...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell’s dad dies in 9/11 and Oskar goes on a journey to find the answer to the key he found. He bumps into many different characters along the way that all show various ways of coping with death. Jonathan Safran Foer shows that through death and loss people can get through hard times. Characters deal with grief and loss in their own way in order to balance happiness and sadness. Oskar deals with grief in his own unique kind of way. He thinks you would never get hurt if you just never met anyone. Oskar tells the limo driver that it would be great to make a limo you could just walk through from birth to death but the driver says you would never meet anyone. Oskar says “So?” (5). To get something is to risk losing something. Oskar invents to get his mind off of things. Oskar says “Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing” (12). When Oskar’s dad died he starts inventing a lot more. Oskar also deals with his loss in ways most young children would not even think of, with self harm. Oskar says “Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I gave myself a bruise” (37) Whenever Oskar feels sad, alone, or guilty he bruises himself. He has over forty all over his body. In result of losing Anna, Thomas Sr. can never truly love or speak again. At first he loses the word Anna. Thomas Sr. says “...but I couldn’t finish the sentence, her name wouldn’t come” (16). Sometimes people can’t stand...
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...Catharsis(es) In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Is there a catharsis in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? If so, when does it happen for Oskar, and if applicable for the reader? Discuss. To discuss whether there are catharsises and if so where, it is important to have a clear definition of ‘catharsis’, so there can be no confusion. According to ‘Oxford’s: Literature Criticism and Style’ a catharsis is: “The purging of emotions which takes place at the end of a tragedy.” A good catharsis closes a story and does not leave the audience, or reader with questions. According to the Oxford definition of a catharsis, it is important to determine whether Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a tragedy, but for this essay, the focus will be on the purging of emotions and the closed ending. First of all for Oskar. On one hand there is a catharsis for Oskar. There are two moments where there could be a catharsis for Oskar. The first possible catharsis is on page 315. On this page Oskar opens up to Ron for the first time. Ron explains that he had a family, but they died. There is a small purging of emotions by Ron. Oskar opens up to Ron, which suggests he accepts that he is there. The acceptance is very important for a catharsis. Acceptance is important, because it creates a closed ending. The acceptance is also important in the second possible catharsis for Oskar, which starts on page 324. The last couple of pages are filled with the purging of emotions, which is a characteristic...
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...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 left America and the rest of the Western World in a state of deep shock. Not only did the attacks lead to many human losses, they also had an immense impact on the minds of people all over the world – especially in the US, of course. An incident that has affected so many people will inevitably find its way into literature, but how exactly can we treat such a tragic event in fictional writing? In the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, author Jonathan Safran Froer tells the story about the consequences of 9/11 from the perspective of a boy named Oskar, who has lost his father in the attack on the Twin Towers. Oskar is a 9 year old child who struggles to get back on track after the death of his father. His sense of humour plays an important part in the forming of a picture of his personality, more precisely that of an exceptionally bright and knowledgeable child. Oskar makes several witty puns such as “Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake” and “Do you want to hear another, or have you already had un oeuf?”. Not many 9-year olds are able to exploit the fact that some French and English words sound alike and that it is possible to substitute English curses with French words, and probably even fewer of his age know who Balzac is. Oskar is deeply affected by the loss of his father, which has left him in great distress and deprived him of his old dreams and childish curiosity: ““I want to know...
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...Change is essential for life. Some people prefer to spend their lives doing the same things and avoiding change. However, others think that change might always a good thing. This occurrence is commonly shown on different types of literature. “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer are two genuine examples that exposes changes throughout the book by leading the reader to develop their own ideas of different events that takes place. Gregor Samsa from “Metamorphosis” changes physically in the first part and then mentally, while Oskar Schell from “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” changes emotionally and also he changed his perception of the world. One day Gregor Samsa wakes up as...
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...In the book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran explains Loneliness in the following quote: “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living”. Loneliness often acts as a barrier between an individual and social opportunities. Loneliness is a prevalent obstacle people struggle with on a regular basis, though some experience the sense more frequently than others. If the presence of loneliness is a persistent occurrence, it can be extremely detrimental to the mental and physical health of one's well-being. Loneliness is a universal experience. It is often inaccurately defined as the lack of interpersonal relationships with friends or companions but is actually a complex and usually unpleasant...
