Bullying and revenge

Bullying and revenge take shape as a sequence of bodily coercion and counterviolence: Jonny and Tomas force Oskar toward an oncoming train, he later sets fire to their desks, and another assault at the school pool makes survival itself the immediate stake. These episodes connect revenge to humiliation and terror without making the violence symmetrical: Oskar’s act targets school property, while his attackers threaten his life and bodily integrity.

Coercion and the Threat on the Tracks

At the station, Oskar’s attempt to leave is stopped by Tomas, who hooks his leg and brings him down onto the platform; Jonny sits on his back. The assault proceeds through physical restraint rather than argument. The boys pull Oskar upright, twist his arms behind him, and force him toward the platform edge. He first tries to make himself endure it, tensing his face and stomach and wishing for it to be over quickly. Only when he understands what they intend does he struggle.

The approaching train turns their hold into an immediate threat of death. Oskar is led to the white line, his upper body forced out over the tracks as wind from the tunnel stirs his hair and the rails begin to hum. Jonny tells him, “You’re going to die now, you understand.” The cold light of the train appears as Oskar sees it coming out of the tunnel. The scene makes bullying more than a contest of strength: the attackers use the station’s edge and an approaching train to make Oskar’s vulnerability physically consequential. These supplied moments establish the danger and threat, not the outcome of the confrontation.

Revenge Through Fire

Later, Oskar enters the school at night through a side door left unlocked because evening classes are taking place. The familiar classroom looks unreal in the dark. Among the desks, he chooses Jonny’s and Tomas’ as targets: he sprays T-Rod onto both, but pauses at Micke’s desk and decides not to touch it. That distinction matters. The act is selective, directed at the two boys whose desks he prepares, rather than an indiscriminate attack on the room.

Oskar gathers his belongings before lighting the desks. He takes his copy of Firestarter, an exercise book containing a story he likes, and his favorite pen, then enjoys the classroom’s quiet for a moment. When he returns to Jonny’s desk for the matches, he equips each desk with a rough-hewn wooden ruler to keep its lid propped open; otherwise, the fire would be smothered when the lid fell shut. He imagines the open desks as hungry prehistoric animals, dragons, and drops a lit match. The scene ends with the fire catching in a sudden “WHOOSH.” The deliberate preparation contrasts with the platform attack: Oskar now chooses the time, place, and objects involved, but the revenge shown is the burning of the two desks, not a physical attack on Jonny or Tomas.

The Pool and the Body Underwater

At the school pool, the balance of power again belongs to the boys holding Oskar. Jonny has a grip on his scalp; after Oskar coughs up water, Jimmy clinks a blade against the tiled edge and describes the ordeal as a competition. He offers an apparent choice: Oskar must stay underwater for five minutes or, when he surfaces, Jimmy will take out one of his eyes. The promised alternative is a small mark on his cheek. The rules turn a sustained assault into a cruel game whose terms the victim cannot control.

Oskar is given almost no time to breathe before his head is pushed underwater. With his foothold gone, his lower body floats up; his scalp burns where torn skin meets chlorinated water. He cannot find anything to grip. Bubbles escape as he thrashes, and his heart beats with a force that the narration compares to a hand against glass. When water enters his nose, a strange calm begins to spread, but his heart keeps insisting on life and he struggles again. The thought that follows—“Better this. Than an eye.”—registers the terrible narrowing of his choices, not consent to the punishment. The excerpt leaves the immediate struggle unresolved.

Asymmetry, Agency, and Consequence

Together, the episodes give the concept its shape through contrasts in agency and consequence. At the station, Jonny and Tomas restrain Oskar and direct him toward danger; in the classroom, Oskar acts alone and uses the desks belonging to Jonny and Tomas as the objects of retaliation. At the pool, the boys again control his movement and breath, while Oskar’s desperate effort is reduced to trying to find a hold in empty water. Revenge briefly lets him choose an action, but it does not erase the vulnerability that the other scenes make palpable.

The narrative also distinguishes between the targets and the means. Oskar does not spray Micke’s desk, though he prepares Jonny’s and Tomas’ for burning; the pool scene, by contrast, makes the collective cruelty of the bullies visible through the blade, the threatened loss of an eye, and the enforced submersion. The fire’s hungry-dragon image gives Oskar’s retaliation an imaginative charge, while the water scene stays close to the body’s panic and will to live. In this pattern, revenge is neither a clean restoration of justice nor a simple repetition of the original attack. It is a limited act of counter-agency set against repeated, much more direct threats to Oskar’s life and body.