The Boy in Striped Pajamas

This summer I read the Boy in Striped Pajamas and after watching the movie I realized they had many differences.

Your favorite childhood books like The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants, Goosebumps or Inkheart have all been adapted and altered into movies. Others like Twilight or The Women in Black have also been made into popular movies. The Boy in Striped Pajamas is no different it has been altered in its character development, themes and plot to create a different story with similar ideas to entertain it’s viewers in a new way. The Boy in Striped Pajamas has been shifted throughout the entire film but something that has continuously shown through these changes is its theme and characterization. The theme of trust has changed dramatically from the book to the movie, so much that the movie actually presents a theme more of distrust than of trust, which the book presents. Whereas in the book they have made both Bruno and his mother more naive and innocent.

The primary way the movie has changed from book was making the script show more distrust than trust, which the book featured to make it more inspirational. Initially the movie features a scene were Bruno is following Schmuel into the concentration camp to look for Schmuel’s father and he starts to get scared and wants to turn back shows that he doesn’t trust that the soldiers or Jews won’t hurt him. This shows that Bruno has witnessed his Father’s Soldiers do unspeakable things to the Jews and now that he’s dressed like one he doesn’t trust they won’t hurt him as well. Also when the mother finds out that the soldiers are burning the Jews she starts loosing trust in him which is shown in the scene where she is yelling at her husband and says “don’t touch me,” and then keeps crying. In the movie the mother shows distrust in her husband but it doesn’t start until she finds out this terrible truth, after that her trust with her husband is gone because she doesn’t truly believe that the Jews deserve that treatment so she loses trust in the soldiers and her husband. Where as in the book Schmuel says ““It’s alright” said Schmuel.” Page 174. After merely a page Schmuel says it’s alright to Bruno and they start talking about something else and it seems that Schmuel doesn’t even care that Bruno betrayed him to Lieutenant when, and their trust is back within an instant. To sum things up, the movie makes dramatic scenes where there is a lot more distrust than trust while the book shows the more inspirational side of things making everyone trust and love one another.

In addition, the movie differs from the book is how they make Bruno more naive and innocent in the movie than he was in the book. One comparison is that for weeks Bruno thought that the concentration camp was a farm until Gretel eventually told him that it was a camp for “bad people” by that she meant Jews. She told him this in the scene where he came into her room after the soldier killed Pavel. Where as in the book Gretel thinks it’s a farm and Bruno tells her that ““There should be cows and pigs and sheep and horses.” Said Bruno. “If it was a farm, I mean, not to mention chicken and ducks.”” These pieces show that Bruno was clever enough to know that it wasn’t a farm in the book but in the movie he made the camp into a little, happy farming village. Bruno still didn’t have enough insight into the war but he knew to rule out other possibilities and he managed to find out the truth much quicker. To finish things off the movie version of The Boy in Striped Pajamas represents Bruno as a little baby who is completely helpless and doesn’t anticipate the risks of his actions or how the war works but the book depicts still an innocent Bruno but one with the knowledge to infer what is happening around him.

The last way the movie has twisted the book’s views and characters in a multitude of ways, one of these ways was changing the knowledge and insight into what was happening in the war. They changed Bruno’s mother into a women almost as naive and innocent as Bruno. In the scene where Elsa, Bruno’s mother, came home and the soldier told her that they were burning the Jews she cried and made a big fuss because in the movie she had no idea that the Jews were being massacred in colossal numbers and that her husband was running the killings. This shows she was completely unaware of what her husband was doing and showed her being very unsuspecting of what her husband was actually doing to the Jews. However, in the book the mother states ““Oh but Switzerland is a beautiful country” said mother quickly.” Page 146. This is when Lieutenant Kolter speaks about his father and says that he left to go to Switzerland right before the war. Bruno’s mother jumped in right after he said that because she was trying to convince her husband or point out that maybe the Lieutenant’s father left to see Switzerland instead of the idea that he fled the country because he was against the war. This shows that the mother most have had some knowledge to the military protocol of traitors. A final piece of evidence is “If the Commandant asks, we’ll say that I cleaned Bruno up.” Page 85. Mother said this when Bruno got hurt from the swing set and they left it out of the movie because they wanted the mother’s role to be more innocent and ignorant. Although in the book they made her character a little more intuitive and aware that Pavel was a Jew and if her husband found out he would be upset and maybe attack him. In conclusion Bruno’s mother was depicted as an unsuspicious and innocent women in the movie but in the book she was shown knowing what was happening to the Jews and what her husband was doing in Poland.

In the end thousands of books have been modified and changed, some directors made it better that the books but some directors failed and the movie was rejected. Many of these movies adapted the book into a story of their own by adding, changing, and removing characteristics, themes, scenes, and setting, in hope of making the movie more enjoyable. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is no different in the way it was made, and the movie changed the characters and theme and made it inspirational in a different way than the book. The book showed the trust of friendship and how it cannot be broken while the book showcased childhood, being young and clueless. Though these changes might seem slight create an entirely different story than the book.