Early winter

Early winter brings the novel’s weather into the lives of its characters: snow melts on Oskar’s bare legs, cold complicates Morgan’s daily routine, and the prospect of ice awakens Fernando Avila’s anticipation of skating alone at night. The season is both immediate discomfort and a landscape of possibility.

Snow and the Arrival of Cold

During gym class, snow begins to fall. After discovering that his pants are missing, Oskar walks home in gym shorts, the chill nipping his legs as flakes land and melt on them. He stops beneath Eli’s window; the blinds are drawn and there is no movement inside. Snow settles on his upturned face, and he catches flakes on his tongue, finding that they taste good. The scene joins an exposed, uncomfortable walk to a brief moment of sensory pleasure, while Eli remains unseen behind the closed blinds.

On Thursday, 5 November, Morgan’s cold is more sustained and practical. A cold spell arrived around the time the submarine foundered and had worsened during the previous week. His beloved cowboy boots have a hole in one sole, and they cannot accommodate thick socks. Though he could buy Chinese takeout, he would rather endure the cold; he has also gone to the junkyard hoping to find work and earn a little money, but business is poor. Early winter is thus registered not only as weather but as a pressure on everyday resources and choices.

Ice and the Promise of Skating

For Fernando Avila, the same early winter carries the promise of a long-awaited return to skating. He enjoys the Swedish winters, has taken part in the Vasa Race for ten consecutive years, and, when the outer archipelago freezes solid, drives to Graddo Island on weekends to skate as far toward Soderarm as the ice permits. The waters have not frozen for three years, but this early winter gives him hope that they may do so again.

Avila prefers the ice at night, when he can skate alone rather than among the crowds he associates with the Vasa Race. The rhythmic scrape of his blades, moonlight giving the ice a leaden gleam, stars overhead, and cold wind on his face make the open landscape feel immense to him. Early winter therefore holds two contrasting registers: bodily exposure and scarcity in Oskar’s and Morgan’s scenes, and, for Avila, the possibility of solitude and expansiveness on the ice.