Gretel

Dolls and puberty

Gretel is Bruno's sister in the novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. She is three years older than him. Gretel is about twelve years old and still likes to play with her dolls. After the move from Berlin to "Out-With," she also does not feel comfortable in the new house. The siblings find it "terrible" there (Chapter 9, 50%).

Gretel tries to find comforting words for her brother and hopes that things will get better in the future. When her father has a conversation with Bruno and her about whether they like their life in "Out-With," she says that she misses her friends and sometimes feels very lonely.

Unlike Bruno, Gretel gets on better with her father than with her mother. She always talks about him "as if he could never do any wrong and never got angry and always came in to kiss h...