Telepathy and telekinesis

Telepathy and telekinesis are possibilities Oskar entertains as he tries to explain a murder and test whether his own thoughts can act upon the world. The narrative gives these ideas force through his uncertainty and repeated experiments, not through any proof that such powers exist: he wonders whether his game could have caused the killing, tries to move a Rubik’s Cube by concentration, and considers using a tree as a link to a schoolmate. Each attempt leaves the question unresolved, making the concept a measure of his imagination and fear as much as a supernatural hypothesis.

A theory formed under uncertainty

Oskar’s first explicit speculation is causal. After considering what might happen if he were caught with a knife, he asks himself whether his game could somehow have caused the murder. He does not accept the possibility outright, but cannot dismiss it. Books he has read contain ideas about a person’s thoughts in one place producing an action somewhere else; telekinesis and voodoo become names for the gap between an intention and an event that seems to answer it.

The uncertainty is not abstract for him. He considers where and how the murder took place, and whether its method could mean that he possesses a frightening power. He also wonders whether the connection might lie not in his own body but in a tree he has cut. In this early formulation, the tree could be a medium through which what he does travels further. Oskar is trying to build a causal explanation out of a coincidence he cannot understand, while recognizing that he has not established that any such link exists.

The concept therefore remains a set of questions rather than a settled account of the murder. Oskar does not know whether his actions, thoughts, or the tree could have mattered. His reasoning moves between a familiar explanation drawn from books and a much more personal suspicion about his own agency. The distance between imagining a power and proving one is central: he can conceive of an influence that reaches beyond him, but has no reliable way to distinguish that influence from coincidence.

The Cube as a test

Oskar’s interest becomes an experiment when he sits by the sandbox and studies his Rubik’s Cube. Two sides are complete, while one small piece on a third remains out of place. He has used an article from Expressen to learn the turns needed to solve the first two sides, but cannot work out how to finish the puzzle without undoing them. The difficulty gives him a concrete object on which to focus his wish for an ability beyond ordinary reasoning.

He presses the Cube to his forehead as though he might reach into its interior, then sets it on a corner of the sandbox half a meter away and stares at it. He thinks of telekinesis and of experiments in the United States involving people said to have unusual perception. The wish that he might possess such an ability is followed by a tentative thought that perhaps he does. Yet the object does not move. Oskar puts it back in his pocket and leaves the experiment without a result.

That failure matters to the concept’s limits. The Cube gives Oskar a visible, modest test, but his desire to move it is not evidence that he can. His attention shifts from trying to solve the puzzle through turns to trying to alter it through thought; neither his concentration nor the intensity of his wish supplies the missing solution. The episode leaves supernatural ability possible within his imagination, but unconfirmed in the events described.

The tree and the imagined link

Oskar’s other experiment is tied to his anger at Tomas Ahlstedt. After a school incident in which Tomas tries to pull out his chair, Oskar plans to go into the forest with his knife and work on the tree while concentrating on Tomas. He imagines the act as a more controlled attempt than the previous day’s: rather than getting carried away, he intends to cut the tree calmly and methodically. In his theory, the tree might transmit an action directed at it to the person occupying his thoughts.

He postpones the attempt because the real murderer has not yet been caught. That hesitation exposes a tension inside the experiment: Oskar wants to test whether his imagined power can affect Tomas, but the unresolved murder makes the test seem dangerous or entangled with something beyond his control. He also recognizes that if the murder was committed by an ordinary killer, the experiment would have no explanatory value. The tree is thus not merely a target; it is the proposed link between his private intention and an external event, a link he is not prepared to trust.

Later, the tree returns as the first association in Oskar’s mind, and he decides he will stab it—not because he truly believes the theory, but because perhaps concentration might make something happen. He imagines an attack on Tomas in his absence, then draws back from the fantasy with the acknowledgment that events would not literally work in the way he has pictured. That qualification does not erase the thought. It marks the boundary he can still state between an imagined scene and a real consequence, even as he continues to entertain the possibility of a connection.

Narrative role and limits

Across these episodes, telepathy and telekinesis name Oskar’s effort to make thought consequential. The Cube, the tree, and his imagined focus on Tomas give the idea separate forms: a test of movement, a theory of transmission, and a fantasy of acting against someone without being physically present. The recurring question is not simply whether a supernatural ability exists, but whether Oskar’s thoughts can cross the distance between what he imagines and what happens.

The narrative supplies no confirmation that they can. Oskar’s experiments fail to move the Cube, he postpones the tree experiment, and his own reflection qualifies the imagined violence as something that would not literally happen in that manner. The unresolved space between possibility and proof keeps the concept active without turning it into a demonstrated power. It also links his fascination with the murder to his wish to retaliate against Tomas: both invite him to imagine hidden forces, while neither his speculation nor his fantasies establish that he can command them.