The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas - Alex Lee

Alex Lee

Independent Reading Project

Mrs. Arnold

05/18/15

For this spring independent reading project, I read "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas" John Boyne. This book is a historical novel and a fiction based on the stories of the Final Solution and the Holocaust in World War II. There are several themes in this book, such as Friendship, Innocence and Morality. Friendship is revealed by the relationship between two main characters; Bruce and Shmuel. Shmuel is a Jewish boy who lives in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Bruce is a boy son of high ranked Nazi executive living right next to the concentration camp. Their relationship is extremely unique, of course it is a relationship of son of Nazi and son of Jew. The next theme Innocence is shown directly from Bruce. Bruce does not have the propaganda of the Nazis but since he lives in the Nazi family, he is "blamed" of the cruelties and inhuman acts of the Nazis. In conclusion, Bruce is innocent about the ideas of the Nazis and has the compassion and his own way of accepting the Jewish people but the fact that he is in a Nazi family, he is blamed of the acts of the Nazi community. Lastly, morality is shown allusively from Bruce's parents. Bruce's father, especially, do not want Bruce to know about the existence of Jews and the concentration so that Bruce does not think or be suspicious about what they do to the Jews. It is a bit ironic because Bruce's dad is a high ranked executive and has a lot of influences to the acts of the Nazis which means he is pretty into the Nazi society. However he does not want his son to know about what he does in his job. I presume that at least he has some morality about his behaviors. As a person who enjoys reading historical novels, I think this book was very interesting because it is a point of view of a person from a Nazi family, not like most of the books that I have read which usually was Jewish or more of third person view. This book made me really emotional and sympathize to Bruce's feelings and behaviors since I was once a nine years old child. The basic story of this book is about a boy named Bruce who moved away from his home Berlin to this unfamiliar place called "Out-With" which is Auschwitz. He of course, does not like the idea of leaving his home, his friends, and other friendly feature in his hometown. As times goes by, Bruce tries to blend into his new home, and then he met this Jewish boy named Shmuel, with blue striped pajamas who is in the other side of the unpleasant looking wired fence that was in fifty feet away from his house in Auschwitz. Since Bruce does not have any friends in his new home, he decided to be friends with Shmuel and Shmuel also became friends with Bruce. And their incompatible relationship begins. My favorite character on this book was the main character Bruce. I like the way the the author portrays Bruce as curious and adventurous nine year old boy. For example, how he is really questionable about everything that he did not like and the relationship of his sister Gretel. A typical older sister and little brother relationship. It was really amusing to compare the relationship that they had and the relationship the I have seen in my life. My least favorite character was the Commander of Bruce's dad, which is Hitler. Hitler did not play a lot of role in the story, he came to Bruce's house in Auschwitz to have a dinner with Bruce's dad, but all of these Holocaust story is caused by this one maniac. Just the existence of this guy makes me mad and how uncomfortable for me to accept this guy as a human being. I was really emotional to this book as a read along. This writer had a really catchy writing style and was easy to know what this author was trying to tell. Not just literally, also meaningfully. One thing that should be point out is that this is just a personal view. This book was really interesting and intriguing that I was just into this book. As a person who really enjoys historical novel, I would suggest anyone to read this book.