Compare and Contrast Essay: The Book Thief vs. Boy in the Striped Pajamas

📌Category: Books, The Book Thief
📌Words: 402
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 18 April 2022

The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak is a novel that details the life of a young girl named Liesel amidst the times of World War 2. Similarly, Boy in the Striped Pajamas, originally a novel, then adapted into a movie directed by Mark Herman stars a male child protagonist called Bruno during the same period. Both pieces of fiction share themes of bleakness and childhood innocence, while possessing ideas of the same sort, they themselves explore these concepts in differing ways, these ideas and what make the two works work in their own right is what's to be explored. 

Where the Boy in the Striped Pajamas demonstrates it's messages in a subtle, even innocent manner - such as smoke billowing in the distance, harboring a sense of genuine discomfort in the viewer and potentially an eventual hit of realization if they didn't already know what precisely it meant. The Book Thief on the other hand makes every effort to tell the reader that there is more than just the surface level in the book to be explored, with the character Death practically exploring the deeper hints and messages with the reader. While taking vastly different approaches to the concept, both texts aim to give this eventual feeling of there being light in the darkness. Book Thief tends to demonstrate slightly more profound yet obvious meanings, potentially to appeal to a teenage audience - this can notably be seen when Liesel steals a book, The Shoulder Shrug, from a burning pile of literature remains, looking to the Boy in the Striped pajamas however, the messages are simultaneously obvious yet deep - the way in which these themes are executed make for a more appealing piece of fiction for a large age range, with varying levels of understanding. A good example is the myriad of times the viewer sees a shot of the two primary protagonists sitting on opposite sides of the fence of the camp. The message of this shot is effective and simple, but doesn't take away from the purpose of it itself, ie, it knows it doesn't need to compensate for anything.

The Book Thief novel shuffles in between Death and Liesel's perspective in order to give the reader a strong sense of foresight and more in depth insight, alongside the feeling of immersion and connection whereas the Boy in the Striped Pajamas tends to have a broader viewpoint, Bruno himself can be a hard to read character and his perspective reflects that, just as Bruno is someone from the outside looking into a world unfamiliar to him, the viewer does the same unconsciously.

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