Chapter 3

     In this chapter, Oskar is again the narrator.  I have noticed some new things about Oskar during this chapter, they are listed below:

- Oskar cares deeply for his mother but sometimes he does not always express it.
          * For example, in the beginning of the chapter he describes the bracelet he made for his mother.  It is extremely intricate and detailed and each bead means something.  The sky blue beads = silence, the maroon beads = breaks between letters, violet = breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string = the long and short beeps.  This all adds up to a message in Morse Code.  The message it says is Oskar's dad's last message before he died. 
          * An example of how he cares for his mother is the fact, on page 68, where he deceives her a little bit.  Oskar is the one who comes home and hears the messages that his dad leaves before he dies.  Oskar cares for his mother, and therefore does not want her to have to hear the messages, so he goes out on the day his father dies and buys and identical answering machine and records the answering message and takes and hides the one with the messages on it in his room.  This is a real act of kindness and love on his part. 
          * However, Oskar is just a child so he feels the need to communicate the messages to his mother so he makes her jewelery, like the bracelet above, to communicate the messages to her.

- Oskar is also very detail oriented and focused, as explained by the bracelet he made, described above.

- He is very blunt and straight forward. However, this does not, in any means, mean that he does not have feelings. 
          * He is deeply sad about his father dying and mad at his mother for all the time she spends with her "friend" Ron.  One day, he asked her, "True or false: you are in love with Ron" (page 35).  This is a blunt statement but he needed to know because he thinks that it, "wasn't fair to Dad, and it wasn't fair to me" (page 35).  I can understand his feelings and where he is coming from.  However, he tells us as the readers that he buried it all inside, which leads to my next observation.

- Oskar self harms by giving himself bruises. 
          * There are a few times throughout this chapter where he does this. He seems to do it after he does something that he thinks that he shouldn't, such as, on page 37, breaking a vase on accident.  He also gave himself a bruise on page 41, when he was made at himself for not realizing that "Black" on the envelope might be a last name (explained later).  He continues to give himself bruises throughout the chapter for different things but they all seem to lead to the the question: Does he blame himself for his dad's death? - hopefully, more considerations and information on that in the chapters to come.

As for the overall plot for this chapter, Oskar goes into his fathers closet for the first time since his father's death (a year before).  He looks around and sees a vase on the top shelf and decides to take it down, but it falls and breaks.  Inside the vase is a small envelope with a key inside.  The envelope says, "Black" on it in small red handwriting.  The chapter is about his adventure to find out what lock the key fits and what, "Black" means on the envelope.  He ends up finding out, from a store manager, that "Black" is a last name.  He also notices that in the store, his father's name is written on the notepads where people write to test pens - the weird thing though is that the pads were changed after his father died...

Overall, a very intriguing chapter and I look forward to learning more.

Olivia