PLEASURE IN JOHN BOYNE’S DARK THEME NOVEL ENTITLED THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS.

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Attainment of the Sarjana Sastra Degree in English Literature

Written by : Filla Lavenia Palupy

12211141012

ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAM FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

YOGYAKARTA STATE UNIVERSITY 2016

MOTTO

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

DEDICATIONS

This Thesis is dedicated to:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Praise to Allah for always giving me guidance whenever I have a hard time. This thesis would not be better without my supervisors, Dr. Widyastuti Purbani, M.A and Niken Anggraeni, M.A. I thank them for the inspirations alongside this journey. I feel grateful for the never ending guidance, patience, advise, supervision, and support during the thesis writing process.

I would devote my sincerest appreciation for the lecturers in English Literature study program who have been guiding me and giving me inspirations through all of these years.

My sincerest gratitude is for all of my friends in English Literature who fight for their dream in every way. I learn a lot from them. I thank them for the lessons and all the good times.

My thanks are dedicated for all of my friends in organizations: SAFEL, EDS, BEM FBS 2014, and Project Child Indonesia. They are the best family I could ask for. I owe them for always accompanying me through all of these years in Yogyakarta as part of my family and best friends.

I feel grateful to have dearest seniors, Zidnie and Sinta, who always help me during the thesis and with whom I share the same dreams. I thank them for always listening to my concerns, worries, and dreams. They are the ones who make me learn to have a big heart.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title ... i

Approval sheet ... ii

Ratification sheet ... iii

Pernyataan ... iv

Motto ... v

Dedications ... vi

Acknowledgements ... vii

Table of Contents... ix

List of Tables and Figures ... xii

Abstract ... xiii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ... 1

A. Research Background ... 1

B. Research Focus ... 11

C. Research Objectives ... 12

D. Research Significances ... 13

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ... 14

A. Children’s Literature ... 14

2. Dark Themes in Children’s Literature ... 17

B. Pleasures of Children’s Literature ... 20

1. The Pleasure of Discovery ... 24

2. The Pleasure of Experiencing ... 26

3. The Pleasure of Finding Mirror for Oneself ... 28

C. The Previous Studies ... 29

D. Theoretical Framework ... 30

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD ... 33

A. The Research Design ... 34

B. Data Types ... 34

C. The Data Source ... 35

D. Research Instruments ... 35

E. The Technique of Data Collection ... 37

F. Data Trustworthiness ... 38

G. Data Analysis ... 39

CHAPTER IV THE RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION ... 40

A. Research Findings ... 40

1. Kinds of Dark Themes ... 41

a. Children’s Anger... 41

b. People’s Oppression toward Children ... 48

c. Children’s Sadness ... 52

d. Children’s Insecurity ... 56

e. Children’s Dark Environment ... 60

a. The Pleasure of Observing ... 64

b. The Pleasure of Learning ... 71

c. The Pleasure of Understanding ... 79

B. Discussions ... 87

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS ... 90

REFERENCES ... 92

APPENDIX I ... 95

APPENDIX II ... 109

THE PLOT SUMMARY OF JOHN BOYNE’S THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS... 125

PERNYATAAN TRIANGULASI I... 127

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 1 : The Scheme of Theoretical Framework Table 1 : Kinds of Dark Themes

PLEASURE IN JOHN BOYNE’S DARK THEME NOVEL ENTITLED THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

By Filla Lavenia Palupy NIM 12211141012

ABSTRACT

The aims of the research are (1) to define the dark themes contained in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and (2) to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. Therefore, the researcher applies children’s literature and pleasure of children’s literature theories.

The researcher used qualitative descriptive content analysis. The subject of the research was a novel entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne. The data of the research were significant expressions related to the dark themes of the novel and how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters in the form of sentence. The researcher was the primary instrument of the research and the two data tables are the secondary instrument. The triangulation technique was used to ensure the data trustworthiness.

The findings of the research show that there are five dark themes found in the novel. They are the children’s anger, people’s oppression toward children, children’s sadness, children’s insecurity, and children’s dark environment. The dark themes represent the oppression toward the main characters and their response upon it. The researcher found three main categories on how pleasure is embodied in the novel. They are the pleasure of observing, the pleasure of learning, and the pleasure of understanding. Therefore, pleasure becomes an important element in children’s literature.

Keywords: John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, children’s literature, dark themes in children’s literature, pleasure of children’s literature.

1

A. Background of the Study

Children’s literature comes as the help of adults to accompany their children to go through the hard phase of growing up. Through children’s literature, parents are able to touch the unseen emotion of children. Moreover, the stories in children’s literature provide a form of experience for every reader, especially children who need to learn about the complexity of life. Stories contain the journey of life and they could be a perfect place to learn. Life is so much complicated to tell to children. Children will not understand unless they actually feel the emotion of such condition in life. Thus, children’s literature is the perfect medium to educate children about the values of life and the things they cannot learn physically but emotionally. According to Karl (1971:6), the author of children’s literature creates an experience for its reader. It means that children need to be opened up and start to discover new things from the stories they already read. The discoveries of new things also include the experience of bitter sweet things in life.

The discoveries of new things include the process of learning many kinds of emotions. Children need to learn about how to survive in this complicated and

difficult life and how to overcome their emotion. According to Southhall (1975) children live in a reality and they do not live in a fairytale where everything is about happiness. They live and mingle with other society, with the emotion of both happiness and sadness. Thus, children’s literature is expected to include dark themes of life. Dark themes in children’s literature are used by parents to educate children about the other aspects of life. The dark feeling such as sorrow, sadness, pain, and death are important to introduce. It is the way to tell children that these feelings are real and they should not feel afraid of these kinds of feelings. It is important for them to understand that such feelings are normal for every human in the world. Thus, the dark themes in children’s literature are needed in order to help children understand about various experiences of life.

The topic related to dark themes becomes one of the concerns in children’s literature. As a matter of fact, there are many children in this world who have to face different kinds of experience from such a young age. There are children who already experience the dark sides of life, including the feeling of loss and sadness, being haunted by wars, parents’ divorce, friends’ illness, and the death of beloved ones, or the loss of parents in such a young age. These conditions are possible to happen for some children but undeniable for some others. Harrison (1981:253) gives her views regarding the role of children’s literature, “children’s literature, which is inextricably related to language, to perception, and to the imagination, is fundamental to literacy and to humanity”. Children’s literature is a way to help

children to cope with the aspects of life including the bitter one and to become a form of experience for those who have no experience in the dark side of life. Children are able to not only feel the feeling of sympathy and empathy but also grow humanity side to gain more understanding of life.

In order to feel more emotions, children need to understand how they should face those emotions. Lukens, Smith, & Coffel (2013:4) give their view upon the benefit of children’s literature, “Children’s literature provides a form of understanding to children”. Literature could perfectly display an image of life that could touch the heart of its reader. The experience shared in children’s literature would be in the form of emotions every reader could feel. Children could specifically feel sad when they drown into a certain character in the story or they feel the joy in the adventurous part of the story. Saxby (1991:6) claims that “literature provides a potent source of vicarious experience and so fires the imagination with sensory and emotive images to provoke imagined experience”. The form of understanding provided by literature could evoke the sense of the reader. The sense of imagination stated by Saxby can enhance the children’s ability to have creative imaginations and provoke children’s ability to feel the vicarious experience through reading. Children will not only gain the cognitive knowledge but also feel a form of vivid experience through reading.

