Dear All, I hope everyone had an excellent break. Mine was incredibly relaxing and one of the highlights of my break was reading the masterpiece that is: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer. It is a critically acclaimed book that follows the protagonist: Oskar Schell as he tries to uncover the mystery of a key he found in his deceased fathers room, who was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. What really captivated me, and forced me to keep reading was how Oskar goes on to look for all the people named ‘Black’ in the whole of New York City and in his travels he discovers the stories of people lost in a crowd of 8.4 million people.
Although we have not discussed the word in our ASTU class, I came across the word ‘Sonder’ at the same time that I was reading the book, and for the longest time I was convinced that it appeared in the book because of how well it correlates nicely with the theme of ‘identity’ in the novel. Oskar uncovers extremely interesting backgrounds through his travels, for example when he visits the Empire State Building and meets Ruth Black and she tells him how she lives in the structure. What I took away from this scene is how ordinary people are living very interesting lives without a second glance from anyone.
Another aspect to identity is when Oskar is constantly told that some of his actions remind others of his father and inexplicably Oskar does not enjoy being similar to his father, even though he idolized him while he was alive. I am inclined to believe that Oskar does not want to remember his father because of the trauma that he experienced after his death. However, he does explicitly mention that one of the reasons that he continues to look for the key is to keep his fathers memory alive.