What was a pretty blue vase doing way up there? i couldn’t reach it, obviously, so i moved over the chair with the tuxedo still on it, and then i went to my room to get the collected shakespeare set that grandma bought for me when she found out that i was going to be yorick, and i brought those over, four tragedies at a time, until i had a stack that was tall enough.

how does the narration shape oskar’s characterization in this excerpt?
his curiosity renders him extremely childish.
his literary references render him mature for his age.
his dramatic experience suggests great talent.
his plan for retrieving the case suggests great ingenuity.

His literary references render him mature for his age.

Explanation:

The excerpt comes from the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and is said by Oskar, a nine-year-old boy, who is also the narrator and protagonist of the story. For a boy of his age, it is not common to have the Collected Shakespeare set and know about their characters (like Yorick, a character of the play Hamlet), therefore these literary references render help portray him as someone intelligent and mature for his age.

overnment is strong when they have the ability to persuade those they govern to believe government has enough power to force them or should be forcing them to do government’s will.

when enough of the citizenry do not believe government can force them or should force them to do its bidding, government has lost or will lose its strength and power to coerce.

when enough of the citizenry do believe government can force or should force them to do its bidding, they become passive at the least or actively pro-government and repeat government’s own rhetoric to pass on what they have been persuaded by government’s propaganda.

a true majority isn’t always needed to govern or to stop government. many times all that is needed is a strong minority. if a determined 30% of the population rises up against government in a concerted effort to bring it down, this size minority usually will succeed as long as those actively opposing the minority are less in force than the minority. so if 41% of the population sits at home watching tv rooting for one side or the other, they don’t matter. it’s the active parties who make a difference.