Happy New Year, readers!
Over our winter break, my ASTU class read Johnathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This novel focuses on the traumatic events regarding September 11th, 2001, specifically by following the story of Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy who loses his father (Thomas Schell Jr.) in these bombings. After finding a key hidden in his father’s room, Oskar sets off on a journey around New York City to find the lock it opens in an attempt to remain close to the father he can no longer look to physically. Although the storyline itself is intriguing, I found the structure of this novel to be the most compelling aspect; this is what sets it apart from the other technologies of memory that I have analyzed throughout my educational career.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close proceeds at a brisk pace, quickly moving from one event to another. Aside from Oskar, there are two other main narrators: Grandma and Grandpa (Thomas Schell Sr.). The grandparents’ chapters in the novel take the form of unsent letters — Grandma writes to Oskar and Grandpa writes to his “unborn child”. These chapters also take the form of flashbacks to earlier times in the grandparents’ lives, including the events they witnessed during the bombings at the end of World War II in Dresden, Germany. In other words, the novel jumps from Oskar in the present day to Grandma or Grandpa’s accounts of the past.
Within each of the narrators’ sections, there is a variety of visuals. These include photos of doorknobs, buildings, keys, and locks taken by Oskar’s camera, newspaper clippings with red pen used to circle grammatical mistakes, letters, and pages where pens were tested in an art store. The pen markings throughout the novel appear in colour, while the photos are black and white. These visuals do not appear in any particular pattern; they are placed in a somewhat random order. I find this last point particularly unusual, as I have not read any other novels with a similar format.
In general, the novel’s structure can be described in one word: sporadic. This choice in layout emphasizes the fact that each of the characters is traumatized. When one is traumatized, nothing makes sense or appears normal. Therefore, the random order of the visuals and jumping around from one character’s thoughts and actions to another makes sense. It gives Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a sense of honesty and authenticity with regards to both the events being described, as well as the characters’ emotional turmoil.
In contrast, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, which I mentioned in my last two blog posts, has no visuals; it relies solely on detailed description. Although this detail is effective in describing the traumatic events experienced by Naomi Nakane’s family, especially the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it does not show the sporadic mindset that the Japanese-Canadians most likely experienced as explicitly as Foer’s novel does with regards to 9/11.
Ultimately, I found both of these novels’ approaches to trauma effective in their own ways. Even though the structure of Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close shows the lack of normal functioning after experiencing an event like 9/11, the visuals were somewhat distracting at times and made the novel feel disjointed. Although this was the point, I personally prefer the approach that Kogawa took in Obasan, as it was somewhat easier to follow and felt more cohesive overall.
Until next time readers!