Welcome back, dear reader. Today, I will be discussing the significance of imagery used in Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. As the title suggests, I refer to Foer’s novel as a ‘pseudo-comic book’ because of how both imagery and text are present throughout the novel – but the novel does not look like a traditional graphic novel like Persepolis or Safe Area Gorazde . But does this enhance the readers experience of the traumatic narratives within the novel, or impede it?

As an individual who is more of a visual learner, I believe that the pseudo-comic book style Foer presents in his novel enhances the reading experience by weaving in some pictures after a couple pages of text. For example, on page 45 Foer includes a page full of scribbles and doodles with what seems to be random words written in different colours. Some words correspond with the ink colour, while others appear to be the names of people – one of which is Oskar’s father. Having the father’s name appear in a location acted as a clue for Oskar, indicating that his father had been here before. However, we do learn later on that it was actually Oskar’s grandfather that wrote the father’s name on the notepad.

The visualization of the notepad’s contents gives the reader a sense of familiarization with Oskar. Being able to see what he saw coupled with the description of his emotions allows for a greater sense of reliability between the reader and the novel, enhancing the reading experience and adds extra emphasis to the weight of the traumatic experience.

Having both graphic and text narration definitely allows the author to put extra emphasis on key narrations and important areas of the plot, whilst catering to both graphic novelists and traditional readers. Of course the combination must be done tastefully, otherwise it would impede the narration of the novel and disrupt the readers pace.