makes you something special. Not even caring what it means really. What it stands for.”

Bruno’s grandmother believes that her son's involvement in the Nazi party and its military have changed him in a negative way. This is in contrast to the views her husband holds. Bruno's grandfather is proud that his son has attained a high rank within the Nazi party. The grandfather feels that his son is helping Germany “reclaim her pride after all the great wrongs that were done to her.” He apparently does not see the Nazis the way the grandmother does; she recognizes that they are committing atrocities and believes it is wrong and immoral for her son to be one of them.

Specifically, she says that the Nazis are “doing ... terrible, terrible things.” She tells her son that it makes her ashamed to think of him as a member of a party that she feels is barbaric. Moreover, her son is not thinking for himself and being manipulated by the Nazis, she believes. This is why she characterizes him as "a puppet on a string" dancing to the Nazis' commands.

Before she leaves Bruno’s home after Christmas dinner, she turns to her son and yells one word—“Ashamed!”—to emphasize just how disappointed she is in him that he has become a high-ranking Nazi. She even tells him that it makes her sick to think about it and to realize what horrible things he and the other Nazis do.

Bruno's grandmother strongly disapproves of the Nazi regime and the key role that her son plays within it. She openly confronts him about his new job as Commandant of Auschwitz, accusing him of not understanding precisely what the smart new uniform he so proudly wears actually stands for. She also wonders aloud if her son turned out this way because of how she raised him.

Bruno's grandmother shows the importance of moral authority and how it's ultimately more important than the authority of law or the state. The genocide in which Ralf is throughly complicit is perfectly legal by Nazi standards and has the full backing of the state. Yet it is also profoundly wicked and immoral. Sadly, only Bruno's grandmother admits this. Bruno is too young and naive to realize, and apart from his grandmother, all the adults in his life are too blinded by loyalty to the Nazi regime to understand or even care about the horrors of Auschwitz.

Bruno's father has really impressed the higher command of the Nazi regime.  Hitler even comes for dinner at their home in Berlin.   Of course, Bruno, in his innocence, calls him the "Fury" instead of the Fuhrer.  Father has been made the commandant of the Auswitz concentration camp.  Again, Bruno, in his innocence, calls it "Out With".  Auswitz, when it was first established, housed Polish prisoners, and Shmuel was Polish.  When the Nazis added Jews and other prisoners, it became too crowded, and they started gassing the Polish prisoners to make room for the prisoners arriving.  When Bruno was in school and people asked him what his father did, Bruno realized he didn't know.

"All he could say was that his father was a man to watch and that the Fury had big things in mind for him.  Oh, and that he had a fantastic uniform." (pg 5)

However, when they are going to move, Bruno asks his mother why they have to move.  She tells him,

"Well, sometimes when someone is very important, the man who employs him asks him to go somewhere else because there's a very special job that needs doing there...It is a very important job...A job that needs a very special man to do it.  You can understand that, can't you?" (pg 4-5) 

Mother isn't happy about it, neither is Bruno.  However, the person most unhappy about it is Bruno's grandmother, his father's mother. When Bruno's father comes out in his new uniform, she says,

"That's all you soldiers are interested in anyway....Looking handsome in your fine uniforms.  Dressing up and doing the terrible, terrible things you do.  It makes me ashamed." (pg 92)

She storms out of the house.  Unfortunately, she never makes amends with her son before she dies. 

Bruno is the nine-year-old protagonist of John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and his father is a Nazi officer in Hitler's army. After Hitler (the man Bruno calls the "Fury") comes to dinner one night, Bruno's father was promoted to Commandant. The family lives in Berlin at the beginning of the story, but the promotion causes them to have to make a change.

Bruno's father has been appointed the commandant of Auschwitz, a death camp in southern Poland, and the family has to move from Berlin. (Bruno calls it "Out-With" and does not understand exactly what kind of place this is.)This affects Bruno in several ways. First, he misses the house he loves to explore. The house in Berlin is

a very beautiful house and had five floors in total, if you included the basement, where Cook made all the food...and if you added in the little room at the top of the house with the slanted windows where Bruno could see right across Berlin if he stood up on his tiptoes and held on to the frame tightly.

The new house only has three floors and has no places for Bruno to explore.

