Kimmie Cortez 12 MM Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I am here to discuss how Safran-Foer uses the characters in the novel to show the relationship between the different ways people experience emotional trauma and taciturnity.

Why do beautiful songs make you sad? Because they arent true. Never? Nothing is beautiful and true. Nothing is beautiful and true captures the essence of the novel and its central theme emotional trauma. Safran-Foer explores the idea of emotional trauma, showing its different facets through the characters and instances he creates. This novel revolves around the idea of loss and healing, and the process an individual goes through to reach acceptance.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close introduces a society fresh from trauma; and a nine-year-old boy that lands right in the center of it. Oskar Schells story begins in New York following the September 11 attacks, and tracks him through an adventure in every part of the city as he tries to discover the owner of a mysterious key he believes his father left him before he perished in the World Trade Center. Intertwined with his story is that of his Grandparents, as his Grandfather, Thomas, recalls his own experiences in the Dresden bombing during the second World War, whilst his Grandmother speaks about her life and her relationship with Thomas.

These three characters in the novel, Oskar, his Grandfather, and his Grandmother, all experience trauma in the form of death, a loved one lost in a massive and tragic event. Oskar loses his father, his Grandfather loses the love of his life, and his Grandmother loses her sister. While it is almost certain that the presence and occurrence of a traumatic event will change the way people live their lives, no two people deal with trauma in the exact same way. And whilst each character in the novel has his or her own quirks, Foer evidently describes the two most commonly and generally known ways of grieving. We can look at the characters and their actions after their specific traumatic experience, and divide them into two umbrella sets -distraction and immersion.

The way that Oskar deals with his fathers death can be categorized into distraction, which means that he distracts himself from facing the realities of the present by shifting his focus on something else entirely. Whilst he is aware of his heavy boots, he does not have the ability to properly deal with its effects on his life. Oskar puts all of his time and effort into completing an activity, choosing to continue what he believes is a last Reconnaissance Expedition. This illustrates a refusal to acknowledge the present as he turns his focus away from the death of his father by merely preserving the image he had of their relationship when he was still alive. This in turn leads to Oskar having fits of self-inflicted physical harm in where violence is one of the only ways he is able to let out his emotions. By not facing his fathers death headon, he also stands to lose the will to grow up, as well as the ability to move on, as evidenced when he asks for coffee instead of tea because it stunts his growth and he is afraid of death.

Thomas Schell, Oskars grandfather, deals with his loss in a completely opposite manner. As supposed to Oskar, the grandfather completely immerses himself in the grief he experiences, almost becoming a personification of it. He has thought (himself) out of happiness one million times, but never once into it, and that he can sometimes hear (his) bones straining under the weight of all the lives (hes) not living. The death of Anna, as well as that of his unborn child, is so incomprehensible that it has an overwhelming impact on his life, which is illustrated in his inability to let go of the past and how he continually relives it. By immersing himself in the events in Dresden, his constant dwelling on the past, of losing something (he) loves ruins any chance of him moving forwards so he refuses to love anything. His mind is stuck in the past which makes him unable to live in the present.

The Grandmothers form of grieving is less obvious at the beginning of the novel. She seems to have coped with the death of Anna better than Thomas has. Despite being left by her husband in addition to all the trauma she has gone through, she was able to make a life for her and her son. However, as the novel unfolds, it becomes obvious that Mrs. Schell is simply putting up a faade in order to try and move on with her life. She believes that there is nothing wrong with compromising, even if you are compromising everything, and that you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. In this sense, her form of grieving is

much like Oskars, except she ignores the circumstances in order to protect the people around her, or in order to do what she believes they want.

Through the novel, Safran-Foer not only shows the different ways people experience grief, but he also focuses on taciturnity, which is a common thread in the novel that remains constant even through the different coping methods. Safran-Foer uses these methods of grieving to reinforce the idea of loss of language as a simultaneous occurrence in relation to mourning. Each of these three characters experience the loss of language in some shape or form, in conjunction with their grief.

Oskar avoids talking to other people about his emotions. He finds no sense in speaking to a therapist as he didnt understand why (he) needed help, even being unapproachable by saying things like actually, Im not your buddy. His most profound ideas towards everything that is happening around him are kept inside his head and not fully expressed to others. His decision to go on the quest to find what the key opens also shows him turning to action for an attempt at healing instead of talking through his emotions with the people close to him that want to listen, like his mother.

The Grandfathers complete loss of speech is due to his being entirely consumed by his grief, and this point is stressed when you realize he has almost chosen to be unable to talk. He often writes about how he wishes things were different, how he could unravel the scarf of (his) silence and start again. Safran-Foer shows just how extreme grief can become through its ability to completely overcome an individual, causing someone to lose even a skill that they have learned since they were a child.

The Grandmothers loss of language is shown specifically through her description of her life. She leaves the pages of her life completely blank, with empty space in places where memories should have filled. She spent (her) life learning to feel less and questions if that is just growing old or something worse. This relates to the Grandmothers grief, showing how her entire life has been an empty shell, only held together by the face she tries to put on. She constantly shoulders all the pain and suffering for what she believes would benefit others, seen where she leaves her husband and says there were some things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them and let them hurt me.

Through Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Safran-Foer illustrates the many facets of grief through showing its effects on the lives of individuals. He also explores the concept of taciturnity, and its occurrence in relation to grief. The novel shows that while the process of recovery differs with each individual, emotional trauma, grief, and taciturnity do occur hand in hand, and that they play a part in the way a person deals with and ultimately recovers from or succumbs to- the effects of a traumatic event.