Dark themes in children’s literature are not something to be assumed as taboo. Theyare one of the topics that need to be introduced as a part of life lesson and

life experience to children. It is the duty of every parent to help their children understand about the topics that are closely related to their real life without feeling afraid or even shy. Moreover, parents can help children to understand certain topics with their own imagination through the power of literature. Dark themed novels may be the least favorite themes parents would introduce to children. However, parents nowadays are also aware of the fact that these novels should be considered as children’s reading materials.

Parents prefer fictional works as they think that it is best for children in guiding their imaginative view and also amusing them. The fable stories have always been the choice of parents to tell or to read for children. These forms of stories are conventional, safe and pleasant for children, like what adults think. Furthermore, when children learn from stories, the learning process would be fun because children see it through the characters and the plot of the story they read. The valuable lessons about life in stories are displayed in a positive way as it helps children know and understand more about their surroundings. Thus, dark themed novels might not be the favorite choice of parents.

Parents are afraid that dark themed novels would frighten their children becausereading is supposed to be fun for children. The activity of reading should not only make children aware of what is going on around their life but also amuse them at the same time. Parents are afraid if children do not feel the pleasure or amusement of reading stories. Meanwhile, what scholars think about pleasure is

somewhat different. The pleasure is the feeling of completeness, the discovery of new things and introduction of the new emotions (Nodelman and Reimer, 2003). The discovery of guilt and loss is also partof reading in pleasure because children are learning something new and they try to cope with that feeling.

On the other hand, children nowadays are different from children in the past. Today’s children are wiser about many things. They are not easily fooled and led, also they are ignorant of many things that children of an earlier generation know well (Karl, 1971:23). Parents should not be afraid because children nowadays are more open-minded to digest dark themed stories. There are many sources that make children open up to the emotions or situations in which they have to learn about the dark emotions in life. Parents are their guardians. Thus, parents should not be afraid to introduce such themes to children.

Reading dark themed novel would be one of the examples on how adults introduce realism stories to children. It is the one very close to everyday life. The fiction of realism probably has a wider range of possibility in making children feel connected to the story. Although it is fiction, the realism is still the essence of the story. The stories, characters, and events might be fictional but they develop to make every element logical and come close to the real reality. Wald (1975:939) explains that realism involves possible people involved in the struggles and complexities of life, so children are expected to relate to the stories. The fiction of realism is the source of learning about the complexity of life.

Children need to understand that life does not only contain happiness and joy of getting a new toy or new clothes and the sad feeling does not only stand for losing their toys. There are deeper feelings of loss, sadness and sorrow, which children feel when they face the real situation. The touching story and plot is the perfect way to help children understand the concept of death and how they should perceive it without losing hope for their future. As always, children’s literature tries to give children pleasure in every story.

Children’s literature is meant to please children. The reading activity can arouse their curiosity in understanding a whole new world they have never been. The way children enjoy literature might be different from adults. Adults develop the ability of enjoying literature simply from reading a lot of books while children might have different ways of enjoying literature through their limited experience. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:21) gives an example on how children find pleasure in reading literature, the pleasure of having their emotions evoked: laughing at a comical situation, being made to feel pain or joy character experiences. Though children and adult have different ways of enjoying literature, reading literature still enriches their understanding as a whole.

Pleasure is the core of children’s literature. “We choose literature that promisesentertainment and, sometimes, escape. If other discoveries come to us, too, we are pleased and doubly rewarded” (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:2). The motives of reading literature would always be the pleasure, the escapism and

the new discovery of the world. Although every reading is different, the ability to enjoy literature is something that can be developed. The more children read literature the more they develop the ability of enjoying literature. Denis Sumara (in Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:2) stated that reading and interpreting literature bring the readers to the pleasure of transforming “imaginative occasions into productive insights”. Reading literature might be a new form of self -discovery and even evoke the sense of humanity. In comparison, pleasure in the real life is the same with pleasure found in the story as it depicts the same vicarious events of life. The characters try to cope with the problems the same as children do in their real life. Those ups and downs in life’s events are the form of pleasure.

Nodelman and Reimer in their book The Pleasure of Children Literature defines a few forms of pleasure found in a text of children’s literature. There are many forms of pleasure in every kind of children’s stories. Furthermore, the main aspect of reading literature itself is finding the literary elements of the text which could be discussed among children, so the essence of reading literature would be shared among them. It helps children to appreciate many kinds of new experience that happen in their actual life.

The question is how dark themed novels provide such a pleasure to children. As Nodelman and Reimer (2003) emphasizes in his book The Pleasure of Children’s Literature, pleasure does not merely contain the feeling of joy,

excitement and happiness. Pleasure indeed has a deeper meaning of the completeness human could feel, the whole feeling of knowing what life is, sharing imagination and emotion. Saxby (1991:5) also emphasizes his views that Children should be able to enjoy such stories and are ready to be taken to a whole new journey, the same as the aim of children’s literature stated by Saxby, which is giving enlightenment to children and giving them wings to fly high.

The pleasure of literature is the pleasure of conversation, of dialogues between the readers and texts, and between the readers about those texts (Nodelman and Reimer, 2003:22). Seen from Nodelman and Reimer’s perspective, pleasure indeed has a wide range of definition. Furthermore, it is the duty of adult to show children that they can find such pleasure in literature. Adults try to help children to read between the lines in order to help them not being a thoughtless adult when they grow up, and to unconsciously agree on some ideas that they do not even know. The freedom of thinking should be their form of pleasure while they experience some new events in life. Children will be able to enjoy and cherish every moment and new experience whether it is a happy one or a sad one. Children will soon find out that those events happening in their life are ways to learn and they will take it as pleasure.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne was released in 2006. This book is quite recent for a book called as one of a must-read novel in children’s literature. It is probably based on the topic that Boyne has brought up

in the book. The book is considered as one of the dark themed novel in children’s literature because it depicts the holocaust setting in Germany and Auschwitz, Poland. Holocaust is a sensitive topic about war, religion, ideology and discrimination. These hard yet important topics might seem to be too difficult and dark for children. However, the topics could be something pleasant, too.

In this book, children are portrayed as close to reality as possible. It is proven by the innocent character of the story, Bruno, in seeing the world around him. The war, discrimination, politics and so on were seen from Bruno’s perspective as a child. The journey of the characters inside of the story portrays the pleasure that children could enjoy although being in a difficult situation. Friendship is also the main issue of the story, on children’s innocent way of seeing the world. It is a satirical way of criticizing adults on their way of seeing people based on their ideology or religion. Through the eyes of Bruno, the main character, the story develops into a perspective taking a child to see war and discrimination that are very close to them.

The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is an Irish writer. He is widely known as one of the most successful authors of young adult novels from Ireland.

This novel was Boyne’s most successful book asit became New York Times no.1

Best seller. It was shortlisted in British Book Awards and won several awards dedicated for children’s literature books. Other books of John Boyne also become international best sellers and win several awards of international literary awards

and listed in numerous list of children’s literature (Boyne, 2016:par.2). In 2008, the novel was made to major motion pictures by Miramax, an American entertainment company based in California, United States.

The book has already been sold for more than 6 million copies around the world and translated into 48 languages. “Boyne’s text has received considerable praise, been shorted-listed for several awards, and a recommended reading in the English secondary school National Curriculum” (Gilbert, 2010:356). Aside from winning several awards for the book itself, John Boyne also proves his existence as a writer by getting awards for Children Book of the Year and Short Story of the Year. Based on the novel and the author’s achievement, this novel is a prominent work of children’s literature to take into consideration as a world literaturebecause of its influential story.

