Shooting Kabul by N.H Senzai Book Review

                In the beginning of Shooting Kabul the main character, Fadi Nurzai, is getting ready  to leave his home in Afghanistan with his family. As they are getting on the truck that will take them over the Afghani-Pakistani border the Taliban show up, and in the rush to get aboard he lets go of his little sister Mariam's hand and she is left behind. The family arrives in America and begins to assimilate, with Fadi's sister and father getting jobs, while Fadi attends school. At school he tries to forget about what happened with Mariam but he can't let go of the guilt and he feels that he has to do something to find her and bring her back. He feels that he begins to fit in at his school when he finds the art room where he makes some friends. During art class Fadi finds out about a photography contest with a grand prize of two roundtrip plane tickets to either China, India, or Kenya. Fadi decides that if he was able to get to India then he could easily just hop the border into Pakistan and then try to find Mariam there. He already has a long experience with photography from taking pictures with his father in the hills outside of Kabul, so he decides to enter the contest. When the winner of the contest is announced, Fadi doesn't win, but his partner in the contest, Anh, does win second place. At Anh's award ceremony, Fadi looks at pictures taken in a refugee camp and he recognizes his sister,  in one of them. After they find out where Mariam is, his family contacts a refugee agency and has her sent to them.

                Fadi begins his new life in America rather shy and quiet, because he doesn't know anyone there. After 9/11, he becomes even more shy because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. Two boys, Ike and Felix, begin to bully him because of his ethnicity, calling him a "towel head" and a "terrorist", but as Fadi adjusts and makes friends at his new school he gets them to stop bullying him and others by throwing the two in a lake, even though at first he wanted more severe physical revenge. Fadi carries the guilt from leaving his sister behind right until the end of the story and that really shapes many of his actions throughout the book. If his sister had not been left behind he would not have signed up for the photography contest and he wouldn’t have become friends with Anh in the first place. The book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is very important to him and he draws comparisons to it a lot. Fadi empathizes with the character Claudia as she is hiding out in a museum because they both have left their old homes and have to go through a difficult adjustment to get used to their new one. "Fadi blinked, his eyes watery. For all the problems in Afghanistan, this was still home."  He is described as having "unruly dark hair" and a nose that had been broken once. Anh and Fadi's father both think that he is a person with noble intentions of getting his sister back.

                The theme of Shooting Kabul is that family can be a very strong force. Many of Fadi's actions are driven by the love for his little sister. Fadi's immediate and extended family help him find her because they all want Mariam back as badly as he does. A loss of a family member affects everyone within the family, and when Mariam is left in Afghanistan everyone becomes depressed. They all blame themselves for her loss, and experience unwarranted feelings of guilt. Every person in his family tells himself or herself that they are guilty, and each one of them tells someone else how they were directly responsible for leaving Mariam behind. Fadi's older sister, Noor, admits to everyone how she thinks she is responsible: "No, I'm the oldest. I should have taken care of them… It's my fault Mariam is lost!" and Fadi himself repeats throughout the book how it was his own fault, "It was his fault that Mariam had been left behind, not his father's, not Noor's, not his mother's."

                The epidemic of racism that followed 9/11, and the situations it created, is given a spotlight in Shooting Kabul. When Fadi arrives in his school, he sees a pair of bullies but they don't pick on him at all. After 9/11, they begin to intentionally target children whom they think have middle eastern skin color. One day Fadi gets jumped by Ike and Felix, who break his camera and try to hurt him. He knows that he can't let them keep attacking him, so he joins up with a group of boys who Ike and Felix have been harassing and bullying in an effort to get them to stop. They corner the bullies, but when a few in the group decide that they would like to beat up Ike and Felix in return, Fadi stops them saying "We can't beat them up. That would make us as bad as they are." When Fadi says that he joins the tradition of leaders who have decided to respond to racism with nonviolence, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He knew and realized that violence begets violence, and if they injured Ike and Felix, they were in a sense hurting themselves with the consequences of their actions. By choosing a path of nonviolence, Fadi responded to racism and violence  with forgiveness and mercy.

                Shooting Kabul was a great book, and one in which I saw America and the events of 9/11 through an entirely new point of view. I would recommend it to anyone. Family plays an important role in it, and even though much of its plot spins on a powerful tenet (that family can be a very strong force) and just one event, the story does not suffer for it. A tragedy gives rise to a guilt-ridden but likeable main character, and, even though Fadi believes that it was his fault that Mariam was left behind, I never believed that he really was to blame. Shooting Kabul is an interesting book that presents the old coming of age story in a new way, and I really enjoyed reading it.

