Summary: Chapter 5

Oskar reads the first chapter of A Brief History of Time while his dad is still alive. The chapter makes Oskar sad about how insignificant he is in the universe. His dad tells him that if he moved a single grain of sand in the Sahara, he would change the entire desert and therefore change human history. Oskar remembers this moment as he prepares to meet everyone named Black in New York City. He decides to visit people in alphabetical order. He promises that he won’t be discriminatory and will only lie when necessary. 

To meet Aaron Black in Queens, Oskar walks across the 59th Street Bridge because he’s afraid of public transit. Halfway across, he realizes he’s in a space that’s neither Manhattan nor Queens and wonders what places that don’t fall in any borough are called. He shakes his tambourine to remind himself that he’s still him no matter where he is. 

Aaron’s apartment has no doorman, unlike Oskar’s. Oskar pushes the call button for Aaron’s unit until Aaron finally answers. Oskar describes the key, but Aaron retorts that Black is a common last name. Oskar wonders why Aaron appears upset with him. Aaron asks how old Oskar is, and Oskar says he’s seven and that his dad is dead in order to elicit sympathy. Aaron invites Oskar up, but Oskar won’t go to the ninth floor. Aaron explains that he can’t go downstairs because he’s ill. Panicked, Oskar flees.

Oskar knocks on Abby Black’s door until she answers. She’s a beautiful epidemiologist in her forties. Oskar wants her to like him and tells her she’s beautiful. Although Abby insists she doesn’t know Thomas Schell, Oskar asks if he can come in, claiming he’s diabetic and needs food. Oskar feels bad about lying and promises himself that he’ll donate his next allowance to a diabetes organization. 

As Oskar follows Abby into the kitchen, he hears a man speaking loudly in the next room, but Abby ignores the man. The only photo on the wall is of an elephant, so Oskar mentions elephant facts, such as that scientist once played recordings of the call of an elephant’s dead loved one to an elephant, and the elephant approached the speaker. Abby asks if the elephant cried, but Oskar says that only humans cry. Abby starts crying, confusing Oskar because he’s supposed to be the one crying. 

The man from the other room pokes his head in, then leaves. Oskar asks who he is and why Abby ignored him. Abby explains he’s her husband. Oskar asks why she’s ignoring him when he clearly needs something. Abby starts crying again. She asks Oskar his age. He pretends to be twelve because he wants Abby to love him. When he shows Abby the envelope, she appears to recognize the writing. She says she knows nothing.

Oskar realizes he hasn’t shown Abby the key. He reaches to the key hanging under his shirt and places it in Abby’s hand, so that they’re close. He invites her to his school production of Hamlet. Oskar asks if they can kiss. Abby refuses. Oskar says that humans are the only animals that have religion, wage war, and kiss, so the more someone kisses, the more human they are. Abby asks what that means about someone who wages war. 

Oskar then goes to his grandma’s house. Grandma looks like she’s been crying, which is odd because she says she cried all her tears when grandpa left. She explains she’s been talking with the renter. 

Grandma stayed with Oskar after his dad died. While walking around the park, Oskar hides because he wants someone to look for him. He watches Grandma panic. When she approaches his apartment, Oskar jumps out and surprises her. Grandma returns to her apartment and puts a sign in the window that Oskar can read with his binoculars. It says, “Don’t go away.” Now whenever they go for walks, Oskar responds that he’s okay whenever Grandma says his name.

After his dad died, Oskar went with his mom to a storage facility full of his dad’s things. When Oskar finds baby monitors, he asks why his dad saved them. His mom responds that they’re for Oskar’s future kids. Oskar becomes angry that a lot of the things in storage are for his hypothetical children. He uses the baby monitors to talk with Grandma across the street.

When Oskar developed an interest in stamps, Grandma bought him a sheet of stamps featuring great American inventors. She identifies the inventors for him, including the inventor of the atomic bomb. Oskar exclaims that the man wasn’t a great inventor. Grandma explains that he was great but not good. 

Grandma asks Oskar what he did all day. Oskar recognizes that at this moment he could have told Grandma about the key, but instead he lies. He hears footsteps and asks Grandma if it’s the renter. Grandma insists there’s nobody else in the apartment.

That night, Oskar wakes his mom up to ask what the storage facility was called, hoping it somehow involved the word “Black.” His mom says it was called Store-a-Lot. 

