The Boy in the Striped Pajamas has a very sad ending that almost makes the reader feel bad for Bruno's dad, the Nazi Commandant. None of them knew what happened to Bruno, just that he's gone, until Bruno's dad finds out that the place where Bruno's clothes were left the fence was not secure enough, and in fact a child Bruno's size could get in. When Bruno's dad figures out what happened to his son, all the pride that he had earlier turns into agony, despair, shame, and guilt that he didn't care anymore when the "soldiers came to Out-With and Father was ordered to go with them, and he went without complaint and he was happy to do so because he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore." In a way, the author tells us that Bruno's dad wants to be punished for the atrocity that he has committed. Bruno's sister and mother also are experiencing emotional trauma with Gretel realizing how much she loved Bruno only when he's gone. The ending is the part that is supposed to resonate with the reader and this book accomplishes that and keeps the reader intrigued till the very end.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is an extremely important book because of the way it describes the Holocaust. This book explains the Holocaust without going into graphic details so it can be a read to kids without mentally scaring them. The book doesn't even really explain what happens at the end (SPOILER ALERT!) Bruno and Shmuel are put into a gas chamber and gassed to death, but the author doesn't just say this, what he does say is " Bruno raised an eyebrow, unable to understand the sense of all this, but he assumed that it had something to do with keeping the rain out and stopping people from catching colds. And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go." Here, the author was purposefully vague about the events of the death and rather focused on Bruno and Shmuel's friendship. The last chapter starts with the following quote: "Nothing more was ever heard of Bruno after that," hinting that Bruno died, but never out right said that Bruno was diseased. I don't think this book will ever lose the title of the most popular Holocaust book because of all the previous reasons. Everyone needs to know the horrors of the Holocaust in order to avoid these conflicts in the future. This was a very educational experience, and I'm glad I was able to read and analyze this book.
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The protagonist in this book, Bruno is a 9 years old German boy who had to move from Berlin to Out With, a concentration camp for Jews during WWII. Bruno's father is promoted to the rank of commandant by the Fury. He was sent on a mission to be the top offical at the camp. Bruno does not like his new home and tries to make the best out of it. Since he likes to explore, he finds a a boy at the camp named Shmuel. They become best friends and Bruno's love of adventure urges him to go inside the camp disguised as a Jew. For the first, Bruno sees the horrific life at the camp.
These terrifying events of the Holocaust draw uncanny connection to the Israelis-Palestinian conflict and the economic injustices that the occupied territory suffers from. The author said at the end of the book, “of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.” which probably was to reassure young readers that we live in a much better world now, but it is not better for everyone! What Shmuel suffered with his family resembles to some extent what Palestinian people have to endure under the Israeli occupation. The United Nations approved giving Palestinian land to Zionists to make a state for themselves to protect them from another Holocaust, but this also created many conflicts in the Middle East. Just like Shmuel was relocated many times and his parents lost their house and business, many Palestinians were driven out of their lands. Israelis also built settlements in the Palestinian territory and made Palestinian lives unbearable by creating multiple checkpoints, so it is not easy to move freely from one place to another even in the land that the United Nations granted to the Palestinians. Also, Israel enforces its occupation through the use of military just like the Nazis did. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a book about a nine year old boy named Bruno living in Berlin, Germany during the WW II. The book depicts the horror of the Holocaust, albeit from the innocent perspective of a young kid, Bruno. His dad works at a mysterous job that Bruno dosent know much about, but its not long until Bruno's family moves to out-with for his dad's work, where Bruno is able to see a "town of people" in striped "pajamas" from his bedroom window. He asks his father about the people and his father responds "they're not people at all." Bruno befriends a kid on the other side of the fence named Shmuel. Bruno, being the innocent boy he is, sneaks into the camp to help Shmuel find his father, but he ends up in the gas chamber.
Bruno's dad works as a Nazi Commander under Hitler, and Bruno dose'nt understand what his dad's job entails. The family moves from Berlin to out-with, which I beleive is a child trying to say Auschwitz, one of the biggest concentrations camps in Poland. The reality of the Holocaust is grusome, but the author chose to tell the story from the perspective of a little innocent Bruno who does not understand fully the horror of what's happening around him. This was probably intentional in order to make the story less dark and easy for the young audience to relate to. Bruno believes that the people in the camp are wearing pajamas when they're really wearing a prison uniform. when his father tells him that they're not people at all it shows how much the Nazi's despised the jew to the point that they believe that they're less than humans. When Bruno sneaks into the concentration camp he gets put into a gas chamber and killed and only then does his father understand the situation. The people in Germany didn't know what was exactly happening in concentration camps, but some still took risks to help harbor Jews. The characters in the book have a slightly different veiws because they were directly involved. In fact, all the main characters change from the begining to the end of the book; Gretel becomes more agrressive, the mom gets fed up with life around the camp and decides to move back to Berlin, and the dad grew frustrated with his job, but Bruno remained the innocent little boy throughout the book. Bruno's friendship with Shmuel was kept a secret until the end of the book, however in reality such a friendship would be very hard to escape the Nazi's guards, and especially the dad. Today Jordan lake is a place where families and friends come together to bond over a mutual love for the beauty and nature of the lake. But how can we do this when our lake is polluted. Our community service project is focused on cleaning Jordan lake. Previous volunteers were able to remove 600 tires and 700 bags of trash, this shows just how much can be done to clean the lake. If we are chosen, we will bring 40 martin students to the lake partnering with “Clean Jordan Lake” and make an effort to clean up the trash.