I got the cover photo from here

I got the other picture from here

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Book Review

                In the world of Fahrenheit 451, possessing a book is illegal, and will result in the books, and your house, being burned. Guy Montag is a fireman, and it is his job to start the fires. On his way home from work, Montag meets a girl named Clarisse. She seems to be much more observant and interested in the world than anyone else he has met. When he arrives back home, he finds that his wife had swallowed a large amount of pills in an attempt at suicide. This upsets Montag greatly, and he begins to doubt the reasons given to him to burn the books. His feelings shift and sway until he eventually decides to read a book taken from one of the houses he burned, just to see what is actually inside. The next day he wakes up sick, and decides that he will stay home that day and try to read the his ill gotten book. When he calls in to report his "illness," the fire chief, who had been noticing how strangely he was acting, comes by the house. While there, he explains to Montag how books are dangerous, that the only media that can exist has to be inoffensive, and how media needs to have "mass" to be consumed. Captain Beatty, the fire chief, discovers the book in Montag's pillow and he tells him how it is the firemen's job to keep people feeling happy. Montag decides that he needs another person who shares the same feelings about books that he does and so he decides to visit a retired English professor he once knew. The English professor, Faber, gives Montag a radio that he can talk to him with, and then sends Montag on his way. Later, when his wife, Mildred, has some of her friends over to watch television, he takes out a poetry book and reads it to them. One of her friends is aghast, and rushes over to her house and reports Montag for the possession of books. When Montag eventually goes back to his firehouse, Captain Beatty tells him of their next assignment, a "special case." They are being sent to burn down Montag's own house. He is told to destroy it piecemeal, with a flamethrower. Once he begins to be berated by Captain Beatty, he decides that he can't take it anymore, and he burns Captain Beatty to death. A mechanical hound is sent in pursuit of him, and he burns that as well. Another hound is brought in, and Montag takes off running until he loses the second hound by jumping in a river. As he walks through the woods and away from the river he finds a group of like minded individuals who are hoarding books in their memories and waiting for the day when they are legal again. They do not have to wait long though, because the next day the cities where most of the people live are bombed and destroyed.

                Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Montag's intellectual awakening. In the beginning, he does not think much and has a passion for burning: "He walked toward the corner thinking little at all about nothing in particular." He really begins to see how wrong his actions are when he burns a woman alive when she refuses to leave her house and her books. He begins to wonder what sort of object can have such a hold over someone, to the point that they will die for it. This is kind of the first crack in his dam, and when he meets Clarisse, she widens it. He begins to question why he is burning the books, why there is always a war going on, and why no one cares about anything that is real anymore. The more Montag learns about the world around him, the more he feels he has to overcome the vapid and self centered society that he lives in, "I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don’t even know why." He is described in the book as a man in his thirties. Other people's opinions of him differ widely, with Clarisse thinking that he is "interesting" and Faber thinking that he is a fellow book lover. They both think of him in a positive light, and that he has more potential than he realizes. Captain Beatty, on the other hand, thinks that Montag is dangerous, like an insect that must be stamped out.

                The theme of Fahrenheit 451 is that it is society's duty to continue to care about the world around it, to not exist in a self contained bubble. In the book, people have lost the time to think: "The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour." The government has taken the saying panem et circenses (bread and circuses) to the extreme by making sure that its citizens are content in watching and hearing government controlled media that exists to make the citizens think less, and watch more, and since no one wants to invest time in a story, the shows have no story, as they exist simply to be seen and to entertain. Montag's wife, Mildred, is enthralled by their television parlor, with a "parlor family" that pretends to know and care about her. She doesn't understand why anyone on earth would want the world different because she feels she is happy with her lot. She is not really happy with it though, because she attempts to commit suicide earlier in the book. Mildred serves as an example of the wider society around her. She acts happy, but her true feelings are extremely different from her actions.

                The citizens in the book have become only interested in themselves. What really shows this is how most of the cars go about one hundred miles per hour, and when they hit someone, it is regarded as the pedestrian's fault. By the year in which it is set, people see nothing wrong with casually mowing down pedestrians while on a leisurely drive. When Montag is attempting to cross the street he narrowly avoids a car that was attempting to run him over. In his world the only thing the people care about is themselves, and the absence of literature sadly helps to promote that. Books and stories make people see the world from other's eyes, and when the opportunity to do that disappears, the attempts to do so vanish as well. Empathy is a core tenet of civilization, since without it, it would be impossible to work together.

