The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

One day, after several weeks of feeling crazy with boredom, Bruno decides to make a swing out of an old tire. Having failed to find one, Bruno asks Lieutenant Kotler, the young blond man who is always around the house, for help. He finds him in conversation with Gretel, who attempts to behave more grown up, fawning over Kotler. In a brusque and very unpleasant way, the Lieutenant orders their waiter, a Jewish ex-doctor named Pavel, to help Bruno with the tire.

Soon after making the swing, Bruno falls off it, hurting his arm and cutting his leg. Pavel carries him to the kitchen to clean and bandage the wound. He reveals to Bruno that before he came to this place he used to be a doctor, which Bruno has difficulty understanding. When Mother arrives back from a nearby city, she sends Bruno to his room, but he overhears her thanking Pavel and stating that she will say she cleaned Bruno’s wound herself. Bruno thinks it is very selfish of her to take credit for something she did not do. 

Bruno’s grandfather, Matthias, used to run a restaurant in Berlin, and his grandmother, Nathalie, was a singer. Bruno misses them and the way his grandmother would always find a way to sing “La vie en rose” at each gathering. He also misses the family Christmas parties because his grandmother would write plays for herself, Bruno, and Gretel to perform.

The last Christmas, however, there was a fight between the adults. Bruno’s father was promoted into the rank of Commandant, and although Matthias was proud of his son, Nathalie was devastated, even though Bruno could not grasp why. She called her husband and son foolish for not understanding the wrongness of their pride, saying, “It makes me ashamed. But I blame myself” (145).

Bruno decides to write a letter to his grandmother, expressing his unhappiness at “Out-With,” the house, the barbed wire, and the people in striped pajamas.

Bruno slowly adjusts to his new surroundings and the lack of any interesting events in his life. His father decides to bring on a tutor for Bruno and his sister named Herr Liszt. Friendly but seemingly always angry, Liszt insists that Bruno learn history and geography instead of reading and art which Bruno prefers. He also mentions the Fatherland, which confuses Bruno—“He wasn’t entirely sure that Father had any land” (153—and great wrongs that have been done to Bruno.

Meanwhile, Bruno decides to go exploring, an activity he always enjoyed in Berlin. The camp beside the house intrigues him for the first time, and he considers why people wear striped pajamas. He wonders “who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms” (159). Reaching the wired fence, he begins his journey alongside it, trying to forget that his parents forbade him to take this route.  

Bruno walks along the fence for an hour until it “seemed to be separating him from nothing but open space” (163). Then he notices a tiny speck in the distance that soon turns out to be a little boy “sitting there, minding his own business, waiting to be discovered” (165). Bruno approaches the boy, and they begin to talk. The small, sad boy also wears striped pajamas and an armband with a star on it. Bruno sits on his side of the fence and introduces himself. The boy’s name is Shmuel, a name Bruno has never heard before. They soon discover they share the same birthday, April 15, 1934. Shmuel reveals there are many boys on his side of the fence, but they are not close friends. He also informs Bruno that this place is Poland, not Germany, and explains his mother, a teacher, taught him German. Bruno blurts out that Germany is superior to Poland, having heard his father say it, but he regrets it, not wanting to alienate his new friend. After careful deliberation, he asks Shmuel what so many people are doing on the other side of the fence.