Analysis: Chapter 5

This chapter introduces the theme of the importance of the small and personal over the great and famous. Oskar’s dad’s anecdote about the Sahara Desert celebrates the ability of a single person’s small actions to make a difference in the world. Instead of focusing on the scale of the change, Oskar’s dad encourages Oskar to appreciate that he can enact change as an individual. Grandma, in fact, explains that making large changes or inventions sometimes creates harm when she says that the inventor of the atomic bomb was great but not good. By disconnecting the idea of being great from being good or moral, Grandma suggests that greatness is a distinction of dubious value. Taken together, we see that Oskar’s family prioritizes small but positive actions over grand, destructive accomplishments. Oskar, though, does not yet seem to understand the value of small actions, as is evident in his confusion over the inventor of the atomic bomb being considered great and in his persistent letters to famous figures like Stephen Hawking.

Oskar’s journey to Aaron Black’s house foreshadows the ways Oskar’s world will expand throughout his quest. Most clearly, his confusion about a building without a doorman tells us that Oskar hasn’t had many encounters with people less wealthy than his family. If Oskar is to meet every person named Black in New York City, he will inevitably encounter a wide variety of lives even further from his own experience. The borough-less spot Oskar encounters on the bridge is a liminal, or in-between, space and there is no clear answer as to whether it exists in Manhattan or Queens. This ambiguous space hints that Oskar will encounter more such places with no easy answers, but his curiosity about the spot—as opposed to fear—suggests that he is capable of finding peace with ambiguity. Despite all this newness, Oskar still shakes his tambourine to remind himself that he’s still himself, demonstrating that expanding his horizons doesn’t erase who he is. Tambourines are percussion instruments, creating the beat of a song and giving it order and structure. Despite all the uncertainty, Oskar can still find ways to understand and give order to the world around him.

Throughout this chapter, Oskar lies in order to make people like him more, revealing a deep insecurity. In light of Oskar’s earlier assertion that beautiful things aren’t true, Oskar’s lying represents his belief that true things are ugly, which would drive people away from him and his ugly truths. Accordingly, in order to connect with Aaron and Abby, he lies. When he wants to make himself appear vulnerable to Aaron, he claims to be younger than he is. When wanting to impress Abby, he says he’s older than is true, suggesting that he doesn’t believe he can connect with either person at his actual age. Oskar’s lies also serve to emphasize how lost and upset he feels without his dad. He tells Abby that he’s a diabetic and needs food and care, reflecting his own need to feel cared for in light of his dad’s death. As with the bruises Oskar gives himself, he lies about having diabetes in order to externalize his emotional pain as something physical. He doesn’t believe that people will respect his emotional pain as something serious or worth attention, so he tries to make it physically manifest.

Oskar’s conversation with Abby about elephants raises important questions about the goodness of human nature that Oskar wrestles with throughout the novel. Oskar’s desire to focus on kissing as a uniquely human attribute contrasts with his assertion in Chapter 3 that humans will destroy each other within fifty years. But Abby’s rejection reminds him of his pessimism. From this incident, it’s clear that Oskar still has an optimist inside him who wants to see love and goodness in humanity. Intriguingly, through Oskar’s own admission, humans both kiss and wage war; they do both good and bad. Like the spot on the 59th Street Bridge that exists in no borough, humans do not fit into a simple moral binary. In contrast, Oskar reveals that elephants mourn but do not wage war, which implies that elephants have a better nature than humans. Oskar and Thomas both love animals, and their ability to see good in animals more easily than in people highlights how their grief causes them to doubt humanity.

This chapter shows the potential of grief to prevent people from connecting with others. At this point in the novel, Oskar’s focus on his own sadness hinders his empathy. He becomes angry at Aaron for not immediately answering the buzzer, not considering the myriad possible reasons someone would have for not immediately answering. Because of his trauma-induced anxiety, Oskar rejects Aaron’s offer to talk to him, choosing his own sorrow and fear over human connection. Oskar believes that he’s the one who should be crying when he sees Abby cry because he is caught up in his own grief to the extent that he cannot imagine others’ misfortunes. Finally, Oskar acts on his desire to feel needed in the wake of his dad’s death to the extent that he traumatizes his grandma. In this instance, Oskar quickly realizes that he’s hurt Grandma with his prank, but he tries to overcompensate by constantly assuring her he’s okay. Oskar believes that his grief can cause him to hurt people. Accordingly, he tries to hide his grief.