The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Essay

552 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The impact of World War II on the literature movement

The novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne is narrated from the outlook of a young, privileged boy named Bruno, whose father is a Nazi Commandant during World War II. One day, when Bruno returns home from school he notices the family maid, Maria, packing his belongings. His mother explains that they will be moving away from Berlin because his father was granted a promotion by the Fury. Throughout the story, Bruno discusses his confusion on exactly what type of job his father employs because he is only told that, “it is a very important job that needs a very special man to do it” (5). The family relocates to a place which the children believe to be known as “Out-With”. Immediately, Bruno notices how isolated and small the new house is when compared to his old home. He expresses how upset he is over the fact that he can no longer spend time with his three best friends and grandparents, but eventually tries to make the best out of his situation. Bruno gazes out of his bedroom window and within the distance, he reveals the concentration camps that the Jews are sent to during this period of time. However, Bruno and his older sister, Gretel, come up with the conclusion that it is somewhat like a farm, where people work and they all wear the same striped pajamas. At this point, they are oblivious to what is actually happening behind the fenced …show more content…

He cannot quite grasp why he is not allowed to interact with the hundreds of children, in the striped pajamas, that he can see from his window. His lonesomeness gives him an idea to gather a piece of rope and old tire to build a swing on the tree in the area he is allowed outside. At this moment, Lieutenant Kotler demands that Pavel, the family waiter, help Bruno find the perfect tire. Bruno and Gretel are both taken back by the tone Lieutenant Kotler uses and Bruno is embarrassed that he is apart of

Show More
Related

  • Similarities Between The Boy In The Striped Pajamas And Night

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    While he is there in the camp he sees and experiences many traumatic events, as well as him being the only one out of his family to survive. In the film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” Bruno is a nine year old German boy who experiences World War ll outside of a concentration camp his father runs. When Bruno gets curious he befriends a Jewish boy inside the camp and decides to come into the camp to help the boy find his father. Bruno and his Jewish friend end up being sent to the gas chambers and die. Both accounts of the Holocaust share many similarities and differences.

    Read More

  • The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Book and Film

    1359 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bruno is getting really upset that he can no longer see his friends or his grandparents. He is stuck in his house and can’t explore as much as he would like because there is no one to explore with. He notices something out his window one day, a large fenced in area with little tiny dots moving. He asks his sister and maid Maria what they are but they don’t know. He decides one day that he is going to explore the fenced in area, so he leaves when no one is looking and explores it for about two hours walking up and down the fence looking for something. Finally he comes across I boy about the same size of him so he goes up and talks to him. The boy’s name is Shmuel and they are the same age. Bruno learns that he is stuck behind the fence and has nothing to wear but the striped pajamas. Bruno doesn’t understand why he is there but is told how awful it is behind the fence.

    Read More

  • On the Other Side of the Fence

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, a young naive boy, Bruno, tells from his perspective how the occurrences in the Holocaust took place. In 1943, the beginning of the story, Bruno’s father, a commandant in Hitler’s army, is promoted and moves to Oswiecim with his family. Oswiecim is home to the hideous Auschwitz Concentration Camp. While Bruno is out playing near a fence at the edge of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, against his father’s orders, he becomes friends with a young Jewis...

    Read More

  • Individual And Collective Identity In Kwame Appiah's Racial Identities

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    The films The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Schindler 's List recall a dark and devastating time in history known as the Holocaust. Amid the barbaric German Nazi invasions, are where we find the main characters of these two films. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells the story of Bruno, a son of German Nazi soldier who befriends an inmate at a nearby concentration camp. For weeks, Bruno shares stories, food, and comforts the inmate, Shmuel, despite his parent’s orders and German upbringing. Bruno has grown up exposed to the Nazi propaganda, however his German upbringing does not create hostility or resentment toward this Jewish boy, but instead compassion. Similarly, Oskar Schindler, a German business man saved the lives of thousands of Jewish prisoners by arranging them to work in his factory. Both Oskar Schindler and Bruno did not allow neither their collective identity as Germans nor their pro-Nazi culture, to become central to their own individual identity and morals. They did not allow the constraints or “expectations of others”, in a German sense, to make them act

    Read More

  • The Pressures of War in Journey's End

    1700 Words  | 4 Pages

    they do not know what is happening - it is more of a threat than the

    Read More

  • Use of Narrative in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Good Vs Evil

    545 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of the book The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Bruno was being inconsiderate when his mother told him they were going to move to a new home named out-with. In the book Bruno says, “And what about Karl and Daniel and Martin? How

    Read More

  • Friendship and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

    1716 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Narrative Essay

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine waking up on a normal day, in your normal house, in your normal room. Imagine if you knew that that day, you would be taken away from your normal life, and forced to a life of death, sickness, and violence. Imagine seeing your parents taken away from you. Imagine watching your family walk into their certain death. Imagine being a survivor. Just think of the nightmares that linger in your mind. You are stuck with emotional pain gnawing at your sanity. These scenerios are just some of the horrific things that went on between 1933-1945, the time of the Holocaust. This tragic and terrifying event has been written about many times. However, this is about one particularly fascinating story called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

    Read More

  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Research Paper

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was The book made it seem like he just walked through the camp, into the uniform barracks, and retrieved a uniform like it was no big deal. Again, if this were the 1940s, the Nazis would not allow this to happen, making the book even more unrealistic than it already was. In my opinion, the most major inadequacy in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is how John Boyne made Bruno so naïve for his age.

    Read More

  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: Personal Response to the Film and Novel

    1826 Words  | 4 Pages

    ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is a 2006 novel by Irish novelist John Boyne; this is his fourth novel, and the first he has written for children. My classmates and I have read the book and watched the trailer of its newly releasing movie. And I have to say, this novel is really remarkable. The novel truly engages the reader completely into the book and it’s difficult to put down. “Believe me”!!.......the trailer is all the more brilliant, with a high standard quality and exceptionally mind capturing images.

    Read More

  • Innocence in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" explores the beauty of a child's innocence in a time of war:

    Read More

  • Innocence In The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    The theme in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is innocence. Bruno’s family shelters him from the horrors of what is occurring at the camp next door, and what his father really does. Because the family wanted Bruno to stay a little innocent kid, his innocence ultimately kills him. Bruno was only kept innocent because of ignorance and things not told to him. Bruno knew that he people in the striped pajamas were Jews, but he was never told what was happening on the other side of the fence.

    Read More

  • Boy In The Striped Pajamas

    1565 Words  | 4 Pages

    The boy in the Striped Pajamas is about a little boy whose father is a commander in one of the many concentration camps. They lived in Berlin, Germany, where the little boy, Bruno and his sister, Gretel grew up. When Bruno was 9 years old, his father had a meeting and was told he had to move to “Out-with” and be a commandant. Bruno was very sad to leave his 3 best friends and the amazing house they lived in.

    Read More

More about The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Essay

Open Document