Monthly Archives: January 2016

Hey everyone! For the past week in my ASTU class, we have been analyzing Ilka Saal’s article “Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Narrative Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. I must say, at first glance this article was a bit difficult to follow but after some class discussion, a few key points stuck with me.

First, in the section titled Frustrated Analogies: “Shakespeare doesn’t make sense”, Saal makes a shift in her analysis of trauma transfer. She describes the ineffectiveness of trauma transfer displayed in Foer’s novel, specifically through the character of Oskar. In my ASTU class, we discussed how Saal is at times fairly critical of Oskar, for example when she claims “Given his thirst for knowledge, it is quite surprising that with regard to world history, Oskar is rather ignorant and disinterested” (461). Here, I disagree with Saal. For a nine-year-old boy, I actually think that Oskar is quite interested when he states “So I tried to remember them so that I could Google them, when I got home” (Saal, 461). I almost feel as though Saal is contradicting herself when she says this because to me, this quote shows that Oskar is in fact quite interested in history. What do you think? Is Saal being too hard on Oskar or is he in fact “ignorant and disinterested” when it comes to history?

Another point that this section of the article raises is Oskar’s inability to talk about “the worst day” of his life, which is a prominent effect of trauma on individuals. Oskar’s grandparents also suffer from this incommunicability of trauma. After the Dresden bombings, Thomas Schell Sr. looses his ability to speak. When Oskar’s grandma tries to type out the story of “My Life”, she does so without a typewriter ribbon, which again signifies how she is unable to communicate her experience going through the trauma in Dresden. This incommunicability of trauma makes me think back to my post, titled “The Act of Forgetting”. I discussed two perspectives on the act of forgetting, one being that forgetting is necessary in one’s life who has experienced trauma and the other being that the act of forgetting can go too far and erase the memories of people who matter. It seems as though Oskar and his grandparents need to forget in order to move on from the trauma that they experienced. In Foer’s novel, Thomas Schell Sr. writes to his son in a letter, “If I could tell you what happened to me that night, I could leave that night behind me, maybe I could come home to you, but that night has no beginning or end” (208). Here we see that the incommunicability of trauma leads to Oskar’s grandpa being unable to move on and forget the traumatic experience of the Dresden bombings. As I sign off for this week, I’ll leave you with a question: If Thomas Sr. was able to forget and move on from this trauma do you think he would be able to speak again?

Hey everyone! Now that we’re back from Christmas break and back into the madness of classes, assignments and due dates, it’s time to get back into the blogs! In my ASTU class, we have been reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell on his quest to find the lock that belongs to the key that his father, who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, left for him. I started reading this novel over the break, not thinking that it would be one that I would actually enjoy, but hearing the story of the affects of the brutal attacks on the World Trade Center from the perspective of a young boy was very moving and made the book a page turner.

In our most recent class, we started discussing major themes that are portrayed in Foer’s novel, the first one being absence. There are many examples of absence throughout the novel but an obvious one that I didn’t think of until another group mentioned it is the absence of Thomas Junior’s body. Thomas Junior’s (Oskar’s father) body was never found after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which can represent a lack of closure for his family. Oskar, a boy with a very active imagination, starts to imagine where his father could be and, at one point, even thinks that his father could have been one of the bodies jumping out of the building. I can not imagine the affects losing a loved one in a tragic event, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has on a family and then on top of that not having any closure to attempt to move on.

While reading Foer’s novel, I thought back to when I went to New York last year and visited the 9/11 memorial. Seeing the beautiful architecture of the waterfalls and the names of every person that died in the 9/11 attacks was an extremely moving experience and allowed me to truly understand how tragic this day was (because I was only 4 when it happened). I also thought back to the ideas of absence and lack of closure portrayed in the novel and how difficult it would be for a family to see the name of their loved one inscribed around the waterfall, but to not know where their body is. Because I’ve been fortunate enough to not experience losing a loved one, a big question comes to mind. With such a tragic event, would knowing where the body of your loved one is make the coping process easier or simply be unbearable?