Preview

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
626 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Analysis
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Told almost entirely from a young, naive German boy’s point of view, Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a hard-hitting Holocaust tale that will render audiences speechless. After arriving home, Bruno (Asa Butterfield) learns that his family will have to move because his father (David Thewlis) achieved a promotion in the Nazi army. Bruno noticed what he believed to be farmers living just past a stretch of woods near their new home. One day, not long after being told not to go near the “farmers,” Bruno leaves his home and heads towards the camp. There he meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a young Jewish boy. While trying to understand what is happening in the world around them, the boys become friends. While
…show more content…
It is hard for someone to fully immerse themselves into a movie when they have to suspend so much belief in the story. Although Bruno and Shmuel are both only eight, it is hard to believe that they would be as clueless as to what is happening. Shmuel lived in the concentration camp and seemed to have no idea what was going on inside it. It is also hard to believe that Bruno, being as curious as he is, would not have tried eavesdropping on his father’s meetings. It is also convenient that none of the guards ever caught them sitting by the fence or that, Bruno’s mother did not notice that he has been disappearing every day. Another unbelievable aspect is how Bruno was able to easily enter into the camp. The camps were meant to be well guarded, and if it were that easy for a boy to enter, it would have been easy for anyone to leave.
Overall The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was a well-made movie. It provided entertainment at times and emotional turmoil at others. The haunting soundtrack and great pacing is able to overshadow the questionable believability in the execution of the movie. I would give The Boy in the Striped Pajamas roughly eight stars out of a total of ten. With that said, I would recommend it to anyone interested in watching this heart-wrenching and haunting drama about the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    At the beginning of the movie, Bruno is completely naive about Germany patriotism. It has the audience curious because Bruno live in Berlin where is known as the capital of Nazi Germany. He at first thought the concentration camp as a farm where he could possibly meet his potential playmate. It is surprising when Bruno is unaware of the Nazi’s propaganda against the Jews. Assumingly, Bruno and Gretel are going to a public school where Nazis ideology was educated in the early age. Even with an overprotective mother, Elsa, Little Bruno must have seen the inequality in Berlin such as benches at the park labeled as “Aryans only” and the Jews being rejected from using streetcars in Berlin. As a German boy, Bruno must have witness the scene of “der Führe”, the leader, passing the city with their expensive car. However, it is the opposite with Bruno, instead of acknowledging the Nazi activities, he is utterly impractical about what is happening in Germany during the 1940s like the children today.…

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    How can two best friends simultaneously be enemies? John Boyne answers this question in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He writes a tale about a Nazi commandant’s son who befriends another boy. They soon become best friends. Everyday Bruno the commandant’s son, visits Shmuel, a concentration camp inmate. Since Bruno’s father works for Hitler and Shmuel and his family are trapped by Hitler, this makes things difficult on the boys. Instead of being able to play with each other, like Bruno wants, they are separated by a fence. Bruno and Shmuel have these secret meetings every day and Bruno’s mother is also having secret meetings. However, her meetings are with the young lieutenant who works for Hitler. Although this is not clearly stated in the book, one can infer that she is having an affair with the man. Eventually, the commandant sends the lieutenant away. After a while of visiting each other Bruno learns that he is moving. As a last adventure, the two devise a plan that involves Bruno crossing the fence. When Bruno finally crosses, a herd of Nazi army officials rush a group of Jews and Bruno into an air tight room. He is only nine-years-old so he is clueless about the…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Night by Elie Wiesel and the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas show two extremely interesting perspectives towards the Holocaust. Night was a non-fiction novel written by a Jewish boy who was in an actual concentration camp. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was a movie based off of a fiction novel written by John Boyne that tells the story of a Nazi soldier’s son named Bruno that befriends a Jewish boy he meets at a nearby concentration camp. Within the two stories, there were differences in perspective, mood, and overall message.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Attributes that pertain to all stories are things such as beginning, middle, and end, characters, a plot, an author, and an intended purpose. So, why are some stories better than others? If every story consists of these components, why are we not moved by every novel we read? There are many things that distinguish bad, mediocre, good, and great stories. The function and the fundamental elements of masterpieces are quite different from just any other published book.…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Boyne uses narrative voice and a variety of other literary devices to convey the main ideas of prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and innocence in his novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (BITSP)”. Boyne’s novel portrays the story of a young German boy in Nazi Germany who befriends a Jewish child residing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The author explores prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and ideas of innocence in his novel. Boyne uses third person limited narrative, dramatic irony, juxtaposition, setting and symbolism to convey these ideas in his novel. Boyne’s novel uses these techniques to create these ideas, giving us an insight into the experiences of the Jewish people during Nazi Germany.…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Boyne represents the different perspectives of society in World War II through the representations of characters in the fictional novel The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. Bruno’s childlike perspective is represented through his malapropism of “the Fury” and “Out-With” and his reaction to unexpected events, “mouth making the shape of an O”. The irony of Bruno’s narrow view, “it’s so unfair...” confronts the audience with the ignorance of some German citizens to the horrific events of the Holocaust. The characters of “Mother” and “Grandmother” are utilised by Boyne to represent the differing perspectives of the society during the Holocaust. Grandmother exercises constructive disobedience in dissenting with the Nazi regime and perceiving Fathers role as “a puppet on a string”. This is juxtaposed to Bruno's Mother through the euphemism of "[Bruno] had never known anyone to need quite so many medicinal Sherries" showing her complacency to do nothing about the knowledge of the concentration camp. Boyne positions an older audience to see the dangers of naivety and the cost of inaction.…

