Sunday, March 7, 2010

Does The Boy In The Striped Pajamas deal with the sensitive subject of the Holocuas in an appropriate way?


I believe The Boy In The Striped Pajamas deals with the sensitive subject of the Holocaust in an appropriate way. The author, John Boyne wrote the book in a child's eye view, use of words to explain 'the other side of fence' and he also showed what people were seeing by thinking, not inferring information to represent the confusion of people. The book is in Bruno's point of view, a child's point of view. This boy portrays the German people or any other people who didn't know so well about the Holocaust. John Boyne did a fantastic job to explain those brain-washed people. There were a lot of explanations about 'the other side of fence'. Those skinny, bony people with old and disgusting pajamas were crowded in a small place. By using the window in Bruno's room and also the place with Shmuel, the horror/gory was deeply explain. Also this historical fiction has a lot of foreshadowing in the character's view or thought, it's never told what's going to happen, but it is referred to the following chapters which leads to 'the final solution'. As Bruno said in the novel, they were in the other side of fence but we weren't so different.

Picture source: http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-4/auschwitz-fence2.GIF