Essay
In the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, written by John Boyne, is about a young German boy named Bruno living in Nazi Germany. His father is a Nazi commandant who is focused on the well-known death camp Auschwitz, and in Bruno’s mind it’s called Out-With. Bruno meets a young Jewish boy called Shmuel who resides in the death camp. Bruno and Shmuel form a strong friendship which eventually leads to their death. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas aim to teach people about the horrors of the holocaust and how it affected and influenced many people, and to also show that not all German people were guilty for the holocaust and supported what Adolf Hitler was doing at the time, and to also show a different point of view to the holocaust, in this case you are looking at the holocaust through a young boy’s perspective.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas describes the events that are occurring in the time of the holocaust, but what can we take away from this? The novel describes a prisoner, Shmuel, from the death camp Auschwitz through Bruno’s eyes. He is always being described as depressed, sad and without life. From this we can see that the death camp can turn people into depressed, life-less human-beings awaiting their death. We can tell that this is true by Bruno first describing Shmuel, “All Bruno could see was an enormous pair of sad eyes staring back” This shows us that even though we are seeing the holocaust through a child’s eyes we know that people being affected by it are seriously depressed, life-less human-beings.
Most people think that all German people were guilty for the holocaust and they all praised Hitler as their saviour. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas shows that this is not the case. German people were forced into liking Hitler if they didn’t because they would be seen as a traitor. Bruno’s father is a commandant for the Nazi party, when he revealed his new status to his parents, there were mixed reactions “Grandfather was very