The Book Thief

The thing about the character of Death is that he is very literal. He is a character in the book. His traits are vague, but we certainly understand that he is confounded by all this misery. I don't think the author meant for us to deconstruct death so much. He literally takes all the symbolism that death entails and turns it into a character. Death if anything symbolizes a beleaguered outsider baffled by the paradoxes of human nature. He often muses about both the beauty and ugliness that humans are capable of.