Equality - An Innate Desire

Our minds work in a very simple manner: we see, we comprehend, and we judge.

Judging is a core part of being human; we constantly form assumptions on what we see and then

extrapolate them into stereotypes. Simply stated, we wouldn’t be human without creating

stereotypes. It's only when we use those stereotypes against people, use those stereotypes to

define people, that things turn ugly. When our inner qualities of being judgemental mixes with

spite and hate, racism is born. Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu, demonstrates how Asians,

specifically, are targeted with racism in the modern day world. It can occasionally be subtle, like

an underlying emotion, but as in the case of Willis Wu, the novel’s main character, it can be life

changing. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a book set about 80 years ago during The Holocaust,

tells the story of the friendship between two young boys in a divided world. Both stories, though

sounding quite different, both demonstrate the underlying theme that every single one of us can

relate to; the innate desire of wanting to be seen as an equal.

Fortunately, by virtue of being brought up in an educated family with reasonable

financial means, I have not particularly experienced racism in its ugliest forms. But, there were a

few incidents here and there that perplexed me which I now realize had racial undertones. Back

in elementary school, a classmate once told me, ”I have white skin, and you have brown skin, it

looks so much prettier and better in a princess costume…”. She obviously was young and

innocent, so I shrugged it aside as I was not interested in being a princess anyway. Another

incident had to do with the food my mom packed for school; she always packed healthy food

loaded with vegetables. One day a girl who shared the lunch table with my twin and I, took one

look at the beautiful pink colored beet pulao (rice) that our mom gave us, wrinkled her nose in

disgust and said, “Indians eat yucky food”. I was taken aback and deeply hurt. I remember
thinking that though I was grossed out by her eating raw meat on bones, I accepted it as her

culture and never commented. I distinctly remember thinking that it was because we were a

minority - my sister and I were the only Indian Americans in our class that time.

At first glance, A Boy In Striped Pajamas, seems like any other novel, but beneath the

layers, lies a deeper story. Bruno, the son of a Nazi Officer, befriends Shmuel, a boy in a Nazi

Prison camp. Bruno portrays the raw innocence of a nine year oldnine-year-old boy, unaware of

how his race, and Shmuel’s race are viewed at that time. During a passage of the book, as

Shmuel tells his story, Bruno ironically thinks they are very similar. When Shmuel talks about

the train ride to the prison camp, and how there wasn’t a single window, Bruno compares it with

his train ride from Berlin and tells Shmuel that there were doors on either end of the train. Bruno,

in his youthful innocence, doesn’t fundamentally understand how radically different their lives

are. All he sees is a nine year oldnine-year-old kid, a potential friend. The darkness of racism and

his race’s role in it has not yet touched him. Willis Wu’s aspirations as a child are analogous

(though obviously at a much smaller scale) to the childhood innocence portrayed by Bruno and

Shmuel. As a kid, Willis Wu’s biggest dream was to be Kung Fu Guy, the lead role which he

later realized was a naive ambition. He desperately wanted to be cast in a lead role, not knowing

how hard it would be for an Asian. He was unaware of the obstacles he would face in his

journey, such as almost losing his relationship with his daughter. Both of these examples portray

the raw innocence of children; they don’t fully understand or comprehend racism. Racism is only

conceived by those who have completely lost their innocence. This can also be seen almost in the

opposite manner with the little girl commenting about skin tones at school; she didn’t have a clue

that it was rude; she thought that she was just making an observation.
 Throughout the novel A Boy In Striped Pajamas, Bruno is unaware that his friendship

with Shmule is considered taboo. They talk for long hours like old friends, despite the fence that

separates them. The fence represents the boundary that separates their starkly different lives - it

labeled them indelibly as the oppressor and the oppressed. Friendship across this fence is

unimaginable, but to Bruno’s sweet, innocent mind all this is lost. A similar point is made in

Interior Chinatown, when Older Brother, during his trial, states, “ Someone who can’t be viewed

through either lens. Whose case cannot be properly considered by this court, where the rules and

assumptions are based on a particular dialectic. Someone whose story will never fit into Black

and White” (234). Older Brother is essentially saying that Asians aren't viewed as either black or

white, but a label somewhere in between. Despite not being given a particular label, they are still

stereotyped and limited by the fact that they are Asian. Just like how the fence in The Boy in

Striped Pajamas represents the physical separation/segregation of two races, there is an

imaginary fence - an imaginary boundary - that is given to different races, based on stereotypes,

placing them into a mold.

During Willis’ trial, Older Brother during his trial, goes in depth into the history of when

Asians immigrated to the United States. He states during the trial, “They zoned us, kept us roped

off from everyone else. Trapped inside. Cut us off from our families and our history” (238).

They were viewed as a separate entity, even as years passed, and even when they were

established as Americans, they weren’t ever viewed as Americans. The description of Asian

targeted racism described in this quote, is very similar (quite literally) to Shmuel’s condition in

The Boy in Striped Pajamas. The phrase, “They zoned us, kept us roped off from everyone else.

