The Book Thief - Something Simple

Air raids. Immediately doesn't those words make you think of war and hurt and fear. Imagine a war. There's a city. 12 000 people. In the middle of the night, an alarm goes. No big deal, right? Dad's off to work. But no, it's an alarm telling you, your town is being bombed. You have to wake up, get out of the house and to the nearest air raid shelter. But when you get there you realise one of the families that is supposed to be there too, isn't. You can't go out to see if they are alright. But you have to know. And still you have to sit and wait in the darkness. Hundreds of thousands of people are put through this still; and were put through this during the past wars. All the people that died because they were bombed.



Himmel St. is being bombed. Maybe not specifically Himmel St, but the general area. All the people of the street must go to one of the families basement and stay there until another alarm goes off so they can return to hell. (well, at least the one that is above ground.) The first raid, the basement is crazy with tired/anxious children and nervous parents. They all return to their "normal" lives afterwards and carry on. Then another raid occurs. This time it's different. Fear has settled in. Liesel, to come herself reads from her book, The Whistler. Eventually everyone in the cramped basement gathers around, calms down and listens to her read. She doesn't even realize they are listen(at first). It's cool how in a situation such as theirs, they are calmed down by a little girl reading a book about a murderer who whistles after killing his victims. Some how I don't think that story would calm me. Just saying. But I have never been in a predicimate such as theirs, so how would I know. ZJust wanted to say how odd I found it that something so simple, could mean so much.