Book: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Author: John Boyne

Publication date: 5th January 2006

The book set in German, which is Berlin on 1942 and during World War II.

The book is about a 9-year-old boy named Bruno and his family that live in Berlin on 1942.
One day he is playing with his friends around the town and when he comes back to his home,
he discovers that his belongings are being packed. His father has received promotion about
his job, so Bruno and his family need to move to the place called Auschwitz or Bruno called it
“Out with”. When Bruno gets there, he is so unhappy because he has no one to play with.
One day Bruno notices a group of people that wear striped pajamas and striped hats behind
their house inside the fence. Bruno is trying to ask his father about that people, but his father
only tells that they are Jews. To find more information, Bruno asks his sister about the Jews.
Because Bruno bored and very curious about the back of his house, one day, he go to the
back of his house and found a boy called Shmuel. Another day, Bruno comes again to meet
Shmuel and it happen for so many times and they become best friend. Sometimes Bruno
gives Shmuel food and also helps him. A year later, Bruno’s mother asks Bruno’s father to
move back to Berlin. Knowing that information, Bruno meet Shmuel and said that he will
come back to Berlin, so Bruno decides to come to the fence at the last day when they meet to
help Shmuel finding his father. Bruno wears striped pajamas and also striped hat. Both of
them cannot find Shmuel’s father, and they are mixed up with a group of people that lead
them into a gas chamber. For about a month, his family searching for Bruno but they can’t
find him. A year later, his father returns to the fence he found Bruno’s clothes and a big gap.
From the information, his father concludes that they gassed Bruno to death.

The main characters in this book are Bruno, Gretel, Bruno’s mom, Bruno’s dad, and Shmuel.
Bruno is a 9 years old boy that lives in Berlin and forced to move to Auschwitz because his
father is reassigned. He is an innocent boy, kind and adventurous, and curious boy. He likes
to explore everything that he sees. The example of Bruno’s curiosity is when he sees a fence
behind his house. Then a few days later, he explores his backyard and he found a boy called
Shmuel. While the example of Bruno’s kindness is when he found out that Shmuel haven’t
eaten, then the next day when he meets Shmuel, he brings some bread and let Shmuel
comes to his house. The next one is Gretel, which is Bruno’s sister. She is a person that is
easy to be influenced by others. The example from the story is when Gretel is totally changed
when her family move to “Out-With”. She changed from totally normal girl that likes to play
doll, become a strong Nazi supporter. The next one is Bruno’s mom. She is a submissive
woman. She also doesn’t like violence. The other one is Bruno’s dad, which is Ralf. He a
strict and also strong guy. But sometimes he is arrogant. He is a guy that likes to be on top of
the others. He is strict because he thinks that he needs to obey the rule. The last main
character is Shmuel. He is a boy that lives inside the fence with the other Jews. He and his
father were being pulled out from his family to go to the concentration camp. Inside the camp,
he is separated from his father because his father needs to do a job. He is a knowledgeable
and also brave boy. He is knowledgeable because he can speak more than 2 languages,
which is Polish, German, and French a little bit. The example of Shmuel’s braveness is when
he goes to the corner of the fence to meet Bruno.

The author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is john Boyne. John Boyne is the author of
eight novels for adult and three novels for young readers. He was born on 30th April 1971 in
Dublin, Ireland. His novels are published in 46 languages. He is an Irish novelist. John Boyne
studied English Literature at Trinity College in Dublin and creative writing at University of East
Angila in Norwich. He was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. When he was writing for the first
time, most of his writing is short stories and some of them are published. John Boyne
published around 70 short stories. John Boyne's novel, which is The Boy in the Striped
Pajamas, was made into an award-wining Miramax film. This book also won a host of
international awards. It is the New York Times Best seller and was the bestselling book in
Spain in 2007 and 2008. It has sold more than 5 million copies, worldwide.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas book is important to John Boyne’s life, because this book has
won so many awards, which is Irish Book Award Children’s Book of the Year, Irish Book
Award People’s Choice Book of the Year, Bisto Book of the Year, Que Leer Award Best
International Novel of the Year (Spain), Orange Prize Readers Group Book of the Year.
Besides that, these book also a New York Times Best seller. The book also shortlisted for
British Book Award, the Border’s New Voices Award, the Paolo Ungari Literary Award (Italy,
Irish Book Award Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Leeds Book Award, the North-East Book
Award, the Berkshire Book Award, the Sheffield Book Award, the Lancashire Book Award,
Prix Farniente (Belgium), Flemish Young Readers Award, Independent Booksellers Book of
the Year, Deutschen Jugend Literatur Preis (Germany). The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
novel winning two Irish Book Awards that really meant a lot for him. John Boyne writes this
book because he is inspired by a lot of writers over the years.

In an interview, John Boyne said that he was a student of Holocaust but he never expected to
write about it. But one day he has an idea of two boys at a fence talking to each other and
one of them are from the point of view of the German child and everyday he will walk to the
fence and asking questions. He said that the idea is too interesting to ignore.

The real setting of this book is during World War II. During World War II, German Nazi
occupied Europe. At that moment, there was a time when Jewish was suffering from
Germany’s activity. Some of the Jews are beaten to death, and around 3,000 Jewish men
were taken to the concentration camp, around 6,000 Jews were murdered. There were 7
camps where the Jewish men were taken, which is Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno,
Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka II. From the 7 camps, the one that is in the book is
Auschwitz. The end of the war had killed a lot of Jewish population in Europe killed in the
Holocaust. At first, Poland has a lot of Jewish population, but because of the war, the Nazis
murdered around 90% or around 3,000,000 Jews. While around 70% of Jewish population in
some of the places around Europe like Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bohemia, the
Netherlands, Slovakia, and Latvia, were killed.

In this book, the author is using some language devices to engage me. One of the examples
is simile. “It was a source of constant disappointment to him that he wasn’t as tall as any of
the other boys in his class”. The author use simile, which is the words as tall as. In the
sentence, it makes me imagine that the author is making a comparison between Bruno and
his classmates about his height. The other one is from the sentence “Bruno would run away
and do his stretching exercises and hope that he would wake up one morning and have
grown an extra foot or two”. I think it is the example of hyperbole. Another example of
hyperbole is “He watched the door, hardly daring to breathe”. The other example is in this
sentence “He ran into Gretel’s room without knocking and discovered her placing her
civilization of dolls on various shelves around the room”. It is personification because of the
word civilization of doll, which gives the doll the effect of human being.

When I finished reading this book, I feel touched because of the things that Bruno do for
Shmuel. He is breaking the rules that his family has for friendship. He does everything to help
his best friend, for example when Bruno goes inside the fence to help Shmuel. He is willing to
sacrifice his life for his best friend. I feel touched because there are few people like Bruno in
this world. People that will do everything just for his/her friend, even though he/she needs to
break the rule and also lying to his/her parent. Besides that, I also feel curious why Jews are
killed like that in German, because I think it is not fair for Jews people to be killed not because
of strong reason. After reading this book it makes changes to my life. I realize that I need to
appreciate my life because I’m so lucky that I don’t need to spend my life in the concentration
camp. I also learnt a lot about friendship. I learnt from Bruno that friends are everything
besides family.