Boyne uses clothing to illustrate images that work to develop the reader’s emotional response to the novel.

Certainly there are the striped pyjamas which have so much symbolism and layers of meaning to them. They are charged with all the torment and dehumanizing suffering of these camps. On a child the pyjamas serve as a symbol of destroyed and perverted innocence. The Nazi uniforms serve also as unfeeling tyranny over innocence.