There are three main characters that the reader gets to see deal with grief in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The first of which is the main narrator, nine year-old Oskar Schell. Oskar is in the denial stage of grief because he is keeping his father alive by going on one last grand adventure to find the story behind the key, thus keeping him alive. But of course, there is no reason for Oskar to have the key. Oskar tells Mr. Black, “There are so many ways to die, and I just need to know which one was his” (Foer, 257). Notice how his isn’t focusing on his father’s death here, he is focusing on the logic behind his father’s death. Right now, in his mind, it isn’t logical and therefore cannot be dealt with. Furthermore, it also detaches Oskar from the death because he views it more as a math problem than a traumatic event. He isn’t suggesting that he wants to know how his father died so that he knows what his last moments were like. He doesn’t want to know if he felt pain or if he was scared. He doesn’t even want to know, in this moment, why his father died; a question many of us would expect him to ask because, historically, many of us are still asking it. That’s not the emphasis he places on the question. Oskar wants to know how so he can categorize it, understand it, and move on without actually facing it.
“Nothing is beautiful and true” (Foer, 43). Oskar tells this to his mom towards the beginning of the novel, and it is a surprisingly depressing and haunting thought for a the average nine year-old to have, let alone vocalize to an adult so off-hand. The reader could use this quote to show how Oskar’s worldview has changed since the death of his father. With is loss of innocence comes a darke...
... middle of paper ...
... conclusion, Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close doesn’t sugarcoat tragedy. It faces it head on and without a sensor, thus allowing it to maintain historical truth. The use of the scrapbook allows the reader to see into the mind of the narrators and reveals personality traits that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. By writing from the point of view of three different narrators, Foer has allowed the reader to see into the minds of people in three different stages of grief. He also focusing primarily on life after trauma, specifically differentiating between acceptance and attachment, and provides the reader with solid advice on how to deal with the tragic aftermath of trauma. Most importantly, the story of the Schell family shows the reader that they are not alone, and that traumatic experience do not have to define who she becomes as a person.
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
Readers develop a compassionate emotion toward the characters, although the characters are detached and impersonal, due to the tone of The Road. The characters are unidentified, generalizing the experience and making it relatable – meaning similar instances can happen to anyone, not just the characters in the novel. McCarthy combined the brutality of the post-apocalyptic world with tender love between father and son through tone.
Denial was also used through the novel as a defense mechanism so that the person can protect themselves from the pain he or she was feeling at that point in time. When Oskar father Thomas Schelle, has gone missing him and his mother both decided it would be a good idea to “fill a suitcase with a poster of Oskar's father and post them all around town they refused to believe that Thomas could have been dead”(For 229). When Oscar and his mother put up these posters it gave them a sense of belief and hope that their loved one may still be alive. Another person the denied the death of a loved one was Oskar grandfather, they believed he was“trying to remake the girl he knew seven years before”, his beloved Anna, who had died in the bombing of Dresden (83). Many Psychologists have said that “ People grieve because they are expecting their loved ones to magically appear even though he or she is really gone”. Living in denial is very hard for a person and it is hard to move on into their day to day routines. Denials help delay the other stages of the grief and this stage usually lasts the longest. One of the first feelings that we experience after Denial is anger. Anger comes after the numbing of shock that something bad just had happened. Oskar puts all of his anger towards his mother because he thinks that his mother does not love his father anymore because he believes she is not honouring his name and memory. Seeing his mother being happy and continuing on with her life makes him think that she does not miss his dad (Foer 170). Oskar was releasing all of his build up anger towards his mother because he felt that it was her fault and that she was moving on without
The author clearly shows how his childhood effected his adulthood, making in a living example of what he is writing about allowing the audience to more easily trust what he is writing about. Instead of using factually evidence from other dysfunctional family incidences, the author decides to make it more personal, by using his own life and comparing family ideas of the past to the present.
The critics who perceived this book's central theme to be teen-age angst miss the deep underlying theme of grief and bereavement. Ambrosio asks the question, "Is silence for a writer tantamount to suicide? Why does the wr...
The characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones are faced with the difficult task of overcoming the loss of Susie, their daughter and sister. Jack, Abigail, Buckley, and Lindsey each deal with the loss differently. However, it is Susie who has the most difficulty accepting the loss of her own life. Several psychologists separate the grieving process into two main categories: intuitive and instrumental grievers. Intuitive grievers communicate their emotional distress and “experience, express, and adapt to grief on a very affective level” (Doka, par. 27). Instrumental grievers focus their attention towards an activity, whether it is into work or into a hobby, usually relating to the loss (Doka par. 28). Although each character deals with their grief differently, there is one common denominator: the reaction of one affects all.
The emotional appeal can be felt on every sentence of the essay. Form this we can see the suffering faced by the writer. Even the first sentence of the article grabs the reader’s attention. It says,” The blood was like Jell-O. That is what blood gets like, after you die, before they tidy up” (Roberts). The words, blood, suicide, death are themselves filled with emotion which grabs reader’s attention to read the essay. Life is precious. We don’t have a second chance to live. We just live our life once and nobody sacrifices one’s life uselessly. Roberts effectively makes appeals to