The Book Thief Quote

"There would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing"

I tried to write a whole long response to this line, but it ended up turning out far too similar to my Glass Castle post, so I'm not going to put it up. Taken from The Book Theif when the main character is given a journal to write in and told not to punish herself too much for having hurt someone else, this perfectly illustrates where Liesel Meminger and I connect-- on writing being a way to process and think, on writing being brutally honest- reflective of life and where it stands at the moment. We connect not on stealing books or more tangible and visible aspects of our separate, respective lives, but rather on a mutual love for words, infatuation with literature, and on her idea of a library filled with books and pages being such a happy place. Though the length of this post will make it seem as though I have not gotten much out of this, I have. And though I didn't want to repeat myself in a long ramble, I just had to do something with this line.

I wish I were Rory Gilmore.

Rory Gilmore from the tragically cancelled show Gilmore Girl’s is the perfect girl. She is the sweet, personable, mature, driven, smart, graceful young woman. She is small and effortlessly beautiful. She’s got big strikingly blue eyes and can have any boy that she wants, but will never take advantage of it. Rory Gilmore was accepted into all three ivy leagues that she applied to. She goes to Yale but doesn’t have to worry about the money because her wealthy grand parents will pay. She knows who she is, what she wants, exactly where she’s going and you can’t help but to be so sure of the fact that she will, without a doubt, get there. And, more commonly known, (aside from her ridiculously fast talking) Rory Gilmore is the girl who has made a best friend in her insanely perfect mother. She’s the one with that flawless relationship that I- and I think so many others- will always envy more than her small waist or her big blue eyes or her brains or the way that she’s so responsible. I want that more than, I think, pride or maturity or comfort of relatives with money or comfort with myself. Because as much as I love her personality, determination/drive, sweet looks, and frame of mind, really the show's not about that. As much as I love Rory's Grandpa and Luke the softie and Suki's clumsiness, it's not about them. It’s about Lorelai and Rory Gilmore- about their relationship. It’s about a daughter who can, after a terrible day, go home and cry to her mom about it- even in that awkward stage during which she should hate her. It’s about a girl who shares inside jokes and favorite junk foods and secrets and gallons of coffee and heart breaks with her mother.

I have this vivid speck of a memory from when I was seven years old. I’m curled up next to my mom- I used to, even then, like to fall asleep with her in that massive-seeming bed. I didn’t care to admit it to friends because that was the age where everyone wanted to seem older, more mature, more grown-up, and sleeping with my mom was not going to help with that image in the eyes of classmates. We’re both on our sides, facing each other- heads tipped down, foreheads touching slightly like young lovers. She has one arm around me and closed eyes, but mine are wide open and I’m staring intently at her face and thinking about how pretty she is and how I want to be like that someday. Then she squints a bit like she does when her glasses aren’t on because she has such awful vision and whispers to me “Promise you won’t turn against me when you’re older?”. I’d seen the way she fought with my sister and I’d seen the TV shows portraying parents as the enemies in the eyes of a teenager. Knowing that would never ever be me, I nod “Of course”. Then she closes her eyes again and smiles a bit, slightly giving in to sleep "Promise you’ll cuddle in here with me always?”. I grin at that “Definitely”.

I don’t know why I think about that moment so much, why it means anything to me, why I even remember it. I guess it's just a bit of nostalgia, regret, something I miss, a moment I'd like to change and while there are many of those, this one, for some reason, stuck. I often wonder, though, if my mom knew that I wouldn’t keep my word. It’s not fair to ask a seven year old to stick to a long term promise- especially one so hard to keep- and I can’t seem to decide if she knew that and wanted only to be comforted by my response, even if she could anticipate that it wasn’t true. Or if she really did believe me, no matter my age or maturity level. Either scenario kind of breaks my heart to dwell on.

Now I’m fourteen- I don’t sleep in my moms bed anymore and I think that I have done something like turned against her. I don’t remember the moment this happened, and I wish I did, because maybe that could help me pinpoint what the problem was, even if I had no way to reverse it. But despite it all, I still have those moments where I want to run to her massive bed and crawl into her safe arms, where I'm convinced that if I did so, things would be ok- even if only for that small moment in time. But, somehow, I can’t seem to do it anymore. I want to think that if I could only be Rory Gilmore- if I could only have that relationship, if I could allow myself weak moments, be a bit less stubborn, then I’d be happy. If I could only have good priorities and dark hair and big blue eyes and determination and a best friend of a mother, then I’d be just fine.

