The boy in the striped pajamas

Description

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a 2006 historical novel by John Boyne, which tells the atrocities of the Holocaust from the naive point of view of a young boy. Based during World War II, the story unfolds haunting images of friendship, innocence, and disastrous effects of prejudice and hatred. The book has been read by many as a strong if controversial revelation of the Holocaust through the eyes of a German child.

Summary:
1. Plot Summary
Bruno is an 8-year-old German boy, living with his wealthy family in Berlin. His father, Ralf is a high-ranking Nazi officer who works directly for Adolf Hitler himself. When Bruno’s father moves to a remote area after being promoted, the family goes to the unknown place. Bruno calls it “Out-With” actually Auschwitz, notorious concentration camp. Bruno is not happy to leave his friends and house behind; he feels lonely and isolated in the new, dismal environment.

Bruno one day explores the fenced-off areas near their new home and meets Shmuel, a boy his age, on the other side of the fence. Shmuel is a Jewish prisoner at the concentration camp. He is always wearing “striped pajamas” which Bruno mistakes for regular clothes. This distance between the two does not prevent them from having a secret friendship. Bruno, during the Second World War, kept visiting Shmuel, would take his food and talk to him, unaware of the real horrors of Shmuel’s life inside that camp.

Naïve Perspective: Bruno does not know what is really happening behind the fence at Auschwitz. He does not know why Shmuel is always hungry, nor does he know why the people on Shmuel’s side of the fence are treated so poorly, nor why his father is in charge of this place. There is a rather jarring contrast between Bruno’s innocence and the readers’ knowledge of the Holocaust atrocities taking place behind the camp fence.

The tragic ending: Near the end of the novel, Bruno has made up his mind to sneak into the camp to help find Shmuel’s missing father. To aid in his disguise, he puts on a pair of “striped pajamas”. Ensnared with some prisoners who are being marched to a gas chamber, they meet a tragic end. The disappearance of Bruno overwhelmed the family, especially his mother, who, too late, came to realize the deadly reality of what was happening at Auschwitz.

2. Themes:
Innocence and Ignorance: The novel basically revolves around the concept of innocence. He fails to grasp the idea about the concentration camp and the Jewish situation. In this way, he depicted the manner in which some people, mainly children, were excluded from or kept unaware of the harsh realities of the Holocaust. How innocent of hatred children remain, merely forming a bond of friendship like with Shmuel, completely devoid of prejudice.

The novel is a tale of horrors brought about by war and prejudice as it depicts consequences that go unchecked with hatred, bigotry, and war in the gruesome experiences of Shmuel and other Jewish prisoners. The contrast in lives between Bruno at one end and Shmuel at the other boasts brutal inhumanity of Nazi regime and an abomination of holocaust experience.

Friendship Across Boundaries: Bruno and Shmuel’s friendship transcends the physical and ideological boundary between them and perhaps acquires even poignant human dimensions in the darkest of times. The bond is pure innocence and goodness that contrasts the cruelty around them in this world.

Moral Responsibility and Complicity: Ralf, Bruno’s father, loves his family, but he is involving himself with the atrocities of the Holocaust as the man running Auschwitz without questioning his moral responsibility. The novel gives out several questions regarding the participants or followers of oppressive regimes and the informal involvement in those regimes, including the consequences of doing nothing against injustice.

3. Character Development:
Bruno: Bruno is the naive and curiously open protagonist of the novel. His innocence, taken to a central position in the book, still keeps him in the dark with regard to the atrocities happening around him. The gradual association with Shmuel opened Bruno’s eyes to the injustices of the world; however, ignorance befell him for tragic circumstances. Bruno represents a childhood innocence and a blindness that often accompany privilege.

Shmuel: Shmuel is the Jewish boy who lives in the concentration camp Auschwitz. He stands as a symbol of millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust. Despite all that had happened, Shmuel still represents all aspects of gentleness and niceness. Now, when Bruno befriends him, he becomes able to seize some moments of relief and company. As tragic as silent suffering, his fate teaches us all about the effects of hatred and genocide on the human soul.

Ralf (Bruno’s Father): Ralf is an avid father, and yet he is a top-ranking Nazi officer in charge of the worst camp of Holocaust Auschwitz. His character reflects that contradiction between personal love and moral blindness. He is a Nazi ideologue but fails to realize his gross actions when it is too late. The sadness at Bruno’s death has a sobering commentary on what it means for humanity to be complicit in evil.

Elsa (Bruno’s Mother): Elsa becomes morose in her husband’s position under the Nazi regime and the stark reality of what is happening in Auschwitz. She represents the dilemma that exists in the people who lived during the Nazi rule, suffering with the weight of knowing the facts.

4. Historical Context:
The novel is a Holocaust story set between 1941 to 1945, when Nazi Germany ritually murdered six million Jews, among millions of others deemed unfit by the regime, including Roma, disabled people, political dissidents, and many, many more. Auschwitz, a concentration camp in the novel, was one of the most infamous death camps, in which over one million people were killed, most Jews.

Although the novel is a book, it may provide an insight into the atrocities of the Holocaust, especially in the experiences of the two young boys trapped in the machinery of hate and genocide.

5. Criticism/ Controversy:
Although “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” has been read by most students and engaged many youth to read about the Holocaust, historians and educators have condemned the novel. Some say the book oversimplifies and does injustice to real historical facts, especially with regard to the improbable story of a German boy living close to a concentration camp and becoming friendly with a Jewish prisoner. Others argue that a book that stresses the personal tragedy of the German family will shift attention from the Jewish victims and their terrible experience.
6. Symbolism:
The Striped Pajamas : Shmuel and the others in striped pajamas symbolize how the Jews and the prisoners in the camp were stripped of their individuality through these clothes, signifying their marks as being different, but with Bruno, it’s just clothing; he was innocent.

The Fence: Although the fence between Bruno and Shmuel is physical, it is also symbolic. It represents the existence of oppressor and oppressed as well as the very notion of ideological separation pursued by the Nazi regime to highlight. Beyond the fence – in such a fashion as was embodied by the friendship of Bruno and Shmuel across the fence – this friendship represents hope and possibility for human beings between whom hatred and prejudice subsisted.

7. Writing Style and Tone:
Simple, Childlike Viewpoint: The novel is also told from the narrow, naive viewpoint of Bruno. This gives the novel a certain quality, almost like a fable. It’s as if the reader is given an insight into looking at the world through the eyes of an innocent child, but at the same time the deep tragic ignorance that many possessed about the nature of the Holocaust is thrust into the reader’s consciousness.

It is tragic and heart-wrenching because the reader, as early as from some stage of reading, realizes something that Bruno does not-that Shmuel’s life is in grave danger, and this fence between him and Bruno is more than a simple physical boundary-it represents something insurmountable, impossible to cross between two worlds.
Such is the novel “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne-a haunting novel on innocence, friendship, and the devastating effects of prejudice and war. Seen through the eyes of Bruno, the novel presents the cruelty of the Holocaust and the cases in which innocence is lost during war. Despite much controversy surrounding its historical accuracy, the novel is, however, a very popular introduction to the atrocities of the Holocaust for generations of young readers. Its message on human connection and the devastating consequences of hatred stays long after the story is told.