The Book Thief

I think that it was very fitting to have the entire novel be narrated by death. Death in a way, is kind of the heart and soul of the novel because Death encounters more people and situations then any of the other characters. Death would have to be the most interesting character to me because usually people think that the only thing Death cares about is taking a soul, but he seems very interested in the story of Liesel. This could also be Death's conflict with himself. It knows it shouldn't become interested in the lives of people because it is more used to the death of people.
Death's perspective is definitely first-hand. It encounters more on people's lives than anyone else can. Its main priority is collecting souls, but it also witness's the heartache and sorrow which follows death, and sometimes the lonliness.  Death sees more the the gruesome side of the war, and sometimes is saddened by whose souls it takes. This could explain why it went against it's usual custom to see into the life of Liesel.  

Prisoner on the Hell Planet

When first reading this section of the book, one of the first things that I noticed, besides the reoccurring theme of darkness through out the section, is that Artie is wearing a striped uniform. At first I thought okay well maybe he was just portraying himself as Jewish, since Jewish people were required to wear striped pajamas when they stayed in the concentration camps. Then, during our group discussion the other day in class, one of my group members brought to my attention on how Artie feels like a prisoner of his own mind when his mother committed suicide. Whenever something negative happens in life, in this example it's Artie's mom's suicide, one of the typical reactions is how could i have prevented this from happening? or why would they do this? they seemed fine. I have noticed that we usually take the blame, when we don't have any part in a negative situation at all.

The idea of Artie being a prisoner of his own mind seems to become more relevant because as the panels continue, especially after his mother's funeral, the images in the background of the panels seem to distort and twist, as if his thoughts become distorted and twisted. I think that the most important panels during this whole section has to be the last three when it shows him in a prison cell. He basically calls out his mom by saying that by murdering herself, she murdered him mentally, and since she cant see his suffering because shes dead, that he is left to take the repercussions of her actions; therefore she committed the perfect crime.