Wednesday, April 25, 2012

One Life to Live


Thinking through Jonathan Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I kept hearing the same saying, “Live like you’re dying” ring through my head. Yet, as I thought more and more about it, it was more learning to live through the grief of dying and living each day to the fullest instead of eventually writing back on life and regretting moments that could have been written differently. Through the use of older generations portrayed as wise individuals, both Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather act as lessons for younger generations to appreciate life with all its downfalls and upsurges. Foer also uses these generations to link the tragedy of September 11, 2001 to question the inevitability of death or waking up at an old age full of regrets. Within this search, Foer ultimately argues that the obscurity of meaning may indeed help younger generations learn from past generations and understand that change is part of life’s continuing journey.
Writing seems to be an intricate part in the novel, linking the older generations with the technologically advanced younger generation when discussing wisdom learned from the past. When writing a letter to her grandson, Oskar’s grandmother reveals: “I wish I could be a girl again, with the chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently” (79). Analyzing her life in a letter to her grandson, she begins to think about the life she lived and the moments she could have enjoyed or not cared as much about. Like any adult, there are moments to be thought back about and wished had been lived differently as a way of protection or an open door that was missed. In a later letter she directly states an abstraction of regret that can be universally assumed for all, “I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently” (185). Clearly noted Oskar’s grandmother comes right out and tells him “I regret.” Yet what she regrets is an element she cannot change, the nature of living. In a way she is telling Oskar how to experience his life for the future. Not to let the little things get in his way, and enjoy the moments of his life since he spends the majority of his life grieving for his father.
Like his grandmother, Oskar’s grandfather, Thomas, laments on the life he has lived and the people he walked out on. However, he regrets not being able to live, but the failures he had done to an extend of deep sorrowful regret bottled inside, “I sit on the side with a coffee and write in my daybook, I examine the flight schedules that I’ve already memorized, I observe, I write, I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember” (109). His tactics to forget his past involve him working to find things to occupy his mind. Through his dealings with hardship, he lets the regrets of his earlier life overtake his emotional being so he has only to deal with the past instead of looking forward to the future. Which is the exact opposite of what Oskar’s grandmother urges her grandson not to do. Also using letters, Thomas writes to his own son, Oskar’s father, with a lingering sense of regret for his own actions that led him away from the son he never knew: “Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future” (281).  It is within a letter to his unborn son, that he goes in depth into his emotions. These emotions make him turn back onto his life and regret the importance and hope he had once put on the future only to eventually be let down with life’s pitfalls. He notes this as his “greatest regret” highlighting his belief in what could have been and what eventually resulted. Yet it is here that Foer argues it is not the hope in future that lets people down, it is the actions they take in avoidance to what they hope will not happen in the future which ultimately leads to one’s own unhappiness.




1 comment:

  1. you can certainly extend this into a paper if you like - i think that you might clarify the central argument. what cultural context produces this situation of hopelessness? what about 21st century america prevents us from living "like we're dying"?

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