Summary: Chapter 1

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell uses a frenetic narrative style as he imagines inventing eccentric objects, such as a tea kettle that can mimic his dad’s voice. He envisions a birdseed vest that would attract enough birds to make a person fly—useful if they need to escape from a height. He jumps from subject to subject and from past to present. Oskar wishes he had his tambourine with him, because he likes creating a beat when he’s sad, which he calls getting “heavy boots.” 

For Oskar’s ninth birthday the previous year, his grandma gave him his grandpa’s camera. His grandpa left his grandma thirty years before Oskar’s birth.

Oskar rides in a limousine for the first time to attend his dad’s funeral with his mom and grandma. He wants the limousine to drive past his school to show his friends, but his mom tells him they can’t be late. Oskar doesn’t understand why lateness matters because they’re not actually burying his dad. Tired of his grandma holding on to him, he uses a Stephen Hawking voice to ask the driver his name. The driver hands him a business card that says his name is Gerald Thompson. Gerald seems amused by Oskar at first, but when Oskar tells a joke Gerald doesn’t understand, Oskar decides that talking while driving is dangerous. 

Oskar’s mom asks him if he gave a copy of their key to their postal worker and admonishes him not to give keys to strangers. Oskar scoots closer to his grandma, believing that his mom doesn’t love him and wishes he had been the one who died. He asks his mom if she still loves him, and she says she does. He thinks how beautiful his mom looks, and is pleased that she’s wearing a bracelet he made for her because making his mom happy is one of his “raisons d’être.” 

Oskar reminisces about the “Reconnaissance Expedition” game he and his dad used to play on Sundays, where his dad would set up a scavenger hunt. The last time they play, Oskar’s dad gives him a map of Central Park as his only clue. Oskar asks if the lack of clues in itself is a clue, but his dad shrugs. At dinner, Oskar’s dad eats Chinese food with a fork instead of chopsticks. Certain the fork is a clue, Oskar returns to Central Park with a metal detector. He places the trash he finds in a bag. His dad won’t tell him if he’s on the right track. Oskar complains that he can’t know if he’s right without direction. Oskar’s dad counters that he can also never be wrong. Oskar notices that his dad circled the phrase “not stop looking” in the newspaper article that he’d been reading. Oskar believes this is a sign he’s on the right track and keeps hunting in Central Park although he doesn’t understand his goal.

A few weeks after the day his dad died on 9/11, which Oskar calls “the worst day,” Oskar begins writing letters that he sends using the rare stamps from his stamp collection because he wants to get rid of things. He writes to Stephen Hawking, the author of his favorite book, A Brief History of Time, asking if he can be Hawking’s protégé, and receives a form letter in return. 

The night before Oskar’s dad dies, Oskar asks him why the universe is the way it is. Oskar’s dad offers scientific explanations that he’s told Oskar before because they’re atheists, but Oskar wants to know why these scientific systems exist. Oskar’s dad responds that they exist because they do. Oskar asks for a story, and his dad tells him about a sixth borough of New York that no longer exists. 

The next day, Oskar gets sent home from school early because of the terrorist attacks. At home, he discovers that his dad left messages on the answering machine, urging Oskar and his mom not to worry. Suddenly, the phone rings, and when Oskar checks the caller ID, he sees that it’s his dad.

Summary: Chapter 2

Thomas Schell, Oskar’s grandpa, writes a letter to his unborn son. He describes how he lost his ability to speak. The first word he loses is “Anna,” as if her memory has been locked within him. Next, he loses words similar to “Anna,” like “and.” He tattoos the word “Yes” on his left palm and “No” on his right. Whenever he does something with his hands, he thinks of his actions in relation to “yes” and “no” coming together and apart. The last word he says aloud is “I.”

He carries blank notebooks around and writes snippets of dialogue he can easily gesture to, with one phrase on each page. When he runs out of pages in his notebook before the end of the day, he recycles earlier phrases. For example, if someone asks how he’s feeling, he might gesture to a sentence asking for his regular order at a café. Now his apartment is full of notebooks. He goes to the zoo to feed the animals with his friend Mr. Richter. Together, they ignore the world. A photo of a doorknob interrupts his letter. 

Thomas first met Oskar’s grandma at a bakery. She says that she can see he’s lost everything, like she has, but at least they’re alive. She chats about the weather before noting his silence. Thomas writes on the second to last page of his book that he doesn’t speak. She turns to the last page in his book and writes a marriage proposal. Thomas gestures at various phrases in his book that serve as a rejection, but she insists. Thomas thinks of all the joys he’s lost, such as his family’s wealth, Anna, and the marble he’d intended to sculpt. He gestures to the word “Help.” 

