An Interpretation Of The Initiation Theme Of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

In 1975, Markus Zusak was born in Sydney, Australia. His parents are seed of Austria and Germany respectively. He is a contemporary Australian author with the most prizes, the most abundant works and the widest readership. Up to the present, he has published The Underdog, Getting the Girl, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, I Am the Messenger and other works. Since his childhood, Markus Zusak began to love writing and he had said there were always several stories existing in his mind. After his graduation from the university, he engaged himself in teaching. But then, he determined to concentrate on writing. Now, in addition to writing, Markus Zusak manages his writing workshop. And he is sometimes invited to give lectures from place to place. The inspiration of The Book Thief comes from his parents’ story telling to him when he was young. During World War II, his parents were young and had witnessed the pitiful sight after Allied Forces’ bombing and they also saw the tragedy that the Nazi sent the poor Jews into the concentration camps. Markus said he remembered these miserable descriptions all the time what his parents had said. He knew that he would some day write these stories into a book. This is the origin of The Book Thief. One of the features of The Book Thief is that readers are told a heart-warming story by a special narrator, who had met the girl three times. Death, an image could shout tired and complain, told us many stories about a stealing-books girl with calm, wise and humorous tone instead of past cruel, ruthless and dark image. Up to now, many scholars had studied this novel from the angles of narrative perspectives, feminism, post-colonialism and paradoxes and some other unique writing techniques such as flashback and exquisite psychological description to analyze this novel. The author uses the narrator of Death to shuttle from the scene to the contemporary readers in order to tell the development of the story and the end of the characters. However, the initiation theme throughout the novel should be taken seriously.This thesis is composed of introduction part, main body and conclusion part. Its main contents are as follows:Introduction: in this part, it introduces the life experiences of the author, Markus Zusak, and his achievements in brief. Besides, it makes an introduction to the content of this book: in 1939, a nine-year-old girl, Liesel Meminger, and her brother were sent to a foster family in the suburbs of Munich. Unfortunately, her brother died on their way and was buried near the railway tracks. Next to the tomb of her brother, Liesel acquired by accident her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, which would be one of fourteen books bringing her infinite comfort. With the help of her adoptive father, a man who could play the accordion, the girl learned to read. Despite the hard life, she found a thing, books, which were hard to resist than food. She helped the people around her by words and books.The main body is composed of four chapters. Chapter I is the theoretical principle of this thesis. First, it presents the definitions and characteristics of the initiation story. Second, it introduces the origin and development of initiation story. Third, it deals with the theme of The Book Thief. Chapter II summarizes the growing experiences of the protagonist: first, it introduces the lack of kinship. Second, it describes the hard journey of life. Then, it introduces the realization of self-worth. Chapter III, it describes the significance of initiation guides, including cultivation of willpower and obtainment of courage. Chapter IV introduces special perspectives to reveal the growth, including the eyes of Death and the symbolic color changes.The last part is the conclusion. The thesis interprets the initiation theme of The Book Thief and the social meaning of this thesis. Thus for the readers, they can have a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the initiation theme in this book. In addition, Liesel’s experiences of growing have universally educational significance on the growth of the teenagers who are experiencing confusion. The innovation of this thesis lies in the analysis of the initiation theme in The Book Thief by using the theory of initiation story. The meaning of this paper is to rich the research of this novel, thereby to broaden the research field of initiation stories.