Cry
Last night I finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and it was an amazing book. I must have cried for about twenty minutes after I finished the book. I mean, really, truly, genuinely cried my heart out. I was so deeply moved by the ending of this book. And the crying was very cathartic. I probably don’t cry enough in real life, so I have to take advantage of emotive fiction.
Yes. I know that I cry at Hallmark Card commercials. And almost every single movie I go to. My kids always make fun of me. They don’t understand how I can possibly cry at a movie. I don’t understand how people can possibly NOT cry, when a movie is sad, poignant, emotional, or even happy. I cried when Mufasa died in The Lion King. My older son, who was then three, was horrified. “It’s a movie, Mom,” he said. “Not only is it a movie, it’s a cartoon. Mufasa isn’t real.” So? Why does something have to be “real” before it can be moving? To me, the beauty of good fiction is that it can move us so deeply. Well-written fiction captures the human condition in ways that literal truth often cannot.
While I cry often at movies, I rarely cry after reading books. It takes a powerful book to make me cry. There are some books that have made me cry a lot, however. The ones that come to mind are: books that deal with war and painful loss. The most recent book that moved me enough to make me cry was The Woman at the Washington Zoo. That book, however, was nonfiction, and I was crying at the loss of its wonderful author Marjorie Williams. I rejoiced in the beauty of her writing but mourned her early death from cancer. It was painful to read her final essays, knowing that she was already dead. At the same time, I thought: she is talking about mortality and death from cancer at far too early an age for people to die. Most of us do not even want to THINK about such things. This woman was living it and writing about it. And she wrote so honestly and so beautifully. I was glad that her husband chose to share her writing with the rest of us in this way.
The Book Thief moved me so deeply because I had grown so attached to its characters and was thoroughly engrossed in their lives. I cared about them and what happened to them. The narrator of the book is Death, or the Grim Reaper. I know that sounds gimmicky, but in this instance, it worked. The book is set in WWII Germany and involves everyday life in a small town, coming of age, the Hitler Youth, the war, the persecution of German Jews, concentration camps, love of reading and books, friendship, and families. The author is Australian, but I think his parents, who grew up in Nazi Germany, moved there after the war. He had a thorough knowledge of Germany and German life, and his insight into what it was like for “typical” Germans during the war years was fascinating. As someone who lived in Germany for four years, I found the descriptions and details to be very accurate and in line with what I had experienced. I have no idea what Germany was like during WWII, but Zusak definitely captured the Germanness of the people. I would like to know if the book is available in Germany and if so, what German readers think of it.
The grief that I felt at the end of this book was very real and very deep. I was surprised by how much the ending moved me and by how hard I was crying. It wasn’t like a tear or two was rolling down my cheek. My body was wracked with grief; I was sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t often cry this hard, and it was very unnerving -- yet also, in a way, very cathartic.
The Book Thief was fiction, and none of the characters real. None of them ever existed on this planet. That I could be moved so deeply by people who are not real startles me on the one hand, and makes me appreciate fiction and the power of art on the other. I am not ashamed that I cried. I only wish that I could write prose that moved others as deeply as this book moved me.
Yes. I know that I cry at Hallmark Card commercials. And almost every single movie I go to. My kids always make fun of me. They don’t understand how I can possibly cry at a movie. I don’t understand how people can possibly NOT cry, when a movie is sad, poignant, emotional, or even happy. I cried when Mufasa died in The Lion King. My older son, who was then three, was horrified. “It’s a movie, Mom,” he said. “Not only is it a movie, it’s a cartoon. Mufasa isn’t real.” So? Why does something have to be “real” before it can be moving? To me, the beauty of good fiction is that it can move us so deeply. Well-written fiction captures the human condition in ways that literal truth often cannot.
While I cry often at movies, I rarely cry after reading books. It takes a powerful book to make me cry. There are some books that have made me cry a lot, however. The ones that come to mind are: books that deal with war and painful loss. The most recent book that moved me enough to make me cry was The Woman at the Washington Zoo. That book, however, was nonfiction, and I was crying at the loss of its wonderful author Marjorie Williams. I rejoiced in the beauty of her writing but mourned her early death from cancer. It was painful to read her final essays, knowing that she was already dead. At the same time, I thought: she is talking about mortality and death from cancer at far too early an age for people to die. Most of us do not even want to THINK about such things. This woman was living it and writing about it. And she wrote so honestly and so beautifully. I was glad that her husband chose to share her writing with the rest of us in this way.
The Book Thief moved me so deeply because I had grown so attached to its characters and was thoroughly engrossed in their lives. I cared about them and what happened to them. The narrator of the book is Death, or the Grim Reaper. I know that sounds gimmicky, but in this instance, it worked. The book is set in WWII Germany and involves everyday life in a small town, coming of age, the Hitler Youth, the war, the persecution of German Jews, concentration camps, love of reading and books, friendship, and families. The author is Australian, but I think his parents, who grew up in Nazi Germany, moved there after the war. He had a thorough knowledge of Germany and German life, and his insight into what it was like for “typical” Germans during the war years was fascinating. As someone who lived in Germany for four years, I found the descriptions and details to be very accurate and in line with what I had experienced. I have no idea what Germany was like during WWII, but Zusak definitely captured the Germanness of the people. I would like to know if the book is available in Germany and if so, what German readers think of it.
The grief that I felt at the end of this book was very real and very deep. I was surprised by how much the ending moved me and by how hard I was crying. It wasn’t like a tear or two was rolling down my cheek. My body was wracked with grief; I was sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t often cry this hard, and it was very unnerving -- yet also, in a way, very cathartic.
The Book Thief was fiction, and none of the characters real. None of them ever existed on this planet. That I could be moved so deeply by people who are not real startles me on the one hand, and makes me appreciate fiction and the power of art on the other. I am not ashamed that I cried. I only wish that I could write prose that moved others as deeply as this book moved me.
posted by delta at 10:28 PM
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