Sunday, November 10, 2013

The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas #1


  • Title: The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas 
  • Author: John Boyne 
  • Genre: Historical Novel 
  • Number of pages read: 40/220

  • Report Section 
The author starts the novel with not revealing much details about Bruno's private life and his family, but later on, he starts describing it slowly. Bruno is a nine year old boy who lives a wealthy lifestyle in prewar Germany along with his mother, father and sister. The family relocates to the countryside. They were forced to move because of Bruno's father job. He is the SS Commandant and his whole family knew how important his job was to him. Neither Bruno nor his sister wanted to move, because each of them had their three best friends in Berlin, and they were used with living their life there. 
In this section of reading I have discovered things such as Bruno's relationship with his parents and how respectful he had to be toward them. He could never interrupt them in their conversations, and he wasn't allowed to have any concerns on what they said to him. Also, words such as 'mother' and 'father' are written in the novels with the capital letter, because in that time, children had a huge respect towards their parents. Another thing that I have discovered is that Bruno was never close with his three years old sister, and that most of the times he was scared of her, just because she was different and that she had unusual habits. 
I think that these developments affected the main character, Bruno, in some ways. I think that Bruno shouldn't judge people by their look and habits; he should at least get to know them better and then say something about them. Also, he was very close with his three best friends. I think that that described his character a bit, because it is shown that he gets close to some people very quickly and that he loves them as much as they love him. 

  • Response Section 
The 40 pages that I have read are very well written. I liked the author's word choice, and I think that the book is very easy to read and at the same time understand. The author starts the novel with a small amount of mystery, but then, he slowly starts revealing some things about the main characters and the people related to him. 
My recent reading has fulfilled my expectations, and I think that anyone could read this book. Whether it's a female or a male, or it's a 15 years old girl and 35 years old guy. This isn't my favorite genre of the book, but is still written in a very special and interesting way that the author forces us on some way to like this book and keep reading it. 
In my continued reading, I honestly expect many things to happen. Since Bruno moved to a countryside, author tells us that there wasn't much people and other houses around him. I expect from Bruno to get to know some people, and eventually get close to them like he was with his old three best friends. I hope that he will build better relationship with his sister, and that he will start liking her. Also, it has been mentioned that they will stay in their new house for three weeks, but I think that they will stay much longer than that.
I am very satisfied with what I have read, because as I have already mentioned, the thing that I liked the mot about this book is author's word choice. I think that anyone could like this book, no matter what gender or age he or she is. This book makes you keep reading, and I am still questioning myself how did I stop reading it. The book is very easy to understand and simply- likable.

  • Passage Section  
''Oh, I'm tired of hearing about Father's job. That is all we hear about, if you ask me. Father's job this and father's job that. Well if Father's job means that we have to move away from our house and the sliding banister and my three best friends for life, then I think Father should think twice about his job, don't you?''

Bruno was talking to their made, Maria, when he said this. He never liked his father as much as he did his mother, simply because he didn't spend much time with him. If you haven't noticed, the word ''father'' is always capitalized, because the children had a huge respect towards their parents, as I have already mentioned. This particular passage shows how much his old house meant to him, also as his friends.  

No comments:

Post a Comment