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?