                Farenheit 451 has made me realize that what happened to society in the book could all too easily happen to our society today. If one person stops caring for others, there is nothing stopping everyone else from doing the same. I would recommend Farenheit 451 to people who enjoy science fiction, or a good dystopian story. It is a book with a plot that grabs you, and a theme that keeps you thinking.

I got the cover picture here
I got the other picture here

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien Book Review

               The Hobbit is the story of a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who lives in a place called the Shire. One day, Bilbo meets an old friend, Gandalf the wizard. Later that night Gandalf brings 14 dwarves, whose names are "Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Thorin" and they attempt to convince Bilbo to go with them in the function of a burglar to help them get their treasure back from a dragon who had taken it from them. After being attacked by orcs the company is forced to detour to Rivendell (one of the last elven houses on the continent) to recuperate and get help with a coded map of their destination, the mountain Arabor. As the group continues on from Rivendell and begins to climb the Misty Mountains, the mountain range that divides the continent in half, they stop in a cave and are captured by goblins and taken deep into their tunnels. The dwarves are again rescued by Gandalf but in their flight from the goblins they drop Bilbo who hits his head on a rock and falls unconscious and the dwarves accidentally leave him behind. Bilbo finds a cavern in which a creature, Gollum, lives and he finds a magic ring that causes the wearer to turn invisible. Bilbo then uses the ring to avoid capture and escape the goblins. The group is beset by many problems in the forest of Mirkwood but eventually they make it out and arrive at Arabor. Smaug, the dragon, still lives in the mountain guarding his treasure, so they eventually find a back door into the mountain and send Bilbo to sneak in and bring back a piece of treasure. Smaug notices when Bilbo takes a golden jug though, and sends Bilbo scurrying back out the back door with a burned bum. When Smaug flies out to burn down a nearby town he is killed and the dwarves claim his treasure. Many other groups in the book also want the treasure and eventually there is a battle in front of the mountain in which Thorin is killed. Bilbo survives the battle and is able to return home to the Shire with a bit of treasure.

                Bilbo undergoes a metamorphosis throughout the book from a reluctant adventurer to a daring burglar. In the beginning of the book Bilbo could not think of doing anything more adventurous than crossing the Water (a river that runs through the middle of the Shire) and by the end he is burglarizing a dragons lair. There is one part in the book where Bilbo wishes to end a siege on the dwarves' mountain so he takes their most prized possession, the Arkenstone that belonged to Thorin's father. Bilbo steals the gem and takes it to the besiegers who uses it as a bargaining chip to get Thorin to negotiate. Even though Bilbo learns to love adventure he is a hobbit, who loves home most of all and there are numerous passages where he just expresses his wish to be home "Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!". Since Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit he is very short individual, with large hairy feet that negate his need to wear shoes. The dwarves he go adventuring with hold him in very high regard as a burglar after he escapes the goblin's tunnels "It is a fact that Bilbo's reputation went up a very great deal with the dwarves after this. If they had still doubted he was really a first class burglar, they doubted no longer."

                The theme of the Hobbit is that there can be the most potential in the most remarkable of people.  In the book, Bilbo is tiny, about 3.5' tall, yet he becomes a master burglar who escapes from the most dangerous of situations. The hobbits play an important role in all of the Lord of the Rings books, as if Mr. Tolkien wished to reinforce this idea for good measure. I think that J.R.R Tolkien might have imposed that as one of the themes because he was a rather short individual in real life, just 5' 5" and wanted to prove to the world that what matters most is your mind. Stephen Hawking is an example of this idea as well, because even though he is a paraplegic he still has written many books and greatly contributed to the field of astrophysics. Gandalf reinforces this as well by saying in the book "Mr. Baggins has more to him than you can guess."

                 The Hobbit's narrator explains the book in a sort of whimsical tone and this passage from the book illustrates that perfectly "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the end of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." The Hobbit was written as a children's book and so it carries a much brighter tone than the rest of the Lord of the Rings series. That tone can make the darkest passages of the book grate that much more strongly, with huge amounts of contrast between the beginning of the book, where they are setting out on a happy adventure, and the chapter where Bilbo meets Gollum, with him lost in the pitch black, desperately riddling with a creature that wishes to eat him.

