Exploring Grief and Repentance in 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'

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Recommended: Critical analysis of extremely loud and incredibly close

In his novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer conveys how repentance along with certain losses of peers attract a variety of individuals together, including strangers. He incorporates several elements such as sophisticated diction, rambling, and humor to demonstrate how the protagonist Oskar distracts himself from mourning over his father’s loss, who had been killed in the nine-eleven accident. Oskar is pursuing a mission for his dad where he struggles to discover a lock to the enigmatic key; as a result, he gets involved with strange types of personalities. Jonathan Foer presents a multitude of characters who employ various techniques for coping in times of agony. We observe Oskar has a quite a decent personality, …show more content…

He encounters a diverse range of individuals from New York who are in difficult phases of overcoming adversities. Oskar’s journey does not primarily concentrate on pain and sorrow, but the common strain which humans share and struggle to survive through different means. Although his wounds do not heal instantly, Oskar is able to fully take control of his past towards the end of the novel when he finally acknowledges his mother’s relationship and informs her “It’s OK if you fall in love again.”(Foer 324). Oskar realizes that other individuals need similar support to move on in life . What he considers to be his mother's betrayal is simply just another form which allows him to recover over his horrific loss. Oskar finally succeeds in recovering over his loss by investigating himself and others similar to him, fulfilling his journey’s purpose. If we look closely at McCloud's Show and Tell Comic we see that he focuses mainly on symbols and their use of enlightening one on understanding complex concepts. He writes, "Some of this art show considerable attention to detail, concerned with pictorial representation."(Page 715, Show and Tell). Symbols are greatly used in this novel to explain concepts. For instance, the birds allow Mr. Black to flee from his past, and the coffin serves as a symbol where Oskar is able to fade his past. Without symbols, it would be nearly impossible for this story to have any sort of a meaning. Symbols along with words are conducive to one’s understanding of the external world. Therefore pictures and text play an equal role in helping us learn various forms of nature and the surrounding

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