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Markus Zusak Brittany Harrell LIS 618 Author Study: Written Summary Due: March 5, 2016 Markus Zusak About The Author Markus Zusak was born in 1975 in Sydney, Australia to immigrant parents, a German mother and Austrian father (Hudson, 2010). He has published five books between 1999 and 2005 in his native country, with many of them gaining international success (“Markus Zusak”). He still lives in Sydney with his wife and two children (“Markus Zusak”). Currently, Zusak is preparing for a US book tour to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of his most popular work, The Book Thief (Zusak, 2016). His writing has won a variety of awards over the years in various countries. Most notably, Zusak won the Margaret A Edwards Award in 2014 (“2014 Margaret A Edwards Award”). He was also a 2006 Printz Honoree for I am the Messenger (“Markus Zusak”). About the Project Because Zusak is an Australian author, his novels have been published differently in each country. In the United States, only four of his five books were published as individual novels. The fifth, also known as the first in the Wolfe brothers or Underdogs trilogy, was only published as part one a combined set with the other two in the trilogy. All five books were read for this assignment but, in order to read the fifth book, the combined trilogy is the one cited throughout this discussion when referring to direct page numbers. If the individual novel is being cited but not direct page numbers, the citation will refer simply to that book instead of the combined trilogy. Also worth noting: the availability of reference material to Zusak’s books, besides The Book Thief, is almost nonexistent. Almost all reference information was received from interviews with Zusak from various websites or journal publications. Short Summary about the Books Underdogs The Wolfe Brothers trilogy follows the youngest boys in the Wolfe family: Cameron and Ruben Wolfe as they try to figure themselves out and their place in the world and within their family, all told through Cameron’s narration. The story has a lot of similarities to SE Hinton’s The Outsiders, to the point that even Zusak says “Cameron was inspired by Hinton’s Ponyboy” (Carstensen, 2014). Ruben is also very similar to Sodapop and their older brother Steve is reminiscent of Dally. Unlike The Outsiders though, Zusak’s characters still have parents and even a sister. The individual books in the trilogy do not rely on each other to be understood, which can be beneficial for readers who can’t get their hands on the other books in the trilogy. That being said, to really enjoy the struggle, triumphs, and lives of the Wolfe brothers, the whole trilogy should be read. Each book in the series features elements of an irony or satire, as define by Northrope Frye, but the trilogy as a whole is more indicative of Frye’s definition of a comedy (Gann, 2016b). As Cameron and Ruben, and even the rest of the Wolfe pack, progress through the stories, they overcome the odds that are stacked against them and find a new, brighter way to look at themselves and their stations in life. I am the Messenger Ed Kennedy is a 19 year old, car playing cab driver that’s going no where until his whole live changes after being held hostage in an armed bank robbery. One day, he starts receiving mysterious playing cards with names or addresses on them, pointing him towards people who need his help in some way while also revealing the darkest and brightest parts of human existence. This romantic quest novel uses suffering to not only impart knowledge on Ed but to also show the triumph of the minor characters he ‘helps’ throughout the story (Nilsen, Blasingame, Donelson, & Nislen, 2013). By allowing the reader to go on this journey with Ed to deliver messages and, in the end, find out the source of it all along, Zusak provides a realistic journey story. He doesn’t need dragons or magic to create the adventure Ed goes on, just a little bit of mystery until the last possible moment. The Book Thief Zusak’s most popular novel is set in 1939 Nazi Germany with a narrator none other than the Angel of Death. The story follows Liesel, a young German girl brought to live with foster parents, who steals books as way to learn about and make sense of the world around her. The story was inspired by his own parent’s experiences in Germany and Austria as children, stories which they would tell him as a child. In an interview with his publisher, Zusak said “I heard stories like that, stories of my dad not wanting to go to Hitler Youth and people who didn’t want to hang their flags in their windows