Analysis: Chapters 1 & 2

Oskar speaks with a unique narrative voice that characterizes him as an anxious child and raises questions about his maturity. Oskar has an energetic speech pattern that jumps between ideas and anecdotes, characterizing him as imaginative but also restless. He tends to speak circuitously and figuratively, such as when he calls sadness or depression “heavy boots.” Combined, this restless energy and imprecision allows Oskar to avoid something he doesn’t want to think about, possibly his father’s death. It can be difficult to judge where in time Oskar the narrator is in relation to the past events he narrates. He still has the same narrative tics—the frantic inventing, the use of euphemisms like “the worst day”—which suggests he’s probably not much older than he was during the events of the novel and still hasn’t fully worked through his grief. However, Oskar’s thought patterns vary greatly in maturity. In some ways, his whimsical inventions and lack of worldly understanding appear childish in an age-appropriate way, but he also has the emotional self-awareness to understand why he’s using his stamp collection to send mail. In this way, Foer portrays Oskar as somewhere between child and adult, unsure of his place in the world. 

In Chapter 1, Oskar is terrified of disapproval. He only acknowledges the possible danger of talking while driving after Gerald doesn’t appear charmed by his joke, which suggests that Oskar’s fear stems not from Gerald’s driving but from Oskar’s belief that he has failed at social etiquette. Oskar’s hyperbolic reaction to his mom’s admonishment about the key also shows that he has extreme expectations for his own behavior. He soon states that making his mom happy is his “raison d’être,” or reason for being, which implies if he upsets his mom, he has somehow failed on an existential level. Through these interactions, it is clear that Oskar understands his role in life to be someone constantly joyful or amusing without fail. His belief that he’s responsible for the happiness of his mom creates a reversal where, instead of a mom offering comfort to her son, a son believes he must care for his mother. The unclear hierarchy of their relationship makes Oskar’s role in his family confusing and constantly on shaky ground. However, it is not yet clear why Oskar believes he has these responsibilities, because neither his mom nor Gerald act as if they actually have this level of expectation for Oskar.

In Oskar’s memories of his dad, it’s clear that he relies on his father to cope with the possible meaninglessness of the world. Oskar’s dad teaches him an existentialist view of the universe that involves creating one’s own meaning. For example, Oskar’s dad sends him on a potentially impossible Reconnaissance Expedition armed with a map and no answers, mimicking how the universe doesn’t provide easy answers to its meaning. Oskar’s dad refuses all requests for guidance but offers tools on how to cope with the lack of answers, such as his assertion that any answer Oskar finds will be correct. In this indirect way, Oskar’s father offers a paradigm for coping with insolvable ambiguities through curiosity and gives Oskar permission to create his own meaning. However, Oskar doesn’t appear satisfied with his father’s lack of answers. In their conversation about the meaning of life, Oskar loves his dad’s scientific explanations but hates that they cannot offer a more complete reason as to why life exists. Significantly, Oskar copes with this disappointment by asking for a story. Stories, unlike science, thrive on ambiguity and speculate about unknowable matters, such as the meaning of life. Asking for a story signifies that Oskar can try to find comfort and hope in his dad’s story that science cannot offer. 

Thomas’s limited phraseology confines him to imprecise conversation that allows him to avoid actively taking part in his life. In the pages structured like Thomas’s notebooks, it becomes clear that he writes only one line of dialogue on each page, leaving the rest blank, instead of using every inch of space to give himself more phrases to choose from, thereby actively limiting his expression. He intentionally limits himself even further by communicating with imprecise sentences, hiding his true feelings from the people he speaks to. By hiding his truth, Thomas loses his ability to forge connections with others. In Thomas’s final response to Oskar’s grandma’s marriage proposal—“help”—it is unclear if he means he wants Oskar’s grandma to help him with his loneliness and suffering, or if he’s speaking to his discomfort with her proposal. Despite his “no” tattoo, Thomas chooses to leave his desires ambiguous. He leaves his fate to Oskar’s grandma in how she interprets that “help,” meaning that he doesn’t have to initiate the next phase of his life.

Both of these chapters tie grief with ambiguity, suggesting that neither Oskar nor Thomas are ready to process their grief. Oskar uses euphemisms like “heavy boots” to avoid saying words he doesn’t want to say, suggesting that imprecision is easier than saying something sad but true. Thomas’s grief causes him to lose his power of speech, placing him in a situation where he uses imprecise means of communication to distance himself from his life and others. Like Oskar, Thomas also uses this ambiguity to hide uncomfortable truths. Despite clearly delineating one hand as “yes” and the other as “no,” Thomas focuses on what it means when his hands move together or apart. This movement symbolizes the uncertain relationship between “yes” and “no,” in other words, “maybe.” “Maybe” of course, can imply hope and possibility, but it’s also a word people often use as a soft way of saying “no” that hurts less. Neither of the Schell men are ready to face the truth of their losses or use language to demonstrate how badly they are hurt.