How does liesel die

She shows Rudy the drawing of him Max made. Rudy is surprised she told Max about him; inwardly Liesel wants Rudy to kiss her and realizes that she loves him. Rudy will die in one month. Liesel heads to Ilsa Hermann 's home, thinking a visit might cheer her up. She enters through a window and begins reading a book on the floor of Ilsa's library. Liesel does not know or care whether Ilsa is home; she contemplates all the people she has seen die and pictures Hitler's words at the center of it.

She does not want to hope for Max and Alex Steiner anymore, "because the world does not deserve them. Liesel writes a letter to Ilsa, in which she apologizes for destroying a book and says she will never return to punish herself. Three days later, Ilsa arrives at Liesel's home. Ilsa tells her that, based on the letter, she can write well and gives her a blank book of lined paper; she asks Liesel not to punish herself, as Ilsa did over the death of her son.

Liesel invites Ilsa in for coffee and bread. That night, Liesel goes down to the basement and begins writing a story titled The Book Thief. Liesel writes eleven pages of the story of her life, starting with her brother's death. Every night, Liesel goes down to the basement to write. Ten nights later, Liesel is asleep in the basement and doesn't hear the air raid siren; Hans wakes her to go to the shelter.

On October 2, Liesel has finished. Death describes the bombing of Himmel Street. The sirens are too late. The first bomb hits Tommy Muller's apartment block; he and his family are asleep. Frau Holtzapfel is sitting awake in her kitchen. Frau Diller is asleep; her shop is destroyed, and her framed photo of Hitler is smashed. The Steiners are all asleep, and Rudy is in a bed with one of his sisters; Death recognizes him as the boy who gave the pilot a teddy bear.

Death observes Rudy's soul and sees him pretending to be Jesse Owens, retrieving a book from the icy river, and imagining a kiss from Liesel; he makes Death cry. At last, Death takes Hans and Rosa. Hans' soul sits up and meets Death, passively ready to go; Hans' soul whispers Liesel's name, knowing that she is in the basement.

Death travels to other streets, but returns to Himmel for a single man. Death notices the recovery crew laughing and curiously watches. The crew pulls Liesel out; she panics and runs down her destroyed street. The crew informs her that her town has been bombed, and she tells them that they must get Hans, Rosa, and Max.

Still holding her book, Liesel collapses to the ground, and a man seats her. She sees a worker carrying Hans' broken accordion case and offers to take it. Liesel drops the accordion when she sees the corpses laid out on the street. She sees Frau Holtzapfel first, then Rudy. She begs Rudy to wake up, then kisses him on the lips. Liesel then sees Rosa and Hans. Crying, she tells Rosa's body about the day she arrived on Himmel Street, how Rosa informed her about Max waking up, and that she knew Rosa would sit with Hans' accordion.

Liesel asks a worker for the accordion, and she places it by Hans' body. She envisions Hans rise and play the accordion beautifully, a cigarette hanging from his lips. She loves them both, but in different ways. Max , however, was always that friendship love. He became, even, like a brother to her. The next day, Liesel finally tells him about Max and shows him his own picture in Max's book. Rudy dies when Himmel Street is bombed. Liesel is just fourteen when Rudy dies.

The day he stopped asking. Liesel's moment in the river and her kissing Rudy's lips when he's dead definitely suggest that she regrets not kissing him. Death then reveals that, in two years, Rudy will die and that he won't deserve to die the way he does , during a bombing. Death uses this chapter to foreshadow two events: Rudy's jumping in the river to save one of Liesel's books, and, afterwards, his asking her for a kiss. After analysis of basements made by the German government, the alarms rang for three nights of light bombing.

Liesel is nine years old , almost ten, at the start of the novel. She is about fifteen toward the end of the novel when the bombs destroy her home and kill her loved ones. The novel ends when she is an old woman and Death comes to collect her soul. Liesel is the book thief. At the end of The Book Thief, you never find out who Liesel married. After searching the internet for a while, it soon becomes apparent many people hoped it was Max Vandenburg. This might be an unpopular opinion but in all honesty, I hope it's not Max.

But then again, maybe not. At the very end, Death takes Liesel's soul to Anzac Avenue which is a real place but maybe Death means an afterlife version. Anyhow, he takes her there and shows her The Book Thief , her book. We are told:. A few cars drove by, each way. Notice how Death seems to count Max among the dead. This means that Liesel must have suffered from his death, but that everybody will soon be reunited in the afterlife, at least according to Death's rather vague description of it.

First, this is a cute and morbid pun. Humans are haunted by ghosts, and some might even say by Death. Death being haunted by humans is something we don't usually think about. Second, this is how Death answers Liesel when she asks if her memoir, The Book Thief , which he's finally returning to her makes sense to him.

We'll take that as a "Yes. At the start of the novel Death says that the most painful part of the job is seeing "the survivors," "the leftover humans," "the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise" 1. In other words, according to Death, it's easier to be dead than to be alive and deal with the loss of loved ones.

Death is haunted by those humans, because he can't forget the suffering they face. In some ways, this is what Liesel's story, The Book Thief , is all about—even though she writes it before she loses Rudy and the Hubermanns. So, in spite of our joy at finding Max alive, the novel ends on a rather melancholy note.