Chapter 17

Bruno starts noticing how unhappy his Mother is and can relate to is since the first days they arrive to Out-With he was also very lonely, until he found Shmuel to talk to. But since Lieutenant Kotler left she had been taking a lot of afternoon naps and some “medicinal sherries”. One day he hears Mother and Father fighting saying how she wants to take the children and go back home to Berlin, to what father answers not to do that, because it would look bad for his family to leave him alone in Out-With. Then one day Father calls Gretel and Bruno into his office and asks them if they are happy at Out-With, to what Gretel says she’s not because she misses her friends and Bruno says how he doesn’t mind where he is as long he is with the four members of his family. The reason why he reunited them in his office, was because he was thinking on sending his two children and Mother to Berlin because the new house is not a good “place for children” and that’s when Bruno screws it up and mentions how there are hundred of children on the other side of the fence. Bruno’s knowledge of the people with the striped pajamas shocks Father and makes him decide to send Mother and the children back to Berlin, surprisely the news upsets Bruno, because he had form a very close bond to Shmuel. Bruno’s innocence is once again playing against him, since he doesn’t understand why Father wants to send them away and considers Out-With is not a place for children when on the other side of the fence there are hundred of them. But us as the reader know its because all those children are not consider persons or with equal rights as the German, because they are Jews. I can relate to this because when I moved from my house in La Molina to an apartment at Surco, I was really sad for leaving my house, friends and memories, but later on in the new house I had form some new memories, new friends and had adapted my life to this new house. So when moving I was again really sad.