As one of the most recommended books for children, the researcher tries to unveil every detail of the dark themes embodied in the novel. The variety kinds of dark themes are an interesting topic to unveil. Moreover, the pleasure of the main characters is the crucial part to be analyzed despite the dark emotions and treatments. By analyzing the dark themes in the book, the researcher would like to reveal the pleasure of the main characters in the dark themed novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

B. Research Focus

There are two focuses in this research. The first is to reveal the dark themes of the novel and the second is to prove that the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. The researcher thinks that the dark themes are important elements to be considered as the strength of the text. The dark themes are the main tools to counter the stereotype that dark themes are not for children. Furthermore, the dark themes are considered as a brave step to advance the study about children’s literature in a deeper level because the researcher determines to reveal that dark themed text also contains pleasure and enjoyment.

The second point in this research is to define the pleasure embodied in the novel. There are many kinds of pleasure that children could feel. Pleasure does not merely contain happiness and joy. Through the eyes of the main characters in the novel, pleasure will be unveiled from their perspective. The research focuses to prove that the dark emotions, new discoveries, and even the dark sides of life contain pleasure. Through this research, adult’s way to see through children’s literature hopefully come to enlightenment.

There are two theories that will be combined as the main approach to the story. The first is the children’s literature theory on how the spirit of children’s reading material is to give enlightenment to children as their readers. The theory is also used as a means to find out the dark themes in the novel as part of children’s literature elements. The second one is the branch of children’s

literature theory about pleasure which is mainly discussed by Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer in Pleasure of Children’s Literature. The researcher tries to reveal how dark themed story contains pleasure for children.

C. Research Questions

1. What are dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?

2. How do the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters?

D. Research Objectives

The objectives of this research are:

a. To identify the dark themes in Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

b. To reveal how dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters

E. Research Significances

a. The result of this research is expected to give a better understanding and deeper knowledge about children’s literature, dark themes in children’s literature, and pleasure of children’s literature.

b. The research is expected to give benefit for the further research done by students, lecturers and future researchers in providing examples of pleasure in dark themed novels and guiding further analysis about the relevant topic.

14

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Children’s Literature

1. Defining Children’s Literature

Children’s literature is different from adults’ literature because they have different audience. Children’s literature is literature dedicated to children. They might contain the same elements of complexity, resonance, insight, wit, and artistry with adult’s literature. However, children’s literature needs to consider its audience because the writers need to provide a form of understanding for children (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:6). Thus, literature for children has to be simpler. Stories for children are usually more directly told than literature for adults. The relationships between characters and actions also need to be displayed in an obvious way in order to make children easily understand about the conflict.

In order to have a better understanding about children’s literature, adults need to understand that children also search pleasure in their activity of reading stories. Many reasons behind censorship in children’s literature and also many adult who do not let their children read certain kind of book are because they thought that the book is not appropriate for children. Children have the same capability to understand certain topics brought in story, but the way the writer displays a

certain topic should be adjusted to children’s level. In conclusion, children are also humans who need to know about the world around them and their limited understanding should not become a barrier for them to enjoy literary works.

Dealing with children means that adults need to concern on how children use their imagination. The power of literature is to encourage children’s ability to experience more value through their imagination. Harrison (1981:244) states that sometimes the demands of literature for children are as exciting as the experience of childhood itself, on how the imaginations depict the experience they feel through literary works. Furthermore, Harrison also explains the importance of imagination. Although the imagination of literary works cannot substitute the real life experience, it can help children to find an exact greater truth than the life itself.

In relation to the importance of children’s literature, Saxby (1991:6) explains that literature provides a source of vicarious experience and fires the imagination with sensory and emotive images to provoke imagination. The form of understanding provided by literature could evoke the sense of the reader. The sense of imagination will directly help children to feel such emotions. Children will not only gain the cognitive knowledge but also feel a form of vivid experience through reading.

The form of experience will increase through reading, as Lukens, Smith, & Coffel (2013:4) explain that “literature also may reveal life’s fragmentation”. Life

is a series of episodes consisting of a few kinds of fragmentations. The life’s fragmentation could not be separated one to another as it is meant to complement each other. The fragmentation of life would include friendship, family, society, love, sacrifice and any other elements of life that all people will face in their life. The fragmentation will come in many ways as people choose their own path in life, and it is the duty of children’s literature to introduce children on what series of event they will face once they grow up. “Literature allows us, as it does our children, to hold life in our hands, the whole and the parts, to gather the recurring fragments and to piece them into a coherent pattern” (Harrison, 1981:253). Every fragmentation will be different from one person to another but it will help children to focus on their life essentials. The experience might be different but the new understanding will surely help them to deal with it.

Children will have different attitudes to death, fear, sex, perspective, egocentricity, causality, and so on. They will be more open to genuinely radical thought and the ways of understanding texts; they will be more flexible in their perceptions of texts; and, because play is a natural part f their outlook. They will regard language as another area for playful exploration. They are less bound by fix schemes and in sense see more clearly.

(Hunt, 1991: 57)

From the quotation above, Hunt believes that through children’s literature, children will be able to appreciate texts and stories. Stories in children’s literature include the value in society and the aspects of life. As readers, children have a different perspective in seeing various events in their life. The exposure of topics such as death, sex, and fear will make children understand more about the value

of life and the life they have to go through. The texts which consist of language will be their first challenge to explore its part and sense. Children will find it usual and attractive to play with languages and to express a certain emotion.

2. Dark Themes in Children’s Literature

Dark theme in children’s literature is a term to derive children’s story revealing dark sides of life as the main themes, such as death, illness, divorce, separation, loneliness, and etc. Many researchers and scholars in children’s literature conduct a research upon the dark themes in children’s literature. The research is done to counter the opinion that children should be away from dark themes contents in literature. As Nodelman (1992:2) said that every subject about things people have no wish to hear about should be silenced and that we think children with such concern are abnormal. The important message author and scholars would give to children is to make them understand that dark side of life is normal because it happens to anybody. Thus, children should be prepared for every possibility to cope with those feelings. Each research usually conducts with specific dark themes in one particular novel or novels with similar themes. Death could be one of the examples of the dark themes which are mostly found in children’s story. According to Romero (1974:par.1), the theme about death will be much seen in various stories of children’s literature and depicted in various

ways to suit the various stages of children’s development. Therefore, the depiction of each theme will be adjusted to children’s stage of development.

Children need to learn and understand about the dark side of life because sooner or later children will face the dark side of life and it is unavoidable. Southhall (1975:12) states that children live in a world, not in a pedestal and they are out among people and interact with each other. Death might still look far away for them but coping with death might happen anytime and they should be prepared to feel the fear, pain, and loneliness as a part of the emotions. Children need to put themselves in someone else’s shoes to realize that this world does not only consist of happiness but also other dark emotions. Children need to see and understand that anything bad could happen to anyone. If it is not to them, it could happen to their family or friends. Furthermore, the sad feeling of watching someone suffering is a part of sympathy which every child should learn as a part of life lessons. As Mehta (2013:1) explains in her article about children who need to have sympathy for others, “children need to read terrifying situations in order to empathize with characters who endure those situations. Those characters, learning to stay strong and amid struggle, are part of a larger cultural shift in how we express ourselves about the things we’ve endured”.