I’ve realised that there are no ‘Rory Gilmore’s. It’s taken me far too long, but I have realised it. And while there are girls with dreams and aspirations, girls with pretty hair and big blue eyes, girls who go to fancy colleges, girls who are proud and confident but modest and honest and sweet, girls who do what need to be done and don’t forget to enjoy themselves, even girls who have an (almost) perfect relationship with their mother and aren't afraid to admit it, I think it’s fair to say that there aren’t many who are all of that, who have all of that. And despite loving this show more than maybe life itself, I resent the Gilmore’s for putting me through so much before I could find the reality out for myself.

I don't usually write about Harry Potter because I tend to think that it's too brilliant for my words... but I guess this is more about life than him.

***Spoiler alert for those who haven't read the seventh book***

“Does it hurt?”
The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

I know you've read the book, because I put a spoiler alert for those who haven't (and they should've immediately quit out of the page before their eyes accidentally slipped over a few words). But if you've forgotten, this is what Harry asks his parents about death in the Dark Forest when he is on his way to give himself up to Voldemort towards the end of the seventh book.

It took me a long time to figure out what exactly made this line stick with me. Often the kind of sentence that wedges itself into my brain like that is 'deep' or beautifully metaphorical or will inspire me in some way. Often these kinds of lines are obvious in what made them stick to me. But this wasn't. This was so plain. This seemed topical, no hidden layers- it was just a simple question. A pretty fair question, really. Why did this stick out more than a sentence during Snape's last memories or part of Dumbledore's past? Why did it double my tear production, keep me up at night, make me think and think and think about I-don't-know-what.

It didn't hit me until a few weeks ago. Sitting on a plane with a finished book, a dead ipod , and a computer with no internet, I began to type. I wrote three little entries about nothing much really, just about my life or about moments that I thought needed to be captured, theories that needed further developing. I wrote about things that seemed more fitting to be in the pretty notebook lying at the bottom of my bag, but, somehow, came out better when I typed. One such moment that I tried to recreate and think slightly deeper about was this, you won't understand what exactly it is or who exactly I'm talking to, but I don't think that I'm going to try to explain:

-I just want it all to go away.

It was a whisper of an answer that slipped through my lips before I could stop it. Like when 17-year-old Harry asks his parents- at the end of the seventh book- if death will hurt. A childish question. A childish answer that happened all too quickly. It was a thought that made itself into audible sounds forming words without my permission- something I thought only happened in movies and books to characters who weren't real. It left my mind and then my mouth before I had the chance to realise it. Before I had the chance to take that thought and disect it- keeping only the vaguely acceptable parts as though to have some traces of truth left behind- and mix it with what she wanted to hear. Before I had the chance to carve and chisel and polish it into something that was not a thought in the rough, but a mature, insightful, and smart answer. Before I had the chance to create an articulate, adult-like response that showed the growth and acceptance I had been faking.

That was what I did with questions and answers and comments. That was how I talked, communicated, lived. I took every instinct and changed it to what I instinct I was supposed to have, and then into what I was expected to think or say. I remodeled my words to match the face that I was wearing, the wall I had put up, the other girl I was pretending to be. What would she say? What would she think? Then suddenly with one sentence, seemingly simple in wording and length, my cover was broken. I was suddenly vulnerable because this was my real answer. Not my fake response that the other girl inside my head had fabricated. This was my raw and true and honest answer. It was stupid, foolish and immature, irrational and far too hopeful. And it was mine. It was real. It showed that I was not mature, not insightful, not articulate- but, rather I was childish and weak and cowardly. It allowed a peek inside of me, into who I was, how I worked- something that was never meant to be seen or heard. I had, for the first time in what must have been forever, let someone in. Not to say that I hadn't let people in, because I had- friends and such- but this was letting her in on an entirely different level, in an entirely different way. And that, in and of itself, was terrifying.

Harry Potter lives in a world and a time where he is the most wanted boy/man/person alive. His parents are killed before he can remember them, years later he find out about and is reunited with his last remaining family member only to see him killed shortly after. The teacher who he thought to be his biggest supporter and defender, the only man he thought could understand him and protect him was now dead as well. He couldn't be with the girl he loved for so many reasons a teenager shouldn't have to face, had been hiding and running for months, had put his closest friends in danger. They'd all ricked their lives for him and, just moments ago, three had died, in part, because of him. Now he was walking into the forest to surrender and be killed. All before he's even eighteen. And though I often felt that Harry got annoying and slightly big-headed at times throughout the series, I think we can all agree that he has a lot on his plate. Yet he always seems to be brave, tough, persistent, and filled with answers- if not in the inside, in his actual thoughts, then at least on the surface for everyone else to see. He always played that part, depicted that image.