                This book is one of my favorite stories of all time and it has spawned an entire universe of books, literature, and movies based off of it. I would recommend this book to anyone who can read, and I would then attempt to persuade them to read the rest of the Lord of the Rings books after that. The Hobbit is the book that introduced Middle Earth to the world, and me to my favorite series of all time.

I got the cover picture from here.

I got the other picture from here.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner Book Review

             The Maze Runner begins with a boy named Thomas standing in an elevator going up a shaft. When the elevator reaches the top he is pulled out of it into a large room about the size of four football fields with a house, a garden, woods, and an animal farm in each one of the four corners of the room. Thomas is told by the other boys there that the Glade, what they call the big room, is in the middle of a huge maze which they have been trying to survive and find a way out of. The next day a girl is sent up the shaft to the glade carrying a message that says she is the last person coming up ever and Thomas decides that he would like to help find the way out of the maze by becoming a runner. Then that night Thomas is stuck outside of the walls of the glade and forced to spend the night in the maze after he tries to rescue some other boys who came back to the glade too late in the day. After Thomas and the boys survive the night he is treated with awe by the other boys because there are creatures called "grievers", balls of skin and knives, that come out at night and Thomas saved the other boys with him from them. The boys' need to find a way out begins to become urgent after the sun in the sky of the glade disappears. After the attempts to find a code in the maps of the maze are stepped up they find that the maze spells the words float, catch, bleed, death, stiff, and push and that there is a hole in the sky floating near the cliff edge of the maze that the grievers disappear into. Thomas gets himself stung by the grievers and remembers that if they get into the room that the hole leads to then they can type in the code they found and escape. After finding that out they decide to do so because the doors to the glade no longer shut and the grievers are attacking them during the night. They charge through the maze and battle the grievers to get into the hole where Teresa, the girl who came the day after Thomas arrived, finds the button to shut down the maze.

                Thomas is described by Chuck, a character in the book. "I'd say you're sixteen. and in case you were wondering, five foot nine… brown hair. Oh, and as ugly as fried liver on a stick". Thomas has an urge to help others, demonstrated in the book by his wish to become a runner, even when he knows the dangers and risks, and by when he ran out into the maze to save Minho, a maze runner, and Alby, their leader, when they are about to be trapped outside the glade "Thomas knew he had no choice. He moved. Forward. He squeezed past the connecting rods at the last second and stepped into the maze." Some people would call Thomas's urge to help people self destructive and it seems to increase after he develops a relationship with Teresa. Theresa and Thomas share a telepathic bond, with them being able to share thoughts and carry out verbal conversation in their mind. This, and the fact that even though both have had their memories erased they seem to know each other begins to make them closer than either is with any of the other gladers.

                The theme of this book is that hope survives in the strangest of places. In the text it says that "The maze was never meant to be solved" and even though they know that, they still persist in attempting to find an exit. They would have never even tried for two years to solve the maze by running if they did not have hope that it could be solved by doing that.  I have been swimming for over six years now and at first I was not very good, but I stuck with it because I had hope that I would get better at it. When the boys decide to one, last ditch effort to get out of the maze, they only do that on the hope that the maze will allow them to escape.

                 The Maze Runner plays with some interesting ideas regarding freedom and memory. All of the boys stuck in the maze have had their memories taken away, with no idea of how they got in the maze or even any idea of the details of the world outside the maze. The only way the boys can get their memories back is to be stung by a griever and get what the boys call "the grief serum"- a sort of antivenin that counteracts the griever poison. There is a catch though- going through the process of being stung and recovering is incredibly painful. What was really interesting was that the boys who did get their memories back were not always that happy about remembering. After Ben recovered from the griever sting he went crazy and tried to kill Thomas, and after Alby recovered his memories he became very glum because the world outside the maze is apparently destroyed by a disease called "the flare" and actual solar flares. The book asks the interesting questions like "What would you do for your memories?" and "What would you do if they are not what you expected?".

                I really liked reading The Maze Runner because you think it should be a science fiction novel because of the setting, but it is actually more of a mystery story. I kept reading the book because I wanted to find out why they are in the maze, and if the group would escape. The Maze Runner relies on suspense, not some overarching theme like a science fiction novel would. I really enjoyed reading this book and would heartily recommend it to anyone who asks, but anyone who enjoys a mystery should pick this up as well. The Maze Runner was a fun read.

