The Book Thief – 1

“The Jew stood before him, expecting another handful of derision, but he watched with everyone else as Hans Hubermann held his hand out and presented a piece of bread, like magic.

When it changed hands, the Jew slid down. He fell to his knees and held Papa’s shins. He buried his face between them and thanked him.

Liesel watched.

With tears in her eyes, she saw the man slide father forward, pushing Papa back to cry into his ankles.

Other Jews walked past, all of them watching this small, futile miracle. They streamed by, like human water. That day, a few would reach the ocean. They would be handed a white cap.

Wading through, a soldier was soon at the scene of the crime. He studied the kneeling man and Papa, and he looked at the crowd. After another moment’s thought, he took the whip from his belt and began.

The Jew was whipped six times. On his back, his head, and his legs. ‘You filth! You swine!’ Blood dripped now from his ear.

Then it was Papa’s turn.

A new hand held Liesel’s now, and when she looked in horror next to her, Rudy Steiner swallowed as Hans Hubermann was whipped on the street. The sound sickened her and she expected cracks to appear on her papa’s body. He was struck four times before he, too, hit the ground.

When the elderly Jew climbed to his feet for the last time and continued on, he looked briefly back. He took a last sad glance at the man who was kneeling now himself, whose back was burning with four lines of fire, whose knees were aching on the road. If nothing else, the old man would die like a human. Or at least with the thought that he was a human.

Me?

I’m not so sure if that’s such a good thing” (394-395).

The Book Thief – 2

“When I traveled to Sydney and took Liesel away, I was finally able to do something I’d been waiting for a long time. I put her down and we walked along Anzac Avenue, near the soccer field, and I pulled a dusty black book from my pocket.

The old woman was astonished. She took it in her hand and said, ‘Is this really it?’

I nodded.

With great trepidation, she opened The Book Thief and turned the pages. ‘I can’t believe…’ Even though the text had faded, she was able to read her words. The fingers of her sol touched the story that was written so long ago in her Himmel Street basement.

She sat down on the curb, and I joined her.

‘Did you read it?’ she asked, but she did not look at me. Her eyes were fixed to the words.

I nodded. ‘Many times.’

‘Could you understand it?’

And at that point, there was a great pause.

A few cars drove by, each way. Their drivers were Hitlers and Hubermanns, and Maxes, killers, Dillers, and Steiners…

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race- that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

None of those things, however, came out of my mouth.

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.

 

*** A last note from your narrator*** I am haunted by humans” (550).

Speak – 1

“Mr. Freeman puts on his turn signal, looks in the rearview mirror, pulls into the left lane, and passes a beer truck. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. Art is about making mistakes and learning from them.’ “He pulls back into the right lane.”

I watch the beer truck fade into the snowstorm in the side mirror. Part of me thinks maybe he is driving a bit too fast, what with all the snow, but the car is heavy and doesn’t slip. The snow that had caked on my socks melts into my sneakers.

Me: ‘All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.’ My fingers fly up and cover my mouth. What am I doing?

Mr. Freeman: ‘Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.’ “ He sticks his finger down his throat. “ ‘The next time you work on your trees, don’t think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or rage—whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling. When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack, cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know’ (122).

Speak – 2

“IT happened. There was no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow.

I look at my homely sketch. It doesn’t need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn’t perfect and that makes it just right.

The last bell rings. Mr. Freeman comes to my table.

Mr. Freeman: ‘Time’s up, Melinda. Are you ready?’

I hand over the picture. He takes it in his hands and studies it. I sniff again and wipe my eyes on my arm. The bruises are vivid, but they will fade.

Mr. Freeman: ‘No crying in my studio. It ruins the supplies. Salt, you know, saline. Etches like acid.’ He sits on the stool next to me and hands back my tree. ‘You get an A+. You worked hard at this.’ He hands me a box of tissues. ‘You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?’

The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up.

Me: ‘Let me tell you about it’ (198).

Stardust – 1

“A warm wind stroked Tristran’s face: it smelled like peppermint, and blackcurrant leaves, and red, ripe plums; and the enormity of what he had done descended on Tristran Thorn. He was walking into Faerie, in search of a fallen star, with no idea how he would find the star, nor how to keep himself safe and whole as he tried. He looked back and fancied that he could see the lights of Wall behind him, wavering and glimmering as if in a heat-haze, but still inviting.

And he knew that if he turned around and went back, no one would think any less of him for it—not his father, nor his mother; and even Victoria Forester would likely as not merely smile at him the next time she saw him, and call him ‘shop boy,’ and add that stars, once fallen, often proved difficult in the finding.

He paused, then.

He thought of Victoria’s lips, and her grey eyes, and the sound of her laughter. He straightened his shoulders, placed the crystal snowdrop in the top buttonhole of his coat, now undone. And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know…

…and into Faerie” (53-54).

Stardust – 2

“He found his hands twining, almost of their own volition, into the star’s wet hair. He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize how much he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing a man had ever been called.

‘So, where are we going after the market is done?” Tristan asked the star.

‘I do not know,’ she said. But I have one obligation still to discharge.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The topaz thing I showed you. I have to give it to the right person. The last time the right person came along, that innkeeper cut his throat, so I have it still. But I wish it were gone.’

A woman’s voice at his shoulder said ‘Ask her for what she carries Tristan Thorn.’

He turned and stared into the eyes the color of meadow-violets. ‘You were the bird in the witch’s caravan,’ he told the woman.

‘When you were the dormouse, my son,’ said the woman. ‘I was the bird. But now I have my own form again, and my time of servitude is over. Ask Yvaine for what she carries. You have the right.’

‘He turned back to the star. ‘Yvaine?”

She nodded, waiting.

