Told almost entirely from a young, naive German boy’s point of view, Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a hard-hitting Holocaust tale that will render audiences speechless. After arriving home, Bruno (Asa Butterfield) learns that his family will have to move because his father (David Thewlis) achieved a promotion in the Nazi army. Bruno noticed what he believed to be farmers living just past a stretch of woods near their new home. One day, not long after being told not to go near the “farmers,” Bruno leaves his home and heads towards the camp. There he meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a young Jewish boy. While trying to understand what is happening in the world around them, the boys become friends. While…
At the beginning of the movie, Bruno is completely naive about Germany patriotism. It has the audience curious because Bruno live in Berlin where is known as the capital of Nazi Germany. He at first thought the concentration camp as a farm where he could possibly meet his potential playmate. It is surprising when Bruno is unaware of the Nazi’s propaganda against the Jews. Assumingly, Bruno and Gretel are going to a public school where Nazis ideology was educated in the early age. Even with an overprotective mother, Elsa, Little Bruno must have seen the inequality in Berlin such as benches at the park labeled as “Aryans only” and the Jews being rejected from using streetcars in Berlin. As a German boy, Bruno must have witness the scene of “der Führe”, the leader, passing the city with their expensive car. However, it is the opposite with Bruno, instead of acknowledging the Nazi activities, he is utterly impractical about what is happening in Germany during the 1940s like the children today.…
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…
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…
Night by Elie Wiesel and the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas show two extremely interesting perspectives towards the Holocaust. Night was a non-fiction novel written by a Jewish boy who was in an actual concentration camp. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was a movie based off of a fiction novel written by John Boyne that tells the story of a Nazi soldier’s son named Bruno that befriends a Jewish boy he meets at a nearby concentration camp. Within the two stories, there were differences in perspective, mood, and overall message.…
Attributes that pertain to all stories are things such as beginning, middle, and end, characters, a plot, an author, and an intended purpose. So, why are some stories better than others? If every story consists of these components, why are we not moved by every novel we read? There are many things that distinguish bad, mediocre, good, and great stories. The function and the fundamental elements of masterpieces are quite different from just any other published book.…
The main themes of the movie that stand out the most but are certainly not limited to is, innocent and complicity. Though he attends school and his father is a high ranking Nazi official, Bruno is mostly ignorant of the political situation at the time. When Bruno leaves Berlin he wonders why he left to be near the camp full of people in striped pajamas. Another example is the fact that he has no idea what is going on in the camp or Germany and also thinks Shmuel lives in the concentration camp with his family. That is abruptly changed when he actually goes inside to look for Shmuel’s father and realizes its not like the video about the camps. Even though Bruno’s mother is not thrilled at her husband’s job, she does not actively fight his decision to move the family. Through her not protesting and like many Germans, they complied with, did not interfere or think about the harsh realities of what the Nazis are doing. Also Bruno, Gretel or the mother doesn’t do anything when Kotler beats Pavel to death, they continue to eat through…
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.…
Both the historical pieces by Jane Yolen who wrote The Devil's Arithmetic and John Boyne who created The Boy in the Striped Pajamas use the power of relationships between characters to transfer the message about the Holocaust and the barbaric nature of the events. The connection between the characters is shown on page 159 in Yolen's book when the protagonist states, “ Run for your life Rivka. Run for your future. Run. Run. Run. And remember.” The author made the relationship between the characters so strong that it showed how hard it was to be in the camps and the sacrifices you had to make for loved ones. It proves that some people in the situation during the time of the tragedy were cruel but others were really good at heart and caught in a bad situation. The novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas used the same technique as Jane Yolen, the message the reader gets through friendships. It was conveyed on page 44 when the young child Bruno states, “ Father returned to his office which was out of bounds at all times and no exceptions.” This little boy is so young and it is hard for him to comprehend why people are on the other side of the fence held hostage and why his dad is always working. Through his eyes it doesn't make sense, which is what many people think of the Holocaust, but when you're a little…
Through Boyne’s novel, The boy in the striped pyjamas it reveals how belonging can enrich our identity and relationships. This would subsequently portray how acceptance and understanding may be obtained through the enrichment of ones identity.…
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…
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a novel by John Boyne. This novel is set during World War 2 and explores themes such as prejudice, racism, war, innocence and friendship. What sets it apart from other novels is that it uses a third person limited point of view, and mostly depicts events as they are seen by a young and naïve boy. This was one of the main narrative conventions that engaged me in this novel.…
In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it was good that Bruno was naive about the Holocaust because it allowed him to develop a friendship with Shmuel. If he were to find out about…
Another reason Bruno’s innocence was poor was the fact that his innocence basically caused him to die. He was so uninvolved in the situation that he marched right into his death. In The Boy in The Striped Pajamas Shmuel and Bruno, being young boys who loved to explore, went looking for papa, and were in the wrong spot in the wrong time. The Nazi soldiers had every Jew in the surrounding area line up and start a…
Themes like intolerance, the discrimination against Jewish people, and the will and strengths that these people had to survive. Most of this discrimination against the Jewish people came from the Nazi soldiers, but not all Nazi soldiers were ‘evil’, some were just doing what they were told with fear of being turned against if they didn’t. Some other texts of this genre explore whether or not everyday Germans had a full understanding of what was going on and weather or not they did anything about it. These issues can be seen in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. We see a lot of hatred towards the Jewish people through characters like Lt. Kotler and Adolf Hitler, and we also see a lot of evidence of the German people being unaware of what was going on. For example, Bruno asks Shmuel if he played “Football for example. Or exploration”. This identifies Bruno’s lack of knowledge of what went on in the concentration…