Feeding the Soul: Exploring Identity portrayed in The Book Thief

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ID: 312256
2025
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Abstract
This research explores George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory to examine how Markus Zusak's The Book Thief uses the metaphor of hunger to shape identity development. The work, which is set in Nazi Germany, delivers a profoundly humanist narrative in which hunger serves as a potent metaphor for existential, intellectual, and emotional longing. It goes beyond simple physical famine. Liesel Meminger's path is characterized by pressing unmet needs, including the need for knowledge in the face of censorship, love in the midst of loss, justice in an unfair world, and purpose in the midst of turmoil. Her development from a voiceless outsider to a self-aware narrator with moral agency is propelled by these symbolic hungers. The story presents identity as a process shaped by yearning by what is absent rather than what is attained instead of showing it as the outcome of wishes being satisfied. The findings reveal that, The Book Thief is a very humanist work that makes the argument that the basis of selfhood and ethical consciousness is built in our deepest emptiness our hungers. According to this study, hunger, as a metaphor, is a force that fosters development, awareness, and the creation of meaning in a broken world rather than a deficiency that needs to be eradicated.
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imported_1776689698_69e62222d88ee Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Seemab Jamil Ghouri
Journal Social Sciences & Humanity Research Review
Year 2025
DOI
10.63468/sshrr.166
URL
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