Week 1- Character- Max

I am page 258, so if you aren’t around there you might not want to read this!

Max as a character doesn’t show up until later in the story, not until part 3. We are introduced to him even before Liesel meets him. Death, our very interesting narrator, starts to tell us about Max, while he is in hiding, so we get to read all about Max’s entire journey to the Hubermann’s kitchen. Max used to be a “Fighter”, even though he would often lose, until he was forced to go into hiding. Max at the beginning is just shut down in the basement and we he is just the family’s big secret. It isn’t until Max is allowed to spend the nights sleeping by the fire upstairs that we get to see Max and Liesel interact. Liesel and Max are connected with words and nightmares. She would spend her time in the basement reading, while Max would be in the basement hidden reading Hitler’s book or the newspaper that Liesel would bring him. This connection improved when (SPOILER) Max made Liesel a book. This showed me a lot about Max as a person. He is so grateful for everything that Liesel and her Family are doing for him that he decides to make Liesel a book, and the book was autobiographical for him, telling her his story. Max used to be a “Fighter”, even though he would often lose. They both also have nightmares, Max dreams about leaving his family and that aweful moment when he left them all knowing that they would not make it, and we all know that Liesel has her nightmares about her brother dying on the train. Max as a character isn’t just the man living in the basement but slowly he is becoming a friend of Liesel and a part of their family.