Oskar and his father after their drunken quarrel

Oskar and his father after their drunken quarrel are joined by a deep, physical ease that Oskar experiences as home, yet that bond is vulnerable to the father’s drinking. Their closeness appears in ordinary shared routines and in Oskar’s trust in his father when sober. Its opposite emerges when alcohol makes the father seem like a different person: Oskar anticipates that transformation, leaves rather than face it, and finally hangs up on a call that turns from the father’s tears to anger.

A Bond Grounded in Familiarity

When Oskar arrives at his father’s home in Södersvik, the confidence he has recently gained falls away as soon as he stands in front of him. His mother has described his father as immature and unable to manage responsibility, even while acknowledging his good qualities. Oskar, however, sees the broad-armed man who welcomes him as the very image of an adult. He accepts his father’s embrace and presses close to him. The difference between his mother’s assessment and Oskar’s experience does not resolve into a simple verdict: his father can be unreliable, but Oskar’s attachment to him is immediate and profound.

The relationship is also carried by routine. On the evening of 7 November, Oskar and his father share a meal of roasted seabird and potatoes, using bread to finish what remains on their plates. His father is not an accomplished cook in general, but he has mastered three familiar dishes, and the next day’s meal is already settled: leftover food will become pytt-i-panna. Such details make care practical and recurring rather than ceremonial. At his father’s house, Oskar has a room that has remained much as it was when he was seven. He likes its unchanging quality, in contrast to the changing collection of things in his room in town. The room gives their visits a continuity of their own.

After dinner, they play tic-tac-toe over graph paper. Oskar values the closeness of sitting with his father over the thin table, heads bent toward the same page. His father does not deliberately let him win; the games have become more even as Oskar has improved. The contest therefore holds both familiarity and change: a long-running custom remains intact while Oskar is no longer the child who loses easily. Their closeness is made legible through this small, repeated activity, not through a grand declaration.

The Conversation That Does Not Happen

Oskar’s mother has asked his father to speak with him about what happened with Jonny, and Oskar himself wants to discuss it. He believes his father is distant enough from the events not to interfere. But when his father finally gathers himself to begin a serious conversation, he turns instead to the possibility of buying Oskar ice skates if the winter brings suitable ice. The offer is a form of reaching toward shared time: his father already has skates, and imagines that they might use them together. Yet it also leaves the subject Oskar expected them to face untouched. In this exchange, attention and avoidance coexist; the father offers a future activity, while the difficult present remains unspoken.

The evening’s domestic calm makes the later rupture more painful. Oskar is in his room while his father and Janne talk loudly in the living room with music playing. Oskar cannot make out their words, but knows the song. He is not surprised by what he expects to follow. Once the bottle is empty and Janne has gone, he thinks, his father will pace, then come to his room and ask to talk. Oskar anticipates declarations of love, a need for reassurance that Oskar loves him in return, and a rambling account of grievances that may turn into anger. His expectation is specific, drawn from a pattern he recognizes, rather than a vague fear of conflict.

Drinking and the Father’s Double Image

Oskar distinguishes sharply between the father he knows sober and the person who appears when his father drinks. He expects no physical violence, but the prospect of the encounter still frightens him. In his understanding, the father’s eyes can seem to contain someone wholly unlike the man who welcomed him and shared a meal with him. Oskar gives this change a werewolf image: alcohol, as he imagines it, brings another creature out of his father. The image helps him make sense of a relationship in which love and fear are not separate chapters but competing experiences of the same person.

That metaphor does not cancel Oskar’s affection or turn his father into a literal monster. Rather, it marks the distance between the two versions of his father as Oskar experiences them. The sober father is associated with familiarity, shared games, and the adult Oskar can lean into. The drinking father is sentimental, needy, and capable of becoming angry; Oskar expects to be drawn into managing that emotional scene. His fear is intensified by the contrast: he knows the tenderness is real, but cannot rely on it to remain available once drinking has altered the encounter.

Before leaving, Oskar puts Eli’s notes in his wallet, dresses, and slips out without announcing his departure. In the hall he notices his childhood rubber boots beside his father’s much larger boots. The old pair has been kept there for as long as Oskar can remember, despite there being no one who can wear them. He pauses over that unexplained act of keeping them, then leaves with the boots he has been carrying. The moment places the relationship’s history in the hallway: an object from Oskar’s early childhood remains in his father’s house even as Oskar chooses to leave it.

Departure and the Failed Repair

Walking toward the store and the road beyond it, Oskar thinks of families sitting safely in lit houses and children sleeping without being woken for difficult conversations. He blames his father for the situation and imagines the consequences of his disappearance: his father will notice, search for him, and probably call Oskar’s mother. He plans to reach Norrtälje, use a pay phone to say he has gone back to Stockholm, and avoid telling his mother what happened. Leaving is both an immediate escape from the anticipated drinking episode and a break in the ordinary arrangement of the visit.

When Oskar does call his father from Norrtälje, his father cries. Oskar has heard him cry only once before, and for a moment the sound nearly persuades him to give in. The call briefly exposes the father’s vulnerability and the strength of Oskar’s pull toward him. But the father then becomes worked up and yells that he must be allowed to live his own life and do as he pleases in his own home. Oskar hangs up. The emotional reversal matters: the tears offer a possible route back to connection, but anger closes it before the two can make their way toward the conversation about Jonny or the drinking that Oskar had hoped to avoid.

The episode therefore ends not with proof that Oskar has stopped loving his father, but with love unable to make the visit feel safe. Earlier, Oskar’s father’s embrace had made Oskar’s recent sense of growing up fall away; during the departure, his father’s tears nearly draw him back. Between those moments lies the effect of alcohol on their bond: Oskar can cherish his father and still choose distance from the person he becomes when drinking. The call leaves that conflict unresolved, with Oskar hanging up rather than accepting either the father’s appeal or his anger.