Disability
Trudi is the protagonist of this novel and is a dwarf. Due to her disability she is teased and treated like an outsider. Hegi offers a poignant, moving account of what it is like to live with a disability, detailing the everyday experiences and issues that Trudi faces. In one example, Trudi is walking home and is laughed at by other children: "she heard children laughing behind her. Certain that they were making fun of her body, she walked faster, her face hot, hating her short legs and how they curved." Additionally, this novel is praised for its presentation of a character who is a dwarf. Often in literature and media, Dwarf characters are caricatured. However, in this text Trudi is a complex, fascinating character who is unique and nuanced in her behavior and thoughts.
Prejudice
Prejudice is a key theme of the text. People are unkind to Trudi due to her physical differences. Even her own mother struggled to accept her when she was a baby, which is something that impacts Trudi throughout her life. Trudi's individual struggle with prejudice is set against the wider theme of prejudice in the context of World War II. After seeing the persecution of Jewish people, Trudi decides to hide Jewish people in her cellar. Trudi understands their struggle in a personal way, as she herself has struggled with prejudice. She can resonate with them as she has also been branded as being different, and as being "other."
Uniqueness
Trudi is at first resentful about her differences. However, she later realizes that she is unique in another way. Trudi has a special gift for finding out other people's secrets, and through this, she discovers that everybody is different, and suffers with their own, unique struggles. For example, her friend Georg reveals that his family pretend he is a girl. At the end of the text, Trudi realizes the positive impact she has had on others due to her unique abilities and accepts her differences as being a force for good.
Passivity
This text explores how passivity and an inability to act can lead to terrible things. Hegi suggests that many residents in Germany don't agree with the mistreatment of Jewish people, however they fail to make their views heard. For example, the narrator tells us: “And so they kept hushed, yielding to each new indignity while they waited for the Nazis and their ideas to go away, but with each compliance they relinquished more of themselves, weakening the texture of the community while the power of the Nazis swelled.”
