Saturday, January 3, 2015

How does Boyne present the differences between Bruno's life in Berlin and "Out-With"?

Boyne, the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, uses simple and direct language that echoes the words and tone a 9-year-old boy like Bruno might use to describe his life. Boyne's diction, or word choice, is very straightforward; it emphasizes the setting and the impressions that such a setting makes on the characters involved.
In Berlin, Bruno's family has a butler, a maid, and a cook. He attends school, and he lives relatively close to his friends. Bruno's family home is large; in fact, at the beginning of the second chapter, the house is described as "enormous." Bruno even has his own bathroom, and he is yet to have discovered all the "nooks and crannies that he hadn't fully finished exploring" in this home. His neighborhood is full of other large houses. His house is "on a quiet street and alongside it were a handful of other big houses like his own, and it was always nice to look at them because they were almost the same as his house but not quite, and other boys lived in them who he played with (if they were friends) or steered clear of (if they were trouble)." Lively market stalls "piled high" with fresh fruits and vegetables amused Bruno and lent a comforting air of activity to the area. These descriptions lead the reader to believe that Bruno led a comfortable life in Berlin.
Upon Bruno's arrival in Out-With with his family, he sees that "everything about it seemed to be the exact opposite of their old home and he couldn't believe that they were really going to live there. . . . When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere." This bleak introduction to Out-With contrasts powerfully with Bruno's old life in Berlin. Within moments of arriving to his new home, Out-With, Bruno experiences a terrible stomachache, and he wants to cry; these emotional reactions to Bruno's new home only foreshadow the pain to come.

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