The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What literary works related to the Holocaust have you heard of or read? Try to think of at least three.

Teaching Suggestion: Fiction, nonfiction, theater, and poetry have all explored the Holocaust extensively: Some of the more famous works include Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, Elie Wiesel’s Night, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List, but there are many others. Use students’ responses to spark discussion about how literature tries to represent the Holocaust and perhaps whether such representation is even possible or desirable (critical theorist Theodor Adorno famously remarked that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” although he tempered this pronouncement elsewhere).

• “Holocaust Literature”: an essay by Sara R. Horowitz at the Jewish Women’s Archive focusing on women’s Holocaust writing
• "The Holocaust’s Uneasy Relationship with Literature”: 2010 Atlantic article by Menachem Kaiser discussing the role of literature (including nonfiction) in understanding the Holocaust
• SuperSummary’s list of recommended reading for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

2. How would you define “allegory”? If you aren’t sure, can you think of any allegorical works you’re familiar with? What do these works have in common?

Teaching Suggestion: Allegory is a genre that uses symbolism to suggest a second meaning behind its overt narrative: Characters, objects, and events may represent real-world occurrences or stand in for abstract philosophical or moral concepts. Some of the best-known allegories include George Orwell’s Animal Farm (an allegory of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of Soviet Communism), C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (an allegory of Christian theology), Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (an allegory of McCarthyism), and William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies (an allegory of human nature and society). Allegory can cleave more or less closely to its symbolic meaning; some works merely build on an allegorical premise, whereas others contain extensive one-to-one correspondences. Likewise, allegories may depend heavily on their symbolic meaning or function equally well when taken at face value. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas leans more towards the latter, but use this prompt to get students thinking about less literal ways to approach the novel.

• Oregon State University video (and transcript) discussing allegory, representation, and the role of interpretation in each
• "Save the Allegory!”: 2016 Slate article by Laura Miller on the nature of allegory and why so many people dislike the genre

Short Activity

John Boyne has said that the idea for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas began as an image of two children sitting on either side of a fence. Using this same image as your inspiration, write a short story about two other children. Who are they, and what (if anything) is the significance of the fence?

Teaching Suggestion: In writing a “fable,” Boyne clearly intended The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to have applicability beyond the historical events it depicts. This is nowhere more evident than in Boyne’s starting point: The image of two people separated by a fence all but inevitably evokes the less tangible forces that can separate people—race, religion, nationality, etc. Although students are free to take their stories in whatever direction they like, use this activity as a jumping-off point for discussing these kinds of divisions and how it’s possible to find shared humanity across them. 

• Poster for the 2008 film adaptation prominently featuring the fence
• “Walls! Walls! Walls!”: 2017 Society & Space article by Claudio Minca and Alexandra Rijke about the proliferation of walls and other physical barriers in the last few decades