Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
With all due respect to the San Francisco Examiner and the Washington Post, we here at Shmoop acknowledge the New York Times as the true intellectual king of the newspaper world. It's got the most educated readers and most erudite writers. (If you read the Times, you'd know what that word meant.) As such, the paper represents Oskar's intellectual precocity. (Ditto.) Not many nine-year-olds have the Times read to them before bed. And not just reading it, but looking for mistakes? Fuhgeddaboutit.