Well, I have to say that I was surprised at how much I absolutely loved this book. Not only was it my favorite book that we have read in the class, but I would go so far as to say that it has probably become my favorite book of all time. Unfortunately, however, I am now completely obsessed with finding out the meaning of certain codes in the book, such as the sequences of numbers on pages 269-271. I attempted to translate it by decoding the numbers on the telephone and matching the numbers up with their appropriate letters, but I was only able to translate a few sentences, such as “Help!” “This is not a joke” “Is it really you?” and “My name is”. This is extremely frustrating to me (look, I’m already beginning to talk like Oskar!), because I feel like it would be just plain cruel for Foer to include this sequence of numbers if they did not have a specific meaning. He must know that there are going to be people out there, such as myself, that are going to take the time to attempt to crack the code, so that would just be mean on his part!
Another part of this novel that interested me was the pictures. It seemed to me that most of them had a very clear meaning, but for some of them the meaning was more ambiguous. For example, the picture on pages 60 and 61, in which there is a large white rectangle in the middle of Manhattan, was confusing to me at first. But as I read on I realized that it related to the story that Oskar’s father told him about the Sixth Borough, in which Central Park was literally relocated so that it could be saved, but it was not originally located where it is located today. I enjoyed that many of these “picture mysteries” were able to be solved by reading the novel, such as the “Thomas Schell” signature that Oskar found throughout the art store, which actually turned out to be his grandfather searching for sculpting clay. I thought that maybe I noticed a pattern with the pictures of doorknobs, because there are three in particular that caught my eye. The first one does not have any lock or keyhole, the second one has a lock on it but no keyhole, and the third had just a keyhole. I thought that maybe this could signify something that was going on in the story, but maybe I’m reading too much into it, as I have not found anything too concrete yet.
As for Oskar, I completely fell in love with him as a character. He is by far the most interesting, hilarious, emotional, adorable…well, the list could go on…character I have ever come across in a book. I don’t know exactly what it is about him, because there are so many things, but I can’t believe I enjoyed this character so much. Just his language, such as his phrases, “Jose!” for “no way” and “What the?” are so funny and clever to me, that it just makes me laugh out loud to imagine a 9-year-old boy speaking the way he does. I can just imagine him, dressed as a little old man, and intellectually stimulating those who are far older than him. I thought that Foer did a fantastic job of making Oskar lovable as well as interesting.
As for the ending, I must say that I was disappointed for two reasons. The first being that the book was over. I literally have never enjoyed reading a book so much, and I was sad that I had to stop. The second reason was that I was so sad that the key did not have anything to do with Oskar’s search for his father. I was literally heart broken. We get so invested in Oskar’s character and we are so familiarized with how strongly he feels about this key, that finding out that the key has no real significance in this father’s death was devastating. I could only imagine how awful Oskar felt. However, I do think that his reaction was such that made us realize that he did learn a great deal of things throughout this journey. It is not as though this journey was meaningless or worthless, because he did manage to find out a great deal about life. For example, he learns much about his mother when he realizes that she was responsible for so many people knowing his name or being prepared for him, which teaches him that his mother cares a lot more than he thought, since he thought it was almost insulting that she was letting him go out at all hours of the night by himself. In the end, like I said, the journey had great meaning and was beneficial for Oskar in many ways, but I was still disappointed that he did not find exactly what he was looking for: the way his father died.