Different Concept, Same Author

    Hey everyone! As you can tell, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is currently what I talk about constantly because it has been my favorite book so far. And also, I have finished I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak and I was wondering, "How are they different, but they come from the same author?" I think you can answer this easily because he wouldn't want his work to be the same and bore his readers. But I feel that there is a connection between these two books even though they both have a different concept.

   Now to start this off by seeing what they have in common. The main characters Ed and Liesel have a hard family connection. In the Book Thief, on page 21, the author writes, "It was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten. Her brother was dead." And in I Am The Messenger on page 353, the author writes, "" I killed your father, Ed."" This shows that when Ed and Liesel were little kids, Liesel and Ed lost very important family members in their own books. But the only difference was that Ed never saw his father hung, but Liesel has seen her brother die in her arms two days before he was buried by gravediggers. Ed recalls in the book that others told Ed that his father died while sitting on a chair in a moving van (because Ed's father worked for a moving company) being hangover because he drinks a lot. But in reality, it was a murder that someone (who is open to interpretation) has killed Ed's father. I felt that there wasn't a lot of things that were similar between The Book Thief and I Am The Messenger.

   Now as to how they are different, there are a lot of features that makes these books unique from each other. Firstly, The Book Thief took place during the time period of the Holocaust in Germany while I Am The Messenger doesn't have a time period or country set. Also in I Am The Messenger, not many people have been killed, however in The Book Thief, it describes millions of people dying in multiple ways because the time period was the Holocaust. Also, none of Ed's friends die, but for Liesel, someone important to her dies during a bombing in Germany.

    Even though Markus Zusak has written these wonderful books, they leave you with something to ponder about.

 Vs.