A Case of Literary Murder.
I must admit that I may never forgive Paul Gallico for what he did to me at the end of his book, "The Abandoned." I was twelve or thirteen years old and I loved the story about a young boy who was changed into a cat. To me, the characters were completely believable, and I bonded with the cats and identified with their feelings. Until the end of the book. At the end, critically injured after surviving a fight to the death with a larger cat, the main character wakes up in a hospital as a small boy again. The author then destroyed the whole story and all of its characters by explaining it away as a fever-induced hallucination.
I was in shock for three days over the emotional loss.
Years later, I would completely agree with J.R.R. Tolkein's opinion that a book, or story, must remain true to its own reality. It must be written as if it were true, and remain within the fictional universe in which it is set. It is a literary crime for an author to laugh above the head of the reader at how fake the story is in our own reality.
Which brings me to the book, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," by John Boyne.
This is a children's book because it is short, because the sentences are simple, because all the violence is implied rather than explicitly described, and because it is told through the viewpoint of an immature 9-year-old boy who does not understand what it means that his own father is the commandant of the Auschwitz death camp.
Now a good story will carry the reader along with the main character through life changing events; the main character learns the most important thing and uses that knowledge to carry him through (or into) a great crisis in his life.
It is okay for a story to be a tragedy. The story of Romeo and Juliette teaches us that love can be more powerful than our fear of death. Both Romeo and Juliette choose to kill themselves rather than live without the love of their life. The tragedy is that their deaths are unnecessary --- based on Romeo thinking that Juliette was dead, because he missed the memo (letter) that she was not really dead. But the story, "Romeo and Juliette," did not mislead the audience. This tragedy was explicitly explained and foretold in several places. Also, both characters went into the situation with their eyes wide open; they deliberately chose to do what they did.
But the book, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," does not tell a good story, or even a good tragedy with a clear moral. The moral of the story of Romeo and Juliette was stated by the Prince --- The violent feuding between the two families set up the events that led to the death of both of their children.
That "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is not a good story may be shown by altering the ending. Imagine that Bruno and Shmuel return to the fence, Bruno gets dressed and goes away to live in Berlin. The end. What would people have thought of it? The book is slow. The main character never learns the great truth of where he is and what his father is and what happens at the camp. The only explicit action is falling out of the tire swing and skinning his knee. The only moral is that it feels bad to have lied and betrayed your friend who was then beaten for what he had not done. But hey, Bruno apologizes and Shmuel forgives him and Bruno goes home to Berlin and never sees Shmuel again. If that were the end, this book would never have made it into print.
But that isn't the end. Instead, the author marches the two boys right into a gas chamber where we must assume that they die because the author never really tells us exactly what happens. Bruno has learned nothing of significance about the great truth of the camp.
In a good story, even in a good tragedy, the main character would have learned the truth, and he would have been faced with the choice, the chance of saving himself, or of being a true friend by refusing to abandon Shmuel to face death alone. But no. This author uses their fear of being discovered to march them , in all their ignorance of what is about to happen, into the gas chamber, not knowing they are going to die. This author uses the ignorance of the main character to keep the reader in the dark about his own intentions to kill them both. As one reader commented, "It's a kick in the gut."
This author deliberately manipulates the feelings of the reader. He does not allow the reader to share a depth of feeling with the main character --- there was so much discarded potential for the main character to be shocked by the truth, to be afraid for his life, to choose to love his friend, to deliberately choose to die with him. Instead, this author destroyed the story and the characters just for the emotional shock value.
I feel like the author took my sympathetic feelings for the characters, drop-kicked me off a cliff and laughed at my concern while saying, "Thanks for the money; have a nice fall, sucker." And my response is this: Why would I ever again trust you with my feelings by reading any of your books? I put you, John Boyne, on the same shelf as Paul Gallico; you have betrayed your readers and committed literary murder.
