‘And not just us,’ said Shmuel. ‘There was another family there and the
mother and father were always fighting with each other and one of the sons was bigger than me and he hit me even when i did nothing wrong
.’ ‘You can’t have all lived in the one room,’ said Bruno, shaking his head.
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ ‘All of us,’ said Shmuel, nodding his head. ‘Eleven in total.’ Boyne,
2007:128 Children should be protected as they are still under the responsibility of the
parents. They should be protected because they have a limited access to the world outside. It is the duty of every parent and also country to protect their children
from any vio lence, discrimination, and war. What happened to Shmuel’s family
was beyond imagination. Shmuel undergoes several bad treatments and oppressions from the NAZI soldiers and the older children around him. He has no
one to share about the pain he hides for a long time. Bruno comes as someone who listens to all Shmuel’s story about his pain and
the bad treatment he receives from the soldiers. Shmuel is forced to stay in one room with the other family and he has to live in a dreadful place. One thing in
common between Bruno and Shmuel is they have a similar experience in being
bullied by other people. They share the same experience which makes them understand each other’s feeling and relate to one another. Bruno’s presence is a
kind of therapy for Shmuel who finds no one to talk with. Their friendship is unique but they complete one another.
Shmuel continues his story by telling Bruno the details when the soldiers separate his family. The bitter story about Shmuel’s past is an extreme violence to
Shmuel as a child. The victim is not only Shmuel but also his family and many other families in Poland. It takes a huge courage for Shmuel to tell the story to
Bruno. It could be seen in the quotation below. ‘Then one day the soldiers all came with huge trucks, continued Shmuel, who
didn’t seem all that interest in Gretel. ‘And everyone was told to leave the houses. Lots of people didn’t want to and they hid wherever they could
find a place but in the end i think they caught everyone. And the trucks took us to a train an
d the train...’ He hesitated for a moment and bit his lip
. Bruno thought he was going to start crying and couldn’t understand why. Boyne, 2007:129
Shmuel recalls his past memories on how his family is taken from him. It is such
a heartbreaking story where the soldiers violate the rights of Shmuel and his people. As he tells the story, he looks very sad and contemplating whether or not
he should continue the story. The victims of wars and conflicts are always children and the citizen. Shmuel
and his family is the example of how a war could destroy not only a child and a family but also
the whole nations. The soldiers violate not only Shmuel’s right as a child but also the human rights as a whole, which is to live in a safe and stable
environment and to pursue their happiness. Shmuel recalls the way his people is taken from the city by the soldiers and sent away to Out-With and separated from
their family. It can be concluded from the main characters in the story that mistreatment
and violence are part of oppression towards children and it could happen anytime regardless the situation. The children are often being the object of mistreatment
by people around them just because people think that they cannot stand for themselves. Mistreatment comes not only from
someone who has super power but also from adults around children, even their parents. As a result, it is the duty of
every adult to protect children.
c. Children’s Sadness
Sadness takes a major part in the main character ’s dark emotion. Sadness is a
natural emotion every person could experience. As the main characters, Bruno and Shmuel have gone through a lot of events to experience sadness. Sadness is
not something children could avoid. In fact, children will feel the feeling of sadness from the very simple things in their life. In this novel, the main characters
need to deal with extraordinary problems which are different from the normal children. The experience of separation, pain, and mistreatment are the complex
problems Bruno and Shmuel have to deal with. In order to feel the complete emotions of life, children should experience both
happiness and sadness. To enjoy happiness to the fullest, children need to learn that they should appreciate the feeling of sadness and how to deal with those
kinds of feelings. As the main character, Bruno experiences the sadness as a part of his struggle when he moves from Berlin to Out-With. He has to deal with his
own loneliness in the new house. When his Grandmother passes away Bruno feels
another kind of sadness. The new sadness is the feeling of grief. It is new for
Bruno in which he realizes that he will never see his grandmother again. The datum below
could reflect Bruno’s feeling of sadness.
Bruno hadn’t seen his grandmother since leaving Berlin but he had thought about her every day
. The things he remembered most about her were the production that she and he and Gretel performed at Christmas and
birthdays and how she always had the perfect costume to suit whenever role he played. When he thought that they would never be able to do that
again it made him very sad indeed
. Boyne, 2007:175 From the above datum, it shows that Bruno is longing for his grandmother. When
his grandmother leaves Out-With, he already feels sad to the fact that he cannot perform with his grandmother again. The sadness is getting darker when his
grandmother passed away and he cannot meet her and even perform the small play.
