Words from the basement: Markus Zusak's The Book
Thief
Notes on Contemporary Literature, January 2011
In his classic study The Poetics of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard claims that the cellar
is "first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces" (The
Poetics of Space. 1958. Trans. Maria Jolas [Boston: Beacon Press, 1969]: 18). Exploring the
archetypal image of the cellar in the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and Henri Bosco, Bachelard argues
that this underground space embodies humanity's deepest fears and in some cases represents
"buried madness, walled-in tragedy" (20). Because Markus Zusak's novel The Book Thief (NY:
Random House, 2007) is set in Nazi Germany and is narrated by the figure of Death itself, one might
expect the author's depictions of cellars to match perfectly with the "dark entity" described by
Bachelard. However, in this compelling story of a foster child's coming of age during World War II,
Zusak alters and subverts the archetypal image of the basement, picturing it instead as a shelter, a
home, and a setting in which words can provide salvation. When nine-year-old Liesel Meminger
comes to Molching, Germany in 1939 to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, the couple's basement
is converted into a make-shift schoolroom where Hans gives his foster daughter reading lessons.
Since Hans is a house painter by trade, he and Liesel paint the words that Liesel doesn't yet know on
the basement walls, recoating the walls each time the cement "pages" are filled. Here, in the
basement, Liesel's love affair with reading begins-a passion that leads her to steal books from a Nazi
book-burning as well as the library of the mayor's wife. As the narrator observes, "She was a girl. In
Nazi Germany. How fitting that she was discovering the power of words" (147). When she turns
fourteen, Liesel writes her life story in the Hubermanns' basement (reminding readers, perhaps, of
Anne Frank penning her memoirs in an attic) and is the lone survivor of a bombing raid that flattens
her neighborhood. For Zusak's heroine, therefore, the basement is not only a sanctuary for words, but
a setting which literally saves her life. During the course of the novel, the Hubermanns' basement also
becomes a shelter for Max Vandenburg, a Jew hidden from the Nazis by the goodhearted Hans and
Rosa. Max first regards the basement as a rat hole that somehow befits a wretched man like himself.
But he changes his mind about this underground habitation, largely because of his blossoming
friendship with Liesel. The girl brings crossword puzzles to Max, often reading in the basement while
he completes them. She brings him weather reports, does push-ups with him, cuts his hair, and even
hauls in buckets of snow on Christmas Eve so that the whole family can throw snowballs and build a
miniature snowman. Max's life in the cellar is far from ideal, of course. His health deteriorates badly
during the cold weather, and he must continually live in fear of being captured. Yet thanks to his bond
with Liesel and her foster parents, the basement actually becomes a place that Max "liked to call
home" (222).
Max also transforms the Hubermanns' cellar into a setting for creative/political activity. He paints
words and pictures on the cement walls, until the basement itself resembles a large, illustrated book.
He develops a vivid fantasy of a boxing match between Adolf Hitler, "the champion of the world," and
himself-"the Jewish, rat-faced challenger-Max Vandenburg" (251). Most importantly, Max becomes an
author for the first time in his life, whitewashing the pages of Mein Kampf and then painting new
words over the pages-literally erasing Hitler's language until it is "gagging, suffocating under the
paint" (237). Max's underground writings-which include personal reminiscences, political
commentaries, illustrated stories, and disturbing drawings-serve as his deepest form of selfexpression and a means of surviving his ordeal. Indeed, for Max, the basement ultimately becomes a
kind of writer's den or artist's studio. It is not a scene of Poesque madness and disaster but, to borrow
Bachelard's terms again, "a nest for dreaming, a shelter for imagining" (John R Stillgoe, The Poetics
of Space, By Bachelard (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994]: viii).
The image of the basement as a refuge and a sanctuary for words is reinforced later in the novel
through the portrait of the air-raid shelter in Liesel's neighborhood. Located in the Fiedlers' cellar, the
shelter can hold over twenty people, who huddle together in its dank space each time the sirens warn
of an attack. Clinging to their loved ones, the Germans watch each other's frightened faces-"waiting
for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid [is] finally over" (375). The fear in the basement
dissipates, however, when Liesel begins reading aloud to the gathering. Her story distracts the adults,
and the children are calmed by the sound of Liesel's voice. From then on, Liesel reads to her
neighbors during every bombing raid--the words bringing comfort to all those present in the cellar. As
Janet Maslin notes, The Book Thief is a figurative text whose story "unfolds as symbolic or
metaphorical abstraction ("Stealing to Settle a Score with Life (New York Times on the Web 27 Mar.
2006. Aug. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/ books/27masl.html). Indeed, in Zusak's novel,
the world of Nazi-dominated Europe can itself be seen as a vast basement-a setting of tragedy, evil,
and unspeakable horror. Not only do we learn of the deaths of Liesel's family and friends when the
Allied bombs hit Molching, but we witness the costs of war after one of the Hubermanns' neighbors is
maimed in Stalingrad, and his wounded brother returns home, only to hang himself. We watch Max's
march to Dachau along with other weak, starving prisoners and receive accounts of exterminations at
Auschwitz, where "the sky was the color of Jews" (349). Through his portrait of the Hubermanns'
basement and the telling of Liesel's story, however, Zusak presents his readers with a
counterbalancing, hopeful message: that any basement-whether real or metaphorical-can be
transformed into a shelter where goodness reigns; that any place of darkness and "walled-in tragedy"
can be transfigured, in the end, by the extraordinary power of words.
Susan Koprince, University of North Dakota
Koprince, Susan
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2011 Notes on Contemporary Literature.