The second major impact the change has on Bruno's life is that he must leave his very best friends for life: Karl, Daniel, and Martin. These are the friends with whom Bruno has made plans far into the future (or at least as far into the future as a nine-year-old can see), and now he will have to leave them. Even worse, once he gets to the new house, Bruno discovers that there are literally no neighbors or friends to be had anywhere. The only thing he sees is what is called "the camp" next door, but there do not seem to be any friends for him anywhere. 

Of course we know that Bruno eventually does make one friend, but for a time Bruno has no one to play with in his boring new house. In fact, several times he is so bored that he resorts to talking with his older sister, Gretel, because he does not have anyone else with whom to talk. We also learn that, over time, Bruno begins to forget his three lifelong friends, first who they are and finally even their names. 

The move is not what Bruno--or his mother--would have chosen, but he adapts quickly, as most children do. The biggest impact the move has on Bruno is meeting Schmuel, something that will literally affect everything in his life. 

Bruno's grandmother is one of the few characters in the book shown to openly question the system and the Nazis. Ironically, her liberty to express such things—even if only at home—stems directly from the fact that her son is a high-ranking official. You could theorize that it's somewhat easier for her to see through the propaganda and hate-mongering, as opposed to her soldier husband and son, who have always functioned in a framework that doesn't allow them to question orders and the status quo. Nonetheless, she should be considered very brave, since it's not unheard of for fanatics of any system to send their own blood and kin to death for disagreeing with them. Considering the terrible times she lived through, that thought must have gone through her head.

As for the specifics of her resistance, it's difficult to say what she achieved exactly. She stood up for her beliefs by speaking plainly and truthfully to her son, who was probably more used to people agreeing with his every word. On the one had, it seems like that did no good whatsoever. Bruno's father still made Commandant, moved his family to the camp, and conducted crimes beyond imagining.

On the other hand, her effect is more plainly seen in Bruno himself. Her grandson remembered her defiance, and it could be said she distantly played a part in Bruno's friendship with Shmuel. If Bruno believed everything his father said, he would have probably refused to speak to the Jewish boy at all. Instead, Bruno saw humans on both sides of the fence, like his grandmother would have. Despite Bruno's eventual fate, you could say that his grandmother was responsible for Bruno not becoming like his father. If it wasn't for the tragedy, Bruno would have likely grown up to be a much better man than his father, and he owed that partly to her.

The novel doesn't explicitly say what Bruno's father felt when his own mother rebuked him so furiously. Unfortunately it took the loss of his son to make him see the evils he'd committed. Even so, Bruno's grandmother symbolizes all those people who dared to speak up against the Nazis. She isn't able to save Bruno nor her son, but it is comforting to know that even in the midst of such horror, there were people who tried to stop it, and there were those who succeeded as well.

When Bruno's grandmother Nathalie expresses her shame at her son's wearing the uniform of the SS, she's directly challenging Ralf's entire world-view. Ralf sees himself as a soldier, just like his father, who bravely served his country during World War I.

But Nathalie is there to remind him that he's no such thing, and that comparisons with his father are deeply offensive. She recognizes more than anyone else what the SS uniform really represents. She knows that it stands not for defending one's country, but for cruelty, barbarism, and mass murder. Although there's very little that Nathalie can do as an individual to challenge the all-pervading Nazi ideology, she can at least express her shame at the way in which her son has falsely presented himself as a soldier fighting a war instead of the common criminal he really is.

Nathalie, the grandmother, stands up against Nazism by stating her beliefs very strongly to her son. She does not approve of his career with the Nazi SS, she dislikes his uniform, and she is horrified when he is promoted to Commandant. She says she is ashamed of him. In this, she differs markedly from her husband, who is proud of his son's career. As Bruno overhears,

"A patriot indeed!" she [the grandmother] cried out. "The people you have to dinner in this house. Why, it makes me sick. And to see you in that uniform makes me want to tear the eyes from my head!" she added before storming out of the house and slamming the door behind her.

As the above quote shows, Nathalie is very clear in stating her case to her son, and worse, in pulling away from him. That must have pained her, as she was warm-hearted woman who loved her family and her grandchildren. Bruno misses her. Nathalie also took the risk that other people would hear of her dislike of Nazism and denounce her, though her son's high status position, ironically, would probably have protected her.

Bruno's grandmother is deeply hostile towards the Nazis. She bravely expresses her utter loathing for them and their sadistic cruelty. Much of her ire is directed towards her grandson, Bruno's father. For him to take over as commandant of Auschwitz represents a source of abiding shame for his grandmother. She knows full well what goes on there, what horrors await those unfortunate enough to enter its gates.

