Accuracy of Historical Fiction Novels Both The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne and Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson are historical fiction novels. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Boyne portrays the story of Bruno, a naive German boy who meets a Jewish boy during the Holocaust. While in Chains, Anderson tells a story of Isabel, a slave girl living during the American Revolution who tries to gain freedom and protect her sister. Both novels are similar in the aspect of accurately depicting historical places, but they differ because Pajamas does not accurately display historical people or events, whereas Chains does. The places in both Pajamas and Chains are presented realistically by the authors due to the portrayal of what happened …show more content…
In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the main character Bruno, does not understand why Jews cannot come out of Auschwitz, nor does he know who Hitler is, and he creates his own iterpretations, which he believes with no doubt. While living in Auschwitz, Bruno never comprehends why there is a fence separating him and Shmuel. He also does not know who Jews are, and even asks if he is one. This could have never happened because during the Holocaust, because children were taught “racial awareness”, which basically taught children that some religions and races were inferior. In addition, Bruno’s father is a Nazi commander, so it would be unlikely that his father did not teach him “racial awareness” from a young age or at least encourage learning it. Furthermore, Bruno does not know who Hitler is, the leader of his country. Along with “racial awareness”, German children were taught to worship Hitler and his beliefs. The Nazi targeted German youth to win them over, so a boy like Bruno would know who he is, yet Bruno is clueless, calling the Fuhrer “the Fury”. After Father says “Heil Hitler”, Bruno thinks that the phrase meant, “another way of saying, ‘Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon’” (Boyne 54). In reality, at school, children were greeted by the Hitler salute; “Heil Hitler”. The teacher welcomed the …show more content…
In the climax of Pajamas, Bruno climbs under the fence to be with Shmuel. However, this never could have happened in real life. Bruno can easily pass food to Shmuel under the fence, but in reality there was electrocuted barbed wire in both Auschwitz I and II, which were parts of Auschwitz. While Bruno is changing into the camp’s uniform, Boyne states “Bruno looked left and right again but there was still no one to be seen” (Boyne 204). Bruno saw no one near, but the Holocaust Teacher Resource Center says that “The entire perimeter of the camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and 28 watchtowers with armed guards. This made prisoner escapes virtually impossible” (“Auschwitz: The Camp”). Bruno made a point to look around and saw nothing, when in real life there were many guards and towers. With so many watch towers, Bruno and Shmuel surely would have been spotted when they met at the fence, and Bruno could never have gone under the fence without being electrocuted. Unlike Boyne, the events Anderson write about are historically correct. Halfway through the book, Madam, Isabel’s owner’s wife, has her branded. Sadly this actually happened to slaves. Slaves were branded as extreme punishment, usually when a slave attempts to run away, which is what Isabel tried to do. Often whipping is punishment enough, as the judge in Chains points out, but sometimes