The existence of dark themes in children’s literature is to help children to cope with the feeling that deals with the dark side of life. The important part of the death is not the death as a loss but more on how children should cope with the

feeling of loss, so the after effect of the death is more important to children. It is emphasized by Corr (2004:338) who believes that children need to understand about death because they need to learn how to grief and cope with it.

Children need to understand about the concept of death, pain, loss, illness, and many other dark side of life. In the case of death, children should understand that death is a natural process that will be through by all the living things in the world. Children need to cope with the feeling of sadness, loss, and grief. Jimmerson and Lazarus (in Heath et al. 2008:259) state that “grieving is defined as personal thoughts and feeling associated with loss”. They continue to explain that a loss triggers children to feel the grief and it involves experience of mixture emotions in response to the loss. Although the grief is associated with death, it is also associated with the disruption of familiar comfort and security, including divorce, family financial difficulty, and loss of a friend.

To see so many children’s books contain dark themes nowadays, parents might think that dark themes in children’s literature seem more varied and darker. However, the readers might not realize that the dark themes have been a part of children’s literature since a long time ago and even folklore of children also brought dark side of life as a themes in a story. Bates (2007:48) argues that the children’s classic folklore has been started with the universal dark themes of separation. There are many classic works of children’s literature that brought separation as a theme. The separations are usually between children and parents

or step-parents. Some of classic stories are The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Both stories depict the main characters whose separated from their family and had to deal with the current condition to survive.

The classic fairy tale has already started to bring dark themes to children’s reading materials. The nowadays theme seems darker to most of the parents because the present children’s literature brought the reality of life closer to children’s perspective. Divorce, illness, pain, and also death are becoming more and more vivid in present children’s literature. According to Eccleshare (2013:par.5), “today’s book for children tackle the current problems of the world at both a domestic and a global level; they are sometimes bleak in themes but may also be inspiring, unrevealing difficulties in a wonderful story”. In the article, Eccleshare also explains that a classic novel like Charlotte’s Web also brings death as one of the topics. Children will mostly remember the adventure as much as the darker subject matter. Thus, nowadays children’s text maybe the same as the subject matter.

B. Pleasure of Children’s Literature

Children might have difficulties to understand the complexity of ideas, but the difficulties do not stop children to seek pleasure when they experienced many kinds of emotions. In fact, their source of pleasure could be simpler than what

adults thought. People seek pleasure in reading literature, they read for pleasures. The simplest pleasure might be found in enlightenment when children read literary works. It could be the pleasure of knowing simple words from the text or might be a pleasure comes from the background of the reader while reading particular events which evoke the past memories (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:2). In relation to the simple pleasure, every story could give emotions to children. Events and emotions in life are also parts of pleasure children should enjoy and discover. Pleasure is not only found when they read certain stories but also when they have vicarious experience and try to deal with it.

Pleasure is the main attraction of children’s book, as stated by Greenby (2008:67), “children book should be judge for the pleasure it gives, for its style and its quality”. The potentpleasure in children’s book should be fairly judged as the source of vicarious experience to take children into a whole new level of enjoyment and excitement. All the new discovery contains in a text could be the source of potent pleasure. The experience of happiness and sadness are both pleasure for children. Furthermore, Lukens, Smith, & Coffel (2003:6) also explain that children seek the same pleasure as adults when they read stories, but the difference is their source of pleasure. Children have a limited source of pleasure because of their limited experience. Thus, children’s stories are displayed in a simpler way.

Nodelman and Reimer (2003:23-24) already listed the outlines of pleasure on how pleasure could be achieved by all children when they experience events in their life. One of the examples is the pleasure of experiencing. They explain that every kind of life experience is meaningful to children and they should learn based on their experience. To be examined as pleasure, children do not have to understand the whole meaning of a life journey. Children will naturally learn how to deal with the current situations and find the pleasure. This is how a simple event of life could give a pleasure to children. Both experience in reading literature and experiencing life events are the process of learning, the source of potent pleasure to children. Thus, pleasure in reading and in life experience is coherent to one another.

Pleasure is borderless, and even the limited experience of the reader will not become an obstacle in reading literature, as Nodelman and Reimer (2003:16)) said that the lack of knowledge does not prevent the reader from enjoying it. The pleasure of the text does not require absolute mastery of its vocabulary. Children could feel the pleasure of a story even from the strangeness of how a word sounds. Furthermore, children could relate to the reality in which they can find pleasure through the bitter experience and still learn about how to cope with those kinds of feelings. Children should know that their limited experience could be their benefit in learning and understanding the new situations that they will face in the future and still call it as pleasure.

Furthermore, the story as the essence of the text also plays a big part in giving pleasure. A story is the perfect way to see and to analyze children’s world through the actions and events in children’s environment.

“the most important source of pleasure in a text is the pleasure of the story. The organized patterns of emotional involvement and detachment, the delays of suspense, the climaxes and resolutions, the intricate pattern of coincidence to make up a plot”. (Nodelman and Reimer, 2003:25)

From the quotation above, Nodelman and Reimer explain that children put all the events happening surrounding them to learn and to understand something new. The process of learning is what Nodelman and Reimer call as pleasure. The complexity of the plot is also the complex journey of a certain character in the story. The more complex plot means more events will happen in the story. Throughout the complex events happened in the plot, children represented by the characters are expected to give the mirror of the actual reality on how they should deal with their current problems. As thinking is pleasure, children are expected not only to discover but also to explore the new experience which is the highest level of learning.

The fundamental of children’s literature is the discovery of the new experience. The process of discovery is the pleasure fulfillment of a text. The idea of meaning between the texts is something difficult and complex to be revealed, but there is a certain tension between texts and literary elements which give its fulfillment of pleasure as the discovery of the texts continues. Lesnik-Obesrtein

(2004:97) agrees to this argument by saying that the idea of meaning is waiting to be discovered and something to be completed.

The discovery of pleasure might be different from one person to another, but the actual pleasure should be enjoyed based on understanding. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:25) give his argument about how the world could shape people for its purpose and not necessarily for their own good. In addition, an understanding of pleasure is important to distinguish the good from the bad especially for children. The understanding of pleasure in every emotion is necessary to shape children’s sensitivity and to make them understand of what gives them the actual pleasure. Deeper consciousness of pleasures also reflects and gives benefit to children as mirror to themselves.

1. The Pleasure of Discovery

Many people assume that pleasure is the opposite of thinking. Pleasure should be felt when they enjoy a certain moment without thinking much about it. In the exact opposite way, Nodelman and Reimer (2003:23) share his thought that pleasure is not the opposite of thinking—that meaning is waiting to be discovered. The discovery of life events is a long way journey for children to understand and gain an insightful exploration. In conclusion, thinking is pleasure. Meaning is different from every reading and sometimes in each reading the readers gain a new perspective upon the story. The spirit of learning could be

applied in the story. Each event in the story could affect the character’s feeling in learning new things. Thus, learning could be the source of great relief and satisfaction (Hintz and Tribunella, 20013:11). In learning the new skill, children are able to discover and then take a whole new understanding of the new experience. A simple understanding of others can help children to treat people better and probably different based on their characters.

The explorations of life events need a whole understanding. To relate with others is the first step to gain understanding. There are relations in understanding others and gaining new experience, so children can learn from those relations. Great pleasures are found after experiencing many kinds of life events and feeling many kinds of new emotions (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:137). Representing reality is important to children in order to relate and explore their own feelings and imaginations.

