Boy in the Striped Pajamas Blog 1

The story, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne opens with a boy named Bruno encountering his maid packing all of his things into several suitcases. Bruno learns that he and his family are going to leave their friends and old lives in Berlin behind to move far away. Bruno is saddened by this idea, but the only explanation of the relocation is that his father’s job is taking him to a new area in Germany. Upon Bruno’s family’s arrival in their new home, Bruno is appalled by the lack of greenery and cheerful things in the vicinity. I ended my assigned reading with Bruno’s shocking discovery that his new home is actually right next to a Nazi concentration camp. Bruno is a polite and curious 9 year old boy who lives in Berlin during the early 1940s. Throughout the entirety of the book’s introduction, Bruno has only ever been depicted with semi-angelic qualities. Although he was reluctant to move away from his three best friends for life and his house with the large bannister that he would so frequently slide on, he never argued with his parents about this new change in lifestyle, and he decided to adapt to the situation at hand. His often mentioned (yet never physically depicted) father has a high-power job in the Nazi regime, as evidenced by the following quote, “…The large dining room where the Fury had been to dinner the week before.”(p.2)  As of yet, no real problem has emerged from the plot, although I do believe that since Bruno has just discovered the Concentration Camp, conflict in the plot lies ahead.