The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I had heard of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas before, though I had never read it. As the matter of fact, a student I help to make her level of English improve had to read it, which was why it was very convenient for me having to read it too. However, I had no idea it was about WWII until I started reading, so it was rather heavy and unexpected. The language used was very readable and easy to understand, I think students would also not have any problems reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

The friendship of Bruno and Shmuel was sort of a light in the darkness of the story. It was very beautiful to see that they didn’t really live with the knowledge that it was war and awful things were happening around them; this shows that ignorance can actually be bliss.

During class we talked about how believable the book is, I must admit that I hadn’t even thought about it that way. The subject was the likelihood of being able to crawl under the fence without being seen, which is next to nothing. Of course books have to be read with some sort of imagination, which is probably why I didn’t think about that before. Most of the other people did think it was too unrealistic to be in the story, even though I hadn’t thought of it before, it is quite unrealistic. If it was possible for Bruno to go back and forth, everyone in the camp would’ve been able to cross the fence and nobody would stay in the camp.

We also had to discuss which perspective young readers would have, opposed to adult readers. The conclusion of the group I was in was that the book can be appealing to both categories, but probably for different reasons. If we take the friendship of Bruno and Shmuel for example; young readers can relate to this because they’ll compare it to their own friendships whereas adult readers find the innocence is endearing to read about.

To my own surprise I really liked the book; I am not really a history / war fan. I would therefore recommend it to readers of the ages 14 to 16; they can really learn something about WWII whilst broadening their vocabulary. Teenagers will be able to relate to the book because of the struggles they are going through themselves and might learn that their life isn’t all that bad. Another reason they could relate to the book is pushing boundaries, in this case done quite literally. They can also learn that it might be for their own good to listen to their parents instead of trying to break the rules set for them.

I would use this book in class, and to make the pupils think about the story, I would let them have a class discussion about what would’ve happened if Bruno’s parents found out that he had a friend on the other side of the fence.