Critical Analysis of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

You never really know the last time you will see someone. Especially the ones you love most and are close to. You cannot put a date or time on the day someone dies. Who knows when your last goodbye will be. In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Johnathan Foer focuses on the trauma of families affected by the deaths of 9/11, and the Dresden Bombing. In particular, Oskar Schell, who is nine years old in the book, is grieving the death of his father, Thomas Schell Jr., who died during that tragic day. He finds a lock his father has left behind has the word “black” written on it, and is determined to find what it’s leads to.The book varies on the range of human emotion that comes into play, and presents the pattern of what the psychological lens, and new criticism lens follow.

“Every time I left the apartment to go searching for the lock, I became a little lighter, because I was getting closer to dad. But I also became a little heavier, because I was getting farther from mom” (Foer 52). In Oskar’s expeditious search, he temporarily distracts himself from the harsh reality; His father is never coming home. The two of them shared an extremely cozy relationship portrayed by a common love for comprehending riddles. He thought of his father as his closest companion, so he dealt with the misfortune especially hard. Consequently, Oskar began to invent new ways of his father’s cause of death. His pain is shown by a proportion of self inflicted pain. He often refers to himself as having heavy boots. During bad times, his boots get heavier. When he does things that he enjoys, like sitting in his dad's closet, his boots get lighter. The boots symbolizes his depression following the death of his father. The fact that Oskar refers to these feelings as 'boots,' exemplifies Oskar's unwillingness to deal head-on with his emotions. At the end, Oskar comes to peace with the death of his father.

Oskar's mom, Linda, was also loving and supportive of her child in the best way she could because she was also grieving the death of her husband. t the point when she initially understood that Oskar was planning to go on his adventure to discover the lock, his mom said, “I went into your room and I tried to think like you did. I wanted to understand” ( Foer 168). Linda sufferers through her husband’s death in silence. Her hidden emotions and weeping cries portrayed as an act of negligence to Oskar. He starts feeling distance and tells her things she regrets. “If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you” ( Foer 171). The author gratingly disposed of his words portraying Oskar as a confused and distraught child.

In the novel, the author utilizes the symbolism of deliberately including blank pages. Foer also included a few sections of deliberate compacted writings. These strategies were used by the writer as visual symbolism to convey meaning and relation to the characters. Foer builds up an association among content and pictures with the utilization of extra-printed material. In the book, Foer sets a solid connection among writings and pictures and uses the methods to make an effectively moving story. These writings and pictures connect to demonstrate that these two highlights can exist agreeably together in works of writing. The setting of the story is completely perused from the earliest starting point, and the network where Oskar is completely portrayed. History coincidentally repeats itself with tragedy and the effects it has on people. Like the catastrophic event that took Oskar’s father, his grandparents survived through the Dresden bombing in Germany. Oskar’s actions are aligned to his grandfather’s. They both are unable to cope and make peace with the past.

Throughout the novel, pictures of door handles are dissipated. At a certain point, Grandpa took photos of the entirety of the door handles in their home. “ He took a picture of every doorknob in the apartment. Every one. As if the world and its future depended on each doorknob” ( Foer 175). These door handles speak to how Grandpa's uncertainty between opening the entryway to another life and family and abandoning his previous lifestyle and family that died in the Dresden bombing. Be that as it may, Grandpa's failure to open or close the entryway leaves him remaining in the center, going no place. His hand contain the words 'YES' and 'NO' on them. These straightforward words pass on Grandpa's hesitations inside his life. He is incapable to pick between the family that passed on in Dresden and his family that is alive in New York. Grandpa Schell’s hands are likewise portrayed as being extremely unpleasant on the grounds that he is a stone worker. Emblematically, this is another motivation behind why Grandpa battles to manage his present family. The unpleasantness of Grandpa's hand speaks to an absence of closeness among Grandma and him. It symbolizes that he never loved her, and just started an existence with her to attempt to relive what he once had.

Grandma’s chapters have a significantly unique structure from Thomas' and Oskar's. She titles her chapters “My Feelings”. In contrast to Thomas, she utilizes section breaks. She utilizes them a lot, particularly in replace for dialogue. Quotes never show up, yet the reader can tell who is talking by the line breaks. Grandmother's sections do exclude visual segments while Thomas' have a couple and Oskar's have many. Fundamentally, the parts including Oskar's character are a mix of styles Jonathan Safran Foer alloted to the grandparents. Grandma also writes in a letter to Oskar about the story of her grandpa, which contradicts what he wrote. She reveals many more details, but tells a different version.

The theme of death permeates the novel, and takes us on a ride through the lows that the characters go through. Everyone has their own way of coping with the tragedy. The novel consists of many letters written by the main characters; Oskar, Grandma, and Grandpa Schell. Foer uses the letters as motifs. It suggests that the characters feel more comfortable expressing themselves through paper, rather than having a face to face conversation and someone to negate. In spite of the fact that every one of the storytellers talk in first person about existence, what they share for all intents and purposes above all is their unavoidably despairing tone. Each character is investigating their own despondency.

Another calm however comprehensive topic, is love that ties the characters together as they explore the complexities of their sadness. At last, the novel proposes that affection fills in as the other side to death, and one should at last pick between the confidence of the previous or the cynicism of the last mentioned. Grandmother's affection for her child and grandkid turned into the point of convergence of her reality. She took a chance with the condition of her union with imagine her kid, picking her kid over her better half. Thomas Sr. has an increasingly troublesome battle with the idea of adoration. His relinquishment of spouse and child recommend that he didn't adore them, yet the long periods of letter composing and his inevitable come back to America show his internal clash.

Johnathan Foer focuses his writing on captivating the reader's heart by revealing the character’s deepest, darkest secret. The novel delineates their grief and guilt, but they release it in a way that suggests they’re not comfortable to do so in person. This story shows the psychological hardships that kids who have lost a parent face, and also features the kind of strength it takes for a little kid to beat the hardships of lamenting. However, there are substantial explanations to guarantee that some might say Oskar is unrealistic.