Chapter 10

When i first opened up this chapter and saw the red pen that circled errors in these letters it made me think that Thomas, Oskar's Dad read this letter. He used to always read through the New York Times magazines and circle mistakes he found in red pen. Also when Anna says, "I'm pregnant" (210), and then find out later in the chapter that Anna and the baby die in the bombing, I know understand why the grandfather made the rule of no having children. The rules they make were to help them not think about their troubled past and having a baby reminds Thomas, the grandfather of Anna and how she was pregnant and that was too much for him to handle and because of this he runs away.

Who are the letters really to?

While reading the chapter why I'm not where you are, I was having trouble figuring out who the letters were really written too. Before reading this chapter I had thought that Thomas was writing the letter to the other Thomas, his son, because he had left him. Then during this chapter I began to question this assumption. On page 208, it said "sometimes my had starts to burn and I am convinced that we are writing the same word at the same moment", this quote went along with my theory that Thomas is writing this to the son that he abandoned, but then on page 214 it said, “In the days and weeks that lead to my release, I looked for my parents and for Anna and or you”. This quote made me believe that he was writing the letters to Anna’s son now because just before that Thomas had learned that she was pregnant. I continued to read and on page 215 it said “your aunt had told me that she was pregnant, I was over joyed…”, this once again made me stop and think that maybe it really is to his abandoned son and not Anna’s son.

So I guess I’m asking who you think that these letters are written to? Am I missing something that tells us who the letters are really for, or am I supposed to be unsure?

why I'm not where you are

I noticed throughout this chapter that the idea of nothing and something was brought up a lot, not only throughout Grandpa and Grandma's apartment but when people were speaking and not speaking.

"We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things" (113).

"The more we took each other's assumptions for granted, the less was said, the more misunderstood…" (111).

"I wanted to call her name, but I didn't want her to hear my voice, all of my desire was based on that one brief exchange" (116).

"I told her how I felt, this is how I told her… I don't know what she thought, I don't know what she understood, or what she wouldn't allow herself to understand" (135).

Quote #1: talk about nothing, but it is something

Quote #2: say nothing, and is interpreted as something its not

Quote #3: say nothing, the possibility of never finding Anna or her understanding what he is saying in that brief exchange

Quote #4: say nothing, interpreted however the other person wants to

All of these quotes express a different type of communication and how they differ from one another. I just found it interesting how this connects slightly to our poetry unit when we had to give feedback. Not saying anything can mean something its not, but saying something that you may think of as nothing really means something to the person hearing it.

Chapter 6 Quote and Questions

"Im telling you all of this because I'll never be your father, and you will always be my child. I want you to know, at least, that it's not out of selfishness that I am leaving, how can  explain that? I can't live, I've tried and i can't. If that sounds simple, it's simple like a mountain is simple. You mother suffered, too, but she chose to live, and lived be her son and her husband. I don't expect that you'll ever understand me, much less forgive me, you might not even read these words, if your mother gives them to you at all. It's time to go. I want you to be happy, I want that more than I want happiness for myself... I'll never write another word again, I am gone, I am no longer here. With love, Your father" (135).

These words came right at the end of the chapter and really stood out to me and I am sure to all of you too. Narrator #2 who we all weren't sure who it was is now made clear in this chapter. I imagine this is the last time we are going to hear from him as the narrator because of how this chapter ended. This chapter is all a letter to his unborn son. Him and his wife have a rule that they aren't aloud to have kids so he writes this letter expecting it to never get read by anyone. This raises a few questions:

Where did Oskar's father come from if he's grandma was never going to have any kids? Did Oskar's father ever read this letter? Or did he ever meet his mothers first husband who wrote this letter? Did Oskar's grandmother ever get remarried? What happens to Thomas the sculpture? What happens to Oskar's grandmother after she finds out he's not coming back? Does he come back? Do they ever see each other again?

Chapter 3

“Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots.” This quote was so heartbreaking.

“I printed out some of the pictures I found—a shark attacking a girl getting a blowjob from her normal boyfriend, a soldier getting his head cut off in Iraq, the place on the wall where a famous stolen painting used hang—and I put them in Stuff That Happened to Me, my scrapbook of everything that happened to me.” All those pictures are vulnerable.

About chapter 2

In the second chapter, the narrator has the problem speaking.

“Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought f myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” 

This quote really hit me. Even he tattooed himself YES and NO on each hand, he couldn’t really express what he was thinking. He lost his connection with the other people. YES and NO could be the answers of people’s questions. However, it would not be enough to express what he wanted to say, it would not be enough to let people know him. It makes me think about how O craves for the answer. The answer is not enough to sacrifice people, probably the process is the thing that actually matters. And O might realize that on his journey of finding the lock. He starts to write things down on the paper to communicate with people. I wonder why he only writes one phrase on every paper. It makes him run out of paper easily. “if something made me want to laugh, I’d write ‘Ha ha ha!’” This quote is fairly gloomy to read. It shows how much he wants people to know how he feels.

About the first chapter

At the end of first chapter, O’s dad kept leaving messages to the phone when nobody’s answering the phone. It makes me think of the bridges his dad has mentioned, the story of New York’s six borough. His dad was looking for the bridges between him and his family. When he couldn’t find anyone answer that phone, he must felt disconnected. And I wonder why O didn’t answer the phone. O craves for connections. The connections between things and clues(playing that game with his dad), and the connection between him and the other people(he remembers all kinds of people’s names, and writing letters to a lot of people)