I'm not trying to say that Harry Potter is fake, because I don't believe he is. And in that small moment, I'm not even trying to say that I'm fake, because I don't believe I am either. But I think that, as humans, we often put up walls to protect ourselves or to protect others or for any number of reasons we come up with. And that could mean having a brave face so that the people around you can feel safe. It could mean telling someone what they want to hear so that things are easier, cleaner for them and for you. So that you can be the person you want to be, the person they want you to be, even if only on the surface. It could mean not letting yourself cry to prove to god-knows-who that you are not and never will be weak. But then I think, as humans, we also all have a breaking point. I think that we all, at some point, have a moment where the wall falls down- when you just need to cry or you feel so fake that you can't stand another moment of it or, if nothing else, you just forget and it happens before you can remember. We let our guard down, or it comes down without our permission. For some people, probably, it can happen in a bigger way- an outburst, or a breakdown. For Harry and I, it came in a short line, a simple spoken sentence that could, to others, almost go unnoticed. He, like me, had built up an image and a character for everyone to see- a personality that he had gotten himself into and was now committed to keeping up. Then suddenly in a simple question, he had (maybe even accidentally) shown a different side- perhaps a truer side- which wasn't weak or immature or cowardly. It was only human.

This book hurts.

I don't know why I never read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak- I'd certainly heard a lot about it. Maybe it was my being guilty of judging the book by its cover that wasn't exactly suggesting "my type" of book or maybe it was the specific people that had recommended it to me whose opinion I didn't trust or value or believe that I'd agree with or the concept of death as a narrator I'd heard about that implied an ironic black humor sort of book- definitely not my taste. But then with about a month left before starting high school, I had the novel idea of going online to check for any summer assignments that should have been already completed. And lo and behold, I was supposed to have read The Book Theif. At first, this was a burden seeing as though I wasn't keen on the idea of the book in the first place and being long, it rather interupted my other nerdy reading plans for the last few weeks of summer. However, though I expected to have to force myself to pick it up and read in order to ever finish, it turned out that I rather had to to force myself to put it down for a a 20-minute meal break every once in a while. I devoured the book, often reading a few hundred pages in one sitting. This may have had something to do with the fact that, while reading it, I had two nine hour flights between Alaska and New York on which I couldn't fall asleep and only read/wrote for hours on end. But whatever the reason, those 552 pages flew by far faster than I ever could have imagined.

Set in Germany during the 1940's, you know that this book hurts without me even having to even say it. It revolves around Liesel Meminger- a young German girl- and her learning about, then shortly after falling in love with words, books, writing. She is a girl who goes through more in ten years than anyone should have to endure in a lifetime. Her story is narrated by death- a character who helps you see into people in a way that no one else could. He, while collecting souls of the dead throughout the world in a time when there seems to be more to collect than ever before, follows Liesel through her childhood, often revealing what will happen or who he will visit next, long before it takes place in the story. The language is beautiful, every moment is poetic, and each image is strong.

So I have forewarned you- this book hurts. It hurts simply because of its setting and its protagonists struggles. It hurts because death is the narrator who tells you what will happen before it does which makes a different kind of pain. It is no longer a quick shock that stabs your heart. No, it's suddenly slow and excruciating. It is waiting for what you know is coming, watching around every corner of every page for it to come. It is standing by and knowing what the characters you love don't, it is wanting to tell them and not being able to, wishing to scoop them up out of the story and save them, but you can't. Like things so often are, though, what makes this hurt the most is also why it's so beautiful- the characters and how you are able to see into them. Because this isn't an ordinary book with 2-dimensional, rather undefined supporting characters. There is so much depth, not only in Liesel, but in her mama who curses like no ones business and her papa who plays the accordian better than anyone ever could and in the young jewish man that they hide in their basement who lives to hear her weather reports and her friend Rudy who wants to be Jesse Owens and in the mayor's wife and the angry woman next door who spits on her door step. There is depth even in the boy that they steal apples with and a kid from school named Tommy and the stern nazi who owns the candy store. Every single character is endearing and good somewhere, every single characters finds a little crack in your heart to wedge themselves into. Even death. And that hurts so much, somehow, because when you find yourself loving so much, you suddenly have worlds more to loose, immense amounts of more potential pain to be caused.

This post has done the book no justice and barely began to organize or complete my thoughts on it, but I don't think that I'll ever really be able to do that. It is one of the most endearing, original, haunting, and heartbreaking books that I have ever read. I cannot find words for it.