One of the first things any writer considers when beginning a story, be it a novel or a short story, is the perspective they will use. Most likely, it comes down to the choice between third person -- in which the narration can follow any character, using pronouns such as “he, she, they”, or first person -- in which the narration is confined to one character, and said character tells the story from their point of view. Now, if one were to want to show an event based off of the thoughts of a particular character, they usually would want to choose first person. 

So, why does John Boyne choose to write The Boy In Striped Pajamas in third-person?

The first thing to observe is that Boyne does not use traditional third-person. He uses a sort of mix between first and third person. This is achieved by combining the elements of both; while the pronouns are that of third person (never using “I” outside of dialogue), the narration does not leave the main character, Bruno. It is always following the eight-year-old, never narrating another character. However, while this is still not completely abnormal for a book in third-person, Boyne takes it a step further and introduces Bruno’s ideas, memories, and way of thinking. The reader sees this most prominently through the names that Bruno gives to things: Fury as Fuhrer, Out-With as  Auschwitz -- even referring to his sister as a “Hopeless Case”. In fact, the only time Boyne breaks from this confinement is at the end, when Bruno is implied to be dead (of course, this could likely have been an incentive for Boyne to use third-person). The reasoning behind restricting the story to Bruno’s point-of-view is straightforward: the author wants to show how an unbiased child would think of the Holocaust, and the treatment towards Jews. But, could the same result not have been achieved conventionally, with first-person?

I ended up deciding on two main reasons why Boyne could choose to do this. The first pertains to style.

Style is unique to each writer, and it is formed upon their own wishes. Style is how the same event can be dull and uninteresting in one text, yet lively and engaging in another. Perhaps John Boyne simply prefers writing third-person over first-person. There may not be a substantial reason for this. Some writers could find that it has a smoother flow, or that it is easier to exhibit the emotions of any character. Boyne may generally enjoy third-person better, or perhaps he just thought that it would fit this specific story better.

The second reason is that Boyne did not want to make a story based solely off of one child’s emotions. The perspective Boyne uses is very close to first-person, but he manages to still ascertain that he could introduce the emotions of other characters without it being tainted by the child’s opinion. The reader is simply told objective information to make their own judgements. To demonstrate this, I have provided an excerpt from the book below:

“I’ve never been to Berlin,” said Shmuel.

“And I don’t think I’d ever been to Poland before I came here,” said Bruno, which was true because he hadn’t. “That is, if this really is Poland.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Shmuel quietly. “Although it is not a very nice part of it.”

The third person tells the reader what the first person can only imitate awkwardly. The adverb in “said Shmuel quietly” allows the reader to make an inference. It can be speculated that Shmuel is talking quietly because he is unhappy. The entire chapter represents this, with Bruno speaking in boisterous tones, yet Shmuel always acting quietly, never contradicting Bruno or providing many opinions. Through the eye of Bruno, or any protagonist in a first-person text, adjectives and adverbs could come across as opinions. Assigning more subjective words such as “sadly” or “happily” would be hard to avoid in first-person writing. This is by no means explicitly bad, as it would make sense, but it comes back to the previous point of style, and how Boyne chooses to give the reader an unfiltered look at events. 

Looking at the big picture, the third-person perspective that Boyne adopts fits in perfectly with the theme of the story. He cleverly forms a perspective that allows him to take in the best of first-person and third-person. A neutral glance at what happened in 1942 with a child’s thoughts on the matter invokes a certain feeling in the reader. For, the reader knows exactly what is happening, but they are forced to watch as a young child, oblivious to the terror around him, conducts what he believes to be a boring and ordinary life. 

An interesting thing about the ending is that Boyne hints what is to come, before it even happens. It is impossible to restrict the story to Bruno’s point-of-view when he is missing, so Boyne begins to set it up beforehand. In Chapter Nineteen, “What Happened the Next Day,” we witness a very slight shift in perspective. It is still third-person, yet suddenly the confinement to Bruno is missing. In his last moments, Shmuel becomes just as much of a protagonist as Bruno, shown in different passages.

For example:

“You said we’d need to find evidence,” said Shmeul, who was feeling upset because he thought that if Bruno didn’t help him, then who would?

This is the first time in the story that the reader is given emotions of any character besides Bruno -- a phenomenon that could not have been accomplished with first-person writing. It happens again, as well.

Shmuel nodded his head sadly. He wasn’t really surprised. He hadn’t really expected to. But it had been nice having his friend over to see where he lived all the same.

Starting all of these sentences with the subject being another character (seen rarely, if ever, in other parts of the book) is how Shmuel now transitions to being the second protagonist. Boyne sets them up to be on the same level, for the story of Bruno is ended with Shmuel. The entire final chapter, we can only watch helplessly like the shy, timid Shmuel, and realize all of us except Bruno, what is about to come.