Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Bruno’s thoughts and understandings are comprehended through innocence making him seem unaware in many occasions in the book “the boy in the stripped pyjamas.” Bruno, being the main character but still not having a clue what is going around him is quite absurd, but then again, he wasn’t told any of this.
He has never been exposed to poverty, any bad treatment, Nazi’s, the Jewish Holocaust or racism. When he first looked out his window, his assumes all the wrong things. He considers himself and a Jew to be equals. Bruno thinks he knows what is going on at the out-with and why he and everyone else is there, but he doesn’t.
He was being kept in the shade, from the unpleasant, harsh world. Bruno is living in the WW without even understanding what is going on around him. But, of course, how would he understand, he is eight; the age where every kid believes that unicorns are real. When he first looks out of the window and see’s the people in the stripped pyjamas, Gretel thought it was a country side, but Bruno figured out that it wasn’t a farm because there were no animals, like Gretel had said but they were right enough to figure out that it was a horrible place. Then further along they came to the conclusion that ‘it must be some sort of a rehearsal’ (on pg.
37), because after the kids had formed a line were out of their hurdle the soldiers stopped shouting and hitting the kids, the soldiers laughed and applauded at them, both Bruno and Gretel ignoring the fact that the kids were actually crying. Finally they decided that these were not the types of children that they wanted to play with since they didn’t look clean, which Gretel thought was stupid because (on pg.38) she said ‘what kind of people don’t have baths?’ to which Bruno replied with, ‘people who don’t have hot water?’ and because they lived in houses that ‘must be modern types of houses’ according to Bruno and Gretel (on pg.33) but are actually huts. So what do those quotes tell me? They have never seen people without a bath in their house? Never have they ever seen a hut before? They had never seen child abuse before, and passed it of as a rehearsal? They are children, children who have never been exposed to poverty or child abuse or any bad treatment. A curious boy with nothing to do, Bruno ignores his mother’s instructions on not to explore the back garden and takes off for a “farm” that he has seen from his bedroom window.
That is when he first meets Shmuel. As he approaches a barbed wire fence, Bruno sees Shmuel, the boy in the striped pyjamas, on the other side, and an impossible and life-changing friendship develops. He describes Shmuel as (on pg.106) ‘it was quite a strange face too.
His skin was almost the colour of grey, but not quite any grey that Bruno had seen before. He had very large eyes and they were the colour of caramel sweets; the whites were very white, and when the boy looked at him, all Bruno could see was an enormous pair of sad eyes staring back.’ When Bruno and Shmuel knew each other’s names, they thought each other’s names were quite unusual and that they had never heard anyone called that before, but they quite liked each other’s names. They found out that they were both born on the same day and they were both the same age, them being kids, they thought they were twins.
No matter how Shmuel looked, Bruno thought they both were equal, but he did not know Shmuel was a Jew, which even If he knew, I don’t think it would have mattered. Bruno thought it was quite unfair how Shmuel had friends on the other side of the fence when Bruno was stuck all by himself on this side of the fence, But the main thing was, Bruno had finally found a friend. After meeting Shmuel and playing with him for a few days, he started whining why he couldn’t go to the other side of the fence and play with the children there, because the camp looked fun and he was stuck here all by himself.
Curiosity killed him so he decided to go ask his sister and he finally found out why the fence is there. ‘“Jews,’ said Bruno, testing the word out. He quite liked the way it sounded. ‘Jews,’ he repeated.
’ All the people over that side of the fence are Jews.’” (pg.182) Bruno thought about it but asked after a while, ‘Are we Jews?’ He is a child with no clue who Jews are and asks this question like it’s the most normal question ever. Gretel looked like she had been slapped in the face and answered, ‘No, we most certainly are not Jews’ (pg.182). After the long talk with his sister and finding out who the people in the stripped pyjamaswere, Bruno still did not stop visiting Shmuel, who he now called his best friend but this time he actually knew that Shmuel was a Jew. Bruno’s understandings and thoughts are innocent reflections of the reality that an adult would comprehend.
He has no clue what so ever that he is living in the middle of WW, neither has he ever in his life experienced any type of bad treatment, poverty or racism. When he first sees the camp, he thinks it’s a weird place, with modern house. Bruno starts finding the camp interesting and wants to go to the other side of it, but he doesn’t know that the camp is anything but fun, but how would he know? He is the one being kept in the shade. He becomes friends with a Jew, the same Jews his father doesn’t consider as real people, but Bruno considers them as people, even saying that he and Shmuel might be twins. He seems to be quite unaware of what’s going on around him.
He even thinks his father is a good man, saying, ‘My father is a soldier too, but not the kind that takes clothes away.’ to Shmuel as if trying to prove a point. He is an eight year old boy, at the time of war, completely oblivious to the killings of the war around him, even with his father being a Nazi commandant.