CAP – ASTU

Hello and welcome back to my first blog of 2016! This semester started off with our ASTU class reading the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer – a book that focuses on the journey of a young boy named Oskar and his quest to find out about a key seemingly left by his father. The storyline is further complicated by the fact that his father, Thomas Jr., died in the 9/11 attack and the intertwining narratives of Oskar’s grandparents – grandma and grandpa (Thomas Sr.).

After reading this novel, I have to admit – I did not like the main character, Oskar. I found the way that he approached situations and ideas to be not really normal, and I mean that in the sense that he overcomplicates/twists the situation. For example, when he was meeting Abby Black, he was adamant about getting to know her better and having a strong need to enter house (pg. 91). He did so by making up lies and manipulating the conversation. To me, I just did not see how he could validate himself to do such actions. How does he think he has the right to do whatever he wanted? And why did he want to do such a thing (such as having the need to visit an absolute stranger’s house)?

But as I was thinking about this, I also noticed that Oskar had a lot of blunt and straightforward moments, such as Oskar’s various comments regarding different races. For example, on page 10, Oskar comments how “if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word ‘fragile’.” Another instance where he makes a racial remark is on page 36, where he makes several comments about how he dislikes Arab people even though he is not racist.

The more I thought about how Oskar approached all these things in his life, I got the idea that perhaps by portraying the main character as a child narrator, it gave Foer the opportunity to express such blunt and weird thoughts that he wouldn’t otherwise to able to in an adult character. Like could an adult get away with saying racially sensitive remarks and making up lies to get into strangers’ houses? Most likely not. But a child saying these things and doing such a strange thing? More acceptable. And in a way, I think Foer did this because he wanted to express a sort of racial fear – especially regarding the fear/suspicion of Arabs after 9/11. The things Oskar said about Arabs were probably some of the thoughts thousands of Americans were thinking after the attack – but they couldn’t directly say it. The strange actions Oskar took to help heal himself after his father died were probably what some Americans wanted to do as well (after dealing with 9/11) – but they couldn’t because it was strange. So in that sense, Oskar could have been an outlet to express the thoughts and opinions  Americans might have had at that time.

However, there are certainly more questions to consider about Oskar and his weirdness, and even more questions to ask about the parallel to his grandparents’ narration. That is to say, those are just some more ideas that I’m interested in exploring in my next blog!