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Themes In The Boy In Striped Pyjamas

Satisfactory Essays

The novel “The Boy In Striped Pyjamas” is a story written by John Boyne, that is set in Berlin during the Holocaust, as this story begins you get to look into a life of a little 9 year old boy named Bruno, who has trouble with moving to the country side in Auschwitz, until he meets a new friend who lives in a concentration camp, but their friendship is forbidden according by adults because of religion, even though Bruno doesn’t understand why their so different to each other, which ends in their sad death together.
“Explain how the narrative elements help to convey a key theme in the novel” is the essay question for “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas” and the theme being used in this essay is innocence.
Innocence is the key theme in “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas” because Bruno is a pure child with nice thoughts without any bad ones. Even though Bruno is unaware of the Holocaust, Bruno is still taught by his tutor that Jews are evil, animals that’s why Gretel ended up throwing away her dolls and why her room ends up being covered in Hitler posters. This theme starts to get very consistent when Bruno goes under the fence to the concentration camp, and you can see from his face worry and how he wants to go home.

Firstly, the theme innocence is shown through Bruno by John Boyne making Bruno the main character, so that a message can go across that nobody is born racist or evil, but can be moulded into it from a young age by brainwashing from the adults around us. When Bruno made friends with Pavel their new servant, Bruno thought Pavel decided to become a potato peeler, even though he was forced too.
Bruno didn’t ask Pavel if he was Jewish, what he believed in or where he came from, because he doesn’t care and didn’t think it made a difference if they were friends.
This shows the innocence in the story being shown through Bruno an innocent child, and how he thinks about people and thing before being moulded or changed by an adult, so he can understand the Holocaust and to make him believe that Jewish people are evil.

Secondly, the theme innocence can also be seen through the conflict form the war on children like Gretel in the novel “The Boy in Striped Pyjamas”. Before Gretel and her family moved to Auschwitz, Gretel’s

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