The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

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Prejudice in “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by John Boyne
The novel by John Boyne called “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” relates a story of a German boy about eight years old called Bruno. He had an older sister who was twelve named Gretel. After his father's promotion, they moved to a new location where Bruno finds himself bored and in need of adventure. Around their home, there is a fence and one day when he goes looking around their home, he sees another boy about his age across the fence. The boy across the fence is a Jew named Shmuel and had been separated from his family as all of them were forced to work in the camps by the Germans.
In the novel, there are quite a number of themes that come out clearly; among them, friendship, innocence, discrimination, ignorance, boundaries, fear and prejudice. Of importance in this paper, is the prejudice theme and how it is illustrated throughout the content. One of the instances that introduced the aspects of the prejudice in the novel, relates to a time when Bruno and his sister Gretel were looking outside the window and wondering about the camp houses. According to the sister, huts in the camp are part of the countryside, but Bruno objects feeling that they might have represented something else other than the countryside (Shigekuni). The sister blatantly tells him that he would not know; after all he was just nine. According to the sister, given that Bruno was just nine, he could not understand as much as she could, given that she was older than him.
Later that day, Gretel also shows prejudice towards the children that were living across the fence. In a statement, she feels that the children across the fence are filthy and are the type of children she would not want to play with, considering that they look like they have never had a bath in their entire lives (Litlovers). In...