The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

[jen]

This book is a superb piece of writing, aimed at young adults but superb for big adults too! I don't often recommend books because everyone has different tastes but this is one book I think everyone should read.

I love all the veiled references to the Holocaust and Auschwitz and the ending is superb, totally unexpected and I thought very much a case of "just deserts" in a sense.

The reference to "The Fury" (the Fuhrer) is fantastic, what a brilliant play on words.

The author is John Boyne and I have no idea if he has written anything else but he certainly should.

[Almas]

Hi Jen,

Actually I have heard of John Byone and so far the only Byone book I have read is Next to Kin. A most interesting read!

I have heard of The in the Striped Pyjamas but I'm afraid I haven't read it. It sounds jolly interesting...

Check out his offical webbie in here: http://www.johnboyne.com/

[RainbowJude]

I have no idea if the book is anything like the film - which I saw yesterday and which has a really disturbing ending plus all the complexities of working out from which perspective we're seeing World War II, a cause which the pretty British accents doesn't help at all - but if it offloads into the mind what the film offloads into the mind, I'd hope there was an adult around to help the child who reads the book to unpack it. (Ditto the film, but that at least has a 13 age restriction here and is playing the art film circuit which younger audiences tend not to frequent. At any rate, part of me thinks the book might be more child-friendly than the film, as it doesn't have the manipulative score and the very realistic imagery that goes with it.) At any rate, I think you'd need at least a basic knowledge of the Holocaust to fully appreciate the film - and I'd guess that holds true for the novel too.

But I was thinking this - I read Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl when I was 8 going on 9. My mother was reluctant to let me, but my teacher said it would be all right as long as I knew that I could ask any questions about thinks I didn't understand. I can't imagine what I'd think of the narrative of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas purely in story terms if I was that age. It takes you to spaces in the war that Anne Frank's diary, simply because of when and where she wrote it, never does.

I guess I'll have to check the book out of the library when school goes back and give it a read... but I'm not sure I want to have to experience all that again, even though (and especially because) I know what happens...

Later days
David

[Rob Houghton]

The book is very cleverly written, I think, always from the viewpoint of the main child character, and very innocent in its depiction of the concerntration camps etc and the 'Fury'. It's all from the little boy's point of view, so it could be read by children as a sort of 'mystery' book, if they didnt have much knowledge of the history behind the happenings: why do the family move, why are all the people wearing striped pajamas, why are they the other side of the fence, etc? Of course, as adults, we know the answers, and this adds an extra layer of textual meaning to the book.

Yes. It's a very sad ending, though I must admit I guessed what would happen. Still very shocking and sudden though.

I have yet to see the film. I always make a point of reading the novel first, or else I'm usually put off from reading it once I've seen the film or TV adaptation!

[RainbowJude]

I've been chatting with a number of people about the book and the film today and it seems the key difference between the two is that as far as the book is concerned, the space and time is not immediately clear to the reader and he/she has to put it together from the clues provided through the boy's reporting of his experiences. In the film, it's perfectly clear from the get-go that we're in Nazi Germany.

(For anyone who's interested, one of the discussions I had that seems to highlight some of the differences between the book and the film is available on the "What'ya Reading?" thread at Finishing the Chat. The link should open on the first relevant post and it continues for the next page or so.)

Later days
David

[Tony Summerfield]

I have a bit of an advantage on you both here, as I have both read the book and seen the film. I agree entirely with Rob, that this is one where it is best to have read the book first (which I did) as inevitably we can see things in the film which are not at all obvious when viewed through Bruno's eyes in the book. I also had the advantage of reading the first edition hardback, which at John Boyne's insistence gave nothing away at all about the contents - it must have upset him to see that the reprints didn't follow the same line.

I thought it was a superbly written book, but it clearly wasn't everyone's cup of tea. At the 2007 Enid Blyton Day I was discussing it with Nicolette Jones (Sunday Times children's book reviewer) and she told me that she hated it. I have to disagree with you on one point however, Rob, I thought the ending was made a lot less obvious in the book than in the film, though I guess it is difficult to judge as I knew what was going to happen.

[Petermax]

This reminds me so much of I Am David by Ann Holm, a tale of a boy who escapes from a concentration camp in Eastern Europe and makes his way to Denmark via a very circuitous route. I was probably about 9 or 10 when I first read this book, and yet I can still remember whole passages quite vividly.

In 2003, a film version of I Am David was released to rather lukewarm reviews.

