My son has started reading John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for the third time. The first time he read it was at home, and subsequently, much to his distress he has had to read it for school a few weeks later, and having changed schools recently he was even more distressed to find it back on the reading list this term. When he finished reading it the first time, he handed me the book and said quietly, “I don’t think you should read this Mummy, it doesn’t end well.” With that he went upstairs to bed, in a mood that could only really be described as deflated. I read the book myself, and by the time I finished it the next day, I understood why he was upset. Although when I questioned him about the ending, it became clear that he hadn’t really understood what had happened.
The novel, for anyone who hasn’t read it, is narrated by a nine year old boy, Bruno. He lives on the edge of Auschwitz where his father is the Commandant. He befriends a Jewish boy who is a prisoner on the other side of the fence. It is written with the childish innocence of someone who has no idea what is going on at the camp. However, as a adult reader, we know exactly what went on, so when Bruno sneaks into the camp and follows his friend into a gas chamber it is horrifying to read. And no, it doesn’t end well.
The book is really powerful because of the narration, which is not overly explicit and horrifying for the child reader, but does bring to life some of the awful history which they are now learning about in school. I had to explain the ending to my son, because, like Bruno and Schmuel, he had not realised that the room the boys had been herded into was a gas chamber. I can honestly say that I have never seen such a mixture of disbelief and revulsion on a child’s face. It is almost impossible to explain the holocaust. Facts and figures in the history books explain it in terms that are just too black and white. It is hard to grasp the fact that six million Jewish people perished during the war. The number is too large to comprehend, and the manner in which people died was so barbaric and inhumane that it feels as if we are talking about something that happened in the Dark Ages, and not something within the living memories of our grandparents.
However, through the medium of fiction we get into a relationship with the characters and care about what happens to them. And to care about what happens to two fictional little boys is part way to understanding and caring about what happened to the six million real people. It is a truly inspired choice of book for primary school children. The last book my son had to read for school dealt with the Irish Famine. And again, through the fictional family created by Marita Conlon-McKenna in Under the Hawthorn Tree he learned what it was like to live during such a harsh environment. I read a little of the book myself. It went something along the lines of Chapter 1 Dad leaves home to try and find a job elsewhere. Chapter 2 Baby dies. Chapter 3 Mum leaves home to find Dad/Food/Help. Chapter 4 the other kids cope with hunger, illness and predatory neighbours who are also starving. I didn’t get to finish it, but apparently it didn’t get much more cheerful, although it did have a marginally better ending. But the Famine was a truly dreadful era, and to deal with it in any other way would not have been honest.
I love studying history and it is one of the most important subjects on the curriculum, but I think that literature plays an equally important place in explaining past events in a way that draws out compassion and understanding. John Boyne’s novel has raised some controversy because of its inaccurate portrayal of events, however, this work of fiction is more likely to generate an emotional response to the atrocities, than a history book written for the same age group could. Simply learning facts and figures is not enough.
Maybe it is time to put Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns, on the curriculum as a way of attempting to explain what is going on in Afghanistan.
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