Liar & Spy

“While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau’s mouth, I’m looking at the false tongue poster and I’m kind of wishing it wasn’t wrong. There’s something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there’s a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be.”

Georges longs for things to make sense because his life feels so out of control to him. From his family’s move to the apartment to his mother’s prolonged illness and the bullying at school, he is entirely overwhelmed by the grim realities that face him in his day-to-day life. His desire for “a right place for everything” reflects his desire to find some measure of order amongst the chaos.

“Mom’s always telling me to smile and hoping I’ll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying. But I know she’s extra-sensitive about me ever since she and Dad made their big announcement that we had to sell our house. She even recorded a bunch of America’s Funniest Home Videos for me to watch: my smile therapy.”

Georges’s mother’s emphasis on a positive outlook is seen here, along with her emphasis on the big picture in life. Georges knows that his parents are worried about how he is handling all the changes in their lives, and he is sensitive to their feelings as well. This quote also introduces America’s Funniest Home Videos, a comforting resource that Georges will continue to turn to as things in his life grow more difficult.

“I want to tell him what I know, which is that the fate of the world doesn’t hang on whether a bunch of seventh graders win a game of volleyball in some really old school in Brooklyn that smells like a hundred years of lunch.”

Georges’s perspective here reflects his ability to see what his mother calls “the big picture”—the things that really matter. It shows his maturity, but it also reveals his numbness and the difficulty he has in caring about “the little things,” the day-to-day experiences that make up his life.