Preview

Striped Pajamas Ignorance

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
337 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Striped Pajamas Ignorance
The movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells the tale of the friendship between a boy in a concentration camp, Shmuel, and the son of a Nazi, Bruno. Neither is quite aware of who each other are; this childhood ignorance is a large part of what makes this movie so tragic and upsetting for many people: the boys understand hardly any of what is happening in their world. In the end, both are killed at the hands of Nazi cruelty, with the story’s moral being that all people are fundamentally similar and all violence and cruelty enacted is tragically senseless and damaging: with child’s eyes, we all see the same thing. Bruno, newly moved into a town outside of Auschwitz’s concentration camps, comes across Shmuel by accident. A fence separates them

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    It is hard for someone to fully immerse themselves into a movie when they have to suspend so much belief in the story. Although Bruno and Shmuel are both only eight, it is hard to believe that they would be as clueless as to what is happening. Shmuel lived in the concentration camp and seemed to have no idea what was going on inside it. It is also hard to believe that Bruno, being as curious as he is, would not have tried eavesdropping on his father’s meetings. It is also convenient that none of the guards ever caught them sitting by the fence or that, Bruno’s mother did not notice that he has been disappearing every day. Another unbelievable aspect is how Bruno was able to easily enter into the camp. The camps were meant to be well guarded, and if it were that easy for a boy to enter, it would have been easy for anyone to leave.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story starts off in Nazi Germany in the early 1940s. Eight-year-old Bruno and his family move to the countryside because his father was in charge of a concentration camp in Germany called Auschwitz. One day when Bruno was exploring an area that his parents said was out of bounds he came a cross a fence where a boy his age was on the other side. Bruno quickly becomes friends with this boy, Shmuel, and day after day Bruno visits him at the “farm”. Shmuel decided to tell Bruno that his father is missing and Bruno vows to help him find him. The next day the boys meet at the fence and Bruno changes into the striped pajamas that Shmuel provided and then climbs under the fence into the “farm”. As the boys search the rooms for Shmuel’s father they…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Boyne uses narrative voice and a variety of other literary devices to convey the main ideas of prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and innocence in his novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (BITSP)”. Boyne’s novel portrays the story of a young German boy in Nazi Germany who befriends a Jewish child residing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The author explores prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and ideas of innocence in his novel. Boyne uses third person limited narrative, dramatic irony, juxtaposition, setting and symbolism to convey these ideas in his novel. Boyne’s novel uses these techniques to create these ideas, giving us an insight into the experiences of the Jewish people during Nazi Germany.…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the movie, “The boy in the stripped pajamas,” 8 year old Bruno has a great deal of loss of sovereignty. Set in the times of World War II, and the son of the commandant o a concentration camp, he knew little about what was really going on. Understanding that he was only 8 years of age, it was obvious to why his father kept such things from him. Oblivious to it all. Until one day, he and his family moved from their old home into more of a secluded area, not knowing less than a few feet away were…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    If there was a god, why would he/she be so harsh? The text is compared to the book Night by Ellie Wiesel and from the poems “Night over Birkenau” and “Harbach 1944”. The book Night tells the story of a young boy and his father fighting for their freedom from the Nazis; Ellie Wiesel tells the story of his experience of the Holocaust. Both of the poems show the journeys of people and how they pictured all of the madness. Ellie fights through many hardships, but comes out of the Holocaust victorious! Ellie and his father were both willing and strong throughout the Holocaust, but his father escaped a different way. The theme states that during survival, people think about needs rather than wants. This is clearly developed in the poems “Night over Birkenau” By Janos Piliszky and “Harbach 1944” and Night to show harshness, survival, and fear.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The whole world has gone through some tough times, but not many things have been as horrible as the tragedies that happened during the Holocaust, not many things have been as harsh and heartbreaking as the events during the Holocaust. One of the pieces of writing that explains the almost unspeakable cruelty that we call the Holocaust is in a Scholastic Scope article “Betrayed by America” by Kristen Lewis. It was about an eleven year old boy who was in a concentration camp, he went through a hard time but when the war was over and done with they gave him money and let him go. Another narrative on this event was about a young boy Ben and his Holocaust experience who went through a really hard time and saw things we could only imagine. One of…

