Hello fellow readers!
It’s a new year and it’s my turn again to be the class blogger, one of the first five for this new term! How exciting! Being class blogger is my favorite part of this assignment because I got to read people’s ideas and perspectives on what is happening in our class this week or what are we currently discussing!
This week we are discussing a novel by Foer titled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and it’s no surprise for me that almost all of you wrote about this in your blog this week. As most of you have explained, this novel is about a boy named Oskar who lost his father in the 9/11 tragedy and his quest to reveal hidden messages behind his father’s death.
In Kate‘s blog she mentioned a major theme in the book that our class discussed this week which is absence. We discussed a few of examples of absence but the absence of Oskar’s Father’s body is what hit her most till she came up with a brilliant question that keeps me thinking, “With such a tragic event, would knowing where the body of your loved one is make the coping process easier or simply be unbearable?”. In Oskar’s case knowing that the body of his father is absent, it makes him harder to move on and is the reason behind his quest all along, so he could reconnect with his father like what Melissa mentioned.
Some of you (Elizabeth and Martin) also talked about how this novel has touched you or has affected you personally. As we can see from Elizabeth’s blog’s title, “It can happen to you”, she shares her experience of losing someone she cares about, just like how Oskar lost his father. She mentioned that it can happened anytime in a blink of an eye, very unexpected things might happen and when its unexpected its harder to cope with the pain. This book has affected Martin quite differently than how it has affected Elizabeth, instead of telling his own personal experience about lost, he put himself in Oskar’s shoes by listening to the audiobook version of the book so he could really experience the loss Oskar felt.
While most of you only talked about Extremely loud and incredibly close novel, Maria and Magda saw some connection between the past novels that we’ve read in class with Foer’s novel. Like how Obasan, Persepolis and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close novels are very straightforward and honest about what they actually feel since they were told from a child’s point of view. All of the three novels are also talking about a child who tried to cope with trauma and how trauma has a big impact to a child’s life.
I was amazed after reading all of the blog posts you guys posted and how each and every one of you has something different to say and has different perspectives about one exact same novel that we are currently reading. I’m gonna end this blog post here, and if you guys have any thoughts or questions, don’t hesitate to leave comments down below.
– Inneke Soeyanto
Comment for Kate’s blog the week (due 14 Jan. 2016):
Kate focused on the theme of absence in her blog post and I think it is an important theme to discuss because it is so powerful and dominant in the novel. She mentioned that Oskar, with his creative imagination, imagines that one of the falling bodies from the towers could have been his dad. Foer uses a lot of images within his text and one of the most powerful is the image of a person falling from the towers. The image demonstrates utter desperation. People had to chose to die from fire or from a jump at that moment. There was no question of survival. Kate also discusses the lack of Thomas Jr. body and her visit to the 9/11 memorial. She asks “would knowing where the body of your loved one is make the coping process easier or simply be unbearable?” I think that the 9/11 memorial became a stand in for the people who died when their bodies could not be found. It commemorates the fallen but also allows grieving families to have someplace to go to mourn their loved ones. Of course I cannot speak from personal experience but viewing this from the outside I think that is one of the uses of the memorial. It can be used for both healing and remembering.