by Io
“I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. (Death)” ―Markus Zusack, THE BOOK THIEF
For as many pages as The Book Thief’s narrator, Death, uses to describe the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is equally filled with the comforting friendship our protagonist shares with the Jewish boy who hides in the basement of her home. In many ways, The Book Thief—despite all its fantastical and cynical splendor of youth—portrays humanity as it is and weaves a heart-wrenching tragedy that still manages to never be devoid of hope.
Books are just one way that people explore the nuances of the human experience; be it in Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus—whose objective perspective is shaped by centuries of history about our species’ evolution—or Inio Asano’s brutally realistic coming-of-age story, Goodnight Punpun, that has broken me every time I’ve read it. These two works could not be more different, but both are equally significant in shaping what I view as humanity.
We often see ourselves in the characters and stories we read about. Andrea Levy’s Small Island puts us directly in the shoes of four people whose paths converge out of desperation and coincidence on the cold streets of post-WW2 Britain. Through their eyes, we experience and see each character grapple with a cruel world blighted by racism, war, and guilt. One character, a Jamaican woman named Hortense, arrives in Britain to chase a loveless marriage and a dream that will cost her everything; however, her headstrong and stubborn attitude help her persevere through much of the prejudice British society throws at her. She is just another person trying to find her place in a land that rejects her, just like so many of us who are facing discrimination and societal pressures. Both her growing vulnerability and acceptance of others represent how everyone has loved and lost, dreamt and despaired. Her story is the story of humanity in all its rawness and heartbreak, persevering even when the small island we are on tries to drown us.
However, some authors take a vastly different approach, creating a being whose actions and thinking could not be further from our own. Shakespeare’s Macbeth shows a king’s gradual descent into madness as supernatural prophecies poison his heart. The countless deaths that occur in the book are all consequences of Macbeth’s warped greed and growing desire, but as we view the power-hungry insanity that he embodies, it is hard not to imagine that the same potential doesn’t exist in all of us. If one man could be driven insane by ambition and the monsters in his mind, could that same creature be growing somewhere in the darkest crevices of our own?
I often find myself returning to the pages of stories like this, scouring for the humanity that resides in evil.
I often leave them terrified, only finding a beast that rears its ugly head back as it wears the face of man.
I am reminded: Evil is human too.
For each story about hope and strength, there are equally as many about the atrocities committed by man. We cannot preach about beauty without confronting the ugliness that everyone is capable of. However, the story of humanity is still being written. When we look back on ourselves, will we recognize the person living in its pages? In a way, I only exist within these words, my thoughts and soul are trapped in the syntax and in the minds of whoever reads this. So as a final wish, I ask you to carry these words, heavy and warm, in your heart to remind yourself that we are all human.
We are all beautiful and terrible and human.