I got the cover picture from here.

I got the maze picture from here.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding Book Review

 

                In Lord of the Flies a group of boys crash land on a tropical island. The first thing they do is to find a conch and use that to gather them together at an assembly where they elect a chief, Ralph. As time passes Ralph begins to clash with another boy, named Jack, over priorities on the island, with Ralph wanting rescue and Jack wanting to hunt pigs on the island. Then, during a feast of pig, the group begins to imagine that a boy named Roger is a monster, and they kill him. Later in that evening Jack is so happy over the imaginary killing of the beast that he makes a bid for the chieftainship and after it fails Jack splits from the main group, taking about half of the older boys with him. Ralph is left on one side of the island and after about two days they decide to walk to the other side of the island to try to reason with Jack's crew.  Once there, an altercation ensues and Piggy, a member of Ralph's lot, is killed and the other two boys with Ralph, twins, are captured and forced to change allegiances. Ralph is left with no followers and Jack attempts to hunt and kill him, eventually setting fire to the entire island in an effort to do so. In the midst of the hunt a naval officer arrives on the island and rescues the boys, but not before the noticing the consequences of the boys actions on the island.

                Ralph is one of the most interesting people in the book, in the beginning he starts as a leader, approaching it with an air of fun and anticipation, but later on the decisions he has been forced to make begin to weigh on him. Ralph is forced to see both sides of the coin in life on the island, much earlier than the other boys. In the book he is described as a well built boy of about twelve, with the shoulders of a boxer but also a kind face. The other boys think of him as their leader, with Piggy saying "You're chief, Ralph. You remember everything." Jack, the other power on the island, does not like Ralph, because Ralph and Jack stand for very different things. Jack thinks in the short term, with the priorities of hunting and meat, while Ralph thinks for the long term, with the priorities of survival and rescue.

                In this book Ralph comes across as a paragon of democracy on the island, with the polarization of  Jack and Ralph becoming apparent in their moral differences in the latter part of the book. Ralph's cleanliness is a kind of metaphor for the morality of their collective actions, because as Ralph gets dirtier and dirtier the actions of the boys also get increasingly horrific. Later in the chapter even Ralph takes part in the quintessential activity of the Jacks lot, hunting, with Ralph beginning to become not just physically unclean, but morally unclean as well.

                In Lord of the Flies there is a theme of the savageness of humanity being just barely contained by civilization. To begin with, the time period of the book reinforces this, with a nuclear war in the background of the book showing how humanity would destroy itself given the chance. On the island the boys begin originally with grand intentions of democracy and prospering on the island, but as time wears on the thin veneer of civilization wears off., and in the world today people are a lot meaner when they think no one else is watching. The character of Roger is a bit of a sadist, and in one section of the book he tries to hit a "littlun", what they called the little kids on the island, with a rock but he still carries some of the rules of civilization so he never actually hits him. "Yet there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life." In the end though the character of Simon sums up best how all the problems of the boys on the island were caused by themselves when he says this, "What I mean is… maybe it's only us."

                I enjoyed reading Lord of the Flies because it shows civilization in microcosm with all it's difficulties shown. It is a wonderful adventure story, with a gripping tale of survival, even though the problems faced are not from nature, but from the boys themselves. Lord of the Flies is a great book.

I got the book cover from here.
I got the other one from here.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Book Review

 
               Heart of Darkness opens with the main character, Charlie Marlow, as a young man, returned from a sea voyage. He takes a job with a company that works to find ivory in Africa. Charlie sails south, and arrives at the main trading post of the company. He then has to wait there for rivets so he can repair the steamship he will captain, and after they arrive he sets sail on a voyage into the heart of Africa to resupply the trading post of a man named Kurtz. When he arrives at Kurtz's he discovers that Kurtz had been slaughtering natives for ivory and acting like a sociopath. They take Kurtz onto the ship, for he had become ill and on the journey back to civilization Kurtz dies of his illness. After Charlie returns to civilization he brings the news of Kurtz's death to his widow.

