Bruno has a much deeper more intense relationship with Shmuel than he had with his German friends in Berlin. Bruno explores themes of humanity that he never would have considered before. Bruno's connection with Shmuel transcends simple boyhood pastime.
This question is the most significant of the two.
Answer: The end of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is symbolic of the horrors of the entire war itself. Bruno and Shmuel, two innocent young boys, are killed at the hands of the Nazis.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a wonderful book. It's incredibly sad, but it is no less wonderful because of the way that it teachers readers about a horrible piece of history. The story takes place during World War ll, but the story isn't about war. A reader could say that it is about the horrors of the Nazi death camp, and that would be correct; however, the story is much more than that. It is a story about friendship and how friendship can cut across ethnic, racial, cultural, and other boundaries.
The end of the story has both Bruno and Shmuel dying in the gas chamber, and their deaths equally shock the reader and other characters in the book, and that is important. It's important because it shows use that there are not any winners or losers in war. Everybody is impacted in euqally horrible ways. The war not only took the lives of Bruno and Shmuel, but it also took their friendship. The end of the book is symbolic of many other wars or conflicts that have gone on in history, and the author drives this point home with the book's final lines;
"Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age. "
I believe those lines can be read with heavy amounts of sarcasm; but even without that tone, the lines push readers to question their validity. Readers that are familiar with history and other conflicts will certainly know that war atrocities were not limited to World War ll.