Books about the Holocaust are never easy to read. Some are downright terrifying and some make the reader nauseous. This book however approaches this period in history from a new and interesting angle and tells a tale of what might have happened, and in doing so opens up these stories to a whole new generation of readers. The book was originally marketed as a children's book, and then remarketed as adult fiction because of the content.
This is the story of two boys who lose everything they hold dear, yet the reality of their loss is completely different. Bruno's life is changed when his father is given a new job and they move from their five-story home in Berlin to a new home in the country that is only three stories tall. He has lost his 3 best friends in life, and his home with the banister and the attic window that looks out over all of Berlin. His new bedroom window looks over small huts in a fenced-in area where everyone wears striped pajamas. One day while being rebellious and doing what he should never do, he walks along the fence and meets a boy with whom he shares a birthday. Shmuel and Bruno meet most days and sit on the opposite sides of the fence and talk. As their friendship grows Bruno's youthful innocence is challenged.
The novel is told in the third person narrative, but told from a nine-year- old's perspective. Though the reader knows that the story takes place at Auschwitz, Bruno cannot pronounce it, and misunderstood the name from the beginning. Yet in not naming the place the author leaves the story as a much broader tale.
This book is extremely well-written; it takes the reader to a place and time we should never forget, and it reminds us of the human element in all stories. John Boyne has written a book that could become required reading for all school children, and maybe all adults should read it also, lest we forget. So pick it up and walk with Bruno and Shmuel as they develop a growing friendship just sitting and talking through a barbed- wire-topped chain link fence.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Introduction:
Lines may divide us, but hope will unite us ...Nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country. All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no one to play with. Until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas. Bruno's friendship with Shmuel will take him from innocence to revelation. And in exploring what he is unwittingly a part of, he will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Read the book,my thoughts:
This book is very good, the outcome was very moved.Hero Bruno and Jews shmuel is a good friend, they ignore their own identity, how pure feelings. Germans and Jews can not become friends, because of historical reasons. Jews were detained a German, a prisoner. We can see how the world was dark. We also are all human, everyone is equal. We can not then forward the history of life.
The whole of Germany was eroding, and will eventually corrode less than the corner, the crowd. What are the ethnic minority border areas, there are those ignorant youth, such as Bruno, a man of those vicissitudes of reading to do, such as Bruno's grandmother. Not only in Germany that, when the Cultural Revolution, we do not have the same ordinary people as cover underground, secretly a cover over half of the defeated people, so those who raised a little light to live it? Pulp in the same black ink in the sink, there are some crystal clear heart, faintly in the flash. Stamp on the foot as being spark a prairie fire in the ridicule of the entire country is dark. Jewish concentration camp so cruel events of the past, writers actually think of two missing companions through the eye of the young point of view, people worship. Nazi children are not completely brainwashed, even though he felt the Jews is bad, not all is. He wrapped his legs to give the prisoners politely said thank you, he felt that the child is his farm friends, succeed in do not want to leave. Jewish children have not been soaked nightmare, he did not know where my father went, he did not know what the concentration camps in the end, he with his naive and simple, so that the remaining time of life there is the sun shining. This weak point the sun is the net fence sat a while and see green, think mountains. The emergence of entirely Bruno windfall, this is not where he's hoping. Bruno's ball is not in the context that he can enjoy, even like it do not hesitate to throw out.
Bruno the original living quarters the students, every day, play together, and each other there is no difference, no suspicion, no I'm sorry, 99% of the sun-degree, left to survive on the left part of his familiar part. To the farms, Bruno has also been isolated, no friends, only dull, shackles, to brainwash the family teacher, only the blind with the situation of radical sister, only the family background is not so plainer, trying to prove plainer aide, and only afraid of reality, trying to to avoid the mother, only by adhering to allegiance to fulfill our mission of his father. Bruno is only yourself.
He did not run the streets a free, no let the wind through the fingers flying, not a common age, there is no coordination of the game, without being wrecked world. A child stuck in the middle of a group of abnormal adults, adults in the part of the brain stem tissue removed by the state, they panic absurd, cruel evil behavior, children hide nowhere to hide, the solution can not be solved. So Bruno to escape this madhouse at home, he wants to go to the normal world. The boy is wearing striped pajamas a normal person, who is not hideous. They even can not Chuanjie line, can not play with the ride, can not have a small piece of free sky, but the two can sit together to talk, play chess or even across the network, looking out across the same boy as their own, they can . Although there still can not understand between the differences, insurmountable ravine, but look, there is a language, a soul on it.
