Hello fellow bloggers,
one term has just ended and the new term begins,and so I am ready to get stared again with my blog! It has been one restful winter break full of family and of course lots of food! As I begin back in my ASTU class, we begin to read and analyze a new text, our new novel is entitled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close written by Jonathan Safran Foer. This novel follows the aftermath of 9/11 and one young Oskar Schell’s journey to find some kind on closure after losing his father on that tragic day. As I am reading this book I was able to quite clearly make some connections between this novel and the other novels and graphic narratives that I read in the previous term. I was able to see some similarities and differences between the novel Obasan, the graphic memoir Persepolis and the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, keep reading to find out what those similarities and differences are!
Most specifically what tied the strongest connection between novels Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Obasan, and graphic narrative Persepolis was the child narrator present in all three. Oskar Schell is able to narrate Foer’s novel as he embarks on an epic journey through the boroughs of New York in search of a lock that fits a mysterious key that is left behind by his recently deceased father. Marji, is the voice behind Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis that portrays a young girls experience living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran Iraq war. Lastly Obasan written by Joy Kagowa is told through the eyes of Naomi as her family is torn apart during the time of Japanese Internment in Vancouver, Canada. All three pieces of literature are similar in the sense that they all posses a child but are very different in that only one of them is non-fiction. Persepolis is the only one of the three novels that is a real autobiography, although with that being said I would argue that Obasan and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are in fact very accurate representations of the events that they portray. In many ways they are not considered non-fiction because they represent a collective of people that have endured similar or the same experience. After the world trade centre fell on September 11th 2001, many lives were lost and many lives were changed, I think that Foer’s novel represents many people that lost a loved one and also a part of themselves, the book very much highlights the grieving process and that it is unimaginably hard to say goodbye to someone that you love. Similar with Kogawa’s Obasan, I believe that this novel gives a voice to all of the Japanese Canadians who were silenced during the terrible time, and represents a very true narrative of the many families that were torn apart.
In summary my blog has covered some of the connections that I was able to draw between the novel that I have read thus far this term(Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and others that were read in the previous term(Obasan, Persepolis). The main connection that I drew was that all three pieces of literature have a child narrator, and that not all of them were non-fiction stories all though all those two covered very real and important ground. All though there were fictional they all represented very real events and told the stories of very real people, so I’m my books I would very much consider them to be non-fiction! These were just two of the connections that I made, but there are definitely many many more connections that can be drawn between the three novels. So my question to myself is are there any more major connections between these three narratives?
Until next time,
Magda