Ambiguity

When an author leaves details unknown or does not specify a part in a story, it leaves the reader guessing and using their imagination to figure out what is happening or what a scene looks like. Ambiguity lets the audience pick and choose parts of the book, creating the imagines in their heads as they read along. By giving the audience the opportunity to create characters and how the book may play out, it lets them enjoy the book and continues to keep them interested and invested.

In The Book Thief, Markus Zusak gives the audience to take a chance as use the power of imagination to create the image of the town and what the characters look like. Zusak gives a sufficient amount of detail and describes the characters enough to provide an image of them, but lets the reader’s imagination create the rest. Zusak keeps the readers on their feet the whole time, leaving questions unanswered, character relationships hidden, and giving the reader leeway to create what the characters looked like and their personality.

Leaving room for the reader to imagine the text in the way they want is how ambiguity works with literature. The author gets to write the book and imagine the book the way they want to and lets the audience imagine it the same or differently. By letting the reader imagine, is gives them a better appreciation of the book and how an author is able to give the reader control of the text too.