Hey there readers!

Welcome back, and happy New Year! This semester in ASTU we got right into it with a novel called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s a wonderful novel that follows a young boy, Oskar, on his journey in the search of a lock that fits a mysterious key. He found the key in the closet of his father who was tragically killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In parallel to his story we follow the stories of his grandparents through letters.

As I read this novel something that stood out to me was the sadness that I felt for the Oskar’s mother. Along with the struggle of losing her husband, she tries her best to make her son happy, but it is a struggle at best. When she tries to stay strong for him he doesn’t believe she’s showing enough sadness over the loss of his father, and when she makes a friend through a loss support group, he accuses her of being in love with another man too quickly. He asks her to promise never to fall in love with another man. When she can’t make such a promise he says “If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you,” (171). Through this he means that he would rather have lost her than his beloved father. Though he’s just a child and he immediately takes his words back, I can’t imagine the pain she must have felt in that moment.

As I read the book I could tell that Oskar had always been much closer with his father. And after the tragedy the distance between mother and son was probably felt more deeply. He struggles to open up to her throughout the book.

For some reason those scenes between Oskar and his mother really stood out for me as heart breaking.

Thanks for reading!

Olivea