Hello everyone,

This week in my ASTU class we have been reading Ilka Saal’s “Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Narrative Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” where Saal looks into Foer’s novel through the lens of Judith Butler’s work. Saal reflects on the impact of authors framing one trauma in the context of another as Foer does with 9/11 in the context of the Holocaust. I have increasingly understood, or at least been subject to, the way in which literature has an enormous impact in our understanding of events. Saal’s work and argument made me reconsider this even more because as I read Foer’s novel I was presented a view of the 9/11 events as I had not seen it before. When these events took place I was only a child and my memories of them are clouded by the naïve views of a girl who understood little about the ongoing situation and following wars. For this reason, reading the perspective, although fictional, of a victim in New York has an impact in my memory of this event. Foer leads its readers to view the victims of 9/11 as exactly that, victims. They are victims of suffering and loss, phenomena that Foer parallels to those of the holocaust. Unlike 9/11 that happened during my lifetime, the holocaust and the World Wars are not as recent and therefor, are a common and constant feature of History textbooks and classes through out high school and the tone is one of tragedy and loss across all the years that I was taught about it. When the holocaust is mentioned, an aura of suffering surrounds it and when Foer frames 9/11 along lines of the Holocaust, even if the reader knew nothing about the events, the tone is immediately accompanied by a feeling of sorrow and empathy for the victims. Today, millions of refugees from Syria are seeking asylum in countries all around the world and what the media compared them to or how their stories are framed has an enormous impact on what people’s opinions on the situation will be. If refugees are referred to as victims of human rights abuse and lack of government protection, they are more willingly accepted but if the media or governments refer to them as possible terrorist or threats to jobs, the open arms close up due to fear. The relevance, especially in our time, of how a story is framed is enormous and we must be cautious of this when we receive news and take in different perspectives of an event or situation.

Have a great day!

Andrea Barraza