I LOVE BLOGGING. =]

We had an extremely loud and incredibly productive conversation today. It was MY idea first that when Oskar described 9/11 backwards it reminded me of when Billy was watching the video on Dresden and he saw it backwards. It makes both of them with that they could change a situation that simply cannot be changed. It also gave them both a very negative outlook on life. I was also very upset by the fact that the grandma left to live in the airport. Oskar already lost his dad who was the only person who really understood him and his grandma is the only other person that even comes close and she leaves him too. I thought that it was really selfish of her to do that to Oskar after all that he had been through. I was upset that the renter didn't tell Oskar that he was his grandpa. Of all times then was the time Oskar would need a grandpa. The end of this book was overall upsetting. I was also upset by the fact that when Oskar and his mom finally had a moment where they really came together and were close and she tells him that his dad called her on her cell phone when he was in the building that Oskar didn't show her the messages. Those were her husband's final words and he is so selfish as to hide them from his own mother. I really hope that the picture was of his dad. Even though digging the coffin up was REALLY messed up on a couple of different levels Oskar clearly needed that closure to move on from what happened so I suppose it was a good thing. The new book for Stuff That Has Happened To Me was also symbolic of him moving on and hopefully growing stronger from this terrible experience.

GUYS IM HAVING A MOMENT!

Today, like all other days, we had another awesome discussion in our lit circle. My main moment today was when we were talking about the characters and how they are all emotionally, well we couldn't decide on a word but, distraught, incapacitated, disabled, etc. While talking about this I mentioned that these characters, mom Oskar, grandma, and grandpa, all have one thing in common: they all lost someone they really loved. For Oskar it was his dad, the one person on the planet who really understood him. For Oskar's mom it was her husband, for obvious reasons. For the grandparents it was Anna. For the grandma she was so close with her sister in so many ways and losing her was tragic. The grandpa was in love with her so losing her was obviously very painful for him as well. Their relationship blooms off their mutual love for Anna and trying to salvage what they have left of her. These people all lost someone of great importance to them. And now they have trouble sharing and expressing their emotions because they feel that if they do that then they will become close to whoever they are sharing with and if they come close to that person then the pattern will continue and they will lose that person in some way. We also talked about the long term effects these attacks must have had on this boy. I said that I would be afraid to go into tall buildings and petrified to go into airplanes if I was him. The other thing is that now he notices what things, like ferries, would be good potential attack targets which isn't something a younger boy should be thinking about. This does make him mature but it also raises concerns for his future. He is already bruising himself and we discussed that as he gets older we hope that doesn't further evolve into cutting and eventually suicide because he is 10 and already thinks of time as just slowly getting closer to death. It was kind of a sad discussion today. =(

Today was such a successful literature circle. We made many connections together about the themes of the novel and the characters themselves. I think these connections have made each of us more excited to read the rest of the book.

We all agreed that the chapter beginning of page 174 was a good source of information. Previously, we read about the grandfather's side of the story of him leaving the grandmother. This chapter gave us the grandmther's side of the story and cleared up any confusion we might have felt when the grandfather told us the story.

On page 184 the name "Mary" appears in the novel for the third time. We took time as a group to search for the other referances to this minor character and now we all know she was a schoolmate of the grandmother's when they were younger. I feel like maybe her minor role in the novel will become significant in the next few chapters.

We all got "heavy boots" for Oskar when the kids at school were teasing him on the playground and during his class presentation. Poor Oskar :(. I also found it kind of disturbing that Oskar knows so many sexual terms for a boy around the age of 10 and I think the group agreed with me on this.

I brought up the discussion about the signicance of the word "buddy". When Oskar makes a visit to Doctor Fein on page 200, the doctor refers to him as "buddy" and Oskar responses saying, "Actually, I'm not your buddy." I linked this back to page 14 when Oskar's father is tucking him into bed. The last live word Oskar's father said to him was "buddy". The next time Oskar heard his father's voice was on the message machine on September 11th. I think that Oskar treasures the word "buddy" because it was the last word his father spoke to him.

I am happy that I am not the only one who got so lost on page 202 (the discussion between Doctor Fein and Oskar). There are no breaks in the page or anything - just straight quotations and it can be hard to distinguish is saying what.

We talked about the chapter beginning on page 208. Oskar's father has obviously read this letter before because it is marked with red pen and Oskar's father used to make corrections in the newspapers with red pen. We discussed how we thought that Osker's grandfather was afraid to fall in love again and then lose everything he loved. Oskar loved Anna and he loved their unborn baby. He lost both of these important people in Dresden. Whe Oskar's grandmother told his grandfather that she was pregnant, Oskar's grandfather got scarred of losing someone again so he just decided to leave.

