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Summary: Chapter 3

Oskar asks his mom if she’s in love with her friend Ron, but she insists they’re just friends. He doesn’t think it’s fair to him or his dad for his mom to enjoy herself. 

One night, Oskar looks in his dad’s closet. He notices a blue vase on the top shelf and uses a chair to reach it. The vase falls and shatters. When his mom and Ron don’t hear him shout, Oskar gives himself a bruise. Glancing through the pieces, Oskar notices an envelope containing a key. He tries it on every lock he can find with no success.

The next morning, Oskar fakes being sick to avoid going to school. After his mom leaves for work, Oskar goes to a locksmith and asks him about the key. The locksmith says the key must be for an old safe or lockbox. 

Oskar researches how many locks exist in New York City but realizes he can’t try every lock. He returns to his dad’s closet. When he looks at the envelope again, he notices it has the word “Black” written on it. After researching the word “black,” he does searches about other things and prints out the resulting images, like one of a shark attack, to put in his “Stuff that Happened to Me” scrapbook.

The next day Oskar tells his mom he’s sick again. She asks if he’s actually sad. Oskar lists things about the world that make him sad. Oskar believes that humans will destroy each other and that beautiful songs are sad because beautiful things aren’t true. His mom says that he reminds her of his dad. Oskar doesn’t like being told he reminds people of dad or grandpa because they’re gone, and it makes him feel like he’s not special. His mom apologies and lets him stay home.

Once his mom leaves, Oskar goes to an art supply store to ask the manager about the color black. The manager notes that whoever wrote “Black” on the envelope wrote it in red, which is unusual because people usually write a color’s name with the same color pen. She shows Oskar a piece of paper where people test out pens as an example. She suggests “Black” might be someone’s last name. 

Oskar looks at the tester page and notices that “Thomas Schell,” his dad’s name, is written there. He asks the manager how often the pages get changed, and she says they would have been changed more recently than a year ago. 

Oskar researches the number of people with the last name “Black” in New York. He calculates that it would take him less than three years to visit all of them if he spent every Saturday and Sunday doing so. 

He decides not to tell his mom about the key because he’s mad at her for spending time with Ron. Every time Oskar leaves during the eight months he spends looking for the lock, he tells his mom he’s going out and will be back later. He believes her lack of follow-up questions means she’s forgetting him. Pursuing the lock makes him feel closer to his dad and farther from his mom. 

On the day his dad died, Oskar replaced their phone with an identical one he buys to protect his mom from hearing the messages his dad left. He keeps the old phone hidden away in his closet. 

Oskar listens to one of the messages his dad left. After, Oskar has to invent and give himself a bruise to cope. He uses his walkie talkie to talk to his grandma. She says she had been talking to the renter. Oskar isn’t sure the renter exists. 

An ambulance goes down the street, and Oskar imagines a device that would let ambulances tell people whether they know the person in it. People could rank everyone they love, so if the person they loved the most was dying, the ambulance could flash, “Goodbye! I love you!” as it passed. 

Oskar asks his grandma why his grandpa left. She says he had to leave. She tells Oskar she hopes he never loves anyone as much as she loves Oskar.

Oskar ranks the people he loves. He puts the mysterious key next to his apartment key on the string around his neck. Finally, he falls asleep.

Analysis: Chapter 3

This chapter reveals Oskar’s fraught relationship with his mom and their differing approaches to grief. Oskar’s anger at his mom stems not only from her relationship with Ron but also her ability to continue to do everyday tasks normally, meaning that Oskar would like her to stop trying to live her life. Ron, in particular, drives Oskar’s anger because he represents his mom moving past his father’s death and possibly finding love again. Because Oskar not only loves his dad but also relied on his dad to explain the universe to him, Oskar finds the thought of accepting a world without his dad and moving on impossible. His decision not to tell his mom about his quest for the lock represents him shutting his mom out of his grieving process. Oskar’s belief that his mom is forgetting him stems from his sense that she’s also moving on from his dad, whereas Oskar, by pursuing his dad, remains trapped in his grief and longing for the past. Since his mom has already moved forward, Oskar’s pursuit of anything related to his dad inevitably means moving farther from his mom.

Chapter 3 introduces how Oskar’s dad’s death has caused Oskar to become deeply pessimistic. This is clearest in his insistence to his mom that he no longer believes in the truth of beautiful things. Even more than his belief that humans will destroy each other, Oskar’s distrust of beauty suggests a change in world view. Oskar used to think the world was safe, but the loss of his dad shattered this illusion. Oskar’s online search for images that distress him recalls his search through Central Park in Chapter 1 for objects that could be relevant to his Reconnaissance Expedition. Instead of a physical search full of wonder and beauty, Oskar now finds himself glued to upsetting images that he forces himself to identify with by stating they happened to him, which suggests a shift in how he explores the world. Under his dad’s guidance, Oskar saw adventure in the unknown, but now he uses the searching to find possible threats and add visuals to his fears. In this sense, Oskar seeks out these images to remind himself of the dangers of the world. 

This chapter highlights that Oskar not only grieves his dad’s death, but feels guilty about it for reasons that are not yet clear. The phone Oskar hides demonstrates his guilty conscience. Oskar insists that he hid the phone to protect his mom, but this explanation seems incomplete because he doesn’t clarify what about the messages would hurt her. Furthermore, Oskar’s reaction to listening to the message involves not just invention to soothe his mind, but also giving himself a bruise to, in effect, punish himself. Oskar also gives himself a bruise after his mom and Ron don’t hear him break the vase. Most simply, Oskar might be punishing himself for breaking something of his dad’s. He waits until he’s sure his mom and Ron don’t hear him in order to keep his guilt a secret. However, his bruising may also serve as a reaction to his mom and Ron not noticing him. In this reading, Oskar bruises himself in order to make it visibly clear that he’s hurting. Bruises are visual marks on the body that his mom might notice. 

Oskar’s idea about the ambulance encapsulates his desire to eliminate grief by eliminating ambiguity. It is likely that Oskar starts inventing the device as soon as he hears an ambulance because his anxiety and grief cause him to worry that he might know the injured person. Oskar’s inventions, therefore, help him imagine ways to stay safe physically and to mentally protect himself from worry and harm. In this light, his thought that the ambulance could tell a dying person’s loved ones “Goodbye, I love you,” hints that Oskar’s dad may not have said, “I love you,” in his message, causing Oskar to long for a scenario in which all doubts about a dying person’s love are eliminated. Finally, Oskar tries to quantify love with a ranking system, forcing a clear-cut organization onto the messy world of emotions. This impossible task harkens back to the way Oskar’s dad explained the world to him through science, but also emphasizes the impossibility of using math and science to erase doubt or to impose order onto feelings. 


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