THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS

Discuss the relationship between Bruno and Gretel. Why does Bruno
seem younger than nine? In a traditional fable, characters are usually
one-dimensional. How might Bruno and Gretel be considered onedimensional?
• At age 12, Gretel is the proper age for membership in the League of
Young Girls, a branch of Hitler’s Youth Organization. Why do you
think she is not a member, especially since her father is a high-ranking
officer in Hitler’s army?
• What is it about the house at Out-With that makes Bruno feel “cold
and unsafe”? (p. 20) How is this feeling perpetuated as he encounters
people like Pavel, Maria, Lt. Kotler, and Shmuel?
• Describe his reaction when he first sees the people in the striped
pajamas. What does Gretel mean when she says, “Something about the
way [Bruno] was watching made her feel suddenly nervous”? (p. 28)
How does this statement foreshadow Bruno’s ultimate demise?
• Bruno asks his father about the people outside their house at
Auschwitz. His father answers, “They’re not people at all, Bruno.”
(p. 53) Discuss the horror of this attitude. How does his father’s
statement make Bruno more curious about Out-With?
• Explain what Bruno’s mother means when she says, “We don’t have
the luxury of thinking.” (p. 13) Identify scenes from the novel that
Bruno’s mother isn’t happy about their life at Out-With. Debate
whether she is unhappy being away from Berlin, or whether she is
angry about her husband’s position. How does Bruno’s grandmother
react to her son’s military role?
• When Bruno and his family board the train for Auschwitz, he notices
an overcrowded train headed in the same direction. How does he later
make the connection between Shmuel and that train? How are both
trains symbolic of each boy’s final journey?
• Bruno issues a protest about leaving Berlin. His father responds, “Do
you think that I would have made such a success of my life if I hadn’t
learned when to argue and when to keep my mouth shut and follow
orders?” (p. 49) What question might Bruno’s father ask at the end of
the novel?
• A pun is most often seen as humorous. But, in this novel the narrator
uses dark or solemn puns like Out-With and Fury to convey certain
meanings. Bruno is simply mispronouncing the real words, but the
author is clearly asking the reader to consider a double meaning to
these words. Discuss the use of this wordplay as a literary device.
What is the narrator trying to convey to the reader? How do these
words further communicate the horror of the situation?
• When Bruno dresses in the filthy striped pajamas, he remembers
something his grandmother once said. “You wear the right outfit and
you feel like the person you’re pretending to be.” (p. 205) How is this
true for Bruno? What about his father? What does this statement
contribute to the overall meaning of the story?
• Discuss the moral or message of the novel. What new insights and
understandings does John Boyne want the reader to gain from reading
this story?
• Ask students to discuss the differences in a fable, an allegory, and a
proverb. How might this story fit into each genre?

VOCABULARY

CREATE YOUR OWN DICTIONARY. Identify unfamiliar words, and define them using hints from the context of the
story. Such words may include: greengrocers (p. 19), insolent (p. 51), reverberated (p. 62), jumper (p. 71),
sinister (p. 98), despair (p. 104), confirmation (p. 112), resolution (p. 113), disdain (p. 122), catastrophe (p. 142),
sarcasm (p. 157), sophistication (p. 158), medicinal (p. 167), inconsolable (p. 178), and misshapen (p. 184).

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

1. There is an epigraph at the beginning of the text. What is an epigraph? How do writers use them?
2. Explain the idea of carrying in O’Brien’s book. What are things they carried (concrete and abstract) and by whom?
3. Compare the “things” the soldiers carried in Vietnam to the “things” soldiers are carrying in Iraq, both standard issue and personal objects. (You may want to post the question on the blog).
4. Discuss the use of third-person narration in the book. Since most of the book is personal and written from a first-person perspective, what purpose does third-person narration serve? Why is the title phrased in the third-person plural?
5. What is the role of women in The Things They Carried?
6. At the end of "On the Rainy River," the narrator makes a kind of confession: "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (61). What does this mean?
7. Are there any clues about what O'Brien thinks of his narrator? What should the reader think of him?
8. One of the web sites treating O'Brien and his books leads to a site about magical realism. What is magical realism? Here's the site: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm. Find other examples of magical realism in the novel.
9. Try taking any two chapters (or just Chapter 1 or just Chapter 3) and find all the metaphors and similes that O'Brien uses. List them and discuss how they work.
10. O'Brien talks about courage in a range of ways. Discuss.
11. Is the Vietnam War experience different from that of WWII?
12. "Stories are for joining the past to the future" (38). Is this statement true? Can "stories" affect the future?
13. "Love" is the title of an entire chapter. Are there other treatments of love in the work?
14. What do the following sentences mean? "I want you to know what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179).
15. Using O'Brien's The Things They Carried as a model, what is the weight of the things students carry?
16. What is the legacy of Vietnam for America today?
17. Is it possible to "win" a war? Are there any victors?

ACTIVITIES: PICK ONE OF THE FOLLOWING. You may team up with a partner or do independently.