John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

How can two best friends simultaneously be enemies? John Boyne answers this question in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He writes a tale about a Nazi commandant’s son who befriends another boy. They soon become best friends. Everyday Bruno the commandant’s son, visits Shmuel, a concentration camp inmate. Since Bruno’s father works for Hitler and Shmuel and his family are trapped by Hitler, this makes things difficult on the boys. Instead of being able to play with each other, like Bruno wants, they are separated by a fence. Bruno and Shmuel have these secret meetings every day and Bruno’s mother is also having secret meetings. However, her meetings are with the young lieutenant who works for Hitler. Although this is not clearly stated in the book, one can infer that she is having an affair with the man. Eventually, the commandant sends the lieutenant away. After a while of visiting each other Bruno learns that he is moving. As a last adventure, the two devise a plan that involves Bruno crossing the fence. When Bruno finally crosses, a herd of Nazi army officials rush a group of Jews and Bruno into an air tight room. He is only nine-years-old so he is clueless about the
event. The book ends with the two boys holding hands and dying together in one of Hitler’s gas chamber. After that, no one sees or knows where Bruno is. The family searches for months but only find Bruno’s clothing from when he had to change into the “striped pajamas” to sneak into the camp. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is set in Berlin, Germany at first, but Bruno and his family later move to Poland when his dad was transferred there. Their house was next door to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. In the book, Bruno mispronounces the name of the camp and instead calls it “out-with.” During this time period, Germany was ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Many believed that Jews should not be treated equally. This was also the time when World War II was being fought in 1943.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was written by John Boyne.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1971 and has written a total of 14 novels. Boyne originally did not intend on this novel to be about the Holocaust; however, the idea came up and he just could not pass it up. When writing this novel, Boyne did not have a definite viewpoint expressed. He decided to keep the viewpoint neutral and give both sides of the story. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a fable according to John Boyne that is based on historical information. Boyne hoped that by writing this novel people would learn a lesson or understand a moral. As I have stated before, Boyne writes about two boys from different sides of a fence (literally and figuratively). They are each going through the Holocaust and the Nazi Party’s rule on
Germany.