The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

Over the March break I read John Boyne’s The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. This book is fiction but based on real events. It takes place during World War II. Bruno, a nine-year old boy is the main character. Bruno doesn’t wear striped pajamas but one day after arriving in his new home he discovers a fenced off area that is “Out of bounds and no exceptions.” His father, Adolf Hitler, states this rule. Beyond the fence, Bruno finds hundreds of people of all ages in striped pajamas wearing yarmulkes but he is not smart enough to know who they are. I didn’t really enjoy this novel because nothing really exciting happened. He moved into his new house, looked through his new window on tiptoes, fell off a swing and then he followed his Jewish friend into the concentration camp. The only part that kept me reading was when Bruno’s curiosity overwhelms him, which eventually leads to his very gruesome death.

The story begins with Bruno packing up his things in his home in Berlin getting ready to move to his new home. The story never quite told the reader where they were moving to except that Bruno called it “Out-With.” Bruno lives in a mansion with maids, cooks, butlers and even onion choppers. Bruno’s father, Adolf Hitler is very wealthy and well respected in Germany pays for these serveants. Bruno has a sister named Gretel who is turning thirteen. She is very bossy and she has a habit of whining and crying to get what she wants. They are both very ignorant and extremely spoiled children and know nothing of what their father is doing or what is happening around them. They finally arrive after a long drive into their new house. Bruno and Gretel both hate it, as there is nothing around their house except the fence in the distance. There are no stores to shop in, no kids to play with and all the people they see outside of their family are the many serveants and important looking people in fancy uniforms. One day when Gretel is rearranging her dolls for the seven millionth time and Bruno’s become too bored to stay in the house he decides to do a little exploring. He takes a bundle of bread, a nice warm sweater and a map of the world and heads across the street to where the fence is. This is finally when I stopped yawning and falling asleep and paid attention to the story.

On the other side of the fence he meets a little boy in striped pajamas wearing a yarmulke. His name is Shmuel and he explains that he is Jewish which takes a very long time for Bruno to understand. Shmuel is a short scrawny little boy around the same age as Bruno and over the next couple of months they meet there every day talking to each other. Shmuel describes how his family was separated when they were taken from their home in Poland and scattered across Germany in different concentration camps and how he had been beaten and not fed in the concentration camp. After Bruno hears this he concludes that Shmuel was over exaggerating a little and is delighted to find yet another similarity between him and Shmuel. Bruno then tells Shmuel of how his family chose to move from his mansion in Berlin with six floors to this dreadful place in “Out-With” that wasn’t very fun and only had four floors. When Shmuel hears this he is blown away and decides to bring Bruno into the camp the next day to show him what it’s like. Bruno is so excited for tomorrow that he runs home as fast as he can and almost tells Gretel of his friend and what was going to happen the next day. Bruno gets changed into an extra pair of pajamas the next day behind a small tree and is disgusted by the oncoming rain and how he has to go barefoot. He is appalled to find the people in caps sitting outside in the rain. All of a sudden a bell rings and people in uniforms spring out of little huts and call for a march. The people in caps line up single file and are ordered to go into a larger hut in the distance. When they arrive Bruno decides that they didn’t want the people to catch a cold in the rain but all the other capped people look extremely frightened. Bruno looks around then sees dead people in the corners and scratches on the wall. This is where he finds he cannot breathe very well. Bruno dies along with Shmuel and hundreds of other Jewish people that day in that small room.

This book is written in the third person style from Bruno. Although it is funny how ignorant Bruno is it is a very boring book and doesn’t have enough good dialogue. This book is descriptive in some areas where it shouldn’t and not descriptive enough where it should. As I’ve stated in previous Blogs I don’t enjoy unnecessary detail, which this book has. This is one of the many reasons why I didn’t enjoy this novel. I can relate this novel to our next unit in Social Studies and anything anyone has told about the Holocaust.

The author could’ve included better dialogue and could’ve cleaned up his detail choices. He could’ve also included more of Hitler, which would’ve made the story more interesting and if it was told from his point of view. I think it is safe to say that this is the worst book I have ever read from what I’ve stated above.