Kaitlyn and I mentioned how there is a possibity that the renter living in the grandmother's apartment is the grandfather. The grandmother mentioned in one of her chapters that the grandfather had written an "I'm sorry" card to her the day of her son's funeral. However, his funeral was over a year ago. What has happen in the past year between the grandmother and grandfather? Because we read about the renter in Oskar's eyes, we saw the renter as an imaginary friend. Oskar does not really know much about his grandfather anyway so we think that the renter might be the grandfather and he just does not want to see Oskar because he is afraid he will fall in love with him and then lose him.

The chapter titled "The Sixth Borough" links back to page 13. Earlier in the novel, we read the beginning of this story that Oskar's father told to him. This chapter tells us the whole story. We all seemed to enjoy this chapter.

We discussed so much today, so I am afraid I am missing something important in this post. However, once we each read each other's blogs I think we will have covered everything.

Enjoy your break guys and do not forget to read! :)

SCRIBEtastic!!!!

We had quite an awesome discussion today. We made a bunch of breakthroughs that will hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of the rest of the novel. The first thing we would like to clear up is that Sara was correct and Buckminster, Oksar's pet, IS in fact a CAT. Now that we cleared that up the first thing we talked about was the Grandpa. We, or at least I, used to think that he was no longer alive and by "left" the Grandma meant died. We discussed that this assumption is false and he is actually alive. Sara then brought us to page 177 where the grandma tells the grandpa that she is pregnant. Here we had a revelation. Earlier in life the grandpa got Anna, the grandma's sister, pregnant and then lost her and the baby in Dresden. Now he can't handle losing another child and is afraid to love again. We also deduced that the red marks on the grandpa's letter indicated that Thomas had read the letter and edited it like he used to do in the newspapers. 

Kaitlyn made a connection after that when she brought up page 216 where the grandpa "refuse[s] to love anything". This further solidified the fact that because of Anna he will never truly love again. We discussed how we thought the elongated 6th borough story that was told briefly on page 14 and then again later was the cutest thing in the book so far. 

We also talked about how many animals he killed and how we were surprised and slightly appalled by it. We also talked a lot about Oskar's angry reaction at the Doctor calling him "buddy". Mary discovered that the last words Oskar and his dad had exchanged in person had consisted of his dad calling him "buddy". Now nobody else can call him that and when they do it makes him miss his dad even more and get mad.

We also found the part on page 192 that Sara and Mary brought up sad because all the kids were making fun of Oskar. We feel that they may be a little young to know all that they know but Oskar definitely felt left out and bad and we were all upset by it. We also found out that they never even found the dad's body and they buried an empty coffin in his memory. And as if to make it even more sad the dad was alive long enough to leave four messages on the answering machine before he actually was killed. 

After we discussed that Kaitlyn had an OH MY GOD big connection moment.  She brought up the quote from Oskar on page 202 "Life is impossible." He says that he is constantly emotional and overwhelmed by his thoughts. This is taking over him and making his life impossible. Then on page 214-215 she brought up that the grandpa keeps telling himself to keep thinking because that's how he knows he's alive. We deduced from these two excerpts that thinking is an underlying theme in this book. We think that thinking is keeping them alive but destroying them all at the same time. As is to prove this point we also saw on page 215 the Anna says "life is harder than death," and the Simon kills himself after THINKING about losing his entire family in Dresden.

We were also kind of confused as to who Mary was. Ironically Mary helped us answer this question. She found Mary referenced on page 228, 184, and 78. In the first two we just see Mary with the grandma jumping on the bed. On page 78 though we find out that she was a "school mate friend" and that she is just the grandma's friend. 

Continuing with our theme Sara then had a big connection moment. We took another look at the part where the grandma asks Anna if she can watch her kiss the grandpa. Later in the conversation she asks what a kiss feels like and Anna kisses her. After we discussed the reasons we thought this was wrong Sara deduced that the grandma and the grandpa were both so in love with Anna, the grandpa being obvious and the grandma from saying she had never felt so much love, that they are together "loving" each other but really trying to hold on to and salvage their connections and feelings for Anna. 

Our whole group then had an OH MY GOD moment together when Mary and Kaitlyn posed the option the grandpa being the renter that lives with the grandma. We found is suspicious that the grandpa came back the day of his son's funeral but Oskar never meets him. Also we only ever hear about grandma talking about him leaving once. We decided that this theory could make sense because Oskar is hardly aware of his grandpa's existence which could explain the imaginary friend theory that he developed. 

