images in book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I am very interested in the images in this novel. When I read page forty-four, I did not really understand the dialogue between the Oskar and the woman. The images after that page well explained what they were talking about and why he felt it was strange to write the word black in red pen. And this is important to the following text. So I think those images are very necessary in the text.

What I am interested in is that : Do Americans like to write their names when they test a pen? Then woman makes Oskar look at the paper filled with first names and family names and colors’ name. People who buy pens from her write those names on the paper to test pens. In my country, people seldom write their names on the test paper. Some one will recognize them from their names. Although it doesn’t matter whether others know where they buy pens, they still feel kind of upset.

Why Americans and Chinese are different at this point? I guess that because American names are not as many as Chinese. People cannot recognize others just by their names. Almost in my each class there are two or more students with the same first name.