and I thought ‘I’m gonna write about those people’” (“Interview with Markus Zusak”). This tragedy, by Frye standards, poses Liesel as the hero of Death’s story (Gann, 2016). Even in the darkest times, like when locked underground for a bomb raid, Liesel never loses hope. Instead, she provides hope to those around her by reading aloud from her book, making her a truly heroic character (Zusak, 2005). Overarching Themes in the Canon Australian Setting/Slang Zusak utilizes his own knowledge of Australia, particularly in and around Sydney, in four of his five novels. All three of the books in the Underdogs trilogy and I am the Messenger came to life in the streets of Zusak’s hometown. Underdogs only mentions bits and pieces of the city, placing less emphasis on a specific physical setting and more on an emotional setting. However, especially in the second and third books in the trilogy, quite a few neighborhoods are brought up. When Cameron and Ruben begin boxing to make extra money in Fighting Ruben Wolfe, their sponsor of sorts tells the boys of the various gyms they’ll compete in around the city, which include Glebe, Maroubra, Ashfield, and Helensburgh (Zusak, 2013, p. 179). In Getting The Girl, Cameron has some minor stalker tendancies and ends up sitting outside of the house of the girl he has a crush on, which is located in Glebe (Zusak, 2013, p. 320). Cameron, ever the romantic, also goes to meet his major love interest in the story at Circular Quay Harbour as well as at her house in Hurstville, both of which are actual locations in and around Sydney (Zusak, 2013, p. 393, 405). As the reader progresses to I am the Messenger, more concrete locations in and around Sydney are utilized. With the main character, Ed, being a cab driver, streets and locations in the city are more prominent in this book. He mentions various places he has to drive his customers, most often to ‘the city’ which seems to be the name for Sydney proper, rather than the suburbs usually mentioned in Zusak’s novels. The most interesting setting details though, come with the mysterious playing card packages Ed receives. A quick Google maps search will reveal that places like Edgar Street or Harrison Avenue actually exist in the suburb of Maroubra (Zusak, 2002, p. 1). There’s even a St. Michael’s Catholic Church a little further out from Sydney as well (Zusak, 2002, p. 154). Many of the places in I am the Messenger are real locations and feasibly can be reached by walking, much like Ed does in the story. Another commonality in these four novels is the Austrialian slang. Words like bloody, shirty, and mate pop up often through out the novels. Two words actually required some translation though. ‘Whinging’ appears in all four novels fairly often and means ‘whining’ or ‘griping,’ which wasn’t hard to determine considering the closeness in spelling of whining and whinging. However, ‘Sledge,’ which is pretty exclusive to I am the Messenger, was a little harder to find and actually refers to the game of cricket (Zusak, 2002, p. 98). The use of real places and common terms in his novels are indicative of Zusak’s upbringing in the same area. They also add an authenticity to the stories that provide the readers with another level on which to enjoy them. Stylistic Formatting All five of Zusak’s novels have an extra emphasis added to the story through the means of some form of stylistic formatting. Each style choice elaborates on the character or book message by providing more insight or introducing another level to the narrative. Underdogs as a trilogy is a perfect example of using stylistic formatting to provide more insight into a character. Each novel in the trilogy employs a different kind of writing but they all do it in the same way: through an italicized passage at the end of each chapter. In The Underdog, the italicized passage at the end of each chapter is a dream Cameron is having, oftentimes nightmarish in nature. Each dream allows the reader to understand Cameron a little more by showing his fears, how the events of the chapter affected him, and, in some cases, foreshadow the coming chapters (Zusak, 1999). Fighting Ruben Wolfe, as a story, focuses more on the brotherhood between Ruben and Cameron and the italicized section at the end of each chapter does the same by spelling out conversations between the brothers, oftentimes late at night in their shared bedroom. These conversations offer the biggest insight into Ruben’s character, especially considering all of the books are from Cameron’s perspective, and how he relates to Cameron as a brother and friend (Zusak, 2000).
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