Critical Response Essay: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

📌Category: Literary Genre, Literature
📌Words: 891
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 15 January 2022

Critical Response Essay: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne 

Explore how the author of your prescribed text has used characterisation to engage the audience and present a compelling narrative about The Holocaust.   

Introduction 

In The Boy in the Striped Pajama's, the author uses characterisation to demonstrate the horror of the holocaust by highlighting the two completely different worldviews of two 9yr old boys, one a Jewish boy, Shmuel, imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp and the other, Bruno, the son of the camp’s commandant. Bruno is oblivious to the class difference between the two boys, and the author uses other characters to show how indifferent and narrow-minded people can be to the predicament of others and how getting to know someone can change your view of them. 

Perspective and WorldView 

The author uses Bruno and his sister Gretel’s superficial view of outward appearances to demonstrate that their understanding of the world is naive and innocent, but that Gretel is a bit more callous about the children in the camp than Bruno. 

Boyne shows this through an incident witnessed by Bruno and Gretel. “Gretel - those children look like they’ve never had a bath in their lives, Bruno - it looks very dirty over there but maybe they don’t have any baths, Gretel - Don’t be stupid, what kind of people don’t have any baths”. (Ch 4, pg 39)  

In another example, Boyne shows that Gretel dismisses the scene as some kind of rehearsal while “ignoring the fact that some of the children, even some of the older ones, even the ones as grown-up as her, looked as if they were crying”.  Gretel then goes on to state “ not the type of children I want to play with”, “they look filthy”. (Ch 4, 38, 39) Gretel was determined to blame the camp children for the sad condition they were in. 

The scene witnessed by Bruno and Gretel is foreshadowing a time that Bruno himself will be separated from his own family and put into a line similar to that one later in the story. Boyne uses foreshadowing in this scene to give the reader a strong sense of irony as we finally discover Bruno’s tragic fate. 

Bruno and Gretel were judging the children in the camp from the perspective of their own lives without any idea about the kind of life the children in the camp had to live every day. Even though they had no understanding the author still holds them somewhat responsible. Bruno, in his innocence, is trying to give the other children the benefit of the doubt but Gretel shows only loathing and disgust. 

Journey of discovery 

Bruno is portrayed as an average 9yr old boy who has lived a sheltered life. He has no understanding of the class difference between Shmuel and himself or the supposed reasons for it. In chapter 10 Bruno goes on a journey of discovery and finds himself leaving his house and his life there far behind. Walking along the fence line of the camp he sees Shmuel in the distance. The image of Shmuel is described as “the dot that became a spec, that became a blob, that became a figure, that became a boy”. (Ch 10, pg 109) 

Boyne uses two literary devices here, imagery and metaphor. He gives the reader a vivid picture of Shmuel slowly coming into focus as Bruno moves closer to him, anticipating their meeting. This is also a metaphor for the journey of understanding that Bruno is on. Bruno’s understanding of the life of Shmuel and the Jews in the camp is like the dot, as he gets to know Shmuel his understanding of Shmuel’s life becomes larger and clearer.  

Sadly, Bruno only fully understands Shmuel’s life as he is standing next to him holding his hand in the gas chamber (Ch19, pg 220). At that moment the two lives are like one. 

The Fence 

The meeting of the two boys at the fence was one of the most significant events in the book. It represents the colliding of two very different life stories and is the beginning of Bruno’s understanding about how differently the Jews are treated in the camp.  

Bruno thought Shmuel looked small for his age and “had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life”. (Ch 10 pg110) Bruno thinks it is unfair that Shmuel has many friends while he has none. (Ch 10, pg114) This shows Bruno’s lack of understanding about what happens on the other side of the fence.  

The fence in the story is a powerful metaphor which has a lot of meaning. It represents the class division between the Germans and the Jews, on one side of the fence there is freedom, power, wealth and privilege, on the other side, powerlessness, hunger, fear, sadness & death. The fence is also a barrier that keeps a dark secret inside that Bruno only begins to understand as he seeks to find out more about life in the camp from his side of the fence.  

The more Bruno finds out about Shmuel’s life in the camp the more he crosses over to Shmuel’s world. 

Conclusion 

Bruno is an adventurous and inquisitive 9yr old boy who has lived a sheltered and privileged life as the son of a Nazi commandant. Perhaps the story is best summed up when Bruno says, “The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered.”(Ch 10, p.g118) Bruno’s discovery of Shmuel helped him to broaden his perspective of the world and see life from someone else's point of view, which is always worth finding.

 

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