To Kill a Mockingbird vs Boy in Striped Pajamas

Hidden Discrimination The children’s perspective in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Boy in Striped Pajamas reflect a tone of innocence and ignorance about the mayor problems in their small communities, but due to the conflicts in their societies they change their perspectives and become conscious of the existing problems. First person point of view gives a clear and very different view of the conflict, which they are part of without knowing, because they don’t see the conflict, they move around freely without prejudging who they hang out with. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, the narrator, is an eight year old girl living in a small town where black people work for white and for her that is normal. In The Boy in Striped Pajamas, the story is seen through the eyes of Bruno, son of a German General during World War II, living next to a concentration camp and befriends a Jewish boy. Innocence is shown throughout the story in the children who narrate because they are blinded by their parents and teachers, who hide from them all the discrimination and unfairness around them. This is shown in To Kill a Mockingbird, when ironically the teacher says they don’t prejudge anybody in their community: “We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship”… “Over here we don’t believe in prosecuting anybody. Prosecution comes from people who are prejudiced…” (Lee 245). In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is described as an innocent girl at the beginning, but she is eventually exposed to the conflict that surrounds her due to her dad’s profession as a lawyer, who defends a black man and gets judged by society. On the other hand, in The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Bruno is completely childlike throughout the whole story, not realizing what his dad does, the difference is that he realizes there is something wrong in his community unfortunately too late for him, because he is killed ironically by his own dad. The fact that the two stories are in small communities really emphasizes the conflict of discrimination because citizens know very well other members in its society, so when a group is left aside it is very evident. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the story is in Maycomb, which is a very small southern town, but regardless to its size, it is still divided between races, and when Scout and her brother Jem go to church in the “colored” side of town, they are face to face with racism and begin to wonder why things happen the way they do. In The Boy in Striped Pajamas the story takes place in Auschwitz, but the only thing that is close to Bruno’s house is a concentration camp, so his needs and curiosity as a child make him move around his house surroundings, until he builds a friendship with a Jewish boy without wondering why he looks the way he does, and why is there a fence separating them, and despite the differences, Bruno’s need for company and friends make him eventually dig to the other side of the fence to be with his friend, where he gets treated as any other Jew inside the fence. In conclusion, in novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Boy in Striped Pajamas where the narrator is an innocent child living in a small community eventually build up to a conflict of discrimination being discovered by the main character.

Works Cited
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Washington DC: Warner Books, 1982. Print

Cited: Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Washington DC: Warner Books, 1982. Print