“…I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t matter if I existed at all.” (86)
Oscar talks about how he feels insignificant to thw world and what he can do to change the future.
"" Because it means you're biographically significant." " And why is that good!" " I want to be significant."" (159) Oskar wants to be know as someone. He questions who his father was in this passage.
"I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?" (145)
"When the walls collapsed, my fingerprints collapsed." (226)
This quotation is from a chapter when Oskar's Grandma is remembering the moment when she knew Oskar's dad died. The walls she is referring to are the walls of her old house in Dresden. In essence, I think she is saying that her identity was connected to the house and the bombing destroyed them both, leaving her as an empty shell. That reminds me of the insignificance of people, how her identity was destroyed and no one seemed to care or realize.
"My other rules were that I wouldn't be sexist again, or racist, or ageist, or homophobic, or overly wimpy, or discriminatory to handicapped people or mental retards." (87)
"'Which problem?' 'The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.' He said, 'Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it on millimeter?' [...] 'I changed the course of human history!' 'That's right.' 'I changed the universe!' 'You did.'" (86)
"He asked what was wrong. 'It's just that why would you have one for him and not one for my dad?' 'What do you mean!' 'It isn't fair.' 'What isn't fair!' 'My dad was good. Mohammed Atta was evil.' 'So!' 'So my dad deserves to be in there.'"
This quote shows Oskar feeling that his dad, because he is a good person, should be in there; and because he's not, he feels like his dad is insignificant. This links to significance. I think that Oskar has the wrong view here. the significance of people isn't determined by their importance seen from the world. But someone's significance is determined by how important they are to the people they are close to.