In this section of the book the narrator, Death, introduces himself. Through the narrator, the author personifies death. Death is not the antagonist of this story, likewise, death is not characterized as a bad thing, he just exists as is. Because death affects all of us, the reader should treat him as a trusted narrator.
Colors play an important role for Death when he describes events throughout the story. Death offers a theory on colors in this section: "People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors."
To finish this section of the chapter, Death summarizes the story as:
- A girl
- Some words
- An accordionist
- Some Fanatical Germans
- A Jewish fist fighter
- And quite a lot of thievery
Here we are introduced to three new (unnamed) characters: The book thief, her dead brother and their mother.
It takes place on a train and at a train station. Death takes the young boy's soul and watches the book thief's reaction, captivated and moved. The color he associates with the scene is white. "Of the blinding kind."
The Eclipse:
I'm assuming that this chapter is a scene in which the reader will come across again in the book, but here we meet the book thief again as well as a male counterpart. Death watches them sift through the wreckage of a downed jet-craft. Death takes the pilots soul and describes the color for that scene as charcoal black. The reader learns that whenever death takes a soul he sees an eclipse-the recognition of another soul gone.
The Flag:
The final section of the prologue sets the stage for the rest of the story (as a prologue should). The final color for this chapter is red. At the end of this section, Death reveals the importance of these three colors: White, black and red. They make up the three colors for the Nazi flag of Germany:
Again, the author is describing a scene that will occur later on in the book (I'm assuming). This scene is the third and final time that Death see's the book thief, which one can logically conclude that since it is his final time seeing her, it is also her death.
Fitting for the book thief, when Death finds her, she is clutching a book in a mountain of rubble.
-BrassMasterTom
