A Story of Prejudice and Bias

• What has the novel taught you /shown you about prejudice and bias?

One of the many novels written by John Boyne was fulfilled with the act of prejudice and bias. The book is called The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, a story from a small boy's view who has a father that is in charge of a concentration camp in Poland, Europe. The main character of this book is a boy named Bruno, the father of this 9 year old is a big time follower of the Nazis. Without even trying to think, we know that Bruno's father is supporting a group that has all the evidence of once a huge prejudice. This book shows a lot of connection of parents and their children, many of the scenes from this book is Bruno's parents telling their children bits of wrong information that leads to following what Bruno's father is doing.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas novel has taught and shown me the bigger meanings of prejudice. Before I read this book and think deeper about prejudice, I would only imagine a person that doesn't want to do things with a certain of people. This novel carved a note in my mind that prejudice can damage more as the "hate" becomes bigger. In World War 2 the Nazi party is keeping millions of Jews to suffer and die by the Nazi system of concentration camps and many more. The reason of all this is bias and prejudging, some Germans that lived on the 1940's encouraged their people that their 'failing country' reason is the Jewish. Those actions were completely unreasonable because the Jews had done nothing wrong. They were just living people like the rest of German and rest of the World.


The parents and surroundings of Bruno and Gretel (his sister) are frequently teaching them to think that Jewish people were horrible. This is what the novel had shown me, people that supported the Nazis must have been encouraged to blame something in a time where the people were desperate. It was the reason why Nazi had so much of great power, influencing others in which had the greater amount of people to vote. Gretel is much more influenced to the 'Jews are horrible' than Bruno because Bruno interacted with a Jew and it was a person that meant a lot to him. As his surroundings were encouraging him to hate Jews, he questions himself a lot of times because Shmuel (his Jewish friend) was the friendliest person he have around his place. He know that means Jewish aren't horrible at all, they're friendly. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas shows these moments of encouraging in many occasions, this made me realize that the opinions of people are extremely likely to evolve because the later people never interact with the one blamed and have no connection to them.