Bruno Hero's Journey

Bruno completes the Hero’s Journey, and this feature renders the film an allegory rather than a piece of historical fiction. Understanding Bruno’s metamorphosis through these steps is essential to understanding the central point of the story. In the film, physical boundaries indicate when a new stage is reached. The stages of the Hero’s Journey are divided into three worlds: the ordinary word, the other world and the ordinary world as understood through the lens of a newfound knowledge. In the film, these stages correspond to the Berlin house, the countryside and the compound first to introduce the Hero’s Journey in an overarching sense. However, the settings this paper will analyze as they relate specifically to Bruno include: the compound,

the forest and Auschwitz.
The movie opens in the ordinary world with Bruno and his friends in a make believe game as they run through the streets of Berlin.

Clearly, Bruno is enamored with his father’s role as a soldier and looks up to the military a glorious ideal. This idealization is evident when his mother announces that his father got a promotion and, worried, Bruno confirms that Ralf “is still a soldier.” This scene leads directly into the call to adventure, the first step on the Hero’s Journey. Ralf’s promotion means they are moving—that is, Bruno will be leaving the ordinary world to travel to the compound. True to Campbell’s formula, Bruno refuses this call to adventure, as the Berlin house is the metaphor for a comfortable, familiar ignorance. However, he is unable to resist his parents’

decision.
Bruno is not long in the new home when he meets his first, albeit unwitting, mentor. Pavel, a Jewish prisoner of the camp who works around the house, is ordered by Kotler to take Bruno to the shed to pick out a tire for his swing. This is significant because previously Elsa had forbidden Bruno to enter the back garden out of fear that he might interact with the prisoners. Therefore, this event represents a first approach to the threshold into the otherworld as Bruno enters a forbidden space. However, once in the shed, Bruno spots a window through which he could easily escape the compound and into the woods beyond. This is the door which will allow him into the otherworld.
That chance arrives very soon. Sitting on his swing one day with Herr Liszt’s almanac, Bruno notices the gate to the back garden ajar and any prying eyes momentarily turned away. Within moments he has slipped through the garden, out the window and into the verdant freedom of the forest! The otherworld is a lush and wild place, much like an individual’s subconscious. Bruno was now in his natural element, exploring and free, although he pointedly heads in the direction of the farm. Once there he meets Schmuel at the second boundary—but he flees when he learned that Schmuel is a Jew.
His curiosity couldn’t keep him away, however, and Bruno begins to sneak out regularly to meet Schmuel. He brings him food, games and lots of questions. The boys develop a bond and Bruno moves into the next stage of the Hero’s Journey: tests, allies and enemies. One day while taking sweets from the kitchen, Maria catches him. Elsa walks in right as Bruno tells the maid to mind her own business, and when Elsa demands what the trouble is, Bruno lies, narrowly escaping detection. Maria says nothing to Elsa, but it is clear from her facial expression she understands what has just transpired. In this way, Maria serves as an ally to Bruno as Elsa tests him, while the rumbling planes overhead suggest the presence of enemies and dangers.
Elsa’s test is only a precursor to bigger trouble as tensions escalate in the household. Bruno’s approach to the inmost cave—that is, the inner chamber harboring secret knowledge—happens at the height of Elsa and Ralf’s fight. Although an outwardly innocuous intrusion, Bruno has caught a glimpse into the ugly underbelly of the truth of Ralf’s work and the deeply hidden emotions attached to it. This scene serves as a foreshadowing to Bruno’s ultimate demise, because it is this horrible truth to which he will ultimately be drawn as he continues the quest to its end.
The Ordeal occurs shortly afterwards when Bruno discovers that Schmuel has been sent to the house to polish glasses because “they wanted someone with small fingers.” Overjoyed at seeing his friend, Bruno offers him a cookie. Moments later, Kotler bursts into the room and catches Schmuel. Terrified of Kotler, Bruno denies giving it to him and swears he has never met the boy. It seems that the approach to the inmost cave has not left Bruno untouched, and his seeming failure indicates that a shard of the fight’s darkness has indeed registered within him. This was a necessary evil, however, because Bruno’s betrayal of his friend creates the dynamic necessary to undergo the latter phase of the journey.
When it is announced that Ralf is sending away Gretel, Elsa and Bruno to live elsewhere, and a return to the ordinary world is imminent, Bruno flees to tell Schmuel the news. The two agree that Bruno should help Schmuel find his father within the camp and they enact a plan to do so. Bruno trades a sandwich for prison clothes, but he drops the sandwich on his way out of the window. The removal of sustenance indicates that Bruno’s flight through the otherworld will be his final journey; indeed, moments later, Bruno is resurrected as a prisoner and he slips into the camp.
His entrance into the camp is a return to the real world, for immediately Bruno is assaulted by the reality of the camp.

We see him attempting to retain a grasp on his fantasies by skipping across the pathway stones the way the Jewish children did in the propaganda film. Disconcerted by what he is witnessing, he begs Schmuel to take him to the café—but Schmuel only shakes his head and explains there is none. Finally, the boys wander into a warehouse full of sick men. Not a moment later they are swept out by officers and into the gas chambers. All through this, Bruno remains conspicuously unaware of what is

happening.
Although the elixir is literally the Zyklon B poured into the vent, Bruno’s death completes the Hero’s Journey by returning to his family knowledge of the reality of Auschwitz. Bruno’s death served as a warning for Ralf and Gretel, who occupied the pole of tribal allegiance, and punished Elsa who passively complied with her husband’s fanaticism. All of these characters thus transcend their immediate personhood to represent the different facets of society. If Ralf is the Nazi, then Gretel is the actively supporting nationalist and Elsa is the Good German. Similarly, his fate represents the ultimate eradication of the individual identity in favor of tribal allegiance; it is a sick irony that the Nazi’s Final Solution was aimed directly at restoring the health and purity of the Fatherland. Bruno, therefore, corresponds to that unwelcome element which would put itself outside the tribal identity by harboring an individual personality.
Reaction
This film was difficult to watch and not because of the particularly dark turn it suddenly took. I had a really strong reaction to several aspects of this film, the most notable being the trivialization of the Holocaust, and the reduction of Auschwitz to a theater for the tragedy of a Nazi family—even if it was an allegory. I felt the film seemed very disconnected from the historical context of Nazi Germany and even made the concentration camp seem a little kitschy, which made me feel very uncomfortable because I am Jewish.
To be quite honest, I had a hard time feeling bad for Ralf because he would have known exactly what was going on at the prison, because I couldn’t help but think that now the shoe was on the other foot. Why was Bruno’s death a greater tragedy than all the other people who were killed? I would have liked to see the film focus more on Bruno’s Return with the Elixir, rather than the sense of tragedy it emphasized at the expense of some six million people who really died.