Essay On Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Jonathan Safran Foer
Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City our perception has changed, we see the world differently. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is one such novel that shows how it directly affected one particular family. Thomas Schell, father, husband, and son, perished in the attacks, and this novel is a narration by his son, Oskar. It's interspersed with letters from his grandfather to his son, Thomas, and letters from his grandmother to Oskar. Together it tells the long history of this family, and the pain and suffering they felt caused by the loss of their loved one.
Oskar is a nine-year old boy who is highly intelligent as well as creative, speaks French, corresponds with Stephen Hawking, plays the tambourine, and he's an atheist as well as a pacifist. Precocious children can prove to be dangerous for a novel. They act more adult than childish and they often exist as nothing more than a

After the attack on 9/11, Oskar was sent home from school and he was the first one home. There he was received by the answering machine with five messages from his father calling from one of the World Trade Towers. After listening to them he replaced the phone and kept the messages to himself. For some closure he likes to be in his father's closet because "it made my boots lighter to be around his things, and to touch stuff that he touched." But one day on the highest shelf of the closet he finds a vase, and inside the vase he finds a key in an envelope and the only thing written on the envelope was "Black". This key sets Oskar on a quest to find the real story behind it, to find the secret that his father kept from everyone, in hopes that it would help him understand his dad better. Eventually he finds Mr.Black, in his very building, an old reporter who touched by the boy’s story and accepts to help