“A Border is a Veil”: Death as a Border in The Farming of Bones and The Book Thief

Abstract

Within literature, death has always been a common theme. In this essay, death as a border in literature will be explored in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. The Farming of Bones follows Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman working in the Dominican Republic, and tells of the Haitian massacre in the Dominican Republic in 1937. The Book Thief follows Liesel Meminger, a young German girl living under the Nazi regime, and tells of life during World War II. Both Danticat and Zusak explore death as it appears in those tragedies, how it affects the people under those regimes, and how it creates a border. Death creates a border both physical and spiritual, rigid yet permeable, and one that is displayed through the personification of death by Danticat and Zusak.