Not Really Pajamas, Not Really a Good Read
BY: Toni Taylor
I enjoy going out with friends, going out with my family, and going out with my dog on walks. However, I did not like going out with this book in hand. While I forced myself to read the book, I felt like it was not expanding my vocabulary. Written at an elementary reading level, the book could be read by a first grader. Why is it then listed for grades 8 and above? Well, because it deals with the issues of Nazis and the Holocaust. There is a deeper meaning within the book, besides the friendship, that it may be difficult for those seventh graders to grasp, but give it to an eighth grader, and boy, they’ll get it!
The book consists of the story of Bruno, a 9-year old German boy raised in Berlin whose father is the leader of “The Fury,” as Bruno refers to it. The setting of the book is in Berlin of 1942, during the Holocaust. When Bruno gets home one day he realizes his belongings are packed and the family is moving. The place they move to is known as “Out With” and has a long fence beside it where Bruno sees men and male children in striped pajamas “playing” all day. Bruno enjoys going on adventures and wants to know more about these children in pajamas because he has no friends to play with, and he meets a boy, Shmuel, who is on the other side of the fence. They realize they have a lot in common, besides their age, and a friendship blossoms which leads to devastating consequences.
The point of view, descriptions and Boyne’s writing technique are what make the book interesting to read. The point of view in the book is the most attractive feature. The text is written in the perspective of the main character, Bruno, a 9-year-old boy. With this perspective readers can experience the innocence and naivety of a child. For example, when Bruno and his family move, he refers to the place as “Out-With.” After finding out what the place is called, he asks his sister, Gretel, “’Out-With?...What’s an Out-With?’” (24). She responds and says, “’It’s not an Out-With, Bruno,…It’s just Out-With’” (24). Bruno doesn’t hear the difference, and the reader doesn’t see the difference, but what is really being said is Auschwitz. In addition, when Bruno arrives at his new home, “Out-With,” his window in the room views the people “playing” in the fenced in area and tells his sister and is proud that he has this view and he is “feeling quietly pleased with himself because whatever it was that was out there—and whoever they were—he had seen it first and he could see it whenever he wanted because they were outside his bedroom window and not hers and therefore they belonged to him and he was the king of everything they surveyed and she was his lowly subject” (32). This shows a child’s perspective on owning a view and competitive behavior with a sibling that many people have experienced and can connect with. Furthermore, Bruno’s ignorance is witnessed when he leaves his father’s office and says his usual gesture, “’Heil Hitler,’ he said, which he presumed, was another way of saying, ‘Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon’” (54). Bruno does not understand his father’s role or the extremities of situations around him. It was a normal “goodbye” for him, because he doesn’t know any better. Reading a novel in a child’s point of view was engaging and it allows readers to observe what children during this time possibly witnessed. They may have not known any better.
Since the novel is written in a child’s point of view, there are points of humor within the novel. I’d catch myself chuckling aloud at Boyne’s use of comic relief. Bruno has an older sister, Gretel, who is 12 and she thinks that she acts 30. For example, it’s humorous when Bruno interrupts Gretel talking with a soldier and Bruno stated a comment and Gretel responds, “’You’re nine…How would you know? When you get to my age you’ll understand these things a lot better’” (34). Since Gretel is so much older, she definitely understands! Another incident where Boyne uses humor is when Bruno “became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wandering around the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too” (69). Boyne’s combination of the child’s point of view and humorous comments made by the child, exhibit why it connects with a younger reader and compels a younger reader to pick up the novel.
Boyne does an excellent job with details and descriptions through the use of similes and metaphors. For instance, Bruno describes the garden at his new home as, “[q]uite a large one … and full of flowers which grew in neat orderly sections in soil that looked as if it was tended very carefully by someone who knew that growing flowers in a place like this was something good that they could do, like putting a tiny candle of light in the corner of a huge castle on a misty moor on a dark winter’s night” (31). Thus, the reader experiences the feeling that the garden looks exceptional and it is something that seen as beneficial to the “look” of everything else at “Out-With.” When describing Bruno’s father’s power, Boyne explains that Bruno’s “[f]ather held a hand in the air, which immediately caused the other men to fall silent. It was as if he was the conductor of a barbershop quartet” (43). Boyne shows, using a child’s perspective, that Bruno perceives his dad as dominant and great. Through the use of similes and metaphors, Boyne’s enables the reader to visualize the image or the situation.
Even though the point of view, humor and literary techniques captured my attention, the lack of complex vocabulary turned me off; hence, why the heart is partially filled in. Yes, the way Boyne writes is appealing, but the book is not for anyone older than thirteen. It does teach a valuable lesson about friendship and about treating others with respect, but the lack of density is disappointing. Therefore, I would not recommend going out with the idea to purchase this novel.
This is where your highlighted vocabulary words, definitions and stems would go.