Think Then Speak
In my English class we have just recently finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusack. Liesel, one of the main characters, loved to read, and she knows how powerful words are. She is insulted for not being able to read part of a book out loud in class and is hurt by that. This is a common thing to day. Even if it’s not about reading, walking around anywhere you can still hear individuals insult someone or harassing a person verbally by saying rude comments about or to them. . When people are doing this, they prove that the pen is mightier than the sword.

If you were to be hit in the face at one point, it would probably hurt a lot. Words can be just as painful if not worse because a bruise heals, but the memory of someone really hurting you verbally last a long time if not forever. “At one point she admonished the small boy until finally he began to cry. Within a few minutes, she spoke to him very softly to after which he was soothed and even smiled.” (Zusack) This quote from The Book Thief is describing a mother yelling at her son and shows how easily people can be changed by words. Another example to show this is a couple years ago, my sister and I were extremely sad and couldn’t stop crying . My grandma came into the room we were in and started to calm us by telling us things that made us feel better. We stopped crying for a while and felt a little better afterwards. Her words of sympathy really helped calm us for a while. This goes to show how words can have a big outcome when it comes to people.

If somebody were to hold a door open for you you’d think they’re polite, but what if someone were to wish you a nice day or compliment you. You’d probably remember that more than having a door held open for you. “Yes, the fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. “ I will never fire a gun.” he devised. “I will not have to.” Still he was not rash.”( Zusack) This quote shows how he will not scare the Germans with violence but with the fierce brutality of words . Depending on how you say something, you get different reactions from different people such as anger, happiness, sadness ect.. Another example is the president election. The presidents don’t use violence to encourage their votes. They persuade the voters with things the citizens want to hear. All of it may not be true, but it gets the people to believe what they say and persuades the people to vote. Violence doesn’t achieve that, words do.

If we didn’t have words and only silence, there would be little to no violence. On page 78 in The Book Thief, Liesel was being mocked because she wasn’t a good reader, and she got so mad she started to hit and claw the boy mocking her. “Her voice to was able to scratch him.” (Zusack) This shows an example of how what you say has effects on people, and violence is one of those affects. Another effect of someone using foul words to a person is self- harm. That person will be so hurt that they start hurting themselves or worse, they decide to end their life. Words can have a horrible impact on people. They can make them feel like they are useless, don’t belong, pathetic, ugly, stupid, ect. I have been a victim of verbal bullying, , it didn’t make me feel good, it made me feel ugly. Soon though, I finally had enough and told one of the guys to shut up. They never really bothered me afterwards. The thing with bullying is that it, like everything else, has an affect; it’s more than likely never a good affect.

Words have affected society in the past, and it still affects us today. Words are what we use to make choices, encourage, destroy, sooth and make a difference. Without words, how would anyone be able to do any of that? Others should consider what they say and the outcomes of it first because, there is always an outcome to words.

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Works Cited
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print.