Previous
Part 9: The Next Temptation
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
Meanwhile, Hans and the men of the LSE are playing cards outside Essen. Hans keeps winning, and a man named Reinhold Zucker gets mad and accuses him of cheating. Whenever Reinhold wins he gloats, but when Hans wins he shares the cigarettes he won with the other men. Reinhold despises him for his charity, and Death implies this will lead to Reinhold's end.
A major theme of this section in the novel will be the randomness of fate, especially who lives and who dies in war. Here Death implies that Reinhold Zucker will be killed essentially because he is a bad loser at cards.
Themes