Yvaine, will you give me what you are carrying?’

She looked puzzled; then she reached inside her robe, fumbled discreetly, and produced a large topaz stone on a broken silver chain.

‘It was your grandfather’s,’ said the woman to Tristan.

‘You are the last male of the line of Stormhold. Put it about your neck’ ” (236-7).

Feed – 1

“She smiled and put her finger inside the collar of my shirt. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘What I’m doing, what I’ve been doing over the feed for the last two days, is trying to create a customer profile that’s so screwed, no one can market to it. I’m not going to let them catalog me. I’m going to become invisible.’

I stared at her for a minute. She ran her finger along the edge of my collar, so her nail touched the skin of my throat. I waited for an explanation. She didn’t tell me any more, but she said to come with her, and she grabbed one of the nodules on my shirt—it was one of those nodule shirts—and she led me toward Bebrekker & Karl.

We went into the store, and immediately our feeds were all this crazy high-tech fun stuff they sold there. Then a guy walked up to us and said he could help us. I said I didn’t know. But Violet was like, ‘Sure. Do you have those big searchlights? I mean, the really strong ones?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We have…yeah. We have those.’ He went over to some rack, and he took these big searchlights off the rack. He showed us some different models. The feeds had specs. They showed us the specs while he talked.

When he went into the back to get another, cheaper searchlight, I said to Violet, ‘What next?’

She whispered, ‘Complicating. Resisting’” (98).

Feed – 2

“And I whispered, ‘Violet . . . Violet? There’s one story I’ll keep telling you. I’ll keep telling it. You’re the story. I don’t want you to forget. When you wake up, I want you to remember yourself. I’m going to remember. You’re still there, as long as I can remember you. As long, as someone knows you. I know you so well, I could drive a simulator. This is the story.’

And for the first time, I started crying.

I cried, sitting by her bed, and I told her the story of us. ‘It’s about the feed,’ I said. ‘It’s about this meg normal guy, who doesn’t think about anything until one wacky day when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold.’ I said, ‘Set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it’s the high-spirited story of their love together, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming, and a visual feast.’ I picked up her hand and held it to my lips. I whispered to her fingers.

‘Together, the two crazy kids grow, have madcap escapades, and learn an important lesson about love. They learn to resist the feed. Rated PG-13. For language,’ I whispered, ‘and mild sexual situations.’

I sat in her room, by hr side, and she stared at the ceiling. I held her hand. On a screen, her heart was barely beating.

I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye” (297-298).

Little Brother – 1

“Good evening and thank you all for coming. My name is M1k3y and I’m not the leader of anything. All around you are xnetters who have as much to say about why we’re here as I do. I use the Xnet because I believe in freedom and the Constitution of the United States of America. I use the Xnet because the DHS has turned my city into a police-state where we’re all suspected terrorists. I use the Xnet because I think you can’t defend freedom by tearing up the Bill of Rights. I learned about the Constitution in California school and I was raised to love my country for its freedom. If I have philosophy, it’s this:

Governments are instituted among men. Deriving, their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

I didn’t write that, but I believe it. The DHS does not govern with my consent.

Thank you” (235-236).

Little Brother – 2

“’Are you sure? Some of the people that were on Treasure Island with us got taken away in helicopters. They got taken off-shore. There are countries where America can outsource its torture. Countries where you will rot forever. Countries where you wish they would just get it over with, have you dig a trench and then shoot you in the back of the head as you stand over it.’

I swallowed and nodded.

‘Is it worth the risk? We can go underground for a long, long time here. Someday we might get our country back. We can wait it out.’

“I shook my head. “You can’t get anything done by doing nothing. It’s our country. They’ve taken it from us. The terrorists who attack us are still free — but we’re not. I can’t go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself” (333-334).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – 1

“They stared at me, the Indian boy with the black eye and swollen nose, my going-away gifts from Rowdy. Those white kids couldn’t believe their eyes. They stared at me like I was Bigfoot or a UFO. What was I doing at Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?

So what was I doing in racist Reardan, where more than half of every graduating class went to college? Nobody in my family had ever gone near a college.

Reardan was the opposite of the rez. It was the opposite of my family. It was the opposite of me. I didn’t deserve to be there. I knew it; all of those kids knew it. Indians don’t deserve shit.

So, feeling worthless and stupid, I just waited. And pretty soon, a janitor opened the front door and all of the other kids strolled inside.

I stayed outside.

Maybe I could just drop out of school completely. I could go live in the woods like a hermit.

Like a real Indian” (57-58).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – 2

“And I was making the attempt, too. And maybe it would kill me, too, but I knew staying on the rez would have killed me, too.

It all made me cry for my sister. It made me cry for myself.

But I was crying for my tribe, too. I was crying because I knew five or ten or fifteen more Spokanes would die during the next year, and that most of them would die because of booze.

I cried because so many of my fellow tribal members were slowly killing themselves and I wanted them to live. I wanted them to get strong and get sober and get the hell off the rez.

It’s a weird thing.

Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear.

But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that reservations were meant to be death camps.

I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez. I was the only one with enough arrogance.

I wept and wept and wept because I knew that I was never going to drink and because I was going to have a better life out in the white world.

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left heir birthplaces in search of a dream.

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms” (216-17).

Make sure to place the passage after Part I, the introduction to the passage, and before Part II, the personal reaction.

Also, over the next week try to watch the Frontline documentary Digital Nation from PBS. Clicking the Watch the Full Program Online link will take you to a page with a video player, however the film is broken up into segments. So you need not watch the 90 minutes all at once. The segments are listed as links above the video player: Living Faster, Relationships, Waging War, Virtual Worlds, and Learning. Try to have complete screening the whole thing by Thursday, April 7.