Friends For Life

Bruno was a young boy with a great life, never had a thing to worry about. In the book “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne, Bruno always had a perfect world in mind, but one day Bruno got the

news that him and his mother, father, and older sister had to move away from their nice home. They had to move to a smaller home where he would have no one to play with and nothing to do. Bruno always kept out of trouble, but he always enjoyed exploring. He wanted to explore his new home. Not knowing what he would find, he made a great discovery.

In the beginning Bruno was very upset that he had to leave his best friends behind. Everything he had ever known, just left there to be forgotten about. That’s how Bruno saw it anyway. He had no clue what the new place would be like. He also had no clue why they had to leave in the first place, but throughout the book he gets more used to the new house, and now he has his new friend, Shmule.

As one day he was exploring through the woods behind his new house, he saw a little boy named Shmule sitting on the other side of a fence. It turned out to be a boy just like him, but lived a very different life. While Bruno had a great life, the other little boy was stuck in a concentration camp for Jewish people. Bruno didn’t understand what they meant, he just knew he found a friend.

Bruno would sit and look out his window and see a field with people working in their pajamas that all matched, they were striped. He knew that his new friend also wore those clothes, but he didn’t know why, and didn’t want to ask his new friend. He didn’t understand why everyone was over there, or  why they all had matching outfits. When Bruno asked his father, who was a German soldier about the people in their pajamas, his father just explained that they weren’t people at all, they were Jew’s. Bruno didn’t understand what his father meant by “not people” because he could very clearly see that they were in fact people.   

In the end of the book Bruno and Shmule were the best of friends, but Bruno realized it was a different friendship than he had ever had before. It was the best one he had ever had. The three boys who were once his best friends, he now doesn’t even remember their names. When he was with Shmule, he didn’t get to play games or anything. They both just sat there on either side of the fence and talked. That made the friendship stronger because they got to know each other.

Bruno learned a lot of different things throughout the book. There’s friendship, loyalty, determination, and discrimination towards people that are different. When everyone else was mean to the Jewish people, Bruno was nice to all of them because he didn’t see anything they did wrong. He thought of them as people just like everyone else. He didn’t see them any different from himself, they are just regular people with their own beliefs. Bruno saw this and didn’t judge the Jewish people at all. Instead he made one his best friend. Bruno was a very loyal friend and tried to help Shmule. Their friendship never ended, but both of their lives did.