Sins of the Father
The movie ‘Boy in the Striped Pajamas’, based on the book by John Boyne, isn’t exactly a feel-good film, but it is an awesome representation of the existence of good and evil, and the responsibility we have as human beings to distinguish between the two; for it is responsibility that distinguishes us from every other being. In my opinion, this is an important, life-changing film, with a significant message, and should be seen by all.
The movie is told from the point of view of eight year old Bruno whose innate sense of morality and justice ultimately makes him the fallen hero of the story. The premise of the movie focuses on a friendship that develops between Bruno and Shmuel, also eight, and a victim of the Holocaust. The movie takes the viewer into the minds of these two young boys and depicts the Holocaust through their childlike eyes. The story is centered during the Second World War 1942, and begins with Bruno running through the streets of Berlin with three friends, imitating warplanes. When Bruno reaches home he finds his belongings are being packed up. He asks his mother Elsa what is going on and she tells him that his father Ralf, a German SS Soldier, has received a promotion and the family must leave their home in Berlin and move to a new home in the country.
From his new bedroom, Bruno looks out of the window and sees what he believes to be a farm. He questions his mother about this, asking why all the farmers wear striped pajamas, and if he can go play with the children that live there. His mother placates him but does not agree to let him go play with the children on the farm, nor is he allowed outside of the compound to play or explore; he is restricted to the house and front yard only. Afte...
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... wrecked with guilt, eagerly wants to redeem himself and agrees to help Shmuel find his father who has gone missing. In searching for Shmuel’s father, the two boys inadvertently get trapped amongst a group of prisoners being taken to the gas chamber to be exterminated. Naked, afraid and holding hands, Bruno and Shmuel die together, as innocents, as friends…as equals. So as evil plays out and reaches its unavoidable conclusion, whereby the sins of the father are ill-fated to be visited upon the son; we the viewer are left reeling, even crying (at least I did) over the utter horror and tragedy of watching these two innocent boys die a needless death. Yet, at the same time, we are equally left cheering for young Bruno as his inherent humanity leads to his final act of good-will in facing his fear, following his heart and helping his friend is radically redemptive.
The major theme of the book is shown through the bonds of friendship and how in the most of unlikely circumstances friendship can survive and exist between people possessing an extensive and most restrictive division. A second theme is the evil and the intolerance which existed around these times of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, as seen by the Germans having the Jews in the concentration camp. And the third theme is the curiosity and innocence of Bruno, Shmuel and Gretel, who all seem to fail to properly notice and understand what is really happening in the world around them, all contrasting with the well acknowledgement of others, such as Lt. Kottler.
Bruno is little eight year old boy who’s learning new thing at school and at home with his parents. Besides that he thinks life is
One day when Shmuel gets sent to shine glasses at his house him and Bruno start talking. A soldier see them and Bruno told him he didn’t know who he was, and the soldier beats the boy, Bruno feels terrible and want to make it up to Shmuel. Bruno wants to understand why the life behind the fence is so awful and why Shmuel isn’t happy. Bruno thinks it’s not better, but interesting because there are other kids to play with. They form a strong bond that can't be broken by anything and it makes him realize that his friends in Berlin weren't as special as Shmuel is and their friendship. The two boys have been talking and have been friends for about a year and decide that Bruno wants to go on the other side of the fence to see what its like and help him find his papa.
When it rains, it makes some people feel joy and calmness, and it makes others feel sad and gloomy. It is fascinating how the exact same thing can affect two different people in 2 different ways. This same statement applies the way ignorance leads to innocence and vice versa and how that affects people, as seen in the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. In both books, the authors used the characters Lennie and Bruno to show that ignorance is often mistaken for the many kinds of innocence and that innocence and ignorance are interchangeable in a way.
During the WWII the Germans conducted Holocaust of the Jewish race. The Germans invaded several different cities and countries and took the Jews to concentration labour camps and eventually killed them. The Germans killed approximately six million Jews all because of racial superiority. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is set in this era. The movie is also centered around the Holocaust where Ralph, Bruno’s father is a SS Commandant in the Russian army. He gets promoted and thus, the family has to relocate Auschwitz. Ralph is the commandant incharge of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His son Bruno, whose point of view we see the movie through, befriends a Jewish boy from the other side of the camp, which proves to have some starting and unexpected consequences. Meanwhile through the documentary we get to see the other side; the artifacts, blueprints and designs of the incinerators and interviews with various engineers to know the reality of how the Nazi were able to kill so many Jews.