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...Summary: Joshua Foer, a science journalist, started his talk by instructing the audience to close their eyes, and visualize the very strange story he was telling. This story acts as an introduction into telling us about his journey into the bizarre world of competitive memorizing. The event, Foer says, includes a “bunch of guys and a few girls of widely varying ages and hygienic upkeep memorizing hundreds of random numbers by looking at them just once” (TED talk). Foer investigated a competitive memorizing competition that is held every spring in New York City called the United States Memory Championship. He explained that the competitors were memorizing hundreds of random numbers by just looking at them once, and remembering the countless...
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...which some say “he traveled 1/48 of a second into the future.” (the first source idk) Similarly to Sergei, both fictional characters Billy Pilgrim and Oskar Schell experience time in a non-standard way at some point in their respective stories. Oskar replays a flipbook image of a man to his death from the twin towers but in reverse, making the man appear to float upwards towards safety. Billy Pilgrim watches a war movie backwards, witnessing the resurrection of soldiers and the dismantling of bombs. These backwards scenes represent something much deeper than what they appear to visually. In Slaughterhouse Five and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, author's Vonnegut and Safran Foer create reversed scenes with an unlinear timeline in order to visually represent the opposite of the atrocities the characters experienced. In the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Oskar Schell deals with the unexpected loss of his father in the September eleventh tragedy. He uses several different coping mechanisms to express and document his feelings throughout the story, the most prevalent one being his “Stuff That Happened to Me” book. The book is filled with images representing his journey visually, but not including actual pictures of Oskar. A large moment of the book is when Oskar flips through many pictures of a man falling from one of the twin towers, he then flips the pictures in reverse and discovers that the man flies upwards instead of falling. Safran Foer...
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...His first novel was Everything is Illuminated (2002) which “received a lot of praise from major publications and well known authors and won The Guardian's First Book Award and The National Jewish Book Award, and it was named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. It was also adapted to a film starring Elijah Wood in 2005” (Gale). His other novels include Tree of Codes (2016), Here I am (2010) and Eating Animals (2009). Along with Everything is Illuminated, two of his other works were turned into films or documentaries; both Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Eating...
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...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes place about a year after 9/11. September 11 was a tragic day which affected every single person in the United States, if not the world. 9/11 changed airport security dramatically, and everyone who was alive during the attack remembers exactly what they were doing. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell was sent home early from school on 9/11. His dad, Thomas Schell, was in one of the Twin Towers for a meeting. He had left several voice messages, each one asking if anyone was there. When Oskar got home, the phone started to ring, but he couldn’t bring himself to answer it. This continued to haunt Oskar for the rest of the book. Also, when Oskar was out on his “quest,” he was frightened by tall buildings, elevators, and public transportation such as trains and buses. This was because he was afraid that those places were prime locations for terrorist attacks. In one scene of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar’s adventure leads him to the top of the Empire State Building. At first, it took a lot of convincing on Mr. Black’s part to get Oskar to go to the top. Once he finally relented, the two of them got into the elevator. Oskar squeezed Mr. Black’s hand,...
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...Literature is a fundamental factor in human growth and improvement. Literature allows one to enter the mind of another and see through their eyes, thus pushing the reader to expand their thinking as well as challenge their personal beliefs. Learning through life experiences, either personal or others’, is an opportunity to evolve as a person. Contemporary literature often has meaningful messages that pertain to a wide audience, hence why it is important to be exposed to it. This semester, students were required to read a variety of contemporary works. Two of those being the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the play The Laramie Project. Jonathan Foer, the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was not afraid to face the...
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...The Reoccurring Theme Of Death Abhi Jain 4th hour Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, written by Jonathan Foer, portrays the struggles of a blossoming boy dealing with his father’s death, a victim of the cataclysmal attacks on September 11th, 2001. To readers this may seem like a novel about the September 11th attacks. However Foer does a meritorious job with the novel, depicting the emotion and confusion going on in nine-year-old Oskar Schell head. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a wonderful example of a novel that deals with the many facets of life after a tragic event. Death is a major reoccurring them in the novel, perceptible not only in Oskar’s loss of his father, but also in his grandparents’ loss of Anna. To anyone, loosing a loved one is a tragic event in someone’s life. Imagine what nine-year-old Oskar is going through when loosing his father, role model, and best friend for no reason. Oskar dynamic emotional changes began to affect the love ones around him. Oskar becomes more violent at home by throwing tantrums, yelling at his mother, and frequently giving he bruises. To cope with his loss, Oskar keeps his mind constantly “inventing,” and embarks on a hunt to find the mystery lock to which his father’s key belongs. When Oskar finally found the lock, he is confused and distraught that there is no longer a way to connect with his father, “But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.” This quote shows...
