The striped Pajamas
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a novel about living in of the Holocaust, from the point of a young boy, written by John Boyne. Fun Fact: he said that he wrote the entire first draft of the book in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end. The novel has sold more than 5 million copies around the world.Bruno is a nine-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin. He lives with his parents, his 12-year-old sister Gretel and main servants called Maria and Lars. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from the Führer, is promoted to 'Kommandant', and the family has to move away to a place called Out-With which turns out to be Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.We now have Bruno, the son of a German elite, while the other, Shmuel is Jewish and in a Camp. Bruno's military father ,the Camp commander, moves the family from Berlin to an isolated, fenced, and heavily guarded house near his Camp. Bruno, being the normal adventurous kid, bored with no kids to play with, soon finds a way to sneak into the woods, meets this strange, bald headed, striped pajama kid, Shmuel, on the inside of the camp's electric fence. Shmuel is pretty clueless why he's there other than he's Jewish, and also doesn't know where his camp relatives are all disappearing to. That's the basic setup. A tutor is indoctrinating Bruno on anti-Semitic philosophies, however, Bruno doesn't buy it because of his secret friend. That fence gets annoying to the children's playing. Shmuel is to scared to come out, so Bruno does the logical thing, and tunnels in. The rest of the story has a impact you won't soon forget, and drives home the horror of the Holocaust, and how innocent children are the true victims of any conflict. The story has no preaching - it's just a logical story playing out that illustrates its message in an incredibly powerful way |
