing some interesting points I've read so far:

"...there may exist a threshold of suffering beyond which an individual's actions teach us

[avus]

Continuing....

I really like Todorov's distinction of evil's opposite not being "good", but rather "caring". He quotes others who are, like me, suspicious of "good". Here's a Soviet Jewish author who spent some 20 yrs in the gulags, Vasily Grossman, from his novel, Life and Fate. (Do you know him?): "Men have always sought to act in the name of the good, [Grossman] explains, but every religion and philosophical doctrine, each race and each class, has defined the good in its own way. The more narrowly the term is defined, the more necessary it becomes to try to impose that definition everywhere. As a result, 'the very concept of good became a scourge, a greater evil than evil itself....' Fortunately, says Grossman, aside from good and evil, there exists 'everyday human kindness. The kindness of an old woman carrying a piece of bread to a prisoner, the kindness of a soldier allowing a wounded enemy to drink from his water-flask.... It is the kindness of one individual toward another, kindness without ideology, without thought

[avus]

Finally, I'd like to mention an interesting conclusion, one I'd never seen. Women were better survivors than men, and this may have been 2ry to greater kindness among women prisoners than among men prisoners: "It is a question not so much of different conditions as of different behaviors: where men often reacted self-destructively, women showed caring and concern for one another. Perhaps the most surprising thing in Ratushinskaya's memoirs is the happiness these women felt just being together; they managed to create a climate of freedom, dignity, and mutual support."

In reviewing this phenomenon -- that of caring within the camp, Todorov noted, "The giver of care... is also a beneficiary. Apart from any future reward, that person profits simply from the accomplishment of the act. The testimony is unanimous on this point. 'Probably this is the best way to retain one's humanity in the camps,' Ratushinskaya remarks, 'is to care more about another's pain than about your own. We were not seeking to perform heroric acts; if

[privatemaladict]

Why Dave, I have thoroughly missed your long-winded responses! :)

I'm glad I got you interested in The Book Thief - I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

Moralism consists of practicing justice without virtue, of simply invoking moral principles without feeling that they apply to oneself, of presuming one's own goodness simply on the basis of having declared adherence to principles of good....You know, this is probably the second-biggest issue that turned me away from Christianity as a teenager. (The first being that I didn't believe in God... but anyway.) Replace "good" with "God" in that sentence, and you have the creepy morality of my fellow youth-group goers back in those days. I remember having a conversation with a close friend about some sin - stealing, or lying or similar - and he said that he'd never do it because it was against the Bible. If that's the first reason you can think of... Well, even at 16 I could see there was something wrong with that. But of course, moralism as described here doesn't have to be