Hey everybody!

I hope you enjoyed your holidays and had a good start to the semester.

So far this semester’s reading has been Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Foer and this novel is about a traumatic event that the United States had to go through: 9/11 or, as they call it in the novel, “The Worst Day”. This book had a really strong impact on me because it talked about the main character’s family, and how the death of the dad changed the lives of everyone, especially of his son Oskar. As I stated before this novel talks about a traumatic event and I believe that it can be related to what Marji experienced in the graphic novel Persepolis. The main similarity that I found between the two novels is the fact that both are written by using the point of view of a child that had to go through events that I believe no child should ever experience. However, while reading Foer’s novel, I interpreted Oskar’s questions and struggles as “why me? Why did my dad have to be the one to die?”, while Marji’s questions I believe were more towards the actual understanding of “why are people are acting this way? And what made them do it?”. Marji is also a very curious character therefore she is always asking her parents to explain her why is the war happening, and who is involved in it. She also goes through emotional phases where you can see how she grows as a person and how her ideals change through her experiences. On the other hand in Foer’s novel the reader knows exactly who is good and who is evil just by how the main character depicts the event. Oskar is also very introvert and he does not open himself to others, not even to his mother, about his feelings, therefore he is very different from Marji. He also does not act, talk nor think his age, however the reader can still tell that is a young boy speaking because of how much he wants to try to make sense of things that do not always have to have an explanation. The main event that explains this way of being, is when he founds the key with the name “Black” on it and he tries to find the lock for it. This key can be considered the representation of the things that do not make sense and that was what kept him going with his life. Even if I have never experienced such traumatic events, this novel made me realize how much one day can completely change the course of your life for ever. It made think also about how people can become somewhat self-centred because they believe that they are the only one that experienced any traumatic events in their lives. This statement can be supported from many passages in the novel, when Oskar goes around New York to find every person with the last name Black in order to find the key. During this journey he encounters people had to go through hard times as well, however he cannot see that in the moment because he is too concentrated on what happened to him.

This made me think of lives and how can you tell that a person’s life is more important than someone else’s. It also amazed me how much people can hold on to an object or anything that reminds them of the loved one that passed away, in order for them to feel somewhat still close to that person.