Holocaust Literary Conventions
Holocaust Literature Essay
The Holocaust genre was a tragic time in the 1930s, during Hitler’s reign in Germany and it involved the persecution of the Jewish people. Holocaust literature was developed from this and from testimonies of survivors and fictional writings by authors. John Boyne’s ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is an example of Holocaustic literature; the story follows a young boy who is the son of a Nazi officer during the reign of Hitler. Holocaust literature texts contain conventions common to the genre, e.g. specific vocabulary, historical aspects and themes.
In Holocaust literature, one of the main conventions common to all is specific vocabulary; the vocabulary is not common in everyday English but common to novels in …show more content…
As a result of this common time period, many characters in these types of novels are similar, i.e. German soldiers, Hitler and Jewish people. ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ follows this convention because it is based in the 1940’s during the Holocaust period and involves typical characters of this time like Bruno’s father who is a Nazi, and Jewish people who live at the camp, next door to Bruno’s home. You can tell that this novel is based in this time-period throughout this book, for example when Shmuel, a young Jewish boy, says “my birthday is April the fifteenth, nineteen …show more content…
Themes like intolerance, the discrimination against Jewish people, and the will and strengths that these people had to survive. Most of this discrimination against the Jewish people came from the Nazi soldiers, but not all Nazi soldiers were ‘evil’, some were just doing what they were told with fear of being turned against if they didn’t. Some other texts of this genre explore whether or not everyday Germans had a full understanding of what was going on and weather or not they did anything about it. These issues can be seen in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. We see a lot of hatred towards the Jewish people through characters like Lt. Kotler and Adolf Hitler, and we also see a lot of evidence of the German people being unaware of what was going on. For example, Bruno asks Shmuel if he played “Football for example. Or exploration”. This identifies Bruno’s lack of knowledge of what went on in the concentration
The Holocaust genre was a tragic time in the 1930s, during Hitler’s reign in Germany and it involved the persecution of the Jewish people. Holocaust literature was developed from this and from testimonies of survivors and fictional writings by authors. John Boyne’s ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is an example of Holocaustic literature; the story follows a young boy who is the son of a Nazi officer during the reign of Hitler. Holocaust literature texts contain conventions common to the genre, e.g. specific vocabulary, historical aspects and themes.
In Holocaust literature, one of the main conventions common to all is specific vocabulary; the vocabulary is not common in everyday English but common to novels in …show more content…
As a result of this common time period, many characters in these types of novels are similar, i.e. German soldiers, Hitler and Jewish people. ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ follows this convention because it is based in the 1940’s during the Holocaust period and involves typical characters of this time like Bruno’s father who is a Nazi, and Jewish people who live at the camp, next door to Bruno’s home. You can tell that this novel is based in this time-period throughout this book, for example when Shmuel, a young Jewish boy, says “my birthday is April the fifteenth, nineteen …show more content…
Themes like intolerance, the discrimination against Jewish people, and the will and strengths that these people had to survive. Most of this discrimination against the Jewish people came from the Nazi soldiers, but not all Nazi soldiers were ‘evil’, some were just doing what they were told with fear of being turned against if they didn’t. Some other texts of this genre explore whether or not everyday Germans had a full understanding of what was going on and weather or not they did anything about it. These issues can be seen in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. We see a lot of hatred towards the Jewish people through characters like Lt. Kotler and Adolf Hitler, and we also see a lot of evidence of the German people being unaware of what was going on. For example, Bruno asks Shmuel if he played “Football for example. Or exploration”. This identifies Bruno’s lack of knowledge of what went on in the concentration