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The boy in the striped pyjamas - book review - Referat
The boy in the striped pyjamas - book review
The novel ‘The boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, written by John Boyne, deals with the story of a boy named Bruno, who moves away from Berlin, because his father gets a new job in ‘Out – With’, where Bruno meets the Jewish boy Shmuel and soon their adventures begin.
The main characters are Bruno, Gretel, Shmuel, Bruno’s parents and Lieutenant Kotler. Bruno is the son of the family and the most important part of the novel, is that Bruno meets the Jewish Boy Shmuel, who become really good friends. Gretel is the sister of Bruno. Her and Bruno often have little fights, but especially in the end of the story is shown, that Gretel loves her brother, like everybody does.
The story takes place at the concentration-camp Auschwitz, which was used by the Nazis to abolish and kill thousands of Jews in the 2nd world-war. The time, when the novel takes place is also the horrible part in the German history, when Hitler was the ‘fury’ of the nazi- dictatorship. The story is about 1 to 1 ½ years long and ends 7 months after Bruno’s dead.
I will short give an overlook on the plot of the novel.
In the beginning of the novel, Bruno comes back home from school and he notices, that his family’s mate, Maria is packing his things into a suitcase. When he asks his mother, she just mentions, that his father got a new job and that they will have to move away.
At first, when they arrive at so called ‘Out- With’, Bruno is really bored and he has no idea what to do. There are no other boys he could play with, just a weird fence, with hundreds of men, who wear striped pyjamas and work all day.
In this part of the book, the characters are described closely and Bruno tells stories about the past, about his grandparents, about his new private- teacher, Herr Liszt and especially, about what his thoughts of Out-With.
After a while, Bruno wants to discover the area around his new house and the strange fence, which he always sees, when he looks out of his window.
After one hour of discovering, he recognizes a boy, sitting on the other side of the fence. The Jewish boy is called Shmuel and soon they become friends. They meet as often as they can and talk a lot. Bruno doesn’t understand, what the fence is for, but one day Bruno’s sister Gretel explains that all the people on the other side of the fence are Jewish and that the people on Bruno’s sideof the fence hate Jews.
Bruno doesn’t care and likes Shmuel anyway. They still meet nearly every day. After one year of living, in Out-With, Bruno’s mother is very unhappy and she doesn’t like it anymore. After a discussion, Bruno’s parents decide, that it might be the best idea for all of them, if the mother would move back to their old house in Berlin and take the kids with her. Bruno doesn’t know how to think about this decision, because he likes Shmuel a lot and he thinks, a lot of things have changed, during his year in Out-With.
When he tells Shmuel the news, he is also very sad and he adds, that his father is lost and he can’t find him anywhere. Bruno thinks that’s really strange and he wants to help, finding him. So the both boys decide, to do a final adventure.
Shmuel gets some striped pyjamas for Bruno and he crawls through a small a little hole underneath the fence, onto the other side.
The boys look everywhere, but they can’t find Shmuel’s father. Instead of having fun for a last time, they get into serious trouble. They have to go for a march, with all the other prisoners and they end up, in a dark room with no windows,
It’s not described, but Bruno, Shmuel and all the other Jews, who went for the march, are killed.
Bruno’s whole family is shocked, because they can’t find Bruno anywhere. Bruno’s father changes a lot and becomes really unpopular. He has to go and work at a different place and Bruno’s mother and Gretel move back to Berlin. Nobody of his family wants to understand, that Bruno will never come back and Gretel is crying all day.
John Boyne writes in the present. He shows the Nazis as the bad people and Bruno& Shmuel as the good ones. I think he’s absolutely right, because the Nazis were and still are terrible people. The story is really serious and the writer, John Boyne wasn’t supposed to be funny. I think the best writing-skill is at the end of the novel, where Boyne sends a message to the readers. He says that the story plays long time ago and that something like that won’t happen again. I think it’s sarcasm and it should be an advice for all the people to vote and to fight against racism, so something that bad can’t happen again.
On my opinion, the writer wants to show more than just the story of Bruno and Shmuel. The story of the both boys is an example for thousands of Jews. John Boyne uses the friendship of Bruno and Shmuel to make the readers feel like if it would be their friend. I really like Boyne’s writing-style, because I can imagine being Bruno.
All in all the book is really sad, but also beautiful. John Boyne has great talent and I would like to know other books, he wrote.
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