The Boy in the striped Pyjamas Essay
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is a story that tells of the holocaust through the eyes of a child, Bruno, a boy who discovers a peculiar friend that lives a strange existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence. The important ideas presented in the novel are cruelty, discrimination, and abusive power, the holocaust from a child’s perspective and the misinterpretations from a child who gradually discovers the world to be not as enjoyable as he thought. Using some of these ideas listed above the storyline of the book gradually becomes more evident and keeps you interested in the book to finding that the story is of the holocaust and how the Jews were once treated, last century.
Cruelty and racism is the most important idea being expressed in the book. The Nazi’s were cruel to the Jews by keeping them in concentration camps where they were beaten, starved, threatened, gassed, burned and forced to work day in and day out, it impossible for them to earn a living. The way they treated the Jewish race was all because making the Nazi people purely didn't like them, which is racist because they had no other reason for their murderous behaviour toward them. One example of cruelty recognised is on page 208, in the last few pages of the book where the meaning behind the whole story begins to be more obvious. “In fact everywhere he looked, all he could see was two different types of people: either happy, laughing, shouting soldiers in their uniform or unhappy, crying people in their striped pyjamas, most of whom seemed to be staring into space as if they were actually asleep. ‘I don't think I like it here,’ said Bruno.” This part in the book clearly states that Bruno is beginning to feel uneasy with where he is, and recognise that the Jewish people aren’t actually having fun on the other side of the fence but for some reason are unhappy, due to what we work out ourselves, the cruel and inhumane way that they...
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