The Shouting Box- An Invention For Oskar

What about a box? What about a dark box that you could stick your head in and scream until you didn’t have any words left. You could yell at everyone and say all the things you wanted them to know, but were unable to say to their face. Because sometimes you just need to yell, but you can’t, so you bury those shouts deep inside and let them burn. But with this box, you let it out. You scream until your lungs hurt, and no one outside can hear you. And then once your voice goes quiet, the walls glow soft colors like blue or green. And the box shouts back to you, but in a different way. It takes the bad noise you made and turns it into something beautiful, like music or the echos of radio waves that have been floating through the universe for years. Or maybe it plays you the sounds of waves cresting or the wind that blows over them. Or what if you didn’t hear much at all? What if it sounded like when you put your head underwater and everything goes still. And its quiet, but not silent. Sort of a whisper. What if these sounds reflected off the walls of the box and came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. You would be surrounded by everything that you forgot was good, and when you came out of the box, you would feel lighter than before.

This invention would help Oskar because he has a lot of pent up and unresolved anger. He often imagines lashing out at people, sometimes violently. For example, on page 146 during his performance of Hamlet, he pictures himself beating Jimmy Snyder and as he hurts him he is also hurting Ron, his Dad, his Mom, his Grandma, and Dr. Fein. However, he does no such thing. Instead, he buries his feelings and turns his anger in on himself, resorting to self harm. Earlier in the book on page 90, when Oskar is standing outside the first Black’s building, he says, “I wanted to press all the buttons and scream curse words at everybody who lived in the stupid building. I wanted to give myself bruises.” This shows how much anger he has and how he lacks an outlet for it. If Oskar had this box, it would help him vent his troubles in a safe and satisfying way so that when he would come out of the box, he could walk away with lighter boots.