Book vs Movie: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Book vs. Movie
If you didn’t cry at the end of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, written by John Boyne, then I can personally find you a therapist. Whether it was the novel or the movie, directed by Mark Herman, this story is a tear-jerker that uses the classic technique of children’s innocence to expose the evil in the world. Although both book and movie are as close to similar as any nerd could want them to be, there is still a significant adjustment in the presentation of the theme that evil will corrupt everything around it.
The baseline of the plot surrounds the little German boy Bruno, age 9, as he moves away from Berlin during WWII. You might be thinking, “Oh, they’re running away from the Nazis.” This is the typical plotline for historical fiction of the time, but then once it is clear Bruno’s father is a Nazi and has been put in charge of Auschwitz, Poland, it shifts the focus into a much darker viewpoint with this New York Times Bestselling novel. Bruno lacks the self-awareness to understand his surroundings, and following the move to Auschwitz, befriends Shmuel, a young Jewish boy who lives in the concentration camp, thus providing the main conflict for the story.
The initial difference between the movie and the novel is the POV and how that contributes to the unraveling setting. From a visual standpoint, it is clear to see in the movie the Nazi signs, the uniforms, the starved looks on the Jews in the concentration camp, and even in the first 5 minutes of the movie how families are being shoved into trucks headed for their traumatizing futures. But in contrast to the movie, the book shows us the events through the eyes of a child who doesn’t understand what he is witnessing. He incorrectly pronounces words (they are spelled based on his thought process), so meeting the Fury seems like no big deal until you realize Fury stands for Führer. Another example is Bruno’s pronunciation of Auswitch as “Out With”, with both examples indicating his naive perspective. These details in the book hit the reader once the connection is made to Bruno’s reality. Once the reader visualizes a 9-year-old boy interacting with Hitler it puts the context into a harrowing perspective of innocence vs. evil, whereas the film lacks this effect.
The next differentiation is seen in the numerous childish behaviors of Bruno in the book that are missing in the movie. A serious mistake Bruno makes in the book is when he tells Gretel, his sister, about the existence of Shmuel, his Jewish friend in the concentration camp. Throughout the novel, Gretel is consistently falling deeper into the Nazi ideology that is targeted toward her, so when Bruno mentions his friend the reader feels the tension with how Gretel may react. Another moment that takes part in solidifying the innocence of Bruno is when he interacts with Eva Braun, the partner/wife of Hitler. She is never named within the novel, but her aura is clear. Eva is simply described as a “beautiful woman” who is incredibly polite to both children and takes a note of interacting personally with Bruno by commenting on his shoes, then followed by the horrible treatment she receives from Hitler to exemplify his depravity along with a child’s perspective of even the horrific nature of the man. The entire scene is missing in the movie, preventing viewers from having that extended exemplification of the immoral life of Hitler and the Nazi party.
The ending is the largest shift in plot between the movie and the book. In both mediums, the events that transpire are evident to the viewer/reader. Bruno sneaks across the fence, meets up with Schmuel, and they look for Shmuel's dad, but their search is interrupted when they are forced to march, then are put into a gas chamber, and finally killed. The movie provides the visual reactions of the father and the mother as they realize the horror of the events that have occurred, but the book is much more ambiguous. The family never realizes what happened to Bruno once he went missing, so the unknown air of the book leaves room for a great hole left in the life of his family rather than a definitive result.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is one of the few book-to-movie adaptions that do the story justice! Although it is inevitable that changes must be made, it simply changes the presentation of the story rather than the lesson to learn. The theme of evil consuming innocence remains clear as day within both presentations, and any reader or viewer will walk away with the harrowing events that happened so long ago.