    • 1362 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bruno and Shmuel were really good friends. The two boys met each other at Auschwitz. Bruno moved to Auschwitz because of his father’s new job. Shmuel moved because of him being Jewish. They ended up becoming friends after meeting each other at a gate that kept the camps prisoners contained.…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Second World War the Nazis were cleansing the Jewish population of Europe. In the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne he writes about a Jewish boy named Shmuel and a German boy named Bruno. Shmuel is a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp named Auschwitz and Bruno’s father is a high-ranking member of the Nazi forces station at Auschwitz. The two boys somehow become friends despite the stupendous odds set against each other by the German forces, "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life” (Boyne 213). This quote shows the strength Bruno has to stay with Shmuel to the end even though he is considered less equal as Bruno. When Bruno was at home talking to his father about Shmuel says, “The people I see from the window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same. Ah, those people, Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno"(Boyne 53). Brunos innocence is shown is this quote from him having no idea what is going on in the world at the time, and through his eyes he sees everyone as…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Raoul Wallenberg

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Growing up, there is a label on each and every person, and on that label, there are expectations. Every single plant, animal, thing, human has to meet the expectations placed upon their label. Whether they like it or not, this label, and these expectations stay with them their whole life. Good, bad, smart, athletic, and so on. What they have been pre-described, shapes their life, for the better or worse, and just like any other time, the time during the Holocaust much was the same. However, the expectations that were placed on every single human, country, and government did not seem to be met. Every one of them all had the same excuse. “We did not…

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Holocaust and war was no joking matter. Millions were executed both intentionally and unintentionally. Men, women, husbands, wives, parents, grandparents, and children; The SS didn’t care. Nor did the Poles, Germans, or anyone at all for that matter. Nobody cared about the “dirty Jews”, the “filthy dogs”, or the “swine dogs”. There were so many insults that it’s impossible to name them all. People were malnourished, lonely, and hopeless. This torture was part of the everyday life of a young man named Lucek Salzman (George Lucius Salton). This boy lost his parents at age 14 and his brother at age 15. He was beaten, he had paint poured over him, his latter was kicked by a German soldier (this ended up causing him to have an infected leg). What this man went through as a child was brutal, but the fascinating part is that he never gave up and he knew that he had a chance. Lucek Salzman had hope in the end.…

    • 2118 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example in the text it says that, "for the older reader, of course, Bruno’s innocence comes to stand for the willful refusal of all adult Germans to see what was going on under their noses in the first half of the 1940s.” For younger readers, she argues, the story’s slow release of details “becomes an education in real time of the horrors of ‘Out-With,’ known to the grown-ups as Auschwitz" This shows us that the story could be taken as adults ignoring the events taking place around them or as a slow release of events in real time in Auschwitz. What Hughes says helps support the claim made in the Point essay by showing how historic fiction could benefit people in real life. All in all, Kathryn Hughes' view of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is that it can mean different things for adults and for…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In an article titled ‘The Impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their children” we hear about a young girl named Sandra who isn’t allowed a normal childhood. “My life as a hidden child was...how can I say it...I had no toys. The only fresh air I got was when I was allowed to go in the backyard. I made up imaginary friends because I had no one to play with. I do not remember being hugged and kissed. That was my life for two years.” Sandra is undoubtedly not the only one who faced this predicament. Many children who grew up during this time have few memories they look back upon with joy. In Sandra's case, she was hidden with her neighbour while her family was sent to concentration camps. Everyday she battled with the gnawing feelings of dread for her family. How can you expect to put a child through such a mental state and not expect them to come out with damage? When she came out of hiding (the end of World War 2) her communication skills had slid to the negative numbers. It wasn’t missed though since anti-semitism was a lasting…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The families of the Holocaust had to endure some of the hardest life lessons that any race had to deal with. The children had to watch as their parents were taken away from them and some of the them had to watch as their parents were killed. Because of this treatment the children experienced a lot of pain, anger, depression and resentment for the people responsible for their trauma. In doing research Weissmark (2004) found that when people experience a measure of compassion for one another’s well being one begins to discern certain HISTORICAL TRAUMA SUMMARY…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Did you know that the Nazis brainwashed children to hate Jews? During the story, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Gretel is subjected to this brainwashing. Gretel demonstrates the Nazi’s brainwashing of children because she learned that Jews in history were awful, that the Fury and his people were very important, and that she thinks she should act mature and care about the war.…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was a book that really made an impact on me. The book is very well written and made you feel a real emotional connection with the characters in the book. The book was so emotionally impacting that it actually made me cry and want to throw the book across the room. What happens in this book is that two little boys, one, the son of a german Nazi, and the other a Jewish little boy, meet and they become the best of friends, but there is a twist. Bruno and Shmuel don’t seem to really understand what was going on at the time.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays