Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

In the novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, the author highlights the main characters point of view to convey the theme that children who are sheltered from bad happening around them have a different,more positive, view of the world. Set during WWII, the story tells of a young boy named Bruno who meets another young boy, called Shmuel, and they form an incredible friendship. At the beginning of the book Bruno and his family are forced to move to Auschwitz. Bruno is very curious about many things, so it is only natural that when he sees the people in the striped pajamas behind a fence out of his window, he decides to check it out.That is when he meets Shmuel, a young Jew.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, is a novel that explores how dreadful and evil the Holocaust was through the eyes of an innocent child. Boyne understands that for the readers to truly understand the horror of Holocaust, it has to be told through the eyes of someone who has lived through it. The protagonist, Bruno, is ignorant of what horrifying events are going on around him at the time, but becomes friends with a boy on the other side of the fence of a concentration camp called “Out-With” which is based on the real life Auschwitz. With a strong friendship, lack of knowledge, and irony, childlike innocence is revealed throughout the story, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

Death will cause a person to lose a life but a friendship lasts forever. "The boy in the striped pajamas" written by John Boyne explores this idea when informing us about a boy called Bruno and a boy called Shmuel. The story recounts the two boys first seeing each other which begins their friendship, the conversations they have, and their adventure into the holocaust concentration camp.

In the novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, author John Boyne portrays childhood innocence

Like Thomas Aquinas once said,”There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” Friendship is everything. They always have your back. Friends get you through rough patches. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about friendship. It is also about a young boy, named Bruno, who moves from Berlin to a Nazi concentration camp, called Auschwitz. Tommy is not excited for the move he is afraid of missing his friends, His dad, a Nazi commandant got a promotion, and they were forced to move. While exploring, he meets this boy named Shmuel. They quickly become friends and have a lot in common. I think the theme in the novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about how some friends may come, and some, unfortunately may go, but true friends stick with you through thick and thin.

Aristotle wrote the ideal qualities in order to form the “perfect tragedy.” Many people argue today that Aristotle’s criteria for a perfect tragedy cannot be met, due to the fact that it is contradictory. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was released in 2008 and I believe it meets Aristotle’s qualifications for a perfect tragedy, except for one part. In this movie, the Anagorisis does not prevent the praxis from happening.

The Holocaust is a subject that in most states are a required element of curriculum. Many choose to teach a version that does not include the graphic nature and torture that Jews withstood. Instead of give lecture or text based assignments many use movies to show the Holocaust, for their easier for children to understand. Issues that could arise would be if they are able to understand that not every story portrayed in a movie is an actual event and that some aspects are fictional while some are truthful. It is essential that teachers ensure their students are aware of the function that the movies is supposed to serve.

“How do I look?” Bruno asked as he was putting his pajamas on. Shmuel responded with a nod indicating that they look alike. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas portrays a family during the German war and all the struggles they had faced. Bruno, who is the son of this family, wanted nothing but to go on an adventure. He even went against his mother’s strict orders not to leave and found himself outside a concentration camp. Children tend to have their own views on the world which results in them not seeing how harsh the world truly is especially when it comes to the aspect of race. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the power of rhetoric is shown in the culture between the German’s and the Jew’s lives and the

“The boy in the striped pyjamas” is an historical fiction based on the horrors of the WWII. Together with his mother, his sister Gretel and his father, an important man in the hierarchy of the Nazi army, happily lives their days in their beautiful Berlin home where his only worry was to play with his three friends. All these changes when one day he sees the maid of the house, Maria, packing his things. Bruno finds out that after Fuhrer promotes his father as a general, the whole family

They say that ignorance is bliss. That is somewhat true, as not understanding the atrocities in our world would surely make a happier person. However, innocence can also lead to calamity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne, is a coming of age story about Bruno, the son of a Nazi Commandant under Adolf Hitler. Bruno was initially very ignorant of what was happening in the world and was very immature about moving from Berlin. As the days went by, he got used to his new home and his thoughts were maturing, as he started thinking with logic and rationale. Bruno finally understands that he has to be a good person to everyone regardless what others might think. His character has strongly developed. Despite Bruno being unaware of his situation and his father being a Nazi, he matures from being childish and unsatisfied for moving to finally finding purpose in life by being a good human being.

A major concern of World War Two which remains relevant to wars today is man’s inhumanity to man. Religious persecution is still common at present (Serbia, Northern Ireland etc) and it is magnified in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas through the naive observations of Bruno. His father’s understated comment “those people... well they’re not people at all, Bruno” (pg 53) ironically explores the horrifying detachment for those who he is mass murdering. It is the father’s emotionless statement and Bruno’s innocent lack of reaction as well as the horrifying truth of the murder of 2.5 million Jews which creates a contemporary concern. In addition the way this comment is written creates enormous reader involvement as they see

“The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas” by John Boyne gives an insight to the holocaust and the rule of Nazi Germany in WW2, Boyne’s novel demonstrates Friendship through protagonist Bruno. Boyne writes about the an inhumane period, even if his book is a fable it still is based on the hardship that the jewish people suffered during this dark time. Throughout the Novel Bruno’s perspective on Friendship changes, he realises that you shouldn’t judge a friend by there appearance. The characters show intricate acts of friendship for life, friendship between young and old. Mateship between four “best friends for life” (karl, Daniel, Martin and Bruno) and the protagonist, Bruno, “crossing the fence” by entering an concentration and extermination camp for his jewish friend, Shmuel. The book is set on the German Polish border in about the year 1942 in the middle of Nazi Germany.

John Boyne has created a sophisticated and meaningful novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” through his portrayal of prejudice and discrimination. Throughout the text, he exposes society's perception, attitude and behavior towards different racial groups and people during the Holocaust in WW2. Bruno’s curious nature, captures the attention of the reader, and provides a platform from which to explore the atrocities of war. Bruno’s innocence shields him from the monstrosities of prejudice and discrimination, depicted by the attitude and behaviour of the people around him. In particular, Bruno bears witness to prejudice and discrimination propagated by Hitler, The Commandant and Lt Kotler.

As a child, we are focused on the small aspects of life. We worry about eating ice cream on a hot summer day or when we will get the opportunity to go out on a cold snowy day and go sled riding with our friends and drink hot chocolate. We are fully focused on such basic childlike desires that we are completely unaware of serious events happening around us or in this case right next-door. As a nine-year-old boy, Bruno has no idea that his father was running a mass concentration camp right next door to his house and exterminating Jews including his new friend Shmuel. Instead, Bruno acquired an irreproachable friendship due to his innocent way of thinking that allowed for him to ignore society’s prejudices against his Jewish friend Shmuel. This essay will provide information regarding the Holocaust and hash treatment of the Jews within the German concentration camp “Auschwitz”. This essay will then offer a brief summary of the events within The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. Finally, this essay will analyze the paradox of innocence depicted within the story, in order to explain how innocence supplied both disadvantages and advantages for Bruno and Shmuel. While this innocence led to the death of Bruno and Shmuel due to their ignorance of the dangers of the Holocaust, it also allowed for the boys to live their lives unaware of

Fredrick Nietzsche, a renowned German philosopher, believed that one of the strongest governing drives that humans possess, is their desire for power. Essentially when we closely examine the idea of power in literature, we see that much of the conflict in novels is about power; the struggle to gain, maintain or redress the balance of power. The need for power is a reality of life; to use or abuse, to claim or deny, own or disown, to marginalize or empower. This theme is omnipresent throughout literature about the Holocaust. Hitler and his struggle for power and dominance are infamous. Novels and films set in World War II often examine the issues of power in terms of race, age, gender and social class. One such novel is The Boy in the