Thursday, April 26, 2012

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely loud and incredibly close presents many strategies of people dealing with tragedy or how they fail to deal with tragedy on a personal scale. Oskar’s search for the lock shows his desire to deal with his father’s death by finding purpose/ tasks. The grandfather’s inability to get over Anna’s death causes him to stop talking. However, they all try to deal successfully and unsuccessfully with tragedy in different ways.
            One of the communal strategies of coping is the use of story and recoding to deal with loss. There are countless examples of this. The interview Oskar plays in class is an example, however Oskar cannot connect emotionally with the story. The grandmother too attempts to record her story on the typewriter, however her attempt fails. Does this mean she doesn’t move on, if she fails to record the story? The father also tells a story of loss in the chapter “The Sixth Borough” This story is a narrative of loss too.
            The grandfather too, tries to record to deal with loss. The letters of his narration are written as a record of the traumatic events in the past. He also writes in his books to communicate, as well as writes all over the walls. Something about experiences compels the characters to record the traumatic things that happen to them often in ways spoken words cannot encompass. The grandmother’s section of narration also supports this, the sections are always titles “My Feelings” but they are more a string of things that happened to her. Oskar too keeps his book of “Things that happened to me.”
            While they record their tragedies, they still have difficulty speaking about them. Oskar’s conversations with Dr. Fein when he asks Oskar what emotions he is feeling Oskar replies, “All of them” (Foer 201).  Throughout the novel Oskar and his mother have difficulty communicating about the father. For example in Heavy Boots Heavier Boots when Oskar tells his mother he wishes it had been her instead who died. They cannot connect their personal tragedies.
            The importance of the recoding of the story to deal with loss I think is that it is something that can be done on the personal lever (e.g. the grandmother writes her story by herself in the other room, the grandfather writes the letters while traveling alone, Oskar makes his book “Stuff that Happened to me” alone however the story also begs to be shared or is presumed that at some point it will be shared. This happens when Oskar plays the interview for his class, or the father tells Oskar the story of “The Sixth Burrow”.

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