Final Reading Response // Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Inquiry Question: How do Oskar's thoughts and feelings about his father's death change throughout the story?

            For this unit, my group and I read the extraordinary novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Through engaging language and imagery, Foer tells the tale of a peculiar young boy named Oskar Schell. During the story, Oskar discovers a key labeled “Black” in his father’s closet, of whom died during the 9/11 attacks. He then sets off on a journey through each of the five boroughs of NYC in search of the person who has both the lock to the key and Black as their last name, in hopes that once he finds it, he will also find the answers to his father’s death. Throughout the book, Oskar’s thoughts and feelings about his father’s passing move from reserved and destructive to accepting and everywhere in between.

            In the beginning of the story, Oskar seems to be very quiet and independent. However, keeping all of his thoughts to himself lead him to become quite self-destructive. He seems to think that much of his father’s death and other things that have gone wrong in life are his fault. As a result, he gives himself a bruise each time he feels that he has slipped up or made a mistake- even for little things, such as forgetting to do something or simply remembering something bad.  In addition to this, there are many scenes in which Oskar imagines himself in a violent situation, often where he’s the one doing bad things. For example, on page 146 Oskar imagines himself smashing a bully’s head on stage with a papier-mâché skull until the bully’s head bleeds while the audience applauds Oskar. Frightening moments like these are places where you can really feel Oskar’s pain from the absence of his dad and the overall destruction that he is going through in these stages of loss. However, since he likes to conceal his feelings, the anger only piles up inside of him. Again, this is a sign of independence and his need to isolate himself in order to restore peace from his father’s death.

            At the end of the story, after visiting a number of Blacks and finding the key’s lock but no information about his father, Oskar learns that his mother had secretly met all of the Blacks beforehand to make sure that Oskar wouldn’t be harmed while on his expedition. He realizes then that all this time, when he thought that his mother didn’t care about where he’d been for the last few months, she’d known all along. She cared about him. It strikes Oskar that spending all this time searching for something his dad had left carried him farther away from his mom. He’d forgotten about what he already had while looking for something he didn’t. It is then where Oskar accepts his father’s death instead of trying to avenge it or take it back.

            Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was a beautifully woven story, and in fact something I could relate to. I had experienced a death before, so each feeling that Oskar went through was something I deeply felt and completely understood. It was all very real and true. From Oskar’s journey I learned that although there are a number of things you wish you could fix or save or bring back, you have to learn to accept that it happened and it’s done. And no matter how far you wander, there will always be someone waiting for you back home.