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...budget of EUR 120 million involving 102 production companies from all over Europe. It now has a catalogue of rights in over 50 features including Academy Award Nominee and Venice Golden Lion winner Before the Rain, box office horror hit Deathwatch; Cannes Directors’ Fortnight opener Princess; Sundance South African hit Son of Man; Jason Biggs starrer GUY X and Dinard winner White Lightnin' as well as 2012 Berlinale Audience Award Winner Parada by Srdjan Dragojevic. The company remains fully owned and managed by producers Mike Downey (European Film Academy Board Member, BAFTA Council member and member of the BAFTA Film Committee) and Sam Taylor ( Board of PACT) backed by its advisory board Billy Elliot/The Hours/The Reader/Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close director Stephen Daldry (Chairman), ex-Creative Artists Agency agent Johanna Baldwin, former Chief Executive of the Guardian Group, James Markwick, merchant banker and internet pioneer Matthew Wilson. Launched in 2000 as part of a public offering on the Frankfurt Neuer Markt, F&ME was the subject of a management buy-out by its principals Sam Taylor and Mike Downey in 2003, and as an independent entity has kept to its annual production targets of producing 2 in house films and between 4 and 6 co-productions a year in the £1.5 - £5 million budget range. The first decade of F&ME’s existence saw it entering into production on 50-odd...
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...“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” Death is an uncontrollable aspect in life, but what about it leaves people to grieve the way they do, and affect the way they live their lives? “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer is a testament of what it means to be human, how people grieve, and how they are affected by their losses. Several characters in the book are going through some sort of grief through loss. Searching for answers that will probably never be found each of them is brought together and deal with their respective issues differently. Most of them spend years of their lives attempting to understand and find closure, but some don’t find any at all. No grief is greater than the other, no matter how miniscule some seem. It’s how they responded to the losses that defined what kind of person they are. Oskar Schell finds his own unique ways of dealing with his grief. Dealing with his issues in his own unique way, Oskar is doing his best to prevent the loss of his father from destroying his entire world. He uses the key he found, his inventions, and even self-harm to help grieve the untimely loss of his father. Using his journey to find what the key opens as way to cope with the grief of losing his father, Oskar struggles to understand why this is happening to him. One would suspect his intelligence would help play a factor in his grieving process, but it is shown that he is still very much a 9 year old kid to the core. Embarking on his journey he...
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...Jonathan Safran Foer was only twenty-five when Everything is Illuminated was published. (What are you waiting for?) It was a New York Times Bestseller, an Amazon.com Best Book pick; it won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction in 2001 and The Guardian awarded it their First Book Award in 2002. And then the book was made into a film directed by Liev Schreiber a.k.a. Mr. Naomi Watts and starred Elijah Wood and that guy from the Gypsy punk rock band Gogol Bordello. But Foer didn't rest on his laurels. He then wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was also made into a movie; Eating Animals, the book that prompted Natalie Portman to become vegan; and edited an English translation of the Haggadah, a Jewish tale as old as time. So, yeah, this guy knows his stuff when it comes to Jewish folklore, vegetarianism, and...
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...Schizophrenia is a very serious illness that at least 51 million people worldwide are suffering from at this very moment (Chiko). This illness is extremely dangerous and it is possible for anyone to obtain it. Therefore, learning about schizophrenia could become extraordinarily useful. Schizophrenia is a commonly misunderstood mental illness, so knowing the definition, origin, and causes of it could help us understand what it actually is and how to prevent it. The symptoms that occur in schizophrenia are intense. The affected person can have positive, negative, or cognitive symptoms. Once all of this information about schizophrenia is obtained, the treatment for schizophrenia will lurk in the curious parts of your mind, but it is a quite simple...
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