On one side, Bruno is the representation of a child in the novel. The way he feels sadness and grief are the reflection of children’s feeling. Children have a
certain way to interpret their own feeling. For Bruno, his goodbye with his grandmother means that he cannot do the performance again in the Christmas.
The thought of never do the performance again with his grandmother makes him sad. That is the kind of grief Bruno felt when he has to be separated with his
grandmother. On the contrary, Shmuel feels the sadness of separation when he has to be
separated from his own family. The cruel treatment he gets from the NAZI soldiers has made him experienced such sadness of goodbye. He is forced to live
away from his mother in such a young age. It traumatizes Shmuel as a child who is forced to
be separated from his beloved ones. The sadness that Shmuel feels is deeper than Bruno’s experience because Shmuel feels the trauma of the
separation. The sadness comes from his fears to the soldiers and the way they take his mother from him. The quotation below shows
Shmuel’s sadness as he remembers the way he is separated from his mother.
‘And Mama was taken away from us, and Papa and Josef and i were put into the huts
over there and that’s where we’ve been ever since.’
Shmuel looked very sad when he told this story and Bruno didn’t know
why
; it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to him, and after all much the same thing had happened to him. Boyne, 2007:130
Shmuel shows his sadness when he tells the story to Bruno. He could not hide his
feelings and expressions. Nonetheless, Bruno as the innocent character cannot fully relate
with Shmuel’s feeling as he does not share the same experience with him. Shmuel
’s sadness is the example of the sadness that is too painful for children. The children who live in conflicts and wars are the one who become the
victims of the cruelty. Children should bear with the feeling of sadness and even have to deal with the feeling of lost and grief as the after effect of the sadness.
Sadness is something that always lingers in the minds. Sadness could always emerge in the surface of memory when someone thinks about a particular event
which makes them remember the sad experience. It happens to Shmuel when he recalls his past experience.
Shmuel shook his head and continued with his story. He didn’t often think about these things anymore because remembering his old life
above the watch shop made him very sad .
‘We wore the armbands for a few months,’ he said. ‘And the things changed again. I came home one day and Mama said we
couldn’t live in our house any more—‘Boyne, 2007:127 From the above datum, it shows that the sadness feeling always haunts Shmuel
whenever he recalls the bad treatment he gets from the soldiers and when he remembers the way he is separated from his family. Sadness is indeed an
important dark emotion children should deal with, but sometimes it could be an emotion which traumatizes them. As what happened to Shmuel, he never talks
about his feeling and his past experience to other children. When he tells Bruno, he shares the sadness with Bruno although Bruno still has limited understanding.
Finally, the deeper sense of sadness is felt by Bruno as he shares the last goodbye with Shmuel. The sadness feel so real because they say goodbye for the
last time and the thought of never seeing each other again makes them very sad. The feeling of sadness will once again become the attraction of children’s
experience of dark emotions. The hard way of saying goodbye make them cherish every moment they already gain. Every moment they spent together becomes
memorable and unforgettable memories. The hard ways of separation could be seen below.
Shmuel shook his head. ‘I supposed not,’ he said sadly. ‘I won’t have
anyone to talk to any more when you’re gone,’ he added. ‘No’, said Bruno. He wanted to add the words, ‘I’ll miss you too,
Shmuel,’ to the sentence but found that he was a little embarrassed to say
them.
‘So tomorrow will be the last time we see each other until then,’ he continued. ‘We’ll have to say our goodbyes then. I’ll try to bring you an extra
special treat.’Boyne, 2007:195 From the datum above, it shows how children also find it difficult to say goodbye
and they are able to feel such a deep emotion. When they are attached to each
other, it will be harder to say goodbye. The bounds that exist between the child ’s
characters are beyond expectation. They could be friends despite the difficulty they have to go through. The special bounds also make their friendship stronger.
It makes them hard to say goodbye and feel the sadness of separation. Children’s way of perceiving goodbyes might be a little bit different from
adults. In children’s world, they still need a little adventure even in goodbyes. The sadness of never seeing each other is commemorated as the last adventures
between Bruno and Shmuel. The children still have a beautiful memory as a goodbye. Therefore, optimism in sadness is a must for children. The light of a
hope should be display in order to make children have a positive way of seeing sadness.
d. Children’s Insecurity
The feeling when children feel dominated by others and when they feel scared of the threat is the feeling of insecure. Insecurity comes when children feel
traumatized upon particular events or treatments. When children feel scared, most of the feeling only comes for once as the impact of a sudden shock. Nonetheless,