Kaitlyn, who was on FIRE today, also brought up the quote from page 175, "As if the world and its future depended on each doorknob." This quote is referring to how the grandpa went around and took a picture of every doorknob which is interesting considering all the pictures of doorknobs in the book. I then came to the OH MY GOD moment that Oskar and the grandpa are like the same person. They both suffered a horrible tragedy and lost Anna and Thomas who were the two most significant people in their lives. This eventually rendered the grandpa speechless and my theory is that it could possibly render Oskar speechless eventually as well.

The last thing we discussed was the therapist and how it was hard to read that section and that the main drift of pages 203-205 was the the mom was NOT letting Oskar be hospitalized.

Overall we had a REALLY good discussion today with an OH MY GOD moment by every member of the group. We were extremely successful and cleared a lot of things up. =) 

lit circle 3

Today we had our third literature circle meeting. We talked a lot about Oskar's grandparents today. We decided that they had an extremely dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship. The grandfather was still in love with Anne the sister of the grandma. This was a serious detriment to their relationship and eventually made everything become "nothing" space. We spoke a lot about the abundance of hospitality that Oskar received at the homes of the people with the name Black. They all welcomed Oskar into their homes and went to his play. We found this peculiar because strangers don't usually let random children into their houses. Their hospitality was a good thing for Oskar's self esteem though because he said at one point that he lost count of the number of disappointments he had. This made me really sad because childhood is supposed to be so much fun and very carefree but Oskar got a huge emotional weight dropped on him at a young age. We also talked about how he says that he doesn't know his grandma very well at all and he doesn't know what they are doing with all their time together if not getting to know each other. Oskar is trying not to be extremely close to people after his dad died because he doesn't want to lose them like he lost his dad. It is an extremely heavy burden for a young child to bear but at least he is keeping his father's spirit alive with all of his adventures and problem solving.

Lit Circle Discussion

We were extremely productive in our circle today. We had a very insightful conversation about Oskar and his relationship towards those around him. We noticed that he is definitely not as close with his mom as he is with his dad. We think that this is why it has been so hard on him. We brought up his similarity to the child in the book The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime. These boys both seem to have a similar tendency to go off on tangents and jump from thought to thought though they are both extremely smart it is harder to recognize. Because of this his dad was the only one who knew how his mind worked and now that he is gone Oskar feels alone. I brought up the similarity in style to Hemingway. We know that his dad died in 9/11 but the narrator made us figure that out and hasn't told up upfront how exactly his father was involved in 9/11. The way that he wants us to figure it out on our own reminds me of Hemingway dropping hints about Jake's injury. 

We all really like the pictures that were incorporated into the novel. His book of things that have happened to him gave us insight into his life as well as raised more questions. Some of the picture made sense to us but some of them have yet to be explained. The picture of the keys was one of the most interesting to me. We liked it because Mary and I discussed briefly how smart Oskar must really be if he can figure out how many locks are made in a day in New York and how many there already are. That picture gave us more of an insight into his intelligence and how he uses it to his advantage. Overall we basically concluded that Oskar was a very smart individual but just no longer has anybody to help him challenge his mind without his dad. He is now on his own adventures learning how to challenge himself.

1st Meeting

In our first meeting we discussed the first few of pages of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The first thing we discussed was our reading schedule. We are reading around 80 pages a night. Sara then read the excerpt to us aloud. We determined that the narrator is most likely a child around the age of 10. He or she has very random trains of thought and uses the word "and" excessively which turns his sentences into run-ons. He or she is also very repetitive. For instance in the paragraph about the child's jujitsu class he says that he class was three and a half months ago at least 4 times. He also adds in a few french sayings in his writing. With this we found that he tends to assume his superiority over others by thinking he is smarter and needs to explain things to everybody else. He tells us what the french sayings mean and he tells his jujitsu class what pacifist means because he assumes nobody else knows. He starts off the story with just a stream on consciousness, jumping from one thought to the next. In his thoughts about hearing everybody else's heartbeat Sara and Mary brought up the fact that peoples' heart rates get faster when they lie or are nervous. We deduced from this that if we could hear everybody's heart beat then we could potentially read their emotions and it could change the entire perspective of the conversation. He goes into story-telling later in the excerpt when talking about his jujitsu class. All in all we get an impression of a slightly off child telling a story.