This is my boy in striped pyjamas essay.
In John Boyne's novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, an important relationship is the one between Bruno and Shmuel. This relationship helped me to understand a key message, which is to never judge a book by its cover. The boys first meet when Bruno decides to go exploring where he was told not to, when he then comes across “a dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy.” From this, their relationship starts at asking each other some simple questions and being confused about the other's problem to being best friends who will make sacrifices for each other.
When Bruno first sees Shmuel he does judge him, thinking he’s really different and weird. “Bruno was sure that he had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life but decided that he had better talk to him." But he ignores this and talks to Shmuel, asking questions and even coming back other days. When talking to Shmuel not once does Bruno let his prior judgement get in his way by bringing the problems up, but instead asks questions and learns why Shmuel is skinny and sad. This ends up with them becoming best friends and making each other's problems a little smaller.
At first, the relationship between Bruno and Shmuel is confusing as they both have so many questions about each other's lives:
'Where did you come from?' asked Shmuel,...
'Berlin.'
'Where's that?'...
'It's in Germany, of course,' he said. 'Don't you come from Germany?'
'No, I'm from Poland,' said Shmuel.
This quote is from when they first met and kept asking questions. It shows that they don’t know anything about each other but still care about each other's views and stories as they have so many differences even though they are so similar. This showed me that the best thing to do when you meet someone new is to view them as equal to you, asking questions about them and being honest about yourself.
Later, the relationship is now developing into them being friends even though their views are sometimes the complete opposite. A quote to show this is:
'There aren't any good soldiers,' said Shmuel.
'Of course there are,' said Bruno.
'Who?'
'Well, Father, for one,' said Bruno …
'There aren't any good soldiers,' repeated Shmuel.
'Except Father,' repeated Bruno.
Here Bruno and Shmuel have completely opposite views of soldiers but end up agreeing to disagree. This quote shows they really care for each other and don’t mind if the other disagrees with them. This helped me understand that everyone can have different views and that even if your views or opinions are different you can still get along.
At the end of the novel, we see that their relationship is now developed into them being best friends, making sacrifices for each other and forgiving each other.
When they go exploring in the camp things take a drastic turn for the worse, but Bruno sticks by his friend, “You're my best friend, Shmuel…My best friend for life." It shows that they’re now best friends, even though not too long ago they were complete strangers, living completely different lives and facing different problems with only their age in common. From this, I understood that you don’t really need anything in common to get along with someone, you just need to listen and be honest to them.
Through the novel, the relationship between Bruno and Shmuel develops from strangers asking about each other's mysterious lives to best friends making sacrifices to help the other however they can. This happened due to them having no one else to talk to, so they spent as much time as possible talking to each other. This relationship helped me understand a key message in the novel, that you don’t need to judge someone from first impressions, but instead ask questions and find out about them. In my opinion, this novel has a great way of showing that you can go from enemies to best friends, as long as you don’t judge the other party on what you’ve been told about them, and instead on what you have learnt of and seen of them. It shows this by Bruno being raised to think of Jews as lower than him and that they are not human, while Shmuel was treated as lower than human most of his life so he hated the soldiers and others who treated him that way. But they end up becoming best friends because they didn’t judge each other on what they were told.
