Minds

[Madeleine Stewart]

Commonly it is brought to light that Werner is basically being brain washed. On page 264 it says, "'You have minds,' Bastian murmurs one evening in the refectory, each boy hunching almost imperceptibly over his food as the commandant's finger grazes the back of his uniform. 'But minds are not to be trusted. Minds are always drifting toward ambiguity, toward questions, when what you really need is certainty. Purpose. Clarity. Do not trust your minds.'" (Doerr) Werner is told things very similar to this multiple times. After being told things over and over people tend to start to believe them. Is this an example of the saying, 'If you say something enough times it will become true' ?

[briannaanderson]

Werner was definitely being brainwashed but his memory of Jutta, and his old home, is what kept him from passing the point of never going back. Someone who is totally brainwashed would not have been able to find the decency in themselves to save a girl like Marie-Laure.
Jutta knew that this would happen to people at this school, and warned Werner of it early in the story.

[Cole Powers]

In response to "if you say it enough times it will become true":
As one line in the book said, truth doesn't matter to the people here. They are making their own world, a world of separate morals and beliefs. They are making humans into soldiers. If you say it enough times it becomes reality. This reality may be far from the truth, but it is the reality that these children are being brought up in, it is the world they know as real.

[Holly]

Relating back to reality, as Cole brought up, each character's reality is contrasting. It all depends on perspective and the way they were told to think. Like Maddy said, Werner was being brainwashed, therefore being told what to think. His thoughts were no longer his own. Werner had a new perspective or reality, vastly different from his old one.

[simonplotkin]

If a statement is said enough times about a certain thing or in a place, the memory of it will trigger the phrase. It eventually causes the brainwashed to memorize and then believe it. This replaces the mind with a series of directions and an ideology to back it up. The sense of brotherhood in the academy also reinforced it. It added a sense of peer pressure to Werner. They followed directions as to not be embarrassed in front of all of the other students. All that Germany, or any nation at war, had to do was to eliminate choice while making it seem like the people were making that choice.