Review Activities for Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Picture Review
Ah, piddling boys. They're impish, curious, messy and daring. Most mothers of boys have at least a few grayness hairs because of their sons' escapades. Sometimes boys really can stop fidgeting at the tabular array and squirming during church. Sometimes they can even resist the temptation to torment their sisters. Rarely, though, tin they ignore the all-consuming urge to explore—and this thirst for excitement can get them into problem.
Enter eight-year-old Bruno, an inventive immature German who loves to read adventure books and investigate whatever is outside. When nosotros run across him in the early 1940s, his father, Ralf, a high-ranking military officer, has only accepted an important position within the Nazi war effort. The family unit packs up their city habitation in Berlin and moves to a state firm located virtually what Bruno thinks is a strange farm.
Naive Bruno doesn't fully understand what's happening in his new world, including why his 12-yr-one-time sister, Gretel, suddenly spurns a treasured doll drove and decorates her bedchamber with Nazi youth posters. He can't comprehend why one-time Pavel, a "farmer" who works in the kitchen, gave upwardly beingness a md so he could peel potatoes. Nor can he fathom why Pavel and all the other "farmers" clothing striped pajamas.
Bruno particularly struggles with his mother's club to stay within their very uninspiring, walled-in front end grand. After all, he thinks the "subcontract" just across the woods out dorsum must exist full of fun, nutrient, animals and potential playmates.
And so, when his tedious tutor, Herr Liszt, and the lackluster life indoors go too much for him to tolerate, he begins to sneak off. He runs through the trees to the "farm," where he meets Shmuel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas who lives backside a huge electrified argue.
[Note: The following sections comprise plot spoilers.]
Positive Elements
Bruno's mother is reasonably patient with his thwarting when they move, but she isn't silent, either. She tells Bruno that sitting around beingness miserable won't make things whatsoever happier. In response, for a while he tries his best to be content.
Despite the adults around him who demean Jews, Bruno ultimately learns to see Shmuel and Pavel through the lens of his own positive, immediate experience with them. While his friendship with Shmuel wouldn't necessarily be called courageous (Bruno is bored and unaware, and Shmuel is the only friend available), it does reveal the beauty of innocence, which underscores the wickedness of the adults' cruelty. And while Bruno is at first intimidated into siding with his male parent's and the surrounding soldiers' hateful opinions of his Jewish friends, he realizes that something is very wrong, and he questions his dad's moral goodness.
One mean solar day Shmuel's male parent goes missing at the "farm." Bruno offers to aid his friend search for him, proverb, "It will be like an take chances!" Shmuel gets a pair of spare "pajamas" for Bruno and then he won't draw attention, and Bruno digs a (precise and impossibly large) trench nether the fence. Until he comes face up to face with the horror within the wire, Bruno seems to but be having fun. But when he sees enough to become frightened, he gathers himself and makes a clear conclusion to confront his fearfulness in guild to help his friend.
This human action is redemptive, in a way, since Bruno turned his back on Shmuel a few days (weeks?) earlier. In that circumstance, he lied in such a way that Shmuel is thought to be a thief and is subsequently browbeaten by soldiers (offscreen).
Elsa's ignorance about what'southward going on in war-torn Germany is much less excusable than her son's, and information technology seems she chooses to remain oblivious regarding what occurs at the "farm." But when she finally realizes how grave the state of affairs is—that her husband is in charge of mass exterminations—she begins to justly rail against him, enervating that he immediately quit. She's besides alarmed by Gretel'southward growing vehemence against Jews.
While raising questions well-nigh where duty to i'southward country ends and censor and morality begin, the film winds these themes together to teach a powerful lesson almost human equality. Prejudice is rightfully shown to be based on lies and hatred. And it's reinforced that every one of u.s.a. has a responsibility to choose rightness and truth, even when the tide of a society is utterly against us.
Spiritual Elements
Bruno says a bedtime prayer with his father, thanking God (in Jesus' proper name) for His protection. It's a sweet children's rhyme that seems real to the male child, and its candid trust feels oddly situated against Nazi hatred. A preacher says another prayer at Ralf's mother'due south funeral service.
Sexual Content
Precocious Gretel holds twentysomething Lt. Kotler's forearm in an adoring fashion and is embarrassed when Bruno publicly reminds her that she is just 12.
Violent Content
Oblivious to the real-life awfulness they're mimicking, Bruno and his immature friends in Berlin act similar fighter planes and pretend to shoot machine guns. In a different play scene, Bruno runs through the woods flailing a stick and shouting, "Die! Die!" A little claret shows up when he falls out of a tire swing and skins his knee.