Bruno can not the playground, not toys, not clothes beautiful, but not the boy did not wear striped pajamas. In particular, the strong force in the adjutant, he had to say bad things, to the adjutant had the opportunity - that he vowed to exterminate the Jews of determination. Jewish children black and blue, but he has grown used to, and submissive, even if the aide is not playing, but also there will be other Nazi fight, fight is a common practice, the enjoyment of playing is light. So he really does not hate Bruno, Bruno and even in that situation to understand that King had under.
Bruno extreme remorse, did not lose his good point, although in such an environment. He has to compensate, he has to do something for a friend, the friend's dad was gone, the power of two people looking for bigger, spiritual action should have support. The support for virtually all the Germans have not replaced the meaning of repentance to the Jews? An innocent boy's life, Nazi, although not compensate the lives of six million Jews, but among the German people the kind of helpless incompetence can not, or can feel.
The whole of Germany was eroding, and will eventually corrode less than the corner, the crowd. What are the ethnic minority border areas, there are those ignorant youth, such as Bruno, a man of those vicissitudes of reading to do, such as Bruno's grandmother. Not only in Germany that, when the Cultural Revolution, we do not have the same ordinary people as cover underground, secretly a cover over half of the defeated people, so those who raised a little light to live it? Pulp in the same black ink in the sink, there are some crystal clear heart, faintly in the flash. Stamp on the foot as being spark a prairie fire in the ridicule of the entire country is dark. Jewish concentration camp so cruel events of the past, writers actually think of two missing companions through the eye of the young point of view, people worship. Nazi children are not completely brainwashed, even though he felt the Jews is bad, not all is. He wrapped his legs to give the prisoners politely said thank you, he felt that the child is his farm friends, succeed in do not want to leave. Jewish children have not been soaked nightmare, he did not know where my father went, he did not know what the concentration camps in the end, he with his naive and simple, so that the remaining time of life there is the sun shining. This weak point the sun is the net fence sat a while and see green, think mountains. The emergence of entirely Bruno windfall, this is not where he's hoping. Bruno's ball is not in the context that he can enjoy, even like it do not hesitate to throw out.
Bruno the original living quarters the students, every day, play together, and each other there is no difference, no suspicion, no I'm sorry, 99% of the sun-degree, left to survive on the left part of his familiar part. To the farms, Bruno has also been isolated, no friends, only dull, shackles, to brainwash the family teacher, only the blind with the situation of radical sister, only the family background is not so plainer, trying to prove plainer aide, and only afraid of reality, trying to to avoid the mother, only by adhering to allegiance to fulfill our mission of his father. Bruno is only yourself.
He did not run the streets a free, no let the wind through the fingers flying, not a common age, there is no coordination of the game, without being wrecked world. A child stuck in the middle of a group of abnormal adults, adults in the part of the brain stem tissue removed by the state, they panic absurd, cruel evil behavior, children hide nowhere to hide, the solution can not be solved. So Bruno to escape this madhouse at home, he wants to go to the normal world. The boy is wearing striped pajamas a normal person, who is not hideous. They even can not Chuanjie line, can not play with the ride, can not have a small piece of free sky, but the two can sit together to talk, play chess or even across the network, looking out across the same boy as their own, they can . Although there still can not understand between the differences, insurmountable ravine, but look, there is a language, a soul on it.
Bruno can not the playground, not toys, not clothes beautiful, but not the boy did not wear striped pajamas. In particular, the strong force in the adjutant, he had to say bad things, to the adjutant had the opportunity - that he vowed to exterminate the Jews of determination. Jewish children black and blue, but he has grown used to, and submissive, even if the aide is not playing, but also there will be other Nazi fight, fight is a common practice, the enjoyment of playing is light. So he really does not hate Bruno, Bruno and even in that situation to understand that King had under.
Bruno extreme remorse, did not lose his good point, although in such an environment. He has to compensate, he has to do something for a friend, the friend's dad was gone, the power of two people looking for bigger, spiritual action should have support. The support for virtually all the Germans have not replaced the meaning of repentance to the Jews? An innocent boy's life, Nazi, although not compensate the lives of six million Jews, but among the German people the kind of helpless incompetence can not, or can feel.
Description:
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a 2006 novel from the point of view of a naïve young boy, written by Irish ovelist John Boyne. Unlike the months of planning Boyne devoted to his other books, he said that he wrote the entire first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end. To date, the novel has sold more than 5 million copies around the world, and was published as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in the United States to go along with the traditional American spelling of the word. In both 2007 and 2008 it was the best selling book of the year in Spain. It has also reached number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as in the UK, Ireland, Australia and many other countries.
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