As time goes on in his new home he meets a boy around his age behind a barbed wired fence. They become friends even though it’s forbidden for them to communicate and they try to see each other as much as they can. Both the boys have no clue on what is going on. Shmuel, the Jewish boy said that the officers took their clothes away so that’s why they wear the striped pajamas. One day Bruno sees Shmuel cleaning the dishes and informs him that they are supposed to be enemies but instead offers him some food.
The analysis of the word “thoughtfully” indicates that Bruno is relating to his parents and teachers lessons and mimicking what they have taught. This can also show that Bruno’s behaviour ‘chatty’ and trivial because all Germans consider Germany to be superior to a cocky level. Boyne is trying to illustrate that our present actions and attitudes are determined when we are young by how we are taught. The reader(s) may interpret the story differently. They might feel that Bruno is unsure about what he is saying and was not taught well enough.
Bruno in the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was completely naive to this even though he was friends with a jew named Shmuel. He was kept from this because his parents were making it that way. It was bad that Bruno was naive about the Holocaust because it made it so that Bruno wasn’t the friend he could have been to Shmuel and it led to both of them getting killed in a gas chamber.
Bruno has no clue that the people in the “striped pajamas” are being cruelly treated and murdered, and is jealous of what he thinks is freedom. Bruno once again reveals his innocence when he asks Pavel, the Jewish man from the camp who cleans him up after a fall, “If you’re a doctor, then why are you waiting on tables? Why aren’t you working at a hospital somewhere?” (83). It is a mystery to Bruno that a doctor would be reduced to such a state for no transparent reason, and his beliefs should be what all adults think. Though what he says is naive, it points out the barbarity of the German attitude toward the Jews.
Throughout the first story Bruno is the one who makes the story positive. He was very positive about everything he did and he tried to make things fun with whatever he had. The second story is more depressing throughout the whole story. If it was told in a different way and death wasn’t the narrator then the story might be a little more positive. Some people think that the theme for “The boy in the striped pajamas” is that friendship requires sacrifice.
The book tells the story of a boy, Bruno, who is the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer. Bruno, for the sake of his father’s career moves to a house just outside the concentration camp Auschwitz. The following quote is an example of the bystander effect in Boy in the Striped Pajamas: "What happened then was both unexpected and extremely unpleasant. Lieutenant Kotler grew very angry with Pavel and no one - not Bruno, not Gretl, not Mother and not even Father - stepped in to stop him doing what he did next, even though none of them could watch. Even though it made Bruno cry and Gretel grow pale" (Boyne 105).
Many times, the problem between two people is fixed because of someone making a nice gesture, comment, etc. An example would be Bruno to Shmuel in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. In the text, Bruno is confused and worried about why Shmuel is in his house. He waits there for a second, and instead of making a scene, he simply says, ¨Im very glad youre here.
This quote shows that Bruno did not want to disagree with his friend Shmuel even though they did not share the same ideas. Both boys knew the differences they had, but they put them aside and became friends. In
Sambo “But he knew that only in the Brotherhood could we make ourselves known, could we avoid being empty Sambo dolls” (Ellison 427). The narrator leaves the headquarters of the Brotherhood and finds Tod Clifton playing with Sambo dolls out in the street. He feels disgusted by it and is sickened even more when Clifton starts singing a jingle and makes the doll dance. While singing, Clifton spots a police officer coming towards him, so he starts sweeping his dolls, and prepares to run away from the police. The narrator felt disgusted because the Sambo dolls represent the black stereotype of servitude towards the white race.
In addition, in The Boy in The Striped Pajamas, Shmuel, who was a Jew was enclosed in a concentration camp and barely got any food until one day he had the opportunity to eat. Bruno (his friend) offered him a bit of food that he was eating and Shmuel refused but Bruno insisted, and Shmuel ended up eating (Boyne). If Bruno had not made this kind gesture, Shmuel would still face the problem of starvation. Adding to the fact that Bruno was being kind, if he had not made the decision to ask Shmuel he would still be facing his own conflict of how to get food. Another research has presented the fact and came to the conclusion that “you will benefit by having good or positive character” (Tramilton).