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Summary: Chapter 13

Mr. Black stops helping Oskar search a few months later, leaving Oskar feeling alone. Oskar goes to Grandma’s apartment, but she’s not home. He imagines terrible things that could have happened. 

Suddenly, Oskar hears a sound in the guest room. He realizes that the renter actually exists. 

Oskar calls out that he’s looking for his grandma. The renter writes in a notebook that he doesn’t speak and that his name is Thomas. Oskar tells Thomas that his dad, who’s dead, was also named Thomas. Oskar asks when Grandma will return because Oskar needs her. Thomas invites Oskar to sit with him and wait for Grandma.

Oskar asks Thomas questions about his past, but Thomas shrugs his shoulders. Even so, Oskar tells Thomas about the key and the vase as if talking to Grandma. 

Oskar tells Thomas about all the people named Black. Fo Black, who lives in Chinatown and rarely leaves, mistook the “NY” on “I love NY” merchandise for the Chinese word for “you,” and bought a ton of it. Oskar and Mr. Black go to Staten Island to meet Georgia Black and her husband, who made museums of each other’s lives even though they’re both still alive. Oskar hadn’t wanted to take the ferry there because it’s an obvious target and he’d recently printed out an image of a ferry crash. However, Mr. Black convinces him. 

Ruth Black lives on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, which makes Oskar panicky. Mr. Black assures him it’s okay to worry, and they visit the observation deck. Oskar imagines a terrorist flying a plane into the building. He would lock eyes with the terrorist and say, “I hate you,” just as the terrorist said the same to him. He tries to imagine whom he would call in those last moments. 

In line for the elevator down, Oskar notices an old woman staring at him. Mr. Black suggests she might be Ruth. She offers them a tour and tells Oskar the history of the Empire State Building. Ruth asks if they have more time because she’d like to give them the special tour that she reserves only for people who would really care.

Ruth explains that during migration season, the building turns off its lights at night so as not to confuse the birds. Oskar adds that ten thousand birds die each year crashing into windows, so he invented a device that made bird calls to distract them. Ruth notes the device would keep birds from leaving Manhattan, and Oskar suggests that would increase the effectiveness of his birdseed shirt. 

Ruth knows everything about the Empire State Building because she loves it. Oskar feels that until he finds the lock for the mysterious key, he doesn’t love his dad enough. 

Mr. Black asks Ruth if he can see her again, but Ruth never leaves the building. Ruth’s husband was a door-to-door salesman and would shine a spotlight at the Empire State Building while he was on the road so Ruth could see where he was. After her husband died, Ruth came back to the building, even though she knew his light wouldn’t be there. Mr. Black promises Ruth he wouldn’t make her leave. 

Once they return to Mr. Black’s apartment, Mr. Black tells Oskar he’s done searching. He reaches out his hand for Oskar to shake. Oskar wants to shout, but instead he thanks Mr. Black.

When he finishes the story, Oskar runs over to his apartment to get the hidden phone. He plays the messages for Thomas. Thomas asks about Oskar’s dad. Oskar says he was the best person and ran the jewelry business founded by his grandpa. Thomas asks about Oskar’s grandpa, and Oskar says he doesn’t think about him. Thomas observes that Oskar’s dad sounds calm in his final message and suggests that Oskar’s dad loved Oskar and didn’t want him to worry.

Oskar wants to know how his dad died so he can stop inventing ways it might have happened. On a news site, he found an image of a man falling that might be his dad. 

Oskar notices Thomas’s tattooed palms. One reads, “Yes,” and the other, “No.” Oskar asks him why he has only yes and no and not maybe.

Thomas makes Oskar promise not to tell his grandma they met and adds that if Oskar ever needs Thomas, he should throw pebbles at his window. 

Oskar stays up late inventing. He imagines digging up his dad’s grave. The chapter ends with photographs of Thomas’s hands.

Analysis: Chapter 13

Throughout their search, Mr. Black slowly encourages Oskar to abandon his protective rules in favor of experiencing more of life. As someone who has experienced every day of the twentieth century, Mr. Black partially symbolizes the wisdom of history and the ability of age to put life into context. While Oskar relies on images and technology to find reasons to fear the world around him for his scrapbook, Mr. Black’s lived experience teaches that taking the ferry is generally a low-risk activity. The contrast between what history teaches through Mr. Black and the fears the twenty-first century obsession with dangerous images pushes demonstrates how focusing on images of danger both creates more anxiety and cheats Oskar out of new experiences. Furthermore, Mr. Black encourages Oskar to live with fear instead of trying to avoid it all together. Throughout the novel, Oskar obsessively tries to eliminate all fear, both through his inventions and by continually identifying new dangers in his Google searches. Mr. Black, on the other hand, suggests that fear can be lived with or overcome, instead of something to avoid. By living with his fear and taking the train or ferry, Oskar manages to go places and see things that he otherwise wouldn’t have.

Fo and Georgia Black offer interesting corollaries to Oskar’s worries about his family’s love because they focus on matters of love in the present. Fo’s immense collection of merchandise that he believes says, “I love you,” speaks to a general love for humanity. In a sense, “I love New York” is about the people in New York instead of just the city itself. So, Fo Black’s misreading doesn’t necessarily change the message he wants to send. Despite not speaking much English or leaving his neighborhood, Fo connects to the city and the people around him by expressing love through his collection. Georgia and her husband’s museums similarly show a deep love for what they have in the present moment. Because Georgia and her husband celebrate each other in the here and now, after one of them dies, the survivor will never doubt how loved they were. Furthermore, their knowledge of each other’s lives means they have no secrets from each other. Oskar, on the other hand, is left with questions about his dad’s death both because of the key and because his dad didn’t explicitly express his love in his last phone call. Fo and Georgia therefore underscore the importance of expressing love freely and openly on a daily basis.

Ruth’s attachment to the Empire State Building demonstrates yet another way to handle grief—this time through transferring love to places. Ruth tells Oskar that she learned all about the Empire State Building because she loves it, but when she gives her reason for why she loves it so, we realize that what she really loves is the way the building reminds her of her husband. Although her husband has died, Ruth can dedicate herself to the building instead and thereby feel close to him. When Mr. Black promises Ruth that he would never make her leave the building even if they started seeing each other, he metaphorically promises that he won’t try to make her forget her husband or diminish his importance in her life. The way Ruth feels close to her husband through the Empire State Building recalls how Oskar feels closer to his dad through the key and his quest for its lock. Although he has not explicitly drawn this connection, Oskar’s quest around New York City is similar to the Reconnaissance Expeditions his dad used to organize for him, creating a type of final scavenger hunt between father and son. 

In the aftermath of losing Mr. Black’s participation in the quest, Oskar feels alone because he has lost a guide who helped him cope with ambiguity and fear. Throughout their quest, Mr. Black has functioned as a surrogate grandfather, helping Oskar cope with the fears of the world by encouraging him to take what Oskar perceives as risks. Losing Mr. Black has brought Oskar back in touch with his fear and left him not knowing what to do, which we see clearly in the way he begins imagining his grandma being in danger when she’s not at home. Without the voice of experience and reason to guide him, Oskar’s brain runs wild at the terrible possibilities. In his conversation with Thomas, Oskar expresses not just sadness about his dad’s death but a desire for answers, an end to the not knowing. Oskar unwittingly hits on the reality of his fears when he asks Thomas how he copes with answers that are neither entirely “yes” or “no” and acknowledges that ambiguity is inevitable. Although Oskar would like a yes or no answer about his dad’s death, it is simply not possible.


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