What's with the pictures? And the bruises?

During our discussion, I suggested that we look closely at the pictures on pages 53 to 67. Our group thought that the pictures were used to illustrate important moments in Oskar's life and to explain the way that he thinks. I think that the most important pictures are on pages 59 and 62, which illustrate the September 11th attacks. Allison helped me to realize that it was a picture of a person jumping out of the World Trade Center and falling to their death. This picture helped our group to understand and discuss the extreme damage that Oskar had endured from his father's death. We also discussed how Oskar determines his level of happiness or sadness by how heavy his boots are, which we thought was interesting. In relation to his father's death, I brought up the fact that Oskar seems to refer to all events in his life in relation to "the worst day", which is September 11th.

I also brought up the mixed signals given off by Oskar's mother throughout our first reading. At one point Oskar says that he knows that his mother wished he was dead, but he also claims that she is his reason for living. She gets Oskar fingerprinted and gets him a cell phone, but at the same time, she lets him wander the city of New York. As soon as we started discussing this, I noticed that Oskar's mother and father were rarely mentioned together, which seemed odd. The other members of my group agreed, and Tara throught that this may indicate that one or both of them was having an affair. She thought that maybe that was the reason why Oskar's father was in the World Trade Center on Spetember 11th, or that "Black" was the name of the person Oskar's father was seeing.

I agreed with most of what the other members of my group thought, but I disagreed with the opinion that Oskar was naive. I think that he is actually the opposite of naive because he is very mature and seems to have a much greater intelligence than most other boys his age. On the same note, I thought he was a little too mature for his age, if that was possible. He knows too much about his father's death (like being burned on ninety percent of his skin), which I think contributes to his mental instability.

Some of the questions that were brought up in our discussion included the reason why his father was in the World Trade Center on September 11th instead of at the family jewelery business and why Oskar bruises himself when he gets upset.