The Book Thief: Allusions 2 key examples

In World War II, "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was a euphemism used by Nazi leaders for the violent, systematic eradication of Jewish people from society. For decades, Jewish people had been scapegoated for social and economic problems in Germany. The Nazi party came to power in part by promising to stop Jewish people from taking over society—something that was never happening to begin with but that many people believed nonetheless. "The Final Solution" that the Nazi party eventually implemented under Hitler's direction was the mass murder of European Jewish people.

Death uses the phrase "final solution" as a deliberate reference to this final, most brutal stage of the Holocaust. Liesel assumes the man in the car is there in case she must be carried into her adoptive parents' house, so she is surprised when he does nothing to speed her out of the car. By suggesting that he is "the last resort, the final solution," Death introduces the more sinister idea that the man is there to beat Liesel into submission or even kill her if every other attempt fails to coax her into compliance.

It might be fair to criticize Zusak for applying this term to Liesel's situation. After all, she is not Jewish; she does not face the unique persecution that a character like Max endures in the novel. However, the allusion allows Zusak to explore the idea that even the threat of violence can be powerful. Liesel resists getting out of the car for 15 minutes, but she eventually complies. Moreover, she does not question the man's threatening presence but merely assumes that he represents severe consequences for defiance. During World War II, many Germans declined to resist Nazi policies at all because they tacitly understood that too much resistance could get them killed. Furthermore, while Jewish people were by far the primary target of "The Final Solution," Nazi leaders targeted other groups as well. Had they maintained power after the end of the war, they likely would have moved on to scapegoat and murder more people. By suggesting that the man in the car might be "The Final Solution" to a little German girl's defiance, Zusak introduces the uncertainty that anyone could trust the Nazi government not to kill them.

The pair of grave diggers is an allusion to one of the pivotal scenes in Shakspeare's Hamlet. In Act V of the play, Prince Hamlet sees two grave diggers making room for his newly-deceased girlfriend in an old burial ground. These grave diggers, who have become icons in literary history, represent the mortality shared by humans across all social classes. They are anonymous commoners tasked with digging up old skulls and bones to make room for a fresh corpse. That corpse happens to be that of a rich woman who is a casualty of high political intrigue. In the end, grandeur and status can't protect Ophelia from being manhandled by these commoners and tossed in with the other rotting bodies. She is mortal like the rest of them.

The shivering pair of grave diggers in Zusak's book immediately evoke Shakespeare's grave diggers and the idea of death as the thing that equalizes humans in the end. Zusak's Death has already described how he must carry everyone's soul away when it is time for them to die, no matter who they are. Still, Death puts pressure on the idea of the grave diggers as a symbol for equality in death. The person being buried in this scene is not a rich woman. Instead, the body belongs to a poor little boy who has lived a life shorter and less comfortable even than the grave diggers have enjoyed. Werner's death is a byproduct of poverty and persecution reinforced by corrupt politicians; had he had stable access to food, shelter, and medical treatment, he might have lived the same long life as Liesel. Death struggles to see how Werner's death equalizes anything.

As Death contemplates the injustice of Werner's death, the apprentice grave digger becomes a metaphor for all the "other" people who followed rather than issued orders in Nazi Germany. No one "called the shots" to kill Werner, but many people contributed to his death by complying with the idea that his family did not deserve social support. How responsible was each person who failed to help? The apprentice grave digger is ostensibly even less responsible for Werner's death than the people who passed him over while he was alive. Nonetheless, Death cannot help but notice that the apprentice has committed himself to an industry that has a symbiotic relationship with mass death. He can look forward to work as long as people keep dying; in turn, if he and other apprentices learn their jobs well, they will make it easy for society to dispose of bodies en masse. What truly seems to equalize people, this passage suggests, is the way social responsibility cascades. Every person plays some role in every other person's fate.