Book Comment: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Just finished The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (2006). It is very good. I always admire writers who can write realistically through the eyes of a child. There is something about the view of the adult world though children's eyes that sharpens the focus on the insanity and inhumanity of what adults foist on each other and the world. The insanity in this case is Auschwitz and the nine year old narrator, Bruno, moves there because his father is appointed Commandant. Bruno’s ignorance of the reality behind the high wire fence that separates his home from the inmates only enhances the reader’s horror. Boyne cleverly laces his main character’s innocent observations with understatement to magnify the evil that most readers are already aware of. There is some potent satire in Boyne’s view of the Holocaust not least of which in the final two sentences: ‘Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.’

As I read this book, I was reminded of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) where Harper Lee uses the young Scout to make observations about the adult world of racism and justice in America’s Deep South. The childlike style also dredged up memories of Raymond Briggs’ caustic satire on nuclear war When the Wind Blows (1982), - perhaps this needs resurrecting in light of current developments! Not that Briggs’ characters are children but they are childlike and the comic strip format adds to the mix.
Of course adults don’t have a monopoly on bad stuff. Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding shows us that even children have an innate capacity for evil.