In the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, magical realism manipulates the reader into challenging their preconceptions and conveys ideas about human existence. Magical realism is a genre used by many authors that through deceiving or tricking the reader can bring to light ideas who is at fault of the holocaust making us re-think our preconceptions . Zusak challenges our preconceptions through the way he uses death. Death in this novel has been personified and acts as the narrator and the way Zusak utilises him brings up ideas such as the power of words, how everyday, average people can be influenced to cause the horrors of the Holocaust and makes us realise that it is not Death’s fault for people dying but actually ours as a society.

Markus Zusak develops Death as a character through the novel which allows the readers to notice that he is naive to the human race and the horrors of what his job actually is. Death’s job in this novel is to collect the souls of the dead bodies which in this time (1939-1942) there were many due to WW2. “Sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls. A few bombs usually do the trick.” This shows the reader Death is naive as he does not know how much impact people dying can have when he says “A few bombs usually do the trick.” This colloquialism adds casualness to what Death is saying and because of this He shows us how little he knows about people dying. This is then ironic as people dying is what he is most involved in. The way Zusak has formed Death like this forces us to see that He doesn’t understand the human race very well forcing the readers challenge their preconceptions that Zusak has formed in their minds about people during WW2. One of these preconceptions is that the people behind the Holocaust are all bad guys and that we could never be like them, but Zusak through the use of Death has made the reader re-think this and helped them notice that it is actually normal people that have been exposed to enough hate and horror to think it is normal. Then these people continue every-day life without second guessing whether what is happening is good or bad.

Zusak also makes Death act in a very calm and relaxed manner. This normalises the death that is occurring in the book and helps to put it into perspective as most of us cannot comprehend how extreme the events of the novel are. “It kills me sometimes, how people die.” When he says this ironic comment it shows us how relaxed he is as he doesn’t know the power of saying “It kills me sometimes” and how saying this can offend many people. Knowing that he does not take much effect from people dying constantly around him also brings to light ideas about human existence. Since Death is calm around all this the reader learns that he knows it is not his fault and makes me realise that it is actually ours as a society. People never really think into how so many people died during the war but the way Zusak has used death to force the readers to notice that it was us that killed them. It was us that dropped the bombs. It was us who gassed the Jews and us who shot each other. This really puts into perspective the horrors of the war and how normal every-day people can kill and not be too effected by it at the time.

Markus Zusak writing The Book Thief has personified death. He has done this to help the reader relate more to what is happening and the experiences He has. Relating to death helps them understand the horrors and tragedies more as most of us, as the readers, have not experienced death in such large quantities. “How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus?” With Death being a character in the novel, He has a personality and questions certain things about humans. One of these this as stated in the quote when He says “How many had actively persecuted others” He is questioning how one person (in this case Hitler) can influence a whole country to cause devastating events. Hitler was once just a normal person but somehow was able to influence a whole country into trying to take over the world and fight for what he believed to be right. This shows the reader how influential words can be and how humans can easily be swayed through the use of the right words. This makes the reader question how our society could have been manipulated by singular people for the bad.

In The Book Thief By Markus Zusak, magical realism forces the reader into challenging their preconceptions. This brings up ideas about human existence such as how normal people can see so much death and hate as normal, how so many people can be manipulated to follow the instructions of one person and how the right words can have huge impacts. Together Zusak has tried to explain to the reader that we must be careful and aware of how we can or have been manipulated to see bad things as normal and how it could have just been through people saying the right words.