About Art and Fences

Session 4 of the Building Peace Project saw Team Hope trading insights on whether art can be used as a medium for peace advocacy. We were encouraged to examine a work of art and explain how effective it was in delivering a message of peace.In this context, I have opted to discuss the book 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas' by author John Boyne through this blog. Big, big, big shout out to Kirthi Di for recommending and sharing the book! If anyone wants to read the book, fair warning, major spoilers ahead!

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a novel set during World War II. The story is told from the perspective of Bruno, a nine year old German boy. He lives with his mother, elder sister and government Officer father in Berlin. They are visited by the Fury, a childish pronunciation of the Führer, who promotes Bruno's father to the position of Commandant. This results in Bruno's family moving away from Berlin to the outskirts of a place called Out-With, an euphemism for Auschwitz. Here Bruno encounters a strange boy, separated from him by a huge fence and wearing comfortable black and white pajamas. This is Shmuel, a young Jewish boy displaced by the Nazis from Poland. Delighted to find someone of his own age, Bruno visits Shmuel everyday. Sitting on  opposite sides of the fence, they share food, stories and a fast friendship. So much that one day Bruno decides to crawl under the fence and don a pair of black and white pajamas to look for Shmuel's missing father. During this adventure, they are caught in a death march to the gas chambers and never make it back to the fence.

I found The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to be a fascinating and slightly disturbing story. The naivete pervasive throughout is what makes the story absorbing yet baffling. It doesn't seem likely that even a precious 9 year old would be so innocent of the atrocities committed in his back yard or even of the propaganda and prejudice designed for young Germans during this period. All discussions about the concentration camp and Bruno's father's job, often whispered, are conducted in a atmosphere of fear or confusion that is only too plausible, as are Shmuel's doubt, pain and silence. The similarities between Bruno and Shmuel compel us to take a deeper look at what indeed separates the two boys. The attachment between them is endearing and makes the ending so much more devastating for a reader. Their death makes it starkly evident that naive tone of the book was only beguiling. It had been long since lost on both sides of the fence when such things happened.

This book is touted by the author as a Holocaust fable. It distorts history in facts like there were no children as young as Shmuel in the camp and the electrified fences were guarded constantly. Amid accolades and fame for the book, the author has also been criticized for these inaccurate depictions. This brings out a challenge that artists often face when art is used for peace advocacy. During our session as well, we wondered whether or not art oversimplifies the subject matter. This was clearly illustrated to me by The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. In this case the simplicity was also what made the story work, which begets the question, how far is it advisable to take art, ambiguous by nature, towards explaining a sensitive topic as conflict. While it is certainly a very insightful way of putting a message across, we must also remember that we are so vulnerable when it comes to art. It is difficult to draw precise boundaries, what is merely a creative view on the situation and what is an infringement.

In this scenario, I think clarity and purity of intent in producing or attempting to interpret a particular art work is the responsibility of both the author and the reader. We have a duty to approach such art and respond to it with empathy and sensitivity. Going back to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the author John Boyne states that the only way he could treat the Holocaust respectfully was to view it through the eyes of a child. He uses this creative devices to make us question and think about fairness in face of cruelty, kindness that comes with a cost and challenging established world views in individual and personal ways. Beating down undeserved prejudice one person at a time.

I loved this book and I learned a lot from it. It is going to stay with me forever. The message of peace was effectively delivered when the author spoke about looking beyond and destroying fences as the one that divided Bruno and Shmuel. And ultimately, ensuring that such things don't happen, 'not in this day, not in this age.'