Boy In The Striped Pajamas Themes

The fence in the boy in the striped pajamas represents the imaginary barrier between the two different worlds that the two boys belonged too. It was the crossing point from a life of privilege to a life of torment and confinement. It represented the irony in the fact that a simple object such as a fence could separate 2 completely different lives.The fence divides the jews from the germans and the fortunate from the unfortunate. Because the boys don't understand each other's lives they think nothing of the fence.The barbed wire fence is more than a physical separation between bruno and shmuel, it also represents,freedoms, friendship and innocence.

Both boys have a different set of rules and freedoms due to what side of the fence they have grown up on.“What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” Asked Bruno. Both are in places they were forced to go to, and both can't leave. Of course the gigantic difference is that Shmuel is in a concentration camp and Bruno is in a house. Shmuel is drastically confined, first to his house, then to a share room, then a
Bruno has a friendship with Shmuel that is unconditional, and unbound by prejudice or misconceptions. His innocence as a child allows him to accept Shmuel as just another boy, and not a Jewish demon like his father would’ve wanted him to believe through his innocence. “It's so unfair, I don't see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there's no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends are probably playing for hours every day, I'll have to speak to Father about it.” Bruno said.. Shmuel although imprisoned, views Bruno not as symbol of the oppression and tyranny that has him locked in a camp, but just as another boy who happens to be on the other side of a