The ability of seeing through life experience is the way to appreciate the pleasure of learning. In stories, the way each character interacts with each other or the way the characters deal with their problems are the source of new understanding in seeing problems from someone else’s perspective. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:26) explain that in the story, sometimes, reality is depicted as something backlashing with the ideology of the main character. Sometimes, it challenges the common value in society and the way stories depicts the problem can be a whole new exploration of understanding for children.

In order to explore the new environment, children need to discover their surroundings. To go out and to discover could lead into certain escapism. An escape which is not in imaginative ways but directly escapes into different environment and different routine. Finding a new environment and feeling the different situation between past and present also part of pleasure. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:25) believe that the pleasure of escape is to step out and to experience the lives and thoughts of different people. That experience will be both bitter and sweet. Being able to see something from the thought of different people is a part of the new experience as the escape of from the current state of mind. Thus, escape can be a part of pleasure in which children could learn how to be critical and how to see something from a new perspective.

2. The Pleasure of Experiencing

Experience is something which is already gained by the characters in the story before the plot. Experience also develops along with the plot. Many of these experiences develop along with the development of the plot. In addition, characters’ experience will be complete at the end of the story. As the story continues, sharing experience could be a part of the pleasure in gaining knowledge. The interaction between characters is the main source of sharing experience. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:26) share his views of this topic; sharing experience with others could be a source of pleasure in reading literature.

It could be derived from Nodelman and Reimer’s view that not only sharing experience with the other readers of the story but also sharing experience inside of the story from characters to characters which could be a mirror to its readers.

Experiencing the plot is another aspect of seeing literary text. The way characters gain experience in the development of the plot. There are many kinds of events that happen in the plot. The events are not only consisting of happiness that the characters feel but also including the horrible experience. The characters need to overcome the horrible experience the same as happy ones. Hintz and Tribunella (2013:11) share their view on experience, they believe that pleasure could be in the form of experience that characters should deal with. Furthermore, the pleasure they felt could help them to work through horrible experiences or feelings.

The pleasure of experiencing can also reveal the greatest pleasure and the deepest fears or concerns. In children’s interaction with the other children or with their own environment is another form of experience. Understanding the world surrounding children is the key to reach a deeper understanding to know what it means to be human and how human relate and treat one another. The attitude of concerning and understanding would lead further to the feeling of empathy as it evokes the deepest insight of human’s feelings. Seeing something people concerned about and being able to relate to other people’s feelings are the best experience. In conclusion, by learning those emotions, it triggers children’s

potent pleasure in experiencing fears, anxieties, pleasures and desires (Hintz and Tribunella, 2013:11).

3. The Pleasure of Finding Mirror for Oneself

To see many interactions among characters and the environment in the story are helpful as the depiction of reality. Those interactions help the children to identify their position in the society and discover their true self. Along the journey, the intense interaction between children helps each child to grow. In finding mirror for oneself, Nodelman and Reimer (2003:25) state that the pleasure of finding mirror for oneself is the ability to identify and discover the true self. Children are able to find the mirror of their selves in the other children’s characteristic.

Being able to relate to people’s perspective is a form of understanding which needs a long process to gain the understanding. The pleasure of having one’s emotion evoked is Nodelman and Reimer’s (2003:25) view in seeing interactions among children. To evoke someone’s emotion is not simply by feeling the sadness of other people but going deeper than the superficial feelings. Being able to relate to the pain or the joy with certain actions is the highest pleasure in being able to relate to others. The relation between children and the actual characters in the story is not something to be underestimated. Children see themselves in characters created in the story. Children could feel what the characters feel even

learn something from the problems faced by the characters. Examining pleasures experienced by the characters also have a significant mirror to have a projection of children having the same difficulties. Thus, pleasures are fundamental things to children and often represented by the characters in the story.

C. The Previous Studies

There are some previous studies which have been done before this research on Pleasure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is conducted. The previous research are on the same topic of children’s literature under the same novel or/and use the same theory of children’s literature to analyze a certain text. The first previous study is a research by Kartika Nurhandayani entitled An Analysis of Themes and Sub-Themes in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret which was done in 2014. The research objectives are to find the themes and sub-themes of the novel. On her research, Nurhandayani aims to unveil the themes and sub-themes in the novel by using New Criticism study. She also uses children’s literature theory as the basic foundation of her research in finding the elements of the themes.

The second previous study was conducted by Gideon Widyatmoko in 2011. His research entitled Telling Institutional Cruelty to Children through Literature: a Study on John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas focuses on how the writer tells the institutional cruelty through his book. Widyatmoko’s research objectives are to find characters which closely related to institutional cruelty and

to analyze the author’s technique in describing institutional cruelty. In his research, Widyatmoko aims to relate between the characters and the institutional cruelty, on how the characters could represent it.

The research on Pleasure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is different from Nurhandayani’s and Widyamoko’s. It differs from the previous research because it analyses the most important aspect of children’s learning process which is pleasure. Furthermore, the topic of the research is also different because this research focuses on the dark themes of the novel. This research differs from Nurhandayani’s because it analyses the specific dark themes of the novel and the pleasure embodied in the novel which represented by the main characters. This research also differs from Widyatmoko’s because it took different approach to the novel. It focuses on finding the pleasure of the main characters and it does not relate any of the topics with the author’s point of view. Thus, this research is different compared to the previous studies because it has different approach upon the dark themed novel. In addition, the researcher could propose the novelty of this research from the previous studies.

D. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework is needed to guide and understand the researcher’s way of thinking in doing the research of Pleasure of John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The research starts from the idea

of dark themes in children’s literature, that children should not be excluded from knowing any kinds of emotions in life. Thus, children’s literature should provide a form of understanding about the dark side of life through literature.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is one of many novels which try to bring reality closer to children’s perspective of thinking. The war, conflict, holocaust, and death are seen to be one of the hardest themes to be brought in children’s literature. Boyne’s tries to give the message to children about the humanity children’s should feel while reading the story. Furthermore, Boyne comes to children’s perspective to tell the story from their innocence eyes to see every conflict in the novel. This book is able to tell children that there is pleasure in reading a book with dark themes in it.

There are two theories that are combined to work hand in hand in order to find the pleasure of the novel. Children’s literature theory is applied to unveil the role of children’s literature to help children to cope with the world around them. The aim of children’s literature is to give a better understanding to children about the world and to grow the deepest humanity side of them. The pleasure of children’s literature theory is applied to unveil the pleasure of the main characters. Furthermore, pleasure is the spirit of life in which children should understand in experiencing life events. Thus, pleasure should exist in every books children’s read and books contain dark themes should not be excluded from the pleasure of life experience.

The theoretical framework of this research can be seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: The Scheme of Theoretical Framework Children’s Literature

Pleasure of children’s literature Dark themes in children’s literature

1. What are dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?

2. How do the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters?

John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Pleasure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

33

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

A. The Research Design

There are two objectives in this research which need to be answered at the end of the research. The first is to find the dark themes in the story and the second is to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. To answer those objectives, the researcher needs a research design to guide the research. The term research design is important to define to guide the researcher in doing research. According to Cheek (2008:761) research design refers to and encompasses decisions about how the research is conceptualized and how the research is intended to make contributions towards development of knowledge in particular area. Furthermore, Cheek also mentions the process to develop a research to gain the most important value. The research design is expected to guide the researcher prioritizing the decisions during the research and help the researcher to answer those objectives. Thus, research design is expected to guide this research effectively.

