Hey Bloggers! Oh how I’ve missed you. I know you’ve been wondering, and yes, my break was awesome, and yes, I could’ve stayed home for about three weeks longer; but honestly, coming back here isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Don’t look now, but I think I may enjoy being here. Haha. It’s nice to be back in the swing of things, and I was riding my high horse and happy on life, then I started reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Foer. That happiness quickly turned into sadness. Deep. Deeeep sadness. None the less it was easily one of the best books I’ve ever read. I felt connected to the story in ways that I didn’t think I could. Not having experienced the loss that Oskar has I didn’t think I’d be able to relate, but I consistently found myself tearing up. All in all this is an amazing book and an amazing story.

Our class spent some time reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and it’s a bit of a complicated read if you don’t know what going on. There’s a lot think about when reading this book and when I looked over some of our class’ bloggers a lot of the different themes in the book are illuminated. We talked a bit in class about how this book may be an example of American exceptionalism. I have to say, when reading Erin’s blog, I found myself agreeing. She writes, “Regardless of whether this American exceptionalism is accurate or verifiable, I don’t believe that this novel deals with this topic.” I also found that 9/11, while a big part of the story, isn’t there to show how because a tragedy happened in America is it different, but is instead used because there aren’t many tragedies as highly publicized and understood as 9/11 and Foer uses that tragedy to help the reader better understand Oskar and his family’s plight.

Erin’s blog made me think to myself that really any tragedy could’ve been used in place of 9/11, as long as the reader understood it. Then Ryan’s blog challenged that notion bringing up how Foer uses Dresden as a tragedy that the Grandfather had to live through. Ryan’s blog made me consider the parallels between the trauma’s experienced by Thomas Sr. and Oskar. Both lost loved ones, and really, both tried to cope with those lost ones in very desperate, but different ways. Oskar with his adventure the NYC and Thomas with trying to recreate Anna, his lost lover, with Oskar’s grandmother. We see how different people process these horrific events, and how they try to cope with the loss of loved ones.

In Isaiah’s blog we get to hear about the different methods that people use to cope, “Whether it be coping through silence or by desperately trying to search for closure on a journey that has no finish line”. The line, “no finish line” really rang true to me. Coping after all is dealing with whatever tragedy you have before you. It’s about understanding that there is a new reality and that’s difficult to do. I think that’s why the book was so tragic for me to read, because I, so much like Oskar, wanted there to be a finish line, and wanted to know that tomorrow everything would be back to normal. I think though that the book ends perfectly. It ends perfectly in the sense that coping isn’t necessarily happy or a big weight off your shoulders, it just is. I think the consensus when finishing this book was that of un-satisfaction, not that the book wasn’t a great read or fantastically written, but that there wasn’t this fairy tale ending that I’ve grown so accustomed to.  

Well that’ll about do it for me, honestly this was a bit more difficult to write than I thought it’d be but boy is it good to be back. There’s so many layers to this book and so many different themes that we can dissect and will dissect. It’s good to talk to you all again, and it’s been nice to read everybody’s blogs. Until I write to you again.

Kennedy