Reader's Response

My Reader’s response is based on a quote. When Ed thinks about killing the father he says, “What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me! Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it’s here. It’s now. I have to go through this, considering the cost at every turn” (Zusak 89).

            This quote really gets me thinking. It is not very often that you see the narrator address the reader. Most times when I read, I don’t worry about their choices or how I would deal with them. This narrator makes you think about if it was the reader who went through this. The narrator says that this is just a book to us. These pages are just pages nothing more. For him to ask us what we would do, it makes us think. What would we do? When I read that, it forced me to think what I would do in that situation. Kill the rapist or set him free? It is a difficult question and the narrator asks it to me. It makes me wonder what I would do when in this dilemma.
              
           I have read books that have addressed the reader. Yet, this actually made me consider what Ed was asking. It makes me realize how grateful I should be. I’m just reading a fictional story while Ed is living a nightmare. How would I react? Being asked this question took the breath out of me.

I can visualize very well when reading. I can hear his words in my head. To me he sounds desperate and to be addressed like that is unsettling. I have never had to make a decision this big yet here I am being asked to. The crazy thing is that this is just a book but it feels like a real person is asking me this.

          It is very hard in books to ask or tell the reader something. It is also weird for the character to acknowledge that they are in a book. I think the author was trying to make it seem real. By asking us the question, he gives us a closer connection to the book. We are living in the story now. That just amazes me. This book has astounded me with their use of words. It is amazing that the character can come across with so much emotion that you feel it too. It isn’t just about the character any more. It is about us.

I always wonder what the character is going to do next in a tough situation. Now it is up to me, up to every reader, to decide. I know many authors that can make readers cry with their sad stories. They know how to make the readers feel emotion over the book. The best way though to make a reader feel emotion is to put them in the story and let them experience it themselves.