In the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, what is one technique that could be used to express innocence and friendship?

Of all the literary techniques present in Irish novelist John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, dramatic irony plays the most prominent role. Briefly explained, dramatic irony is when one character is ignorant of something the other characters and the reader understand. In the context of this Holocaust fable, the reader and the adults are aware of something that is lost on the German child Bruno as he interacts with the Jewish boy Schmuel:

“It’s so unfair…I don’t see why I have to be stuck over here on this side of the fence where there’s no one to talk to and no one to play with and you get to have dozens of friends and are probably playing for hours every day” (111).

As readers, we are shocked by Bruno’s innocence and naivety. How could he not know what is obviously happening right in front of his eyes? How could he be so ignorant? The answer is simple: Boyne, through the use of dramatic irony, transforms Bruno into an allegorical device meant to expose the horrors of war and genocide. It's our job as readers to follow Bruno along his path to destruction and to funnel the anger and frustration we feel into preventing such tragedies from ever happening again.