                You can see Marlow begin to lose some of his humanity on the voyage. As he sails deeper into the heart of Africa it is a metaphor for him sailing deeper into the darkness of his own soul. Even before he casts off, he is delayed in the first station waiting for rivets. The whole episode just shows how the people who are trading for ivory are making it harder for themselves. In the midst of Charlie's journey the boat comes under attack by some of the indigenous people and a group of people on the ship return fire. Charlie describes it as "squirting lead into that bush(63)" and it begins to show how he is beginning to feel disillusioned over the pointless voyage that he is on. Near the end of the story Marlow has to force Kurtz to get on the ship and head back to civilization and it goes to show how Charlie has decided to cut his losses, both literally with Kurtz, and morally as well, by refusing to have more unnecessary deaths on his hands.

                I think the theme of the book is that man is inherently evil, that we all have a heart of darkness and only societies mores are holding us in check, for when Kurtz is around other Europeans he talks of fine things such as progress and civilizing forces, but when he is left alone with the native people in the jungle he takes to raiding, burning and looting villages in the name of ivory. The book mentions the words heart of darkness, etc. at least 20 times. In the world today you see a lot of senseless destruction and violence on the news and in the media in general. During our evolution as a species violence was necessary for survival, for example hunting, and self defense, but even though these are no longer necessary to live in most scenarios  we can't give up the instinct itself, it is hardwired into everyone.

                This book uses the language of an earlier era. When reading early on in book I was intrigued when it used the words such as "niggers" and "savages" when referring to the indigenous African population. Those words have almost died out in common speech because as our society has grown more tolerant of people of different backgrounds and as all people, of all races, have a say in our nations affairs.

                I enjoyed the plot of the book, but the writing itself seems a bit obfuscating. While reading I thought that Kurtz died about halfway into the book and continued to think that until Charlie actually met Kurtz. I would definitely not recommend this book to everyone. The writing is complex and confusing and many of the words used in this book would offend a large swathe of the population. Even with these drawbacks the book offers a look into the lengths men will go to to for the darkness of their hearts.

I got the cover picture from here.
I got the river picture from here.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Book Review

       The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a tale of a boy named Bruno. One day Bruno comes home to find that he and his family is moving from their house in Berlin to a place that Bruno calls Out-With. After building a tire swing Bruno falls off and gets a cut on his knee and since he couldn't find anyone else their waiter, Pavel, offers to treat it for him.  While treating it Pavel tells Bruno that he used to be a doctor before he came to Out-With. Bruno eventually gets very lonely and when exploring the fence he meets a boy on the opposite side of the fence named Shmuel. Bruno and Shmuel become friends and talk every day even though they don't know what is going on. A month later while Bruno and his family are having Pavel, who, like all the people in the striped pajamas seems to be losing a lot of weight, loses his grip on the wine glass and it falls directly into the lieutenant who they are having dinner with's lap. The lieutenant gets very angry and shoots Pavel on the spot, which greatly disturbs Bruno and which also points out to him that maybe all the people in the camp are not equal. Bruno and Shmuel are talking one day and Bruno offers to help find Shmuel's father who has been missing for the past 3 days. Bruno agrees and crawls under the fence where he and Shmuel and a bunch of other people are gathered up into a group and marched into a gas chamber where they are gassed to death.

            This book has a very interesting perspective of the world. Bruno lives in 1940s World War II era Nazi Germany but he still remains oblivious to what is really happening. The book takes the phrase the innocence of childhood to a whole new level. It tries to shield the reader from the reality of what is happening by using different or subtly altered words (which also might be because Bruno is only eight years old so he just can't pronounce them) like fury for fuehrer and  Out-With for Auschwitz. The lone voice of dissent in the book from what is happening in Bruno's country comes from his own grandmother who disapproves extremely of what her own son(Bruno's father is the head of the Auschwitz death camp though the book does not come straight out and say that) is doing to advance his career.

            The theme of this book is that friendship knows no bounds. Bruno and Shmuel are two very people, separated physically by the fence and mentally by their very different life experiences, yet through the power of chance and loneliness they end up becoming friends. Bruno and Shmuel are oblivious to the horror that is happening all around them and I think that is part of what helps them become friends in the first place. They are the least jaded of any of the people around them. All of the adults in this book are not able to tell Bruno what is really happening and even thought Shmuel lives in the camp he also has no idea.

            This book appealed to me because I have always been interested in World War II and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas offered a whole new perspective on it. In most of the books about World War II I have read the main character is always a soldier on the allies side and is nearly always about 19 years old. I enjoyed how The Boy in the Striped Pajamas shows you the world through the eyes of an 8 year old boy being raised in Nazi Germany. I would recommend this book. Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a great story with a powerful ending. Read it!

Link to another review here

I got the picture from here