The Boy In The Striped Pajamas Essay

In the novel, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne, a young boy named Bruno, a son of a high-ranked Nazi officer, moves next to the concentration camp, known as Auschwitz. Out of curiosity and ignorance towards the persecution of Jews, he meets a Jewish boy in the camp. He meets with him everyday and ends up dressing in the striped pajamas and going to the other side. For this reason, he ends up going into the gas chambers, like many others of the time. Ultimately, the most powerful moral in this text was that one must not let love or innocence block them from the faults of another’s actions. Bruno never understood the horrible impact of father’s job, therefore always thinking his father was doing well, out of love for him. Bruno did Not

He would never think that something like this would be happening to someone. When Gretel and Bruno are watching the people on the other side of the fence they notice, “...but then one of the soldiers lunged towards them and they separated and seemed to do what he had wanted them to do all along, which as to stand in a single line. When they did, the soldiers all started to laugh and applauded them”(37). As readers we can infer that it was an execution line, but Gretel and Bruno think of it as a rehearsal. As of their lack of knowledge, they fail to believe in the horrible events on the other side of the fence. Even when he sees the Jews actually dying he never understands why or if they are really dying. When Bruno is exploring he explains, “The pajama people all jumped to attention whenever the soldiers approached and sometimes they fell to the ground and sometimes they didn’t even get up and had to be carried away instead”(100). When reading this quote, readers know that the Jews are dying, but Bruno sees it as falling and being carried away. His unawareness blinded him from the horror going