[RainbowJude]

I think I've finally figured out how I feel about this film. People seem to either love or hate this film. For example, Roger Ebert gives it an unqualified rave, but is concerned more by the politics of the film rather than anything in the film itself, while the New York Times slates it, saying that the Holocaust is 'trivialized, glossed over, kitsched up, commercially exploited and hijacked for a tragedy about a Nazi family', which is a fairly valid point.

I fall somewhere in between the two poles and would not place it on either my list of 10 best or 10 worst films of the year, if indeed I've seen enough films from 2008 to make up a list of 20. (Many 2008 films will only be released here within the next three months or so.)

The film crawls along at too slow a pace for the first 80 minutes, then springs to hectic parallel action for the last 10 minutes or so. In it, we see a young boy begin to discover what's going on around him in Nazi Germany, but he never really makes sense of it. All of this leads to what is meant to be and what is so obviously signaled as a Very Moving and Disturbing Climax. This is my main problem with the film: how incredibly manipulative it is, something I mentioned in my original post above. It sets out to make the ending very sad and very distressing and seems to have little point beyond that, other than to set up situations where the audience can be affirmed in in traditional attitudes towards the Holocaust.

So we see scenes where Nazis mistreat Jews and, because seeing that makes us feel bad, as it should, we can feel good about ourselves because that means we are good people. Or we see a scene where the mother realises what her husband, a Nazi soldier who is co-ordinating the extermination of Jews by gas in a camp, is doing and being horrified by that and, because we are too (as we should be), we feel that our own value systems are reinforced. You think I'm reading too much into it? Well take a look at this response to the film gleaned from another forum where I post:

I went to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tonight. It was sooo good, but my friend and I were sobbing at the end! Oh my gosh, it was sooo sad. But really good. So go see it, if you don't mind crying. (And if you don't cry, you seriously have no soul. Or you're a Nazi.)

The "if you don't cry, you have no soul" reaction reflects precisely that attitude. I have a soul and I'm certainly not a Nazi. I was disturbed by the ending, but I did not cry.

The only major difference between this and watching, say, a film about Anne Frank's experience in the camps is in what this film does next - it asks the audience to have sympathy for a Nazi soldier who though his own actions causes the tragic events at the end of the film. Having set up what our attitude to the Nazis is supposed to be so thoroughly in the 90 minutes that precede that moment, I don't know how the film expects its audiences to make that jump.

I was dumbstruck when I left this film. What you see in the last ten minutes makes it impossible for one to feel any other way. But later I was frustrated and maybe even a little angry, because the bottom line is that this film is an exercise in manipulation and not much else. For what it puts its audiences through, that is just not good enough.

Later days
David

[Tony Summerfield]

David I think that some of the critics have either forgotten or not realised that this was written as a children's book, and the entire book was written as seen through the eyes of an eight year-old boy. This might not always be obvious in a film, particularly when being viewed by adults who are obviously 'reading' far more into it than a young child would.

Hitler is referred to as 'the Fury' throughout the book (as has been mentioned earlier in the thread), and the place that Bruno's father gets transferred to is called 'Out-With'. I don't remember either of these things being made clear in the film, but I will have to watch it again when it gets released as a DVD.

[RainbowJude]

I'm not sure I follow the point. The filmmakers have discarded both children as a target audience (as it's certainly not a children's film) and the Bruno's perspective as a narrative device (as it's told from a more conventional third-person point of view). These things aren't obvious in the film because they're not there. So why should a critic remember these aspects in an evaluation of the film at all except to point out that the film is different from the book?

(Incidentally, neither the referral to Hitler as "the fury" nor the reference to Auschwitz are in the film.)

Later days
David

[Rob Houghton]

Glad I havent seen the film then.

[Moonraker]

Yes, me too! It seems surreal to me that an adult film is made out of a children's book! Maybe we can look forward to an 18 certificate Noddy film in the future?

[Rob Houghton]

Yes, me too! It seems surreal to me that an adult film is made out of a children's book! Maybe we can look forward to an 18 certificate Noddy film in the future?

According to some, Enid has already written one or two!!

[Tony Summerfield]

I keep hoping that someone else will join in this discussion, who like me has both read the book and seen the film. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that the book is aimed at older children, normally now classed as Young Adults, but I would also like to stress that the film is aimed at exactly the same target audience. The book of the film can now be seen in all major bookshops in this country, with a picture from it on the cover, but you won't find it in the adult section of a bookshop.

[Philip Mannering]

The book sounds jolly interesting. What is its age group? (I mean, can 12 year olds read it, Tony?)