The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
by John Boyne
This is a book about a little boy who met another little boy.
"We think you should start to read the book without knowing what it is about."
So if you want to do just that don't read the review...buy/beg/borrow the book now...it's in hardback, about £10.00.
See http://www.davidficklingbooks.co.uk/, your school library, your friendly local bookshop, your local library or the obvious web outlets.
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This is the tale of Bruno a nine-year old child told in his words and from his point of view; his elder sister, Greta, is a "Hopeless Case"; he has three "Best Friends for Life"; and his ambition is to be an "Explorer".
Bruno lives with his father, mother, sister and a maid and nearby to his grandparents. The family move from their comfortable middle-class home in the suburbs of the capital city to a smaller, isolated house near the site of his father's new job far away in the countryside; far away from his grandparents.
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The story, subtitled "a fable", is one of childhood innocence, interrupted by the annoyances of everyday life - big sister's "civilisation of dolls", nits, a cut knee, the boy's lack of size - as Bruno tries to make his new situation a home, relocate his family relationships into the alien setting and find new adventures to explore. The story unfolds deliberately and as the world beyond his new home intrudes he wonders about quite a lot of things - his father's visitors; his mother; about the maid and Pavel the kitchen helper; about returning home to Berlin; about his "three friends for life" whose names, as time passes, he can't quite remember. Bruno can see from his bedroom beyond the garden to the wire fence of the camp where his father works; he calls it "Out-with"; the adults say "Auschwitz". He can see sad-looking people in striped pyjamas walking about behind the wires. For a while his curiosity about these people gives way to the next episode of the tensions in the family's life as adjustment to the new location becomes harder for each of them to bear.
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Leaving the house he finds his way to the fence where he meets another little boy, Shmuel, one of the pyjama people. As their friendship develops they agree to meet regularly. The relationship between the boys begins in the every child’s world of exchanging confidences with a special friend. The contrasts between the experience of the middleclass German whose father is the camp commandant and the little Jewish boy with "sad eyes" and wearing grey striped pyjamas are spoken and felt but often they draw back from questioning the differences between them. Bruno brings food to Shmuel but sometimes eats it on his way to their meeting place by the barbed wire fence. The story is full of references to children's play and it is one of its great sadnesses that the two boys never fulfil childhood with each other by playing together. In the land of "Out-with" childhood has no place. Before they leave Berlin the family are visited by "the Fury" (in adultspeak say "Fuehrer") and Bruno's father demands that during the visit "The last thing we want is for [Bruno and his sister] to behave like children."
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It transpires that the two boys are born on the same day - "We're like twins" - and they meet on the edges of a camp where in the real world twin children were selected and subjected to medical experimentation. Once, having let drop to his sister that he has met someone, to keep his secret Bruno says that Shmuel is his "imaginary friend". Is Shmuel the imagined other of Bruno's wonderworld? Is Bruno the embodiment of the yearned-for freedom of an imprisoned child?
Gradually the narrative moves into another world of fable where the credibility of knockaboutlife is suspended and interwoven with coincidence and the distancing of actuality with everything dominated by the growing tension ... Bruno offers to use his explorer skills and. putting on a pair of the pyjamas he crawls ....
........................................................................................................................NOW READ THE BOOK
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This is a book about a boy trying to feel his way into the adult world outside. It could be read by a child...it could be read to a child...there is no demarcation of an appropriate age to guide us on undertaking the journey. The book's publisher David Fickling says, "This is a book about innocence walking into darkness."
The book is beautifully crafted and the mix of story and fable are held together in the cocoon of the child's mind that we have access to, sometimes through Bruno's and sometimes though the narrator's voice. There are points in the book when you wonder whether a nine year-old would perceive, think, speak or act quite like that; but perhaps these are more a reader's attempts to place themselves in another child's world than any unevenness in writing. The author John Boyne says the idea for the book was not to deal with the Holocaust but was developed from the single image of two boys, with a fence in between them; but it is the reality without (out-with) that unnervingly drives the narrative forward. If John Boyne didn't set out to "deal with the Holocaust" then the reader certainly has to. The book's closing sentence unrolls an empty map of history since the events 1944 and 45 leaving us to write our own narrative and people our own fables.
Marshall Mateer, Shapes of Time, 5th May 2006
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John Boyne
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Published by David Fickling
David Fickling Books
Children's Fiction • 12 + year olds •
ISBN: 038560940X
Publication date: 05/01/2006 •
224 pages
hardback
£10.99
www.davidficklingbooks.co.uk and search for 'Boyne'.
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The Boy in Striped Pyjamas and the Archive resources
In keeping with the direction on the book to read “without knowing what it is about…” it is probably best to hold back research on images, film and information about Auschwitz 'til after reading the book; and certainly not use them to ‘illustrate it’.
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British Pathe Archive
The Archive has many films about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and there is, of course, an enormous amount available in books, websites and museums. Three aspects from the Archive which could be used and form a bridge between John Boyne’s fable, documentary and actuality are:
:: images of people in the striped uniforms.
:: images of the wire fences
:: images of empty rooms (chambers)
All images that are very open to questions, feeling, exploration and imagination.
Children wearing 'pyjama suits' (adult size). Poland 1945. Photo: USHMM 66935a
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Drama and/or Video activity
John Boyne recalls that "In April 2004 an image came into my mind of two boys sitting on either side of a fence." ...(Author's note to American edition.)
Could you use the starting point - two young people; maybe unable to see each other, sitting on either side of a fence - that John Boyne did to develop your own improvisations. Not a camp fence...just any fence or wall. Barriers. Walls. Gates. Doors, Openings. Touching. Passing things through. Could you film this on video? Can you play it back with just sound? Can you play back with the vision as well?
What would you do next?
Read the rest of John Boyne's author's note ...it's at the foot of the page...click on "authors note"
Other artists have worked from a particular image or experience. The great film maker Luis Buñuel tells how his film Viridiana "sprang from a single image, like a spring flowing..."
Project the image of the children at the wire fence onto the wall. Sit in front of it. What would you say to one of them?
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Teachers Guide
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Sleepwalkers
The art work ‘Sleepwalkers’ by Pete Ellis uses lines of poetry from a poet Robert Desnos who died in Terezin prison, embroidered on pairs of the artist’s father’s pyjamas. It opens responses to imprisonment, death, loss, memory and dreams.
The accompanying resources from the Archive show people in the camps in striped uniform but also people who wore their uniform afterwards at ceremonies and events as a way of witnessing their experience.
Lots more about 'Sleepwalkers' from the artist Pete Ellis. Photo: Lady Leverhulme Gallery.
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This page last updated 7th September 2006.
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Shapes of Time
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