The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary: “The Fury”

In a flashback to several months earlier, Bruno’s father receives news that the Fury plans to come for dinner to discuss Father’s next assignment. Father instructs Bruno and Gretel to be on their best behavior and to speak only when spoken to.

Bruno considers the Fury to be “the rudest guest [he] had ever witnessed” (189) and “a horrible man” (191), but he finds his blond and tall companion, Eva, beautiful. While the Fury barely deigns to speak to them, Eva shows kindness. Later that night, Bruno overhears his parents argue about moving away from Berlin to follow Hitler’s orders, which his father feels is the only way.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Shmuel Thinks of an Answer to Bruno’s Question”

Shmuel tells his story. He once lived with his parents and brother Josef in Cracow above the store where his father repaired and made watches. Then one day his mother told him they would have to start wearing armbands with a six-pointed star sign on it. Soon after, they had to leave their home and live in one room with another family. Then soldiers put them into trucks and made them board a train where “there was no air to breathe. And it smelled awful” (200). The train brought them to Auschwitz where Shmuel, his father, and his brother live in one camp, and their mother in another.

Bruno finds Shmuel’s story hard to believe, as he cannot imagine 11 people living in one room. He also believes the boy must have missed the doors to the other, less crowded train, which took Bruno to Auschwitz. Shmuel’s story “didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to him, and after all much the same thing had happened to him” (200). He is jealous to hear that there are hundred boys on Shmuel’s side of the fence and confused that they never play together.

Shmuel shyly asks Bruno if he has any food, telling him he only tasted chocolate once in his life. Bruno invites him to dinner, or himself over to the other side of the fence, but Shmuel only shrugs and runs away, afraid of being caught. On his way home, Bruno decides to keep this adventure to himself.

Chapter 13 Summary: “The Bottle of Wine”

During the following weeks, Bruno continues to see Shmuel, sneaking bits of bread and cheese for the boy. One day, he asks Maria about Pavel, and she tells him he used to be a doctor in a past life but is not one anymore. Bruno then asks Shmuel about Pavel and is surprised when Shmuel claims he does not know him. Shmuel tells him, “I don’t think you realize just how many people live on this side of the fence […] There are thousands of us” (213).

As the boys talk, Shmuel tells Bruno he would like to work in a zoo when he grows up because of his fondness for animals. After Bruno replies that he would like to be a good soldier like his father, Shmuel says sadly yet firmly that “there aren’t any good soldiers” (215), which almost causes an argument.

That evening, Lieutenant Kotler has dinner with the family. Bruno observes Pavel serving them and notices the man is weak and trembling. Kotler lets slip that his father, a professor of literature, left Germany in 1938 to live in Switzerland. Bruno’s father reacts sharply to this, asking him if he informed his superiors of his father’s views. Kotler is afraid and angry, and when Pavel drops a bottle of wine directly into his lap, the soldier punishes him in some unspeakable way that upsets Bruno very much. It disturbs him when both his mother and father fail to react and stop the punishment.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Bruno Tells a Perfectly Reasonable Lie”

For several weeks, Bruno continues to sneak out of the house to spend time with Shmuel, each boy sitting on his side of the fence. Once, he finds Shmuel with a black eye, but the boy refuses to tell Bruno how he got it. Bruno would like to crawl under the fence and come inside the camp to play, but Shmuel does not let him. Bruno also envies Shmuel and the rest of the men there for wearing pajamas all day.

On a day of heavy rainfall, Bruno cannot leave the house. He blurts out the truth about Shmuel to his sister and then comes up with a lie that Shmuel is his imaginary friend, which causes derision. He tells his sister what he talks about with his “imaginary” friend, realizing that he failed to react properly when Shmuel told him that his grandfather is missing and that his father cries when Shmuel asks about him. Bruno misses his friend and wonders if Shmuel misses him too.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Something He Shouldn’t Have Done”

Lieutenant Kotler helps Bruno’s mother prepare a birthday party for Bruno’s father. Bruno makes a list of all the things he hates about the young man, including his shooting a dog that approached the camp fence. Bruno also hates the way his mother laughs at Kotler’s jokes.

