The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne Essay examples -- The Boy

A world in which old men can be degraded and abused, a world in which people wearing dirty, unwashed, striped uniforms are not seen as being oppressed, a world in which a starving boy of identical age yet vastly different physique is seen as simply being unfortunate - such a world cannot exist. Or can it? In the world of Bruno, this is precisely the way the world is. John Boyne's book "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" invites the readers to embark on an imaginative journey at two levels. At the first level, Boyne himself embarks upon an imaginative journey that explores a possible scenario in relation to Auschwitz. Bruno is a 9 year old boy growing up in a loving, but typically authoritarian German family in the 1930?s. His father is a senior military officer who is appointed Commandant of Auschwitz ? a promotion that requires upheaval from their comfortable home in Berlin to an austere home in the Polish countryside. The story explores Bruno?s difficulty in accepting and adapting to this change - especially the loss of his friends and grandparents. Boyne gives personality and family to the sort of person who today is generally demonised by western writings - the people who administered and controlled the death camps in which over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other deemed to be grossly inferior by Hitler and his cohorts. In so doing he encourages us to see a different world ? a world in which obedience is paramount and in which authority figures can never be questioned. He shows us the problem that surfaces when people who are trained to be obedient are confronted with orders that, if analysed and considered, can be clearly seen to be an affront to all human values and decency. People can happily obey ?The Fury? ... ... will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process. Bruno's imaginative journey is a flight from reality. It is a classic example of the psychological "fight or flight" syndrome experienced by all animals (including humans) when they are confronted by something of which they are unsure or afraid - something which challenges their current reality. What Boyne does in this story is to use Bruno to show how either approach can be totally destructive: the critical lesson is that we must acknowledge reality and do what we can to remove the fences that would destroy not only ?us? but our entire world. All imaginative journeys lead to a revelation - both Bruno and the readers will come to realize that their imaginative journeys have transformed them and affected them in indescribable ways and we, the readers come to a realization as well about what is happening.