This book is about the Holocaust through the eyes of an eight- or nine-year-old boy named Bruno. His father is a general, and because of this he is assigned to oversee a place called Out-With--thus his whole family must move with him, despite their wishes.
The description on the back: "If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Thought this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence. Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one."
The first thing you notice--one of the first things--is Bruno's trouble with words. Being a young boy, this is understandable and to be expected. He calls Hitler the 'Fury' and Auschwitz 'Out-With'. He also has trouble with the word 'Jews'. Usually I don't read the 'bonus material' in the back of books, but in this case I felt compelled to when I had finished the book. One of the 'book club' questions is pretty much "Bruno has trouble with certain words because he has a kid, he mispronounces and misunderstands them, etc, but do you think there could have been a greater reason why the author chose to make these changes? Some other significant meaning, or some such?" (It's a little more put together than that...) So okay, in that case, Hitler's is pretty much self-explanatory: fury is violent, passionate, actions done with great violence, vehemence, passion, and so on. But Out-With... Out-With I have grappled with. My best guess is that Auschwitz is removed from the community--or the people of the community have done their best to displace it from their community in their heads, or ignore it, or blind themselves (see Stephen King's novella 'Apt Pupil'), so it is 'out'... But being human they are 'with' these people, because they are united in the fact that they are fellow humans, or in that they can't really turn away, deep down they know, regardless of what they have told themselves... So they're... Together but removed, if you will. Out yet With.
As for Jews, he never hears it incorrectly--it just skirts the word until his sister teaches it to him outright. His reaction to it is that he likes the word, the sound of it and all.
One thing I will mention before I actually start pulling quotes and stuff is that John Boyne does a great job of writing like he is a child thinking. So... Yeah. Let's go:
"'If you ask me, we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking'" (58). This is Bruno complaining about the new living situation to their (Jewish) housekeeper, Maria. Maria of course gets panicked and tells him to stop complaining about the situation and his father, because if it wasn't for Bruno's father's influence, one, she would have been penniless, two, she'd most likely be in a death camp. But this quote is what Bruno says about the situation, which I find impressive. I mean... it seems very adult of him. Like, Bruno parrots back a lot of phrases like kids are apt to, though he doesn't understand them, but there is no precedent for this one. He's just like BAM. And then he modifies it. And I'm all impressed. Just thought I'd mention it.
"'He's crazy,' Bruno said, twirling his finger in circles around the side of his head and whistling to indicate just how crazy he thought he was. 'He went up to a cat on the street the other day and invited her over for afternoon tea.' 'What did the cat say?' asked Gretel, who was making a sandwich in the corner of the kitchen. 'Nothing,' explained Bruno. 'It was a cat'" (68). This is just a little interlude. Nothing really pivotal. But for some reason, I really, really like this bit. Like, originally I didn't mark it to mention but I couldn't stop thinking of it, so I went back and marked it. And here we are...
"'Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know'" (82). This is said by Pavel, a Jewish cook--however he, unlike Maria, lives in the camp. He was a doctor before he was forced to become a cook.
"What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?" (100).
Ooookay. It actually takes kind of a long time to get to the boy named in the title. Not till halfway through the book, literally. Bruno decides to try out his favourite activity--exploring. Shmuel is a boy from inside the fence--and the boy of the title, of course. And the two become friends, of course. They start meeting each other at the fence to talk through it from their separate sides at certain appointed times in the day. They become best friends.
"'Shmuel.' [Bruno] thought about it. 'Shmuel,' he repeated. 'I like the way it sounds when I say it. Shmuel. It sounds like the wind blowing'" (108).
Oh, and Hitler appears in the book too. Bruno has a flashback to the reason why they move--Hitler and his girlfriend come to dinner, where Hitler tells his father that they must move. I can say honestly, that even when Hitler is just being represented by squiggles on a page, he is a scary, scary man. He makes stupid quips everyone must laugh at, and Gretel wants attention so she pipes up and says that she can speak French. Hitler immediately turns ice-cold and asks why she would want to. A very Visser Three-esque feeling, I get. Which makes sense, I suppose. But it's a very tense scene even just reading, because even though the kids don't really get what's up (or at least Bruno)... I mean, you (the reader) know it's Hitler. And that tends to be one of those things that makes a person nervous... He doesn't exactly have a great reputation. Also, it's kind of weird to think of Hitler as a character in a book. And by 'kind of' I mean really, really weird.