After a brief and unpleasant meeting with Kotler in the hallway of his house, Bruno goes to the kitchen where, to his astonishment, he finds Shmuel. Kotler brought him over to polish 64 small sherry glasses because of his unnaturally thin and tiny hands, “like the hand of the pretend skeleton” (256). The boys compare hands, and for the first time Bruno realizes the unhealthy appearance of his friend. He persuades Shmuel to eat slices of chicken, even though the boy is scared Kotler will catch him. This happens, and Shmuel admits to eating, saying Bruno gave him the food and calling him his friend. Frightened of Kotler’s rage, Bruno states, “I’ve never seen him before in my life. I don’t know him” (264), and later bitterly regrets betraying his friend out of cowardice.

During the next week, Shmuel never appears at their meeting place. On the seventh day, Bruno finds him waiting, all black-and-blue with bruises. Bruno apologizes sincerely, and Shmuel smiles then reaches his hand below the fence. They shake hands, touching for the first time.

Chapters 11-15 Analysis

In a flashback scene, Boyne introduces the characters of Adolf Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, as they come to visit Bruno’s father to deliver orders for Auschwitz. By incorporating real historical figures in the novel, including Hitler himself, the author offers an additional layer of credibility and terror to the story. “The Fury” thus stops being just Bruno’s abstract interpretation of Hitler’s title but a grim and decidedly unpleasant reality for the boy and the reader. Boyne juxtaposes the man’s rudeness and curtness with Eva’s kindness and the servility of Bruno’s parents. Bruno’s perspective on Hitler allows readers to see the man without the almost universal sense of either adoration or hatred, in the boy’s simple terms of what is acceptable behavior.

Furthermore, the author contrasts Hitler’s appearance at a dinner party in one chapter with the introduction of Shmuel’s history in the next, thus emphasizing the magnitude of atrocity the man engineered. It is important to note that Boyne continues to stay true to Bruno’s youthful simplistic understanding by refusing to give the character empathy he cannot realistically develop towards Shmuel’s story. Bruno finds it hard to believe that anyone could experience such hardships because there is nothing in his brief life that can parallel such events. In fact, the only point of comparison for Bruno is that he feels put upon by having to leave Berlin, underlining the vast difference in the boys’ lives thus far. Bruno naturally focuses on the fact that there are many boys on Shmuel’s side of the fence, without grasping the implications of this fact. His jealousy is rooted in his persistent failure to understand that people in “striped pajamas” are prisoners. Nothing he has learned of the world enables him to accept the fact that his own supposedly glorious country is committing genocide. This is why he childishly wishes to become a soldier as he grows up: For him, soldiers are a symbol of order, discipline, and his love for his father, not instruments of torture and hatred.

The only soldier Bruno dislikes is Lieutenant Kotler. Significantly, this is not because he understands Kotler’s role in the torture of Shmuel or Pavel; it is because he perceives Kotler as a vague threat to his family life—regarding his sister’s and his mother’s reaction to the young man—and to his own well-being. However, in Chapter 13, Bruno witnesses Kotler’s terrible rage, which stems not just from the young man’s sense of power that the Nazi uniform gives him, but also from his impotent anger at being criticized for the “sins” of his father who refused to accept Hitler’s ideology. Boyne thoughtfully refuses to illuminate the reader as to Pavel’s fate, thus symbolizing Bruno’s inability to process the horror of what he witnesses and his refusal to face the harsh realities. Kotler’s reaction, on the other hand, shows how a frustrated young man behaves when given the ultimate power over other people’s lives; he murders Pavel not because of the spilled wine, but because he is aware that his position in the Commander’s house is compromised by his father’s unsuitable decisions. Through this, the author foreshadows a parallel with Bruno’s fate and his father’s choices, which will reveal itself in the final pages of the novel.

Additionally, Bruno reveals the central weakness created by his coddled upbringing in his betrayal of Shmuel in Chapter 15. Boyne depicts the boy as unable to face up to his actions when questioned by the terrifying Kotler. This contrasts Shmuel’s courage in admitting that he accepted food from Bruno. Shmuel, although the same age as Bruno, has learned the cruel ways of the world; he knows he has nothing to lose, and therefore he is able to speak the truth. Bruno cannot help but think from a self-serving perspective, because the only thing he grasps is immediate danger of Kotler and potentially his father’s anger. The author positions the scene to underline the very different perspective the boys developed due to their circumstances.