The award winning novel, ‘The Boy In The Striped Pajamas’ by author John Boyne is set in the

early 1940’s and tells the tale of a German boy’s friendship with a Jewish boy imprisoned within
a concentration camp.  Bruno and Shmuel, two children on opposite sides of the Holocaust,
develop a touching friendship through the wire. In the novel, the barbed wire fence is
mentioned a few times and apart from a physical separation it also separates two different
worlds. Along with the fence there are also other types of physical and psychological boundaries
that will be discussed in this text response. 

The fence around the concentration camp is used to keep the prisoners in, and everyone else out
and away from seeing the horrors that happen inside. Like the striped pajamas, even if they
weren’t actually what Bruno thought they were. Bruno is able to crawl under a hole in the fence,
symbolic of how even a physical fence cannot become a barrier between children who don’t yet
know how to hate or discriminate. Just like anyone can dress up in the “striped pajamas” and be
mistaken for a Jew, or take them off and be a Nazi supporter, the fence is symbolic of artificial
barriers that can be set up in any part of the world, between any groups of people.

The fence isn't just about what's on the other side, it's also about the side Bruno lives on with
his family. On their side, nobody openly questions what happens within the camp, and instead
Bruno and the rest of his family basically just keep going on with their lives, despite somewhat
knowing what happens within the boundaries of the fence. In this way, the fence draws our
attention to the contrast between the lives unfolding on each side of the fence-one filled with
freedom and plenty, and the other destroying people one day at a time. While people like
Bruno's father and Gretel know exactly what they think  of the other side of the fence—making
it clear they see Jewish people as different from them or not even people at all. “Those
people...Well they’re not people at all Bruno” - Father. When Bruno meets Shmuel, he'd love to
cross over to play with him. But he can't. The fence keeps the boys apart for the vast majority
of their friendship, making it clear to readers that forming friendships across different races
under Nazi rule is basically impossible.

In both Berlin and Auschwitz houses, Bruno’s father’s office is “Out Of Bounds At All Times and
No Exceptions. Even at home, his father is distant to the rest of his family. This separation is
both physical and psychological. Bruno's father does not show any physical intimacy toward
Bruno or Gretel. Also, because of his work, he cannot share most of his life with his family.
There are also other social boundaries such as the inability to ask certain questions but all
these have certain consequences as well. Because Bruno does not feel that he can ask his family
who the people in the “striped pyjamas” on the other side of the fence are, and his parents and
sister do not feel that he receives an adequate response. Bruno has no idea what the outcome
may be when he follows Shmuel in the “march” inside the death camp.