Is it possible to find meaning in suffering?

So far in the book, the protagonist has been the victim of a malicious cycle in which he wanders from village to village, which only culminates in his ejection without any trace of hope remaining that he might be able to return. He suffers excruciatingly at the mercy of his many masters, and is always despised and feared by the villagers, who see him as a Gypsy or a Jew and unhesitatingly cast him as a social pariah.

So far, the reader has not been able to see the effects of this painful life on the boy; Kosinski is very good at keeping the reader in the present because the boy's mind doesn't seem to ruminate on the past or speculate very much about the future except the occasional lament about how painful his life is. However, the story finally progresses enough that the reader is finally able to witness the boy's breaking point. After he witnesses Ewka coupling with the goat, he realizes that the ultimate power of the world is really evil, and that if he wanted to become powerful and in control of his own life, he would have to become a prop for evil.

The irony is that the boy will never be accepted by the Germans because they will never see him as a person, only as a Jew and an outcast. As he runs from village to village, he becomes more and more accustomed to torturous beatings, to disturbing images and to having nowhere to go and having no one to care for him.

One question I have after this reading is this: Since the boy's worldview is becoming progressively darker, and he has not had any experience with real love and care since his earliest childhood days, what would happen if he was suddenly returned to his parents? Would he be able to fit in with regular society, given all that he has been through?

Along the same lines, what is the point of all this endless suffering and the wandering from village to village? When the boy discovers prayer and desperately hopes that he can accumulate enough "days of indulgence" to escape his miserable life, the author almost seems to mock the reader by making the boy pray incessantly, yet futilely. Kosinski seems to be saying that there is no such thing as a "quick fix," or some simple equation that is the root of the boy's suffering and will bring meaning and healing to his life.

At this point in the story, how does the author want the reader to feel about the boy's future? Does the author still want the reader to hope that something will suddenly happen to him that will free him from the cycle of pain and flight? Or is the author merely setting up a trap where the boy dies in the end? Would such an ending be surprising?

Here is a link to the abstract of a research paper that attempts to analyze the extent of the impact of concentration camps on survivors' lives, as well as what it takes to begin to overcome that impact. If the boy survives everything he has been through, the rest of his life will doubtless be very painful as he attempts to overcome they physical and psychological hardships he has suffered. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3971282