After finishing The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, Boyne left us readers to use our imaginations to think of the fate of Bruno and Shmuel as it is not explicitly revealed. I've watched the movie before hence I knew that Bruno and Shmuel would die in the gas chamber.Some quotes left me pondering, such as:

"A few months after that some soldiers came to Out-With and Father was ordered to go with them, and he went without complaint as he was happy to do so because he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore."

 and,

 "And that's the end of the story about Bruno and his family. Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

 After several discussions in class, a theory could be concluded from the first quote that World War 2 would've ended at that time and other soldiers could've arrested Bruno's father as he was a Nazi. Bruno's Father, paralysed with the horrific thought of Bruno's death, just went along without retaliating. Boyne also showed sarcasm in the second quote when he wrote "Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age." because not long after World War 2, genocides and holocausts still occur such as the Khmer Rouge and the Rwanda Genocide.

My classmates and I also worked on writing essays on The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. The majority of the class including me myself chose the topic of "How does Boyne presents friendship in The Boy in Striped Pyjamas?" for our essays. I had an absolute writer's block for I wasn't even sure how to write the introduction paragraph of my essay. I tried to reflect on the essay structure presentations made by other classmates but I just couldn't produce a decent essay as everything I wrote was pretty much waffling.

I believe that the lack of practise (if I remembered correctly I think I wrote my last essay in Dec '11) and I also regretted not changing my topic when I had the chance lead to my writer's block. I also think that the topic I chose was too vague for me or maybe I simply did not understand the topic at all. I choose to believe the latter. I could not cite my quotes, I could not find any arguments to support my thesis statement and most importantly, I could not describe what 'writing styles' was shown in the story.

In my writing in the future, I really want to learn how to make my essays more sophisticated by enriching it with a spectrum of adjectives, vocabularies, quotes and more. I would like to see an example of a good essay consisting of all these elements to give me a clear view of what is expected in my writing.

On the bright side, I managed to memorise and recite a monologue from Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" during my Theatre for Young People (T4YP) audition in KLPac and I especially loved reciting the Shakespeare monologue as I believe that it was my best and most spirited monologue. I was in character and I loved reciting those olde english words such "thy" and "thou". During the audition, I realise just how important it is to be good in english to carry out a good monologue or carry out impromptu speeches. When I forgot my lines, I managed to improvise smoothly as I creatively came up with vocabularies on the spot. When I received the call from the T4YP team on Monday, hearing "The judges loved you!" was probably one of the most priceless moments ever. Even if I couldn't join T4YP this year, I'm glad that I've at least give it a try. And it was definitely worth the try.