It is challenging to imagine that a novel about the Holocaust could ever be comparable to a Grimm fairy tale, however, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Poverty and Humility Lead to Heaven maintain fascinating similarities through the stories of their respective main characters under ‘The Quest’ storyline framework that the pieces follow. Further, both Bruno and the Prince demonstrate senses of basic goodness and fall victim to family betrayal and crimes of status.
It was the year 1942 and the war was in full swing, not much older than I a boy and his brother, Rolf and Alfred watched as Nazis rounded up friends, classmates, family and each other. They watched their mother and father as the Nazis violently took them, tied them up, and threw them into the trunk of a car. This would be the last time the brothers would ever see their beloved parents. Rolf was a young high school student when he was taken by the Gestapo, Hitler’s henchmen. Somehow his brother Alfred managed to escape and only Rolf was taken. He awoke in a bas...
Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. New York: Random House Inc., 2006. Print.
The treatment of Jews in this time period was abhorrent. The mere fact that Jews were placed into a death camp and exterminated was sufficient. In the film “The boy in the striped pajamas”, a moral issue arises in Germany in World War ll. This film reveals the racial discrimination and prejudice the Jewish people faced. Bruno who is an eight year old boy, is distraught after he learns that he has to leave his current home in Berlin to a new home in Auschwitz due to his father’s promotion to a Nazi commandant of a death camp. Arriving at their new home in Auschwitz, Bruno is lonely with no friends. From his bedroom window, he notices people in stripped pajamas behind a fence. He presumes they are farmers and asks his mother and father if he could meet some new friends on the farm. However, to his disappointment, he is told not to
This film portrays one of humanity’s greatest modern tragedies, through heartache and transgression, reflecting various themes throughout the movie. Beyond the minor themes some seem to argue as more important in the film, the theme of friendship and love is widely signified and found to be fundamental in understanding the true meaning behind The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessly infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the film's objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie.
John Boyne's book "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" invites the readers to embark on an imaginative journey at two levels. At the first level, Boyne himself embarks upon an imaginative journey that explores a possible scenario in relation to Auschwitz. Bruno is a 9 year old boy growing up in a loving, but typically authoritarian German family in the 1930?s. His father is a senior military officer who is appointed Commandant of Auschwitz ? a promotion that requires upheaval from their comfortable home in Berlin to an austere home in the Polish countryside. The story explores Bruno?s difficulty in accepting and adapting to this change - especially the loss of his friends and grandparents.
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" explores the beauty of a child's innocence in a time of war:
“Guido the father and son were forced to the Concentration camp but Guido persuades Giosue through the camp to believe that it's a really tough game to survive and win an award of a tank, ( Benigni). Giosue a little boy who doesn't know much about what's going on gets persuade that the camp is a game to win a tank goes through times in the camp where he wants to go home but doesn't know he was abandoned and his family was forced. Giosue later loses his dad and after freedom from the camp, Giosue was able to live his normal life on with his mom who was still
The father was too enamored with his position as the Commandant to pay any attention to his son. His position as Commandant enabled him to give the order that killed his son. Bruno’s father was responsible for the family moving to Auschwitz, which sparked a chain of events that ultimately caused Bruno’s death. The father was responsible for Bruno’s death in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne, significantly distorts the truth of the Holocaust in order to evoke the empathy of the audience. This response is accomplished by the author through hyperbolizing the innocence of the nine-year old protagonist, Bruno. Through the use of dramatic irony, Boyne is able to both engage and involve the audience in the events of the novel. Although it is highly improbable that a son of a German high-ranking Schutzstaffel (SS) officer would not know what a Jew is and would be unable to pronounce both Fuhrer and Auschwitz, (which he instead mispronounces as ‘Fury’ and ‘Out-with’ respectively, both of which are intentional emotive puns placed by the author to emphasize the atrocity of the events), the attribution of such information demonstrates the exaggerated innocence of Bruno and allows the audience to know and understand more than him. This permits the readers to perceive a sense of involvement, thus, allowing the audience to be subjected towards feeling more dynamic and vigorous evocation of emotions and empathy towards the characters. Fu...