The Boy In the Striped Pajamas Is ignorance really bliss? In John Boyne’s novel The Boy In the Striped Pajamas (TBISP) the theme ignorance is bliss is very apparent. The characters are all hiding something from one another and these secrets don’t come out at any point. Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss and this is why: As a little boy Bruno is very impressionable, which is a huge reason why the secrets that were kept led to the novel ending the way it did, if these characters would have told the whole truth, many of the twists of the novel could have been avoided to ensure a happier ending and if some characters wouldn’t have been so ignorant throughout the whole novel the ending could have been changed altogether. The Boy in the Striped …show more content…
Throughout the novel, we are able to see what it was like during the second world war in the eyes of a Nazi son, he was very fortunate and didn’t live like most at that time. Bruno was a very curious boy as are most children, he was told many times not to go outside the houses boundaries, but time and time again he snuck out to go explore. One day he went far enough to find a giant fence with a little boy sitting on the other side, the two boys looked very similar and this is what sparked the friendship between them. Day after day Bruno would visit his new friend Shmuel without his parents’ knowledge They started to bond and had the idea to switch positions, Bruno was to crawl under the fence and put on the striped pajamas that Shmuel was wearing and live like him. Little did he know this would be one of the last ideas he would have as he had snuck into the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Bruno was lead to a gas chamber and was killed by the hands of his own father. This novel shows the tortures of WW11 and how by not knowing enough could lead to something irreversible. If Bruno’s family would have just explained to him what was going on the whole situation could have ended differently and the family wouldn’t have been ripped