What does the ending of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas symbolize?
The ending to The Boy in the Striped Pajamassymbolizes the terror and the brutality that defined the Holocaust.
In the film's final sequence, two separate events are simultaneously shown. Bruno and Shmuel are being herded along with hundred of other prisoners. Neither one is able to stop the mass of people moving them. Bruno is comforting Shmuel with explanations such as "They want to keep us here from the rain." While this is happening, Bruno's mom interrupts Bruno's father in a meeting to tell him their son is missing. Bruno's father orders the Nazi soldiers to find his son. They make their way to the fence where they find Bruno's clothing. His father and the soldiers cross the fence and rush into the camp to try to stop what he fears has happened to his son. Bruno's mother and Gretel lag behind, stopping at the fence.
During the...
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pursuit, the prisoners are told to undress as they make their way into the gas chamber. Bruno holds Shmuel's hand as the lights go out and the gas pellets are released. With that, the door is shut and locked, while people are banging from the inside, trying to free themselves.
Looking for his son, Bruno's father comes across a set of emptied out barracks. He calls out his son's name to no response. At this moment, Bruno's mother realizes what has happened to her son. She lets out a harrowing and heart-wrenching cry. Sobbing, she clings to her dead son's clothes as Gretel is stunned into silence. Bruno's father hears his wife's cries and stares out, standing on the threshold of painful revelation. The film's final scene pans back, showing the door of the gas chamber. No sound can be heard as the backwards panning camera shows the "striped pajamas" that the prisoners had to remove before entering.
The gas chamber door symbolizes the Holocaust. The gas chamber itself is one of the most identifiable symbols of the time period. It was the instrument that the Nazis used to carry out their plans of wiping out those deemed as unworthy of living. The door symbolizes the immediacy of this slaughter. Millions entered doors like the one shown in the final scene of the film. None of them would leave. The way the camera captures the silence and the "striped pajamas" left behind reminds us of this haunting reality.
The terror and brutality symbolized in the film's final scene is enhanced by the sobbing cries of Bruno's mother and the revelation in his father's facial expressions. Bruno's father realizes that what he did for a living had direct consequences. His son died because of his work. Bruno's mother weeps because she knows that her complicity with her husband's work led to their son's death. The emotional weight of two parents' understanding about Holocaust's terror is enhanced with the camera panning backwards, showing the door that led to their child's death and millions of others.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a wonderful book. It's incredibly sad, but it is no less wonderful because of the way that it teaches readers about a horrible piece of history. The story takes place during World War II, but the story isn't about the war. A reader could say that it is about the horrors of the Nazi death camps, and that would be correct; however, the story is much more than that. It is a story about friendship and how friendship can cut across ethnic, racial, cultural, and other boundaries.
The end of the story has both Bruno and Shmuel dying in the gas chamber, and their deaths equally shock the reader and other characters in the book, and that is important. It's important because it shows us that there are not any winners or losers in war. Everybody is impacted in equally horrible ways. The war not only took the lives of Bruno and Shmuel, but it also took their friendship. The end of the book is symbolic of many other wars or conflicts that have gone on in history, and the author drives this point home with the book's final lines.
Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again.
Not in this day and age.
I believe that those lines can be read with heavy amounts of sarcasm, but even without that tone, the lines push readers to question their validity. Readers that are familiar with history and other conflicts will certainly know that war atrocities were not limited to World War II.
What are some symbols in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas?
I think that one symbol in the narrative is the fence. It is the fence that divides worlds of reality. On one side of the fence, the best wine is served, dinner conversation is pleasant, and life is good. On the other side of the fence, the worst in human cruelty is evident. The fence is a symbol because it demarcates this difference i reality. At the same time, the fence is also a symbol of how this can be overcome. Bruno and Shmuel meet at the end of the fence, where it can be burrowed under and overcome. The fence and its divisions are overcome with the friendship of both boys. While they die in the process, the symbol of division is overcome.
I would also suggest that another symbol in the novel would have to be the gas chamber. It is in the gas chamber where death is evident. Yet, the symbolism of the gas chamber is that everyone in it is equal. Death is universal. At the time, Bruno and Shmuel, one German boy and one Jewish boy, are seen as the same. There is no difference in the cruelty of the gas chamber. Yet, it is within this realm where Bruno clings to Shmuel's hand and tells him that they will be "best friends for life." A symbol of destruction ends up becoming a testament to how human beings should act. In this instant, the gas chamber is a symbol of transformation.