Content analysis uses as the design of this research. The researcher did content analysis to seek trustworthiness and credibility in finding the data by conducting a deeper analysis, to find the contradictory examples, to seek

confirmatory data, and provide supporting examples to conclude the data analysis. As qualitative content analysis is used in this research, it is best to answer the “why” question of this qualitative research (Julien, 2008:120). In content qualitative analysis, the researcher’s interpretation is valuable in collecting the data because of its instrument’s validity. The data of this qualitative research are in the form of narrative texts which means it cannot be measured by numerical numbers since it deals with literary text. The content analysis of this research also referred to analytic method in reducing the data to find the meaning of the data to support the result of the research.

B. Data Types

Data is one of the important elements in the research as a material to conclude the result of the research. Vanderstop and Johnston (2009:176) explain that qualitative research uses a narrative form to find the data and explain the phenomenon in the research. In conclusion, this research used narrative expression of the novel as the data of the research. The narrative expressions of the novel are in the form of words, sentences, and paragraphs related to dark themes elements in The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas. The narrative data are expected to give clear explanations upon the phenomena found in the text.

C. The Data Source

The data source of this research were collected from any kinds of sentences, expressions and paragraphs related to the research upon pleasure in dark themed novel by John Boyne entitled The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas. All the data sources that have been mentioned above must relate to the aspects of the research: 1) the dark themes of the novel, 2) how the dark themes represents the pleasure of main characters. The novel of John Boyne entitled The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas was originally published in English. It was published in 2006 by Black Swan and consisted of 20 chapters and 215 pages.

D. Research Instruments

In this qualitative research, the researcher plays a center part of the research instrument. The researcher acted as the interpreter of all the data with specific explanation based on theories used on the research and data classifications. The researcher is the possible valid instruments in qualitative research. Lincoln and Guba statement cited in Vanderstop and Johnston (2009:201) also agree to the idea, they believe that the best instrument for qualitative naturalistic inquiry is human. In this case, the researcher’s interpretation played a significant part to the research. The data table provided by the researcher would be the secondary instrument to this research. There are two data tables to help the researcher interprets the data. Those tables could be seen in the following.

The first table is needed to answer the first objective of the research. The table was designed to categorize the dark themes found in the story. The table helped the researcher to classify the dark themes of the novel.

Table 1: Kinds of Dark Themes

No Dark

Themes

Page Quotation Explanation

1 A.Childre n’s anger

7 ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he asked,

staring at her in surprise. ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he’d munch into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet. ‘Say goodbye to Karl and Daniel and Martin?’ he continued, his voice coming dangerously close to shouting, which was not allowed indoors. ‘But they’re my three best friends for life’.

Bruno is angry with the fact that he needs to say goodbye to his best friends.

The second table was designed to help the researcher answer the second objective. The table is crucial to answer the most important question to show how the pleasure of the main characters is represented by the dark themes of the novel. Thus, the second table played the most significant part to categorize the data classification. The form of the table could be seen as below.

Table 2: Pleasure of the Main Characters Data

No

Pleasure Page Explanation Pleasure

1 A. Pleas ure of obser ving

30 To begin with, they weren’t children at all. Not all of them, at least. There were small boys and big boys, fathers and grandfathers. Perhaps a few uncles too. And some of those people who live on their own on everybody’s road but don’t seem to have any relatives at all. They were everyone.

‘Who are they?’ asked Gretel, as open-mouthed as her brother often was these days. ‘What sort of place is this?’

‘I’m not sure, ‘said Bruno, sticking as close to the truth as possible. ‘But it’s not as nice as home, I do know that much’

Bruno and Gretel feel the pleasure of observing the new environment.

E. The Technique of Data Collection

The technique of data collection is needed to help the researcher to obtain the data and to classify the data. The researcher needs to follow the steps to obtain the data effectively and to analyze the data through the data classification of The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas. The first step referred to close reading and re-reading the novel as an effort to find the significant data. In this step, the researcher had to read the text comprehensively and thoroughly to obtain the significant the data. Re-reading the text was necessary to convince the researcher’s interpretation

upon the text and to gain a deeper understanding of the text. While reading the text, the researcher took notes to any important data and classified them to a certain category to help researcher draw conclusion at the end.

The second step was done to categorize the raw data. The raw data were collected through few steps: 1) identifying, interpreting, and labeling them into two kinds of categories: the dark themes and the pleasure in the dark themes and 2) re-examining the classified data whether the accurate data were already placed in appropriate category. Those two data tables played an important part to formulate the data.

F. Data Trustworthiness

To obtain authentic and trustful data, the researcher needs to provide triangulation to guarantee the quality of the data. In ensuring the data trustworthiness Julien (2008:121) states that validity and reliability is the key to gain prominent result of content analysis. In this research, the researcher’s first and second supervisors helped in checking the data. In addition, to provide data trustworthiness, the researcher was helped by two graduate students under the same concentration in literature and used children’s literature as their thesis topics. These scholars played an important part in data triangulation.

G. Data Analysis

Data analysis refers to how the researcher categorized the raw data into a certain category, found the relation between the data, discovered the deeper meaning of the data and gave a deeper analysis to the data. Vanderstop and Johnston (2009:267) agree that in obtaining the data, the reader of the research should agree and understand how the researcher find the data, and trust the procedure enough to agree that the result found in the research are valid. Therefore, the data analysis is important to be established for its validity and affectivity of the research.

There were some steps of data analysis done by the researcher. The lists of the steps are below:

1. obtaining the raw data from the novel by close reading, re-reading and taking notes,

2. classifying the raw data into two categories made by the researcher to sort them based on their category,

3. identifying the classified data into more specific details of sub-categories, 4. re-examining classified data by checking, comparing and combining the data

in the two categories,

5. interpreting classified data into a new form of understanding, and

reporting the data analysis into a narrative form to gain a deeper understanding upon the text.

40

CHAPTER IV

THE RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

There are two parts of the findings to answer the research questions. The first part of the classifications is essential to reveal the first research question of dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The dark themes are broken down into five major themes. The second part reveals the answer of the second researchquestion. It includes the journey of the main characters as the child characters. The second part of this chapter is essential to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. There are three categories of pleasure to represent the pleasure of the main characters. The last part of this chapter is the discussion on the further implication of the research findings in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamasand the pleasure found in its dark themes.

A. Research Findings

The researcher collected the data and categorized it into some categories to fulfill the purposes of the research. There are two major tables to answer the two research questions. The first table is used to identify the dark themes of the novel.

The second one is used to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. The complete data can be found in the appendices.

1. Kinds of Dark Themes

There are various data found in the novel related to the research. The researcher found various dark themes of John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The data are categorized into five classifications. There are five dark themes found in the novel: children’s anger, people’s oppression toward children, children’s sadness, children’s insecurity, and children’s dark environment. Those five dark themes are considered as the main data classification of the research. These findings are explained in the following.

a. Children’s Anger

The first theme found in the novel is anger. Anger has been one of the most natural expressions of frustration. Anger might be performed in the simplest thing like losing toys or even the hard ways of separation. Children are not excluded from the expression of anger. Some children will let out their anger and some others decide to keep their anger inside. Many of them let out their anger without even realizing it. Therefore, it is a form of a spontaneous action when they feel shocked and angry.

