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Part 10: The Ninety-Eighth Day
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Book Thief, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death
Words and Language
Books
Stealing and Giving
Color, Beauty, and Ugliness
Summary
Analysis
After the funeral for Michael Holtzapfel, Liesel reads The Dream Carrier to Frau Holtzapfel as usual. Death describes how busy he is with the Allies' bombing of Hamburg. Hitler is starting to lose the war, but he doesn't scale back the fighting or the murder of Jews.
The war is starting to wind down, but the danger has only increased for the characters of the novel. By this point Death seems more and more weary of his work, and horrified at the terrible things humans do to each other.
Themes
