Mariana Drok

My ASTU class has been focusing on the topic of trauma for the last 5 months and as a new term begins we continue obtaining new perspectives on this issue. This time our attention was drown to the Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremly Loud and Incredibly Close. This is the story of tragedy and loss shared not just within one family or a country, but within the whole world.

Events of the 9/11 shook the world with the incredible force. When four planes crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania people were terrified all over the planet. However, not everyone could relate to the events as to something personal. Foer’s novel helps understand the tragedy from the perspective of a nine-year-old, Oskar, who lost his dad. In this post I would like to focus on the topic of 9/11 exceptionalism and the way it is portrayed in Foer’s novel.

The concept of 9/11 exceptionalism seems to be something new for me, as I grew up in Ukraine and learned about the tragic events from the TV. I don’t think that Ukrainian media covered this topic enough. In addition I was pretty small to understand completely what had happened. However, right now learning and exploring more facts on this event, I can understand why people treat it as a starting point of a new history, history of War on Terror. As terrorist attack took place in one of the most crowded places in New York it spread the feeling of insecurity and instability all over the USA and the rest of the world. The security measures taken after 9/11 continue to exist and create even more control. The global order of things was forever changed and 9/11 might continue to influence the way people travel, spend their free time, work and live in general.

However, are the attacks of 9/11 actually exceptional? Terrorist attacks were happening and continue to happen now. People experience trauma all over the world. The way Foer emphasizes the existence of similarly between different traumatic events is through the story of Oskar’s grandparents, who experienced bombing in Dresden, seemingly a safe city during the WW2. People can feel unspeakable trauma and it connects them with others, who faced war or terror attack. Events like these are not supposed to set borders between people. On the contrary they can unite people and make them understand each other more.

Every trauma is exceptional and every personal experience is special. However, sometimes it is better to look at a bigger picture and connect pieces of puzzles. We all go our saparate ways in the same way Oskar did, but by making connections with other people’s stories he was able to understand himself and the world arund him better.