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family was hiding insurgent activity. Thus, to keep the existence of Max a secret and to protect both the young Jewish man and his own family, Hans acknowledges that the Hubermanns must not only maintain the illusion of normalcy( by being observed performing all their usual behaviours) but they must also ensure that visibility into their home remains unchanged. They must‘ keep these curtains open in the day’ 72 and‘ do everything like we always have’ 73. Hans recognises that his family’ s behaviour prior to Max’ s arrival never incited any suspicion on the behalf of their neighbours or state forces concerning their loyalty to the Nazi Party – an understanding which complicates Kirril Shield’ s argument that the novel’ s‘ portrayal of“ ordinary” […] experiences of Germans who lived during the period situates the Nazis as a minority group who existed at the periphery of German society’. 74 The ordinariness Shields refers to is exposed, in this context, as a performance – a strategic conformity shaped by the ever-present threat of surveillance. As a result, it neither confirms nor disproves the scale of true support for the regime but rather reveals the effectiveness of panoptic power. Whether the Nazis are a marginalised minority or a dominant majority is irrelevant: they have succeeded in creating an illusion of omnipresent surveillance within a state where the mere possibility of being watched is enough to compel obedience. So, just as, according to Foucault, Bentham’ s Panopticon ensures that the observed within the cells are‘ perfectly individualized and constantly visible’, 75 the Hubermann family must also remain publicly observable, paradoxically concealing their defiance in performed, visible conformity.
Whilst staged conformity enables individuals to remain faithful to their own beliefs by hiding behind conformed compliance with state doctrine, its limitations must also be acknowledged. The mass adoption of at least an outward display of support for the Nazi regime created uncertainty regarding who, amongst an individual’ s peers, actually supported Hitler, and who adheres to the public transcript simply to avoid suspicion, making it virtually impossible to distinguish genuine loyalists from secret dissenters. One of the narrator’ s frequent interjections states that‘ Since 1933, ninety
72
Zusak, The Book Thief, 336.
73
Ibid., p. 229.
74
Kirril Shields,“ Pushing Aside the Nazi: Personal and Collective Exculpation and the Everyday German in Markus Zusak’ s The Book Thief”, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 30, no. 1( 2016): 1, https:// doi. org / 10.1080 / 23256249.2016.1125593.
75
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 200.