The anger is mostly referred to the child’s main character of the novel, Bruno. As an innocent character, Bruno shows many emotions towards the new

environment he has to deal with. When Bruno’s family leaves Berlin for Out-With, that is the time when Bruno starts to show the dark side of him. In this case, Bruno is forced to leave Berlin and his best friends. Bruno’s explosion of anger and surprise can be seen in the datum below.

‘Say goodbye to them?’ he asked, staring at her in surprise. ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he’d munch into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet. ‘Say goodbye to Karl and Daniel and Martin?’ he continued, his voice coming dangerously close to shouting, which was not allowed indoors. ‘But they’re my three best friends for life.’ (Boyne, 2007:7)

In this novel, Bruno shows the hardship of separation. As a form of a spontaneous action, Bruno lets out his anger when he hears the news that he will moves from Berlin. The thought of leaving his three best friends also makes him burst in anger. As a child, Bruno is attached to his three best friends as they always spent time together. When he hears the news, he automatically protests his mother.

Children’s reaction to a sudden separation could be in different ways. Anger is one of the most common emotion children could feel as a form of rejection. Anger also could be a form of confusion because children feel the anxiety of having a different routine. In the quotation below, it shows how Bruno reacts to his new house after he moves.

‘Everything here is horrible,’ he said out loud, even though there was no one present to hear him, but somehow it made him feel better to hear the words stated anyway. ‘I hate this house, i hate my room and i even hate the paintwork. I hate it all. Absolutely everything.’ (Boyne, 2007:55)

Bruno’s expression of disappointment is shown as he sees his new house. He observes his new environment and compares it to his old house in Berlin. There are huge differences between his old and new house. He feels as if there is no one to hear him. No one agrees to him that the place is horrible. Bruno’s expression of anger is understandable as he is new to his environment and it takes time for him to accept the new situation.

Furthermore, parents are the helpers of children to adapt to their new surroundings. As adults, they should make children comfortable with their new environment. In Bruno’s case, adults around him more care to their own problem rather than helping the children to be comfortable. Moreover, Bruno does not get a proper explanation from his parents on why their family should move to another place. Adults tend to underestimate children’s feeling and their ability of understanding. When children involve in any family situation and matters, it helps them to gain trust from adults.

In Bruno’s family, the situation is completely different. Children are not involved in any decision-making and their voices are mostly neglected by their parents. As a result, Bruno grows as a boy who is oftentimid around people older than him. He tends to hide his feelings from his parents because he is afraid that he will get into trouble. The timid personality and even unheard voices in children’s family could lead into a further effect. The datum below is one of the examples.

Bruno narrowed his eyes and wished he were taller, stronger and eight years older. A ball of anger exploded inside him and made him wish that he had the courage to say exactly what he wanted to say. (Boyne, 2007:164) The example above shows how Bruno is unable to say what he wanted to say. He knows that Lieutenant Kotler underestimates him and teases him, but Bruno does not have the courage to speak up. Kotler’s domination is scarier than Bruno’s nerves. Thus, Bruno keeps his anger inside and never dares to say his own opinion.

Adults’ voices areable to be heard everywhere, but children’s voices tendto be underestimated. Many adults think that children have so many limits upon knowledge. However, they forget one thing which is the most basic human nature could feel. Children also have feelings just like any other adults. Adults should not neglect children’s existence and feelings. The impact of adult’s ignorance towards children is far more severe than what adults thought.

In many occasions, Bruno needs to suppress his emotions. He mostly deals with his own confusion of leaving his best friends. His mother may think that Bruno could find friends anywhere and he could adapt everywhere. The reality tells different story. Bruno is still an innocent boy who has never been exposed to a completely different environment than his normal life. His old house is a perfect shelter of every child where he owns anything he wants. Bruno lives in a luxurious house in Berlin. He has many friends and a nice neighborhood. In his

new house, he needs to deal with a dull environment and loneliness. It could be seen from the datum below.

‘Like it?’ replied Bruno with a slight laugh. ‘Like it?’ he repeated, but louder this time. ‘Of course I don’t like it! It’s awful. There’s nothing to do, there’s no one to talk to, nobody to play with. You can’t tell me that you’re happy we’ve moved here, surely?’ (Boyne, 2007:57)

The quotation shows Bruno’s anger towards the new house. He thinks that the house is horrible and he wants to move back to his old home in Berlin. The most important thing from the quotation above is how Bruno wishes that Maria could see from his perspective. Bruno wants to be heard although his voice is not always right.

Children’s situation is similar to Bruno where he chooses to suppress his own feeling because he feels dominated by other people or he feels useless to speak up. Children could relate to Bruno’s situation where he should obey his parent’s decision without even understanding the reason behind it. The suppression of anger could lead into spontaneous explosion of anger. This quotation could set the example.

‘I don’t want to accept it!’ shouted Bruno, blinking in surprise he hadn’t known he was going to shout out loud. (In fact it came as a complete surprise to him.) (Boyne, 2007:52)

Bruno bursts out his anger without even realizes it. This is a result of his suppression of anger. Bruno’s parents should play as the center parts to make Bruno understand upon their new situation instead of making him suppress his own emotions. When Bruno shouts, he is afraid that his spontaneous action will

make his father angry. Bruno is afraid of his father’s anger so he thinks that he should not make his father angry in any condition. Therefore, most of the time, he keeps his anger inside.

b. People’s Oppression Toward Children

The second theme which mostly appears as one of the biggest issue brought in Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is oppression. The oppression towards children can be seen from various treatments people do towards children. One of which is mistreatment. Mistreatment is a severe problem faced by children in their daily lives when they interact with adults. Mistreatment also becomes part of oppression to children. It shows how children are treated inappropriately as they are underestimated. Many adults do not really pay much attention to how children’s feel and how to explain things to children. On the other side, there are just too many cruel situations which make children put as the inferior ones and easily dominated.

In the novel, Bruno gets many unfair treatments from people around him. Not only do his parents and the other adults around him but also his sister often pick on him. The datum below shows how Bruno’s sister, Gretel and her friends like to pick on Bruno.

She had some very unpleasant friends too, who seemed to think that it was clever to make fun of him, a thing he never would have done if he had been

three years older than her. All Gretel’s unpleasant friends seemed to enjoy nothing more than torturing him and said nasty things to him whenever Mother or Maria were nowhere in sight.

‘Bruno’s not nine, he’s only six,’ said one particular monster over and over again in a sing-song voice, dancing around him and poking him in the ribs.

‘I’m not six, I’m nine,’ he protested, trying to get away. ‘Then why are you so small?’ asked the monster.

‘All the other nine-year-olds are bigger than you’. (Boyne, 2007:22) From the quotation above, Bruno shows how Gretel can be mean to him. As an older child, Gretel is expected to take care of her own brother. In fact, she often teases Bruno for being short. Gretel also makes his friends to have an eye on Bruno and together tease Bruno for being short. On the other side, Bruno has a mature side of him when he said that he will never do that to anybody else even if he is at the same age as Gretel. He seeks no pleasure in teasing the other children. Bruno also experienced a severe bullying from Gretel’s friends when there are no adults around. From Bruno’s experience in being bullied, it is not only adults who have the power to oppress children. Older children also have the power to oppress the younger ones.

The oppression towards Bruno does not only come from Bruno’s sister. Bruno’s teacher, Herr Lizst, also preaches Bruno to only study particular things which he thinks suitable for Bruno. Teacher plays a center part in terms of formal education to children. A teacher is supposed to assist children with their interest of learning and direct their potential without explicitly telling children what to do

and what not to do. They let children discover their own self. In the quotation below, it shows how Herr Lizsttries to preach Bruno.

