John Boyne was born on April 30, 1971, in Dublin, Ireland, where he lives now. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin and at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He has written 17 books, the bestselling of which is The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which was published on January 5, 2006. The book is historical fiction, set in 1943 in Auschwitz, Poland (the most famous and most feared of all the concentration camps, the camps where Nazis imprisoned Jews during World War II).
The book begins with a young boy named Bruno and his family moving from Berlin, Germany, to Out-With (Bruno's word for Auschwitz) after the Fury (Bruno's name for Adolf Hitler) visits their home and promotes Father to Commandant. Bruno, his sister Gretel, and Mother do not like their new home, but Father considers only the honor and prestige of his new position. Bruno does not understand his father's job or why the family had to move. All he knows is that there are people on the other side of a large fence that wear dirty striped pajamas “and sometimes. . . [fall] to the ground and sometimes. . . [don't]. . . get up” (ch.9).
One day, Bruno decides to go exploring. He meets a boy through the fence and talks to him. The boy's name is Shmuel. He is sad and thin. They talk, and Bruno promises to return. He does return, and the boys meet nearly every day.
As this goes on, Bruno adjusts and begins to think of Out-With as his home. Then Pavel, the family's waiter and a man from the other side of the fence, accidentally spills wine on one of father's officers. Something happens that is left undescribed, but afterward we don't see Pavel again.
One day, Bruno finds Shmuel in the kitchen. He gives his friend some food; but when an officer realizes that Shmuel has been eating, Bruno gets scared and denies that he knows Shmuel. The next time the boys talk, Shmuel has bruises on his face. Bruno apologizes and is forgiven.
After a long period of loneliness on her part, Mother convinces Father to let her and the children return to Berlin. Bruno is saddened by this news, and he decides he should have one last adventure with Shmuel. He puts on some borrowed striped pajamas and goes under the fence. The other side is not at all like he imagined; it is horrible, and he decides to leave. However, before he can, the boys are herded into a big room. Bruno tells Shmuel they are best friends for life, and everything goes dark.
After Bruno disappears, Mother desperately searches both Out-With and the house in Berlin. Gretel stays in her room, crying and mourning for her brother. Father discovers Bruno's clothes and a gap under the fence and eventually realizes what happened. His position is not so important then, even when he is forced to leave Out-With. The book ends with a sarcastic hope, reminding us that all the character traits, emotions, and motivators that led to vile wrongdoing in this story are still present today.
Father is an expert mask-user. He has two lives: that of the happy husband and father and that of the vicious and cruel Commandant. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot keep these two faces separate. He spends less time with his family and more working. His love for his family is superseded by his position, his idol. Ultimately, his dual life comes crashing down when Bruno is found missing. His faces unite – the fatherly side, which loves his son, and the Commandant side, which gave the order that killed Bruno. Father finally understands the depth of what he has done. His deceit drove his son into a gas chamber. The Commandant mask covered the father, making Bruno believe he was forgotten; and the father mask covered the Commandant, making Bruno ignorant of the horrible things of which Father was capable. The masks drove Bruno blindly to his doom. Father's character arc is an ominous lesson on what deception and two-facedness can do.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a tragic story that makes one consider the innocence of childhood and the importance of caring for and being honest with loved ones. Its main message is that we must beware, learning from history so that we will never repeat its mistakes. We humans tend to think that we would never do such awful things, but this is only because we have seen the consequences. We must keep our eyes open, for it is much harder to see that something is wrong while we are doing it.
John Boyne's intent with the writing style of this book is to introduce the Jewish Holocaust to first-time readers of this topic, which he does well. However, I would recommend research on the context. Because of Bruno's limited point of view, some things are easily mistaken by readers – for example, Out-With is Auschwitz, and the room where Bruno dies is a gas chamber. However, all in all, I would highly recommend this book for introductions to the hard topic of the Holocaust.
Bibliography:
~ Boyne, John. “Biography.” John Boyne, johnboyne.com/about/. Accessed 9 Apr., 2022.
~ “John Boyne: About the Author.” Penguin Random House, penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/70373/john-boyne/. Accessed 9 Apr., 2022.
~ “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Study Guide.” LitCharts, litcharts.com/lit/the-boy-in-the-striped-pajamas#context. Accessed 9 Apr., 2022.
~ “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: John Boyne and the Boy in the Striped Pajamas Background.” sparknotes, sparknotes.com/lit/boy-in-striped-pajamas/context. Accessed 9 Apr., 2022.
~ “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Key Facts.” sparknotes, sparknotes.com/lit/boy-in-striped-pajamas/facts/. Accessed 9 Apr., 2022.
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