Boredom
Nearly all of Torless' actions are motivated by his extreme boredom. He's smart enough to both understand and be disgusted by his peers, so he doesn't need their approval. He's not trying to impress anyone, including his teachers who fail to challenge him. Nobody seems to know what to do with a genius teenager, so he finds himself lost between the cracks of the system. Torless struggles to sleep at night because of the intensity of his thoughts, always processing new data. He's not satisfied by activities in which normal people take pleasure. Most likely depressed, he cannot seem to take charge of his thoughts, preferring to indulge in misanthropic and malevolent ideas.
Manipulation
A theme apparent throughout the text is manipulation of social relationships. The characters are using one another for their own benefit by means of mental (or physical) manipulation. For example, Torless is friends with Reiting and Beineberg because he understands that he's dangerously lonely. He pretends to worship them in order to stroke their egos into complacency. None of them are friends worth mentioning, but they all benefit from the social status of being friends. For Reiting and Beineberg, it's the feeling of superiority and cleverness which they enjoy, thinking they are taking advantage of Torless. He knows the truth, however, that he's really using them to make himself more popular. This is why he's so hesitant to involve himself in the Basini business. Another great example is Bozena who uses her body to trade sex for emotional clarity. She chooses the lifestyle of a prostitute because she enjoys feeling superior to her clients. One would suspect that she feels the opposite, but Bozena has seen enough of life to know that she could be traditionally successful if she chose to be. Instead she leads an alternate life because she does not endorse the harsh and demanding requirements of well-adjusted society. She uses her clients to support herself and maintain her conviction of superiority. She and Basini are foils by the way.
Secrecy
The events of the book only occur because of secrecy. If everyone knew what was happening, the abuse of Basini would never be allowed to continue. Reiting, Beineberg, and Torless, however, go to such great lengths to hide their wrongdoings that they are cleared in an official investigation by the school authorities. They get off totally clean in the end thanks to their presence of mind to cover their tracks and keep their activities off the radar. Additionally, Torless is not looking to attract any more attention to himself by school authorities. His teachers are all frustrated with him because he's so openly bored by their classes which leads him to influence his peers to subordination. More importantly the teachers all know that they are probably less intelligent than Torless, and they're intimidated. This only serves to reaffirm his commitment to privacy. He has severe intimacy issues, understandably, and refuses to allow people to get close to him, including Bozena and Basini who both try to do so. In the end, the key to Basini's deliverance is a simple meeting with the headmaster. He turns himself in for punishment for robbery, but his consequent dishonorable dismissal is much preferably to the torment he's been suffering from Reiting and Beineberg