Nazis shove Jews onto wagons while dogs nip and bark. When inky blackness smoke rises from the furnace at the "subcontract," Lt. Kotler quips, "They scent even worse when they burn down, don't they?" Afterwards he and Ralf yell at Pavel, and Kotler beats the former homo to expiry. We see the lieutenant grab Pavel'southward head and hit him, and we hear yelling and more powerful blows after Kotler drags him into some other room. The side by side forenoon, Maria scrubs the blood from the forest floor where Pavel lay.
Kotler also yells at Shmuel and Bruno. We don't see the officer hurt Shmuel, but it'southward articulate that he does when the boy disappears for days and finally returns with a badly browbeaten face up.
Ralf calmly announces his mother'due south decease. Nosotros're told she died in a bombing, simply circumstances could be viewed as suspicious considering she'd stridently opposed the Nazi party line even when Ralf warned her not to. Similarly, Lt. Kotler talks himself into a corner 1 night by casually mentioning that his father emigrated to Switzerland before the war. Ralf reminds the lieutenant that he must report his father as a defector, and Kotler is disciplined for his oversight by existence moved to the war'due south front line.
And then we arrive at the concluding minutes of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Nazi soldiers herd men and boys into a gas bedroom. We meet their terrified expressions as they're jammed against one other in the dim room. A soldier wearing a gas mask rains down toxicant through a rooftop opening. And prisoners howl until there is silence.
Crude or Profane Linguistic communication
In making its righteous points most prejudice and racism, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas resists the temptation to brandish epithets, simply does include anti-Semitic remarks. Ralf claims that Jews "aren't really people at all." Gretel calls them "evil, dangerous vermin." Liszt teaches his pupils that Jews are a subversive enemy of culture that cost Deutschland the get-go world war. He also tells Bruno that if he finds a "nice Jew" he "would be the best explorer in all the world."
Bruno calls his mother "stupid."
Drug and Alcohol Content
The adults have champagne at a going-away political party and later drink wine with dinner. Ralf smokes cigarettes, sometimes in front of his kids.
Other Negative Elements
Bruno and truthfulness share a strained human relationship. He frequently lies to his mother most his whereabouts, disobeying her rules. He fibs about the contents of his book bag. And when he lies to Lt. Kotler, maxim Shmuel stole food, his selfishness costs Shmuel dearly.
Elsa and Ralf argue loudly about his role in the war, causing Gretel and Bruno to huddle together for comfort. Elsa calls Ralf a monster whose ain mother couldn't honey him.
Crowds of Jewish men and boys are forced to strip naked. Huddled together, and with the camera looking on mostly from to a higher place, only their upper torsos are seen.
Determination
Set against the horror of the Holocaust, Bruno's naiveté and investigative spirit await that much more innocent. The male child's disability to comprehend prejudice and killing, and his instinctive, uncomplicated ability to see Jews as real human beings starkly contrast Nazi cruelty, brightly illuminating the viciousness and irrationality of the bloodshed.
A pregnant plot twist—which is i spoiler I've tried very hard to proceed out of this review—demonstrates with breathtaking force how the consequences of evil behavior somewhen affect all those involved, perpetrators included.
Beyond this, Elsa'south office may serve as sobering testament against complacency. After she blindly follows Ralf to his new post, she struggles with her own attitude toward Jews merely does nothing pregnant to help them, even every bit she begins to recognize their unjust fate. Her conformity should remind us of our own apathy in other situations, and information technology challenges u.s.a. to question situations until nosotros fully empathize them, fight for what we believe in and stand up up for those who cannot defend themselves.
The Male child in the Striped Pajamas, which is based on a book by John Boyne, also illustrates how powerful words and images are. Bruno, who likely represents thousands of his contemporaries, doesn't e'er know what to make of his begetter'south job. That is, until a propaganda motion picture he sees calls the expiry camp—the "farm"—a wonderful place with "hearty, nutritious meals," and the camera shows seemingly happy Jews smiling and waving. After the movie, Bruno proudly hugs his father.
It's ofttimes said that if history is forgotten, information technology's likely to be repeated. And so maybe the most profitable affair about the movie is the fact that—without including any of the gore and explicit violence seen in similar films—information technology reminds us about our global history of brutality. Nosotros must recall and keep recalling the Holocaust and other atrocities like it. And never overlook the millions who have needlessly died at the hand of hatred and greed.
Heartbreaking and soul-rending, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is, then, one more piece of the puzzle that ultimately forms the movie of who nosotros were, who nosotros are and who we don't want to become.
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