The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

As a year passes, Bruno gets accustomed to his life in “Out-With,” still failing to recognize the truth of the place’s terrible purpose. The fact that he is able to live in ignorance reflects how deeply rooted is his belief in his family and especially his belief in his father, whom he cannot conceive doing anything wrong or hurtful. Being a young boy, Bruno soon begins to forget life in Berlin, including the names of some of his friends—another natural reaction in a life of a ten-year-old. This reaction, however, also indicates a symbolic forgetting of past realities, as humans experience new circumstances and distance themselves from their previous states. Presumably, Shmuel and the rest of the prisoners also distance themselves from their former selves, as their previous personalities no longer match their current circumstances. Boyne uses Bruno’s natural process to indicate these radical shifts in life.

Additionally, the author utilizes the scene where Father shaves Bruno’s head to get rid of lice as symbolic in bringing Bruno and Shmuel even closer together. They are no longer just counterparts from different sides of the fence but one symbolic entity, their destinies tied together. Moreover, through the act of shaving Bruno’s head, Father makes it possible for the boys’ final adventure to take place; thus, Bruno’s father becomes both indirectly and directly responsible for his son’s tragic fate.

Boyne structures the final chapters with suspense and with a twist that reveals an immense personal and communal tragedy. As Bruno prepares to leave “Out-With,” it is revealing that even when corrected, he cannot manage to learn the proper name of the place, Auschwitz, which shows how unacceptable the horrible truth of it is to him. The readers already come to expect a tragic ending for Shmuel, especially after both his grandfather and father “disappear.” The author surprises and shocks with the final merging of the two boys in their first and last adventure. The effect of shock is heightened by his use of non-emotive language, creating a tone of an everyday occurrence—which, tragically, the death of Jews in gas chambers became routine during the Holocaust. As the two boys march to the chamber and to their death, they discover an ability to share their feelings of love and trust for one another. Similar to Pavel’s death, Boyne leaves their deaths inexplicit, using elliptical language that reveals their fate without descending into tonal shift that would clash with previous chapters.

It is only in the last chapter that the novel necessarily moves from the centered consciousness of Bruno’s character to an omniscient point of view, as it describes the aftermath of Bruno’s death. The fact that Boyne never mentions Shmuel again is indicative of how insignificant the Nazis considered his brief existence to be. Bruno’s father discovers the terrible truth of his son’s death and remains frozen sitting on his side of the fence, much as Bruno once did, left to accept the horror of what he has done. However, even though readers witness Father’s breakdown and loss of position, the author does not give the readers any indication of whether this tragedy will provoke a change in him regarding his Nazi sympathies. This signals that, similar to Bruno’s child logic, his father sees only what touches upon his personal life and not the wider picture of the atrocities to which he contributed.

The final lines of the novel, especially the words “of course” and “not in this day and age,” take the readers out of the world of the novel and into their own respective realities, underscoring Boyne’s point that although fictional, this is a story about real-life human atrocities. The cynical concluding message warns through irony and contrast against the rise of similar fundamentalisms everywhere and at any time, making the readers question their own realities in a way that Bruno was never able to do. Thus, even though the novel ends in tragedy, Boyne invites the readers to become more aware of their surroundings and become more critical of the world in which they live.