If nobody helps clean up Jordan Lake then soon it will be totally trashed, which not only will make it very unpleasant for the people who go on picnics or enjoy the scenery while hiking. But it will also kill innocent animals and wildlife that live throughout the state park. Which I am pretty sure nobody wants to be responsible for. So if you care about innocent wildlife dying and beautiful state parks being destroyed then I suggest you help us clean Jordan Lake! If this problem is not fixed it could also eventually lead to hurting the local economy. Jordan Lake is a very popular destination for outdoors enthusiasts in the Raleigh area. So if we don’t help clean up the lake that would be kind of selfish because now other people can’t enjoy the park. And I’m pretty sure nobody wants to be classified as selfish. So why not help clean up Jordan Lake! The problem our community service project group will be fixing is cleaning up trash at Jordan Lake. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal at first. But, over 300,000 people get their drinking water from Jordan Lake (According to the 2010 U.S Census), so it is quite disturbing how polluted this lake is. Due to all of this trash and pollution it causes major algae blooms, that kill aquatic life. Jordan Lake has a big bass fishing sport and if the fish are dying it will become unpopular. If keeps continuing Jordan Lake state park could shut down due to lack of activity. The ways people help out can differ, for example the volunteers who were able to remove 600 tires and 700 bags of trash from the lake, and yes that is a lot but it does not mean that we are done cleaning the lake, this is merely just the tip of the waste iceberg. The organization “Clean Jordan Lake” has done great things to clean the environment, they were the ones that removed the tires and trash that was aforementioned. Our goal is to help out the community and clean up a beloved lake. We can't expect the lake to just clean itself we need to take action to clean it up. We can all do something to pitch in and clean up our local environment. But it isn't only citizens that are trying to help out the house budget is also giving 1.3million to fund getting the algae out of the lake to maintain the health of the lake and its organisms but they are on the fence about what method to use. The leading method as of now is to put chemicals into the lake to keep the algae from killing the organisms and harmfully affecting our fragile ecosystem. The reason that the house hasn't put this into action yet is because scientists behind it don't know if its 100% safe, and we can't afford another failed project like the solar bees. We can help reduce the pollution in jordan lake by volunteering to clean it up. Jordan lake is quite polluted and a volunteer group could clean a lot up. We can have a group of 40 or some 8th graders with chaperones to go to a previously selected location and clean up the shore and surrounding area. We have already talked to an organization “Clean Jordan Lake” and they are happy to tell us a spot to go and volunteer. It would most likely be an all day effort accounting for transportation there and back. In doing this we would actually make a impact on Jordan Lake’s ecosystem. We would have around 40 people picking up trash for a couple hours, a very good amount of trash could be picked up. If we get picked I feel like a big impact would be made on Jordan Lake and its surrounding area. We can make the area cleaner for the animals and plants and make the area safer and cleaner for people. That is why you should pick our project to clean jordan lake. Action Plan: tps://docs.google.com/document/d/12_t9jKN6Z9qxbNjKPoSrVIjeWbwL0cgjqQlcfgDtR9o/edit Bibliography: Clean Jordan Lake. “About Us” CleanJordanLake.org. January 2018. http://cleanjordanlake.org/about-us/ http://www.wral.com/jordan-lake-pollution-gets-another-experimental-treatment-in-house-budget/16738875/ ,Laura,”Jordan Lake Pollution Gets Another Experimental Treatment in House Budget”,June 2nd 2017,1/28/18 Recently algae has begun to take over jordan lake, and this is a problem because a lot of families in our community come to jordan lake to have a good time, so it makes sense to take care of it, but how exactly do we do that? I , personally want to preserve the lake because me and my friends and family always looked forward to going there, and if the algae keeps on growing without a good way to stop it alot of people won't be able to enjoy the beautiful lake.
The issue with cleaning the lake is, how to do it there have been a few ways proposed. A few years ago the solar bees failed to work and cost 2 million dollars, now we have to find a method that works. There new method ,given 1.3 million dollars, is to dump chemicals in the water that kill the algae, but representative pricey harrison believes that this isn't completely safe and could harm organisms and have a public risk and is trying to get it taken out of the budget, even scientist on the DEQ were sceptical of this method. But what can we do about this? Well you can tell the department of environmental quality if you agree or disagree with this practice and why. |
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May 2018
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