Paranoia and government corruption
Underneath the many layers of complexity and ambiguity, this story essentially boils down to a single thematic conflict—the conflict between rebellious youths and unjust governments. These are open-minded, curious students whose lives have been marked by pain, warfare, tragedy, and shame. They are angry, disenfranchised, but most of all, they are hopeless in their resistance against the government. Little by little, their little group of rebels gets split up and infiltrated by the government. The friendships end, and many of the friends die, either by suicide, or by undercover government execution.
The shame of political association
This novel features an unnamed narrator who seems to be the author. Both the author and the characters in the noel share something in common: their fathers were all Nazis, and they are ethnic Germans living in Romania. This shameful political association raises interesting questions. One question is whether their mistreatment by the Romanian government stems from the government's awareness of who they are. In any case, they quickly become prime suspects for police attention.
Instability following periods of intense warfare
When war befalls a country, the pain and suffering don't end when the war does. Anyone who lost loved ones is left to mourn, and not only that, the sense of community can often become absent or paranoid. In this novel, the instability is political. Because everyone in Romania still remembers the horrors of World War II, and because the war left Romania shell-shocked and susceptible to dictatorship, the Nazi regime was replaced by another tyrannical government. This instability affects the characters of the novel. Because the government and police understand that they don't have public support, they are extremely aggressive and are constantly trying to find any threat to their power, so they can eliminate the threat, as Captain Pjele does with the college kids.
