The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Style 1 key example

The pacing of the novel is slow because it takes Bruno a while to understand things; he’s a child and doesn’t have much context for processing wartime atrocities. Bruno’s innocent—and often oblivious—perspective makes the reader slow down and experience a childlike, unhurried perception of his world. This pacing also reflects how naive Bruno is, as he encounters his new surroundings with curiosity rather than urgency. He does this because he is unaware of the gravity of what lies beyond the fence, or what it means that enslaved Jewish characters like Pavel and Shmuel serve him and his family. Bruno’s sheltered life and the rapidly escalating atrocities of the Holocaust are running at very different speeds.

The simple, childlike diction further emphasizes Bruno’s limited understanding. The novel’s short sentences and repetitive phrasing reflect the simple, logical thought patterns of a young boy. In addition to this, Bruno’s innocent mishearings, like “Out-With” for Auschwitz and “the Fury” for Führer, show how little he understands about his father’s horrible profession as a high-ranking Nazi. These misunderstandings are endearing, but they’re also reminders of how shielded Bruno is from the realities of life in a concentration camp and all its adult horrors.

The title of the novel exemplifies Bruno’s innocent misreading of everything around him. To Bruno, the striped uniforms worn by the prisoners at Auschwitz are simply an unusual type of clothing. He wonders why Shmuel always wears them, because he can’t imagine not having multiple changes of clothes himself. It’s only after entering the camp and actually seeing how the prisoners live that Bruno sees what the Auschwitz "striped pajamas" truly represent. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas makes innocence and horror inextricable from one another. Boyne uses Bruno’s voice to show how insidious and damaging ignorance and indoctrination can be at any scale. The lesson applies to communities as small as a family like Bruno’s or as large as a world at war.