Hello, again! I tried my best to look for something from a play for this week, but I could not find anything that really inspired me, so I found another passage from one of my favorite books. This one was a bit tricky, but the book that I took the passage from is SUCH a great book with so many great passage that I kept changing my mind, thus I kept switching songs, and it was just tough. I finally settled, though, and this is probably one of my favorite passages in a book.
Anyway, the passage I chose was from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and the song that I am analyzing it with is “Because” by The Beatles. Oh, yeah. **SPOILER ALERT** If you haven’t read this book and you want to, this will kill the ending. Sorry.
The Book Thief was written by Markus Zusak and was published in 2006. The story of the book, however, takes place in Nazi Germany and is narrated by Death.
“Because” by The Beatles was written in 1969, and debuted on their “Abbey Road” album.
“She [Liesel] took a step and didn’t want to take anymore, but she did. Slowly, Liesel walked to her mama and papa and sat down between them. She held mama’s hand and began: ‘Remember when I came here, mama? I clung to the gate and cried,’ her voice wavered now. ‘You said, “What are you arseholes looking at?” Mama… I liked it when you came to school and told me Max had woken up. Did you know I saw you with papa’s accordion?’ She tightened her grip on the hardening hand. ‘I came and watched and you were beautiful. God damn it, you were so beautiful mama.’
***Many Moments of Avoidance***
Papa. She would not, and could not, look at papa. Not yet. Not now. Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.”
Again, it really does help to listen to the music while reading the passage, so here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWlLPJG9Cvg
In the beginning of the song, an electric harpsichord can be heard as well as a guitar mimicking the same melody. This sets the melancholic tone as well as the ambiance of the passage. It lends to the intense emotion that Liesel may be feeling as she is walking over to her mama and papa. It toys with the emotions of the reader and forces them to endure the feeling and thoughts that might be flowing through Liesel. The vocal harmonies during the “aaah’s” also lend to the mixture of emotions seeing as the three voices of the Beatles: top, middle, and bottom, blend together so well which, in turn, allow the reader to reminiscence along with Liesel as she speaks about and remembers her mother.
The nuances in the passages correlate directly with each other tonally in which it switches to a more light-hearted and whimsical ambiance. This occurs in the song when the lyrics, “Love is old, love is new. Love is all, love is you” are sung which also cues the instrumental solo from the “moog synthesizer.” This portion of the song synchronizes well with the memory of Liesel’s mama playing and dancing in Liesel’s mind. Almost immediately after, she begins to think of her lifeless papa, in which the tone reverts back to a more melancholic scene. We then return to a repeat of an earlier melody in the song in which the harpsichord takes lead under the vocals. As the music fades, the vocals abruptly come to a halt, thus paralleling the last sentence of this passage mainly because both are deceiving. For example, the last vocal chord of the song ends in a deceptive manner by stopping on a chord that isn’t the one expected, a term commonly known in the music universe as a “deceptive cadence.” This usually leaves the listener with an unsatisfied emotion. The last sentence of this passage describes the deception that Liesel feels when she realizes that her father had abandoned her, leaving no one to sooth her with the accordion as he usually did. As of that moment, he was gone and she was alone.
This passage just left me with so many emotions that I can’t even begin to describe. Because I felt such a connection with all of them, I was heart-broken when Liesel was left alone with the deaths of her mama and her papa. I actually cried when I read this because of how beautifully written it is. Zusak wrote this in such a way that the personalities of mama and papa were both altered while still depicting their true selves. I loved this song with this passage because of the initial intensity I felt. It really hit me hard, but actually describing how it went with this passage was tricky since it was a Beatles song. So, for help I went to my best friend who actually helped a lot with the analyzing of the music and passage together. I felt obligated to mention that fact.
Anyway, thanks for reading!