‘Those things are useless to you,’ insisted the teacher. ‘A sound understanding of the social sciences is far more important in this day and age.’

‘Grandmother always let us performs in plays back in Berlin,’ Bruno pointed out.

‘Your Grandmother was not your teacher though, was she?’ asked Herr Liszt. ‘She was your grandmother. And here i am your teacher, so you will study the things that i say are important and not just the things you like yourself.’ (Boyne, 2007:97)

When Bruno wants to study about literature, the teacher directly resists Bruno’s wish to study about it. The action of Herr Lizst is the portrayal of some adult’s action to children. There are adults who still think that fiction books are less important than science book. In the case of Bruno, Herr Liszt explicitly shows his intentions to make Bruno only study what Liszt’s thinks is important. The oppression towards Bruno could be seen as the teacher does not give Bruno choices other than to study science and history. In this case, the teacher is the one who gives and decides what should be learned without giving children many choices.

Herr Lizst’s actions might not be Bruno’s biggest concern as Bruno still thinks that Lizst will give him more adventure in Science. Bruno’s father is the one who gives Bruno the biggest impression on what he should and should not do. His father is the most respectable figure for Bruno as he has the most power in his house. Bruno knows that his father has a big position in the army. Their

family moves to Out-With because of his father’s job. Unfortunately, as someone whom Bruno respects the most, Bruno’s father rarely speaks to Bruno the way he supposed to. The datum below shows how Bruno’s father intimidates Bruno to behave like an adult.

‘You open your mouth and speak like an adult. The last thing we need is for either of you to start behaving like children. If the fury ignores you then you do not say anything either, but look directly ahead and show him the respect and courtesy that such a great leader deserves.’ (Boyne, 2007:120) When the fury comes to the new house, Bruno’s father tries to impress the fury. From the quotation above, Father wants Bruno to keep quiet and to never bother the meeting. Bruno should stay quiet and behave like an adult. Bruno’s father oppresses Bruno by not giving Bruno a chance to speak. Bruno’s Father also chooses to act in inappropriate way to his own son and tell Bruno to behave like an adult. Bruno’s father should give a proper explanation to Bruno on why he should behave nicely instead of strictly telling Bruno to behave like an adult and stay quiet. Bruno’s father even justifies the fury’s action if he ignores Bruno.

Another perspective of oppression is experienced by Shmuel. Shmuel experienced bad treatments from the soldiers in the huts. His family has been treated so badly which also traumatized him. The datum below shows how Shmuel is being treated unfairly by the soldiers.

‘No, but when we were told we couldn’t live in our house we had to move to a different part of Cracow, where the soldiers built a big wall and my mother and father and my brother and I all had to live in one room.’ ‘All of you?’ asked Bruno. ‘In one room?’

Data No

Pleasure Page Dark themes Explanation

wandered how a boy who thought he was a good person really could act in such a cowardly way towards a friend.

43 174 And when he said that, Shmue smiled and nodded and Bruno that he was forgiven, and then Shmuel did something that he had ever done before. He lifted the bottom of the fence up like he did whenever Bruno brought him food, but this time he reached his hand out and held it there, waiting until Bruno did the same, and then the two boys shook hands and smiled at each other.

It was the first time they had ever touched.

Bruno and Shmuel are able to relate to each other’s feeling as a form of pleasure in having a friendship.

44 176 He knew that there were many things he should be happy about, like the fact that Father and Mother seemed cheerful all the time now and Mother didn’t have to take as many of her afternoon naps or medical sherries. And Gretel was going through a phase – Mother’s words – and tended to keep out of his way.

Bruno is finally able to feel grateful for what he has and to feel the joy of appreciate it.

45 185 Over the course of the next few weeks Mother seemed increasingly unhappy with life at Out-With and Bruno understood perfectly well why that might be. After all, when they’d first arrived he had had it, due to the fact that it was nothing like home and lacked such things as three best friends for life. But that had changed for him over time, mostly due to Shmuel, wh had become more important to him than Karl or Daniel

Bruno understands his mother’s loneliness. He is able to give sympathy to his Mother.

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Pleasure Page Dark themes Explanation

or Martin had ever been. But Mother didn’t have a Shmuel of her own. There was no one for her to talk to, and the only person who she had been remotely friendly with – the young Lieutenant Kotler – had been transferred somewhere else.

46 205 Bruno had an urge to give Shmuel a hug, just to let him know how much he liked him and how much he’d enjoyed talking to him over the last year.

Shmuel had an urge to give Bruno a hug too, just to thank him for all his any kindness, and his gifts of food, and the fact that he was going to help him feel papa.

Bruno and Shmuel are able to show affection to each other as a form of understanding pleasure in friendship.

47 211 ‘Actually,’ he said, looking down at Shmuel, ‘it doesn’t matter whether i do or don’t. They’re not my best friends any ore anyway.’ He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel’s tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly. ‘You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.’

Bruno feels the pleasure of developing a deeper understanding of his friendship with Shmuel. Bruno is able to expresses his gratitude to Shmuel.

48 212 And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go.

Bruno is finally able to understand how much the friendship means to him. He decided to help Shmuel as a form of empathy.

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The story begins with the main character, Bruno, who needs to move out from his house in Berlin with his family. His father is a respectable NAZI commandant who recently promoted to be responsible for the new camp in Out-With. The new duty comes, hence the family need to move from Berlin to Out-With. The new place is somewhere far from Berlin and all the city life.

Bruno finds no friends or adventure in the new house. Therefore, Bruno always feels depressed and grumpy every time he thinks about his new environment. Bruno looked far in the distance and found that there are strange houses in the distance separated by barb wire. It aroused his curiosity about the new people in huts. They wear the striped pyjamas and move around in a group of people.

Meanwhile, everyone in the house is impressed with the new soldier called Lieutenant Kotler who actually makes Bruno insecure. Bruno decides to explore the new house and its surrounding. He finds a boy in the striped pyjamas on the other side of the fence. Bruno courageously say hello to the boy and they shortly becomes a friend. However, Bruno still misses Berlin and his old life, especially his grandparents.

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At one night, the fury comes to Bruno’s house. The atmosphere in the house instantly changes because Bruno’s father wants everyone to behave perfectly. The fury is being rude to Bruno’s family but Father tolerates it. Bruno hates the fury and Kotler because of their rude behavior in his house. Meanwhile, Bruno keeps his adventure with Shmuel as a secret because he does not want anyone to know about their friendship.

Soon after, they make a wonderful friendship. They share each other secrets and worries. One time, Shmuel comes to Bruno’s house to clean the crystal glass. Bruno gives Shmuel foods and they talk to each other. However, Kotler shouts at them and tells Shmuel to never talk to Bruno. Bruno lies to Kolter that he does not know Shmuel. Bruno feels an instants regret and disappointment because he cannot stand for his best friend. Then, he apologizes to Shmuel when he meets him.

When Shmuel tells Bruno that his father is missing, Bruno offers Shmuel his help. Bruno disguises himself as one of the prisoner and helps Shmuel to find his missing father. However, they are swept away by the crowds of people. At the same time Bruno and Shmuel feel no regret in accompanying each other and becoming best friend. That is the last time they are together and soon after Bruno’s parents realize that his son is missing. Bruno’s family search for him for months and finally finds out that he escapes to the other side of the fence and never comes back.