A world in which old men can be degraded and abused, a world in which people wearing dirty, unwashed, striped uniforms are not seen as being oppressed, a world in which a starving boy of identical age yet vastly different physique is seen as simply being unfortunate - such a world cannot exist. Or can it? In the world of Bruno, this is precisely the way the world is.
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.
Boyne gives personality and family to the sort of person who today is generally demonised by western writings - the people who administered and controlled the death camps in which over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other deemed to be grossly inferior by Hitler and his cohorts. In so doing he encourages us to see a different world ? a world in which obedience is paramount and in which authority figures can never be questioned. He shows us the problem that surfaces when people who are trained to be obedient are confronted with orders that, if analysed and considered, can be clearly seen to be an affront to all human values and decency. People can happily obey ?The Fury? ...
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... will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process.
Bruno's imaginative journey is a flight from reality. It is a classic example of the psychological "fight or flight" syndrome experienced by all animals (including humans) when they are confronted by something of which they are unsure or afraid - something which challenges their current reality. What Boyne does in this story is to use Bruno to show how either approach can be totally destructive: the critical lesson is that we must acknowledge reality and do what we can to remove the fences that would destroy not only ?us? but our entire world.
All imaginative journeys lead to a revelation - both Bruno and the readers will come to realize that their imaginative journeys have transformed them and affected them in indescribable ways and we, the readers come to a realization as well about what is happening.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault onHumanity. Trans. Stuart Woolf. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1987.
It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis
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...
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.
A crucial concept developed throughout Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved is the process of “the demolition of a man” through useless acts of violence. In order for the Nazis to control and murder without regard or guilt, they had to diminish men into subhumans. Those who entered the camps were stripped of their dignity and humanity, devoid of any personal identity. Men and women were reduced to numbers in a system that required absolute submission, which placed them in an environment where they had to struggle to survive and were pitted against their fellow prisoners. The purpose of the camps were not merely a place for physical extermination, but a mental one as well. Primo Levi exposes these small and large acts of deprivation and destruction within his two texts in order for readers to become aware of the affects such a system has on human beings, as well as the danger unleashed by a totalitarian system.
Buergenthal, Thomas. A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy. New York: Little, Brown, 2009.
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
... inferior. Auschwitz is the most notorious concentration camp there was. Two things this camp had that others didn’t was the Gas Chambers and Dr. Mengele. His experiments took on a whole new meaning of cruel and the gas chambers were just another way to kill people. This paper gives me a better understanding of Night because sometimes it’s easier to understand what someone has gone through if you know the extent of the situation. Through my research of Auschwitz I found the extent of cruelty surpassed even my imagination. One thing Elie Wiesel said has stuck with me throughout all of my research on Auschwitz “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” (book's introduction xv) It made me realize that we need to remember the Holocaust and the Genocide that took place during this time because letting it happen again is just as bad as forgetting.
Bruno was very built and had a very large physique, which people found threatening and scary. He looked much older than even one as if he was in junior high. His hair was sleeked back and was very dark and oily with a large neck and shoulders. Even though he had this big overpowering body he let it be known to every one with the cloths he wore. He showed he was tuff, and muscular though those cloths. Bruno also had a scare one his forehead that rumors say he got when a pot of boiling water in a pan hit him. They think he may have pulled it and it fell or his mom dropped it. Through this large stature one might see how he was probably made fun of and harassed.” He spoke English with a strong accent, musical, yet people mocked him and embarrassed him silently”(1201). Written by Joyce Carol Oates the write of the Hostage. This lowered his self a steam that he held in anger and used it to hold himself hostage with in.
...dship even in the darkest and devastating of endings. The interpretation of Bruno and Shmuel’s bond in the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is fundamental in understanding the significant theme of love and friendship.
Bruno, an eight year old boy at the time of the war, is completely oblivious to the atrocities of the war around him - even with a father who is a Nazi commandant. The title of the book is evidence to this - Bruno perceives the concentration camp uniforms as "striped pajamas." Further evidence is the misnomers "the Fury," (the Furher) and "Out-With" (Auschwitz). Bruno and Shmuel, the boy he meets from Auschwitz, share a great deal in common but perhaps what is most striking is the childhood innocence which characterizes both boys. Bruno is unaware that his father is a Nazi commandant and that his home is on ther periphery of Auschwitz. Shmuel, imprisoned in the camp, seems not to understand the severity of his situation. When his father goes missing, Shmuel does not understand that he has gone to the gas chamber.
If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort to mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform. Primo Levi, a survivor, gives account of his incarceration in the Monowitz- Buna concentration camp.
Thus, through the various distortions posed throughout The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne reveals many aspects of truth. Such distortions allow the author to evoke the audience’s emotion, portray the Holocaust to younger readers and communicate humans’ capacity for brutality and apathy. This is achieved by Boyne through the exaggeration of the innocence of Bruno, the misrepresented content of the novel as well as the distinctive voice of youth. Narrative, in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, is therefore presented as a device that distorts aspects of truth in order to reveal. However, in the end, it is the choice of the reader as to whether they will consider the narrative to be a ‘fable’ which reveals a message or an actual source of knowledge and truth.
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.