Trapped inside.”, could verbatim be used to describe Shmuel and the others in the prison camp.
He is isolated, and treated as inferior. He is struggling to survive, while the people on the other

side are going about their days normally.

Though the language in The Boy in Striped Pajamas is rather basic, some scenes

beautifully portray the message of the story in a simple and straightforward manner. One such

example of this is at the end of the book, whenre Bruno slips under the fence and wears the

striped pajamas. As he does so, he remembers what his grandmother used to tell him, “You wear

the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be” (205). This quote beautifully

brings home how something as superficial as a costume or in some cases external appearance,

features, or skin tone, strips away the uniqueness of a person and bags them in a role. -Just by

wearing the striped pajamas, Bruno seamlessly transitioned from a privileged little boy to one

desperately trying to just survive. Similarly, in Interior Chinatown, when describing Willis

Wu’s father, the narratorit states, “In his eight decade, enough thick, black, straight hair to comb

back and across, a clean part on the left side. The way he first learned how Americans did it,

watching old film reels in central Taiwan, his home now a distant watery memory from a Period

Piece” (265). This quote demonstrates the same message described in The Boy in Striped

Pajamas. Willis’s dad desperately wanted to be something he fundamentally wasn’t, and in that

process he lost his uniqueness; his history. Instead of embracing who he was, he tried to fit into

the “American” mold.

Both books have background characters; they aren’t really the main focus of the novel

but play an important role in the book. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, that would be Pavel.

Pavel is a Jewish man who is the waiter in Bruno’s family, and cooks for the household. One

day, Bruno asksed Lt. Kotler (a Nazi LituenantLieutenant) if he has a spare tire, as he wanted to

create a swing. Lt. Kotler orders Pavel to get Bruno a tire. Bruno was surprised by the harsh tone
that Lt. Kotler uses toward Pavel, but follows him anyway. Pavel gets him a tire, and creates a

swing for Bruno. Bruno ends up accidentally falling from the swing and injuring himself, and

Pavel immediately rushes to Bruno and bandages his knee. Bruno, surprised by his deftness,

asks him how he knows so much about wound care when he is just a waiter. Pavel responds by

saying that he is actually a doctor. Bruno, confused, wonders how someone could possibly have

two professions. Pavel then says, “Just because a man glances at the sky at night does not make

him an astronomer, you know” (82). Bruno, unaware of the significance of that statement, later

asks Maria, the maid, if Pavel is actually a doctor pretending to be a waiter. Maria then explains

to him, that before the Holocaust, Pavel was actually a doctor. After the German Invasion, he

was forced to give up his profession and instead be a waiter. The significance of this passage can

easily be overlooked but it enunciates the overarching theme of the book. It describes that

yearning, that wanting to be something knowing that you certainly can be, but society holds you

back. The phrase, “Just because a man glances at the sky at night”, describes that desire to break

the glass ceiling that you are confined to; that desire to break out of the mold you have been

placed in. To be something that you know is outside the scope of a generic person like you, but

you long to be it anyway.

Generic Asian Man in Interior Chinatown faces the same struggle in a slightly different

context. He is always in the background, and never gets to play the lead role, though he is

definitely capable of it. It is always Black or /White that gets the lead role. It states, “Black and

White always look good. A lot of it has to do with the light. They’re the heroes. They get hero

lighting, designed to hit their faces just right. Designed to hit White’s face just right, anyway.

Someday you want the light to hit your face like that. To look like the hero. Or for a moment to

actually be the hero” (11). These lines emphasize the underlying theme, that somehow, Asians
 are always overlooked, or cast as sidekicks - they never get to play the hero. Though these

sentences are written from a movie perspective, it can be applied to a real lifereal-life scenario.

Pavel’s quote applies verbatim here; Generic Asian Man can long to be something, but due to the

mold that society places him in, he might never get to achieve it. This reflects a lot of what

people that are racially targeted face. No matter how hard they try, even if they work twice as

hard, they are never seen as an equal.

Boy in Striped Pajamas and Interior Chinatown, though set in different time periods and

in entirely different historical contexts, portray the innate need to be seen as an equal; to not be

judged based on external features, but your true capabilities. It makes us realize that despite the

cultural/economical/religious differences we share, it's this innate desire that ties us all together.

People just want a chance; a chance to prove themselves, and for them to feel worthy of who

they are. Bruno’s innocence, his childlike view of the world, portrays the stark contrast between

what we imagine racism to be, and what a child perceives it to be. Interior Chinatown reminds

us that racism, though not present in forms as extreme as the Holocaust, still exists today. There

are still people who are oppressed, who struggle to get their voice heard. It's only when we

embrace our differences, see people for who they are, not their skin tone, ethnicity, financial

status, etc, that racism will be a part of the past.

Works Cited

Boyne, John. Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Random House Children's Books, 2007.
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2020.