Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Boy in the Striped Pajamas

  • Submitted By: Rooster
  • Date Submitted: 01/06/2010 12:18 AM
  • Category: Biographies
  • Words: 424
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 3317

Eric “Rooster” McLendon Oct 23, 2009

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a heart wrenching film that shows the life and friendship of two boys. One is a Jew in a nazi concentration camp during world war two and the other is the son of the man who is newly appointed to oversee the camp. Many of the themes of the movie involve the little German boys’ propaganda, fear, and the family and they’re break down over the course of the movie. The mother is accidently told by a man under her husband that they are burning Jews at the camp, this was kept secret from her by her husband. The viewer and see the sorrow of the wife/mother by her inconsolable sobbing and the husband/fathers stress by the way he is smoking. The daughter is pulled deeper into the nazi propaganda.

At the beginning of the movie Bruno, the little German boy, is playing and passes by a group of Jews being loaded onto a truck from the ghetto. It is taken so lightly by everyone like it was ordinary, this contrast with Night, the view is from the Jewish point of view and this is a very painful experience. Later at the farewell party for the family the grandmother makes it very clear that she knows exactly what’s going on and she will be no part of it.

The tone of the young solider when talking to the children changes harshly when he yells at the Jew who peels potatoes. This is contrasted when that Jew helps Bruno when he cuts his knee. At the same time Bruno finds out he was once a doctor but thinks he gave it up to peel potatoes. Bruno’s naïveté is a common factor throughout the movie and continues to the end.

The tutor for the children teaches them the anti-Jew propaganda from the nazi party and this confuses Bruno because he had earlier discovered Shmole is a Jew. Bruno is only deterred for a short while before he is trying to play with his friend. This is where the saddest part of the movie happens the end. Bruno digs a hole under the fence then Shmole gives him a pair of striped...

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