"The Fury was far shorter than Father and not, Bruno supposed, quite as strong. He had dark hair, which was cut quite short, and a tiny moustache--so tiny in fact that Bruno wondered why he bothered with it at all or whether he had simply forgotten a piece when he was shaving" (121).
So, Bruno meets with Shmuel. They become close, regardless of the fact that they can't... really... become physically close. Like actually play together or anything. But. During all of this, of course, life is going on as usual at Bruno's home. Normal, average things--like a lice infestation. Bruno gets his head shaved in an effort to combat them. Right around here, on page 184, you get a sinking feeling,
"'Do you miss your friends?' 'Well, yes,' [Bruno] replied, considering his answer carefully. 'But I think I'd miss people no matter where I went'" (189).
The spoilers will be in this next section. You have been warned. Bruno's mother's desire to go back home is eventually honoured and it's decided they will go back. Bruno is upset about leaving Shmuel--and Shmuel is upset too. He's upset about that and the fact that his father has disappeared and no-one can seem to find him. Bruno decides that for their last meeting they will explore together, and Bruno will help Shmuel find his father. Because his head his shaved, he will look like he'd fit in at the other end of the fence--just so long as they can get him a set of striped pajamas.
Hearing this plan, I literally was saying no under my breath. I was literally speaking to it--going, "Oh God, no no no." Whether you want to look at it or not, from that point on you know how it will end. It is not an inkling. It is as inevitable as, I don't know, nightfall. Daybreak. It is there. They boys are swept up in a march. Thus Bruno's portion of the story ends:
"And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go" (213).
And deep down, for the fraction of the second it takes to turn the page, you still want to hope, even though your heart is already broken, but then: "Nothing more of Bruno was ever heard of Bruno after that" (214).
John Boyne ends with his own note. "...Only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all. Fences such as the one at the heart of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas still exist; it is unlikely that they will ever fully disappear. But whatever reaction you have to this story, I hope that the voices of Bruno and Shmuel will continue to resonate with you as they have with me. Their lost voices must continue to be heard; their untold stories must be continue to be recounted. For they represent the ones who didn't live to tell their stories themselves" (218).
Like I said, there's 'bonus material' in the back too. Some of it is an interview with John Boyne. He's an incredibly eloquent fellow.
"[The book] came to me originally as one single image, of two boys sitting on either side of a fence, having a conversation. And I knew where that fence was. I knew those two boys really shouldn't be there. They had no business being there" (4). (The extras are numbered separately.)
"One of the big questions, and one of the big facts about the Holocaust, is that so many people just were complacent and didn't do anything. It's what we call 'Hitler's willing executioners.' People who sat by and did nothing. It raises the question of if we were there at that time, would we all have stood up and done something? You'd like to think you would have. Would you have? That's the question that people have to ask themselves" (8).
I was so enthralled with the book that I even read the book catalogue in the back. It doesn't really have to do with anything, but I was pleased to see Robert Cormier's I Am The Cheese and Holes by Louis Sachar. Both of these books are amazing. There's also a Jerry Spinelli book in the catalogue called Milkweed, also about the Holocaust--which I want to read just because it's Jerry Spinelli, and he was my favourite author of all time for a looooong time. I actually remember seeing this book at the local library and for whatever reason not choosing to read it. (Probably so I'd be able to take out Space Station Seventh Grade again.)
Anyway. The book. It was--a book. The book was a book. I can't assign a word to it. It was it was, but not in a bad way, or a good way. I mean, it was--good--but, that's not the word. I don't know the word needed. But I personally think it should be read. At the very least, read the interviews with the author. It seems strange that you'd choose to just do that, but if anything, just do that.
As for the movie, I've yet to see it, and I'm not sure that I'd want to. I mean, I would, but maybe in the "If it comes up on Netflix streaming in my suggested or if it's on TV" way. You know? I wouldn't choose to watch it, but I would.
MLA citation information: Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. David Fickling Books: New York, 2006.
I also feel like this (instead of the cryptic lyrics, which will return next post) is appropriate--it's an episode of the Twilight Zone. It's called "Death's Head Revisited". It's about a general from Dachau who goes back to visit the camp after ten years to remember the 'good old days'. He's visited by the ghost of a man he killed and tortured (mentally) as the men he killed were tortured. The episode was mediocre at best, but I include a link to it for Rod Serling's conclusion speech. I think it is poignant, and it stands in the same way as this book stands, or at least in the same way as John Boyne intended it to stand. Start at 3:30. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwUvTNmvynQ
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