    • 510 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the movie, “The boy in the stripped pajamas,” 8 year old Bruno has a great deal of loss of sovereignty. Set in the times of World War II, and the son of the commandant o a concentration camp, he knew little about what was really going on. Understanding that he was only 8 years of age, it was obvious to why his father kept such things from him. Oblivious to it all. Until one day, he and his family moved from their old home into more of a secluded area, not knowing less than a few feet away were…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I felt anger. Anger arose in me when I saw that Bruno’s father was hiding the Jewish concentration camp from his family. Sadness also arose in me when Bruno was put to death by the gas chamber before his parents discovered where he was. I felt curiosity when Bruno was so interested to go on an “adventure” to discover the “farm”. I was curious to understand why he was so thrilled to go see the camp. I guess since he was so young and did not understand. I will now explain how I felt about the actions of the…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cited: Herman, Mark, dir. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Miramax Films, 2008. Film. 15 Dec 2013.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Another reason Bruno’s innocence was poor was the fact that his innocence basically caused him to die. He was so uninvolved in the situation that he marched right into his death. In The Boy in The Striped Pajamas Shmuel and Bruno, being young boys who loved to explore, went looking for papa, and were in the wrong spot in the wrong time. The Nazi soldiers had every Jew in the surrounding area line up and start a…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Second World War the Nazis were cleansing the Jewish population of Europe. In the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne he writes about a Jewish boy named Shmuel and a German boy named Bruno. Shmuel is a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp named Auschwitz and Bruno’s father is a high-ranking member of the Nazi forces station at Auschwitz. The two boys somehow become friends despite the stupendous odds set against each other by the German forces, "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life” (Boyne 213). This quote shows the strength Bruno has to stay with Shmuel to the end even though he is considered less equal as Bruno. When Bruno was at home talking to his father about Shmuel says, “The people I see from the window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same. Ah, those people, Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno"(Boyne 53). Brunos innocence is shown is this quote from him having no idea what is going on in the world at the time, and through his eyes he sees everyone as…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, is a book about two children that were enemies, but at the the end, they became friends. Throughout the book, I describe Bruno as playful ,and smart. I described Bruno as playful, because he loved to play with his old friends before he moved to his new house in Berlin. Once he got to his new house in Berlin, he didn't have no one to play with, than he asked Pavel to create a swing with an old tire.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    History in a Nutshell

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The boy in the striped pajamas was a film of sadness that also educated me even more on the life of a camp inmate. I really liked the plot of the movie and how it centered on kids, who are innocent and don’t care about another’s race, religion, or ethnicity. I liked how the relationship of Bruno and Smuel developed and how they started hanging out by the fence all the time despite their completely different upbringings and experiences. One thing I found gruesome and horrible was the way they treated the Jews and how the Germans thought of them. It had to be included in the movie and I understand that but at some points, it hit me hard and made me understand even more what those people had to go through. For example, Pavel’s beating for innocently spilling a glass of wine shows how the Jews were treated like dirt and the horror they went through. I like how Bruno was not easily influenced by the propaganda his father brought upon him because he cared more about what a person was like and how they treated him, not because of race. I think this was a great choice of a movie by Mr. Ballenger because it showed what the Jews had to go through and gave me a perspective about how lucky I am. All in All, it was a great film that was very sad but is great for people to watch in order to learn about the dreadful life of the Jews during the Holocaust.…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, we follow an 8 year old boy named Bruno who’s growing up during the Nazi regime. His father is a higher up in the Nazi military, and is fed bad information about jewish people. But when they move to the countryside, Bruno meets a young boy named Shmuel who’s in…

    • 1061 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Themes like intolerance, the discrimination against Jewish people, and the will and strengths that these people had to survive. Most of this discrimination against the Jewish people came from the Nazi soldiers, but not all Nazi soldiers were ‘evil’, some were just doing what they were told with fear of being turned against if they didn’t. Some other texts of this genre explore whether or not everyday Germans had a full understanding of what was going on and weather or not they did anything about it. These issues can be seen in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. We see a lot of hatred towards the Jewish people through characters like Lt. Kotler and Adolf Hitler, and we also see a lot of evidence of the German people being unaware of what was going on. For example, Bruno asks Shmuel if he played “Football for example. Or exploration”. This identifies Bruno’s lack of knowledge of what went on in the concentration…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays