The Book Thief: Foreshadowing 4 key examples

The image of ash falling like snowflakes foreshadows the bittersweetness of the story to come. Death draws on the cognitive dissonance that occurs when a person expects one sensory experience and gets the opposite. The shocking pain the reader can imagine were they to catch hot ash in their mouth feels even more shocking and painful by contrast with the cold, pleasant sensation of a snowflake on the tongue. The ash contains remains of not only buildings, but also bodies. As opposed to the sweet, crisp taste of snow, the taste of the ash is surely bitter, and even nauseating. The Book Thief is a story about a girl's childhood, and it has plenty of sweet moments. For example, Liesel and Rudy's friendship-turned-romance (almost) is full of playful joy, and it almost seems as though the two of them will make it out alive together. The ash disguised as snow is a hint that happy endings are not to be trusted in this book. After all, it is set during World War II, and it is narrated by Death.

The fact that the ash looks like beautiful white snow further hints at the way some characters are drawn in by the Nazi party's false promises about a utopian future for White Germans. For example, Hans Hubermann, Junior, encourages his father to join the party. Frau Diller is so loyal to the party that she keeps a framed photo of Hitler in her shop and forces customers to salute him. The way the "snow" turns to burning ash on the tongue foreshadows how characters buying into the party's promises usually find out that they have been sold a lie. Often, they find out the hard way. Frau Diller's loyalty, for instance, does nothing to protect her from the bombs.

The "devastating, home-cooked red" of the sky builds on Death's earlier claim that the sky is the color of burned soup. The soup foreshadows the meal Rosa Hubermann will try to feed her family, day in and day out, throughout the war. Rosa's soup usually tastes terrible, sometimes gets burned, and never quite satisfies anyone's hunger. Nevertheless, it represents Rosa's commitment to taking what little she has and turning it into something that will help her family make it through another week. By comparing the sky to Rosa's soup, Death not only emphasizes the intensity of the red but also makes the disconcerting suggestion that the bombing of Himmel Street is "home-cooked" by people who thought they were doing what was needed to get their families through the war, one day at a time.

It is not the accordion that comes alive in this passage, but rather the story of how Hans acquired it. The accordion is one tangible manifestation of the story. The story also takes the form of a man "wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket" who will show up one day on the doorstep with "a suitcase, a book, and two questions." This man will turn out to be Max, the son of the man from whom Hans inherited the accordion. The suitcase will turn out to be everything he owns. The book is the copy of Mein Kampf he uses to stay safe on the way to Himmel Street, and the two questions are the agreed-upon questions to assess whether he has arrived among friends.

At first, this passage looks messy. How can the accordion be the story if the story is also Max? However, the mixed metaphors seem to be deliberate. Death follows up Max's description by writing, "A story. Story after story. Story within story." The accordion represents the story of Hans's friendship with Erik Vandenburg and the lifelong debt Hans owes to the family of the man who ultimately died for him. Max, who was two years old when his father died, is part of this story. When Max comes back into Hans's life, it is both a continuation of the accordion story and the start of a new story about Liesel and Max. These stories blend into one another, so that it is difficult to tell where one ends and another begins or if they are truly separate stories at all. Death uses foreshadowing and messy personification to emphasize how deeply intertwined every moment in the book is with every other.

Death lets the reader know that something important will come of Hans's idea, but he does not yet reveal what. He does not even reveal yet what Hans's plan is. The phrases, "We'll give him seven months" and "Then we come for him" are ominous, especially when spoken by Death himself. It almost sounds as though Hans's idea is going to get him killed just a few months from now. The dramatic irony creates suspense, urging the reader to keep turning pages to find out what will happen.

Death, though, is having a bit of fun with the reader. The foreshadowing in this passage plays on Death's role not only as Death, but also as the narrator. He "comes for" characters in both capacities, either carrying their souls away or simply telling their stories. By continuing on with Death through the pages of the story, the reader eventually "comes for" Hans right alongside Death. That is not to say that what happens to Hans as a result of his idea is not major. His idea is to send a copy of Mein Kampf to Max to hide behind should he ever need to take the train from one safe place to the next. The idea will lead in seven months to Max's arrival at 33 Himmel Street. Along with him will come many "complications, dangers, and vicious absurdities:" Hans will become further alienated from his adult children, he will see Liesel changed irrevocably by knowing Max, and he will embroil himself further than he ever expected to in the underground resistance to Hitler. For now, though, as Death points out, Hans knows barely more than the reader about how his plan will turn out. He is able to "enjoy" the triumph of his idea precisely because he does not know how everything will play out.

Hans seems about to say that "Maybe ..." a young girl should not see the torture and abuse that is about to be on display for all of Molching to see. It is impossible enough for him to process what he is about to witness, so it will surely be even more traumatic for a child. Then again, Hans reasons, "perhaps it was something she should see." Hans's ambivalence about how best to parent Liesel is tied up not only in the impossible task of parenting itself, but also in the fact that they are living through a historic moment. He does not yet have the perspective to know how this history turns out, or what difference it might make for a young girl to bear witness to the scene in the street. He simply has the feeling that it might be more important to show her the world than to protect her from it.

Death and, to some extent, the reader have the perspective Hans lacks. They know already that most of Himmel Street will not survive the war. Death knows that Liesel will go on to write about this moment in her memoir. Her testimony about the "anguish, torment, despair, wretchedness, desolation" will become part of the archive of stories about World War II—stories that give humanity the best possible shot at understanding what happened during this horrific chapter of history. Hans merely suspects that Liesel should stay, but Death and the reader understand better why she must stay.

Death is also being coy, foreshadowing Hans's impulsive and life-altering decision to bring bread to one of the starving Jewish men. The idea that "perhaps it was something [Liesel] should see" hints at the way Hans is about to catapult the entire family into a new reality. Hans's kindness draws a target on his back. It makes Himmel Street unsafe for Max any longer, it brings a new level of paranoia into the house, and it leads to Hans's forced military service away from home. It is important that Liesel sees his act of kindness so that she can direct her anger toward the right people. Because she stays in the crowd that day, Liesel sees that Hans is in the right, even if the consequences of his actions are terrible. She comes to understand on a visceral level that Nazis literally and figuratively beat the compassion out of people.