A Scribe's Viewpoint

Today, I was the scribe in our literary circle. The main focus of our discussion today was the importance of some of the symbols that we tracked in the novel. We discussed the use of birds as imagery, and Allison had an interesting idea that birds stood for happiness and love, which she backed up with a quote on page 78. Alex also brought up her thoughts about the use of birds, as well as her questions about the symbolism of the color white. Our group decided that we would read more closely for our next literature circle in order to discuss these symbols further.

We also tried to uncover the significance of certain events in the chapter, especially Oskar's meeting with Abby Black and the significance of the letters. At the beginning of our discussion, some of the members of my group were confused about the letters and who was writing them, but we managed to come to the conclusion that the writer of the letters was Oskar's grandmother. We also discussed the fact that something seems to be wrong with Oskar's grandmother. I brought up the fact that she seems a bit strange, especially because of the fact that she has an imaginary friend and Oskar claims that he doesn't know anything about her even though they are best friends.

Tara's opinion about Oskar changed from our last discussion. She no longer believes that he is naive, and we all agreed that he is extremely gifted. We also think that some of Oskar's characteristics remind us of someone who has a form of autism, which we plan to look at in the upcoming chapters. We also plan to track the symbols, including birds, tambourines, white clothing, and letters.

Overall, our discussion was very productive, and we continued throughout the period without stalling because we always had another question to ask once we finished discussing one topic.