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. =)