Previous
Oxymorons
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
The setting of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is the novel’s primary plot engine. The location of Bruno’s new home and what it means that his family lives and works there is at the center of the book’s exploration of childhood innocence and Nazi atrocities. The novel takes place during World War II and is physically set mainly in two contrasting locations. These are Bruno’s family home in Berlin and their new residence in Poland on the outskirts of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.
The family’s home in Berlin appears grand and comfortable when Bruno returns to it in his memories. Its plush comfort is due to the rewards Bruno’s father receives for working as a high-ranking Nazi in Adolf Hitler's army. Bruno feels secure there, surrounded by familiar routines and the comforts of childhood. In contrast to his new home, his early life seems warm and welcoming. He has friends, money, and relative freedom, in a time when freedoms are being stripped from many Berliners around him.
After the family moves so that Bruno’s father can take over running Auschwitz, Bruno is far less fond of his surroundings. The "Out-with" house, while still comparatively luxurious, is smaller and far more isolated. This physical setting echoes the family's displacement and growing lack of connection to one another, as the horrors of their surroundings begin to leach into their everyday lives. Bruno’s bedroom window provides a bird's-eye view of the camp. Bruno, however, doesn’t know why the people who live “on the other side of the fence” are there. Indeed, he wonders why they would choose to be in such a barren place. Bruno’s perspective and the limited information his parents give him only hint at the real ghastliness of the novel’s physical world.
The fence between Bruno and Shmuel physically and metaphorically represents the separation the Nazis attempted to create between ethnic and social groups during the Second World War. The boys make friends through the fence and communicate through the wire, but it remains an immovable marker of Bruno’s freedom and Shmuel’s imprisonment. However, once Bruno crosses to Shmuel’s side of the fence, he’s unable to get back to the safety of his life in the “Out-with” home. When his body leaves the “safe” side of the fence and enters the space of the concentration camp, all the distinctions between Bruno and Shmuel aside from Shmuel’s starvation visibly fall away. When both boys are dressed in the “striped pajamas,” Bruno becomes indistinguishable from one of the imprisoned and enslaved Jews in Shmuel’s community. He is Bruno on one side of the fence, but becomes just one more "boy in the striped pajamas" on the other.
Related Themes:
