...The Boy at the Top of the Mountain is a story of lost innocence in the face of terrible evil. It's a tale of innocence corrupted as Pieter's personal devotion to Hitler changes him from a kind 7-year-old with a Jewish best friend into a self-important bully who betrays his friends and is proud and boastful of his membership in the Hitler Youth. Back in 2006, same author John Boyne had introduced us to Bruno, the 9-year-old whose father is Commandant at Auschwitz where the boy becomes friends with the Jewish hostage Shmuel after whom The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is titled. Reflecting that title, the authors new novel seems to be like a sequel but it's more an assistant piece telling an entirely new story through the eyes of Pierrot, a French/German...
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...Change is both a vital and inevitable part of our lives, and has a powerful effect on people, their perspectives, and the world around them. Through their experiences, many characters in texts such as Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, and the film, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, directed by Mark Herman, undergo various changes and transformations, not only physically, emotionally and intellectually, but also in their understanding and perspectives of the world around them. Studying texts such as these provides the audience with valuable insight into the aspects of changing worlds, perspectives, relationships and selves, which they are then able to relate to their own lives. Characters in both To Kill A Mockingbird and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (hereafter referred to as Mockingbird and Pyjamas respectively) change their attitude to society’s notions of the superiority of certain races and religions over others, creating a valuable moral imperative through the historical nature of the texts. Harper Lee’s Mockingbird is set in the small American town of Maycomb amidst the 1930s civil rights movement, and is centred on Scout’s moral struggle when questioning the racism and discrimination present. At the start of the novel, Scout blindly follows the discriminatory beliefs of society, although as she experiences more of the world for herself, she begins to question the hypocrisy of society, “How can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks...
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...In the movie ‘Boy in the striped pyjamas’ directed by Mark Herman the ideas that are explored are Loss of Childhood innocence, The importance of friendship, and Discrimination. The ideas are important as they help to teach us about the devastating events of the holocaust and how we shouldn’t let history repeat itself. This is done using visual and verbal features such as symbolism, characterisations, and cinematography. Loss of childhood innocence is one important idea that recurs throughout the film ‘Boy in the striped pyjamas’ It is often shown through the use of symbolism one major event shown is how Gretel disposes of her dolls throwing them all into the basement before transforming her room from bright and innocent into a new reality showing posters and propaganda displaying her involvement with the Hitler Youth Movement. Then she became interested in young soldiers all these began taking place and she’s only 12. Besides that one of the main events to set this idea was moving houses, going from a carefree and playful environment into a serious problem. In your childhood you need things to do. You need fun. You need friends and because of moving Bruno was sucked away from all that restricted only his family, soldiers and the front yard. He had some interaction with Pavel the family’s servant but to even more damage his innocence he was exposed to violence when Pavel accidentally spills the wine onto Kolter and then is dragged out and thrashed. That would have done some damage...
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...THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS – Novel Response The book of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas starts out simply with things we can all relate to. Bruno’s almost-teenaged sister, Greta, is a ‘Hopeless Case’ moving from scary dolls to fussing over boys. He’s moving house and gets in scrapes; he misses his grandparents and best friends, which are problems we can all relate to. They’re mundane (everyday) problems, though to nine-year old Bruno, they’re rocking the centre of his world. We feel for him - as we all were nine once, less wise and less able to cope. We might have nine-year old brothers or sisters. He seems very innocent and vulnerable. He has no control over the elements in his life. In short, it seems like an everyday book. If you read the blurb though, there’s a disturbing mood even before you start reading. We’re told we’ll go on a ‘journey with a nine-year old’ but that this ‘isn’t a book for nine-year olds’ - as if it’s not suitable, or too scary. What’s horrible about this is that the boy in it is nine, which makes us afraid that his life is too scary for him. John Boyne builds up the mystery from the start. The blurb says ‘we think it’s important that you start to read without knowing what it’s about.’ Not knowing is unsettling. The first scenes of the film of the novel clearly show Nazi flags, and soldiers in a town. But in the book, there are no clues at first. Because we don’t know their true identity, we’re lulled us into a false sense of security. We think...
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...Fredrick Nietzsche, a renowned German philosopher, believed that one of the strongest governing drives that humans possess, is their desire for power. Essentially when we closely examine the idea of power in literature, we see that much of the conflict in novels is about power; the struggle to gain, maintain or redress the balance of power. The need for power is a reality of life; to use or abuse, to claim or deny, own or disown, to marginalize or empower. This theme is omnipresent throughout literature about the Holocaust. Hitler and his struggle for power and dominance are infamous. Novels and films set in World War II often examine the issues of power in terms of race, age, gender and social class. One such novel is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. An Irish novelist, Boyne is acutely aware of the issues of power and dominance as he grew up during the time of The Troubles between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Boyne uses the narrative conventions of style and characterisation in his poignant and moving novel to explore and expose the power relationships of race, gender, age, social status and politics in the novel. Body Paragraph 1 Topic Sentence: • Style - Point of view eg. Boyne uses third person limited point of view to expose the power relationships of in the novel. Point of view Expansion: • As we see the world through the eyes of innocence and we as readers are positioned through the use of the limited point of view...
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...To the Lighthouse Woolf, Virginia Published: 1927 Categorie(s): Fiction Source: http://gutenberg.net.au 1 About Woolf: Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Also available on Feedbooks for Woolf: • Mrs. Dalloway (1925) • A Haunted House (1921) • The Waves (1931) • Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street (1923) • Between the Acts (1941) • The New Dress (1927) • The Mark on the Wall (1917) • The Duchess and the Jeweller (1938) • The Years (1937) • An Unwritten Novel (1920) Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70. Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks http://www.feedbooks.com Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes. 2 Part 1 The Window 3 Chapter 1 "Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added. To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition...
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...Praise for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down “Fadiman describes with extraordinary skill the colliding worlds of Western medicine and Hmong culture.” —The New Yorker “This fine book recounts a poignant tragedy…It has no heroes or villains, but it has an abundance of innocent suffering, and it most certainly does have a moral…[A] sad, excellent book.” —Melvin Konner, The New York Times Book Review “An intriguing, spirit-lifting, extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy coexistence…A wonderful aspect of Fadiman’s book is her even-handed, detailed presentation of these disparate cultures and divergent views—not with cool, dispassionate fairness but rather with a warm, involved interest that sees and embraces both sides of each issue…Superb, informal cultural anthropology—eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging.” —Carole Horn, The Washington Post Book World “This is a book that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who has given so much as a moment’s thought to the state of American medicine. But it is much more…People are presented as [Fadiman] saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.” —Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic 3/462 “Anne Fadiman’s phenomenal first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, brings to life the enduring power of parental love in an impoverished refugee family struggling to protect their seriously ill infant daughter and ancient spiritual traditions from the tyranny of welfare bureaucrats and intolerant...
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