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The Striped Pajamas By John Boyne

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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is about an unlikely friendship between Bruno, the son of a German Nazi commandant and Shmuel, a Jewish captive in a concentration camp ran by Bruno’s father. The novel takes place during 1940’s, allowing us to recognize that the Holocaust is taking place. The Holocaust was a large genocide led by Adolf Hitler and his army of Nazi’s to exterminate all Jewish people in Europe. The novel begins with Bruno and his family moving into an ‘out-with’, which happens to be in the middle of nowhere. Bruno decides to explore the area around his house and comes across a “farm” surrounded by barbed wired fence. On the other side of the fence was a boy, Shmuel, around his age that is wearing striped pajamas. …show more content…

It is seen throughout the novel how Pavel and many other Jews were being beaten up and yelled at by the Nazi’s. When Pavel was serving wine during dinner time, he accidently spilled some on lieutenant Kolter. Due to his sudden rage and embarrassment, he takes Pavel out of the room. When Kolter returnes, there was no sign of Pavel allowing readers to assume he was beaten to death. Bruno had described the incident is such horror it is tragic how a young boy had to see the monstrosities at a young age. “What happened then was both unexpected and extremely unpleasant. Lieutenant Kotler grew very angry with Pavel and not Bruno, not Gretel, not mother and not even father- stepped in to stop him from doing what he did next, even though none of them could watch.” (Boyne 148-149).
Although this incident had occurred in almost 70 years, the social disparity is seen to this day. In 2017, Donald trump, president of the United States, had launched a Muslim Ban. This ban has discontinued the entrance from major Muslim based countries. This action is exposing the judgment and oppression on a certain religion just as Hitler had done on the Jews. Rather than killing the Muslims, Trump managed to forbid them to seek refuge from the war zone on their land. This novel effects people’s perspective about society by showing them that the world hasn’t changed much and showing fear on how an incident as the holocaust is possible to occur. The

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