Despite her very public condemnation of the Nazis, Bruno's grandmother seems never to get into any trouble with the authorities. Publicly criticizing the Nazis in any way was a serious criminal offense in the Third Reich, one that could lead to imprisonment or even death. One possible reason for the authorities leaving Bruno's grandmother alone is that arresting her would potentially cause quite a scandal. The last thing the Nazis would want is for it to get out that the commandant of Auschwitz's own grandmother was against the regime in any way. Also any publicity could reveal what the Nazis were up to at Auschwitz, something they wanted to keep secret.

I think that the breakup of the family reflects the seismic effect of Bruno's disappearance.  When he disappears, his mother and sister leave for Berlin, convinced that he would have gone there.  His father remains at Auschwitz and searches for his son.  In the end, this shows the effect that Bruno's disappearance has on his family.  They could not progress with their life as if nothing had happened.  Bruno's role in the family and his absence created such a great hole that the family experienced fragmentation.  Boyne creates a setting in which Bruno's importance is accentuated when he disappears.  It is at this moment that the Holocaust has become a personalized reality for the family, something that the father already knows and recognizes in his revelation.  

Bruno's absence enables the pain of the world constructed by the Holocaust to be realized in the most intense of manners.  It is for this reason that his disappearance has a profound impact on the family at the conclusion of Boyne's work. It is in this light that the effect of Bruno's disappearance is extremely significant in the narrative.  When Bruno leaves, the sense of transcendence from the world disappears with it.  The reality of the world comes crashing down on the family, resulting in the family's scattering apart from one another.

In the first chapter of John Boyne'sThe Boy in the Striped Pajamas, we see Bruno's mother responding to the prospect of the move in a positive way and trying to encourage Bruno to be positive as well. One thing she says to comfort Bruno and sound positive about the move is that it is "going to be a great adventure" (p. 6). However, by the time we get to the second chapter and read the description of the new house, we know that the mother is just as disappointed about the move as her children.
The house is described as standing on an "empty, desolate" location with no other houses surrounding it (p. 10). Bruno is further disappointed by the size of the house, as it has only three stories, three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, dinning room, office, and a basement for the servants to sleep in. Bruno feels like the new house is completely isolated from the world. We can tell that Bruno's mother feels just as disappointed about the situation but knows she has no choice but to accept it. We learn of her acceptance of the situation when she explains to Bruno, "We don't have the luxury of thinking ... Some people make all the decisions for us," which are very important statements considering the major themes of the book (p. 11). We also sense her disappointment with the house and their situation when she further tells Bruno, "We have to make the best of a bad situation" (p. 12).

On Christmas Day, before Father became Commandant of the concentration camp, he wore his new uniform for the first time.  The whole family applauded, and Bruno noticed that the soldiers seemed to show his father more respect when he wore it.  Grandfather was very proud of him and told him he was patriotic, but Grandmother told him that he was "Dressing up like a puppet on a string" (pg 90) Grandfather comes to his defense telling him how proud he is of his son who is helping to reclaim the country's pride.  But Grandmother says, "...to see you in that uniform makes me want to tear the eyes from my head."  She stormed out of the house, and Bruno didn't see much of his Grandmother after that, and she never forgave her son.  When she died, Bruno's mother said it was very hard on his father because he never made amends with his mother (pg 177)

When Bruno comes home from school in chapter 1 and sees the family is packing up to move, he asks his mother about it. She explains they have to move because of his father's job: it is very important for his work that he take on the new assignment.

While Bruno's mother acts brave and grows sharp with Bruno when he protests that he likes Berlin, her sadness breaks through when he asks if they are moving more than a mile away. She responds as follows:

"Oh my," said Mother with a laugh, although it was a strange kind of laugh because she didn't look happy and turned away from Bruno as if she didn't want him to see her face. "Yes, Bruno," she said. "It's more than a mile away. Quite a lot more than that, in fact."

We can see that the mother is distressed by the new job that is causing them to have to move, but she has no more choice in the matter than Bruno does. She is not aware at first of what her husband's job at Auschwitz entails, but when she does later find out that he is participating in exterminating Jews at the concentration camp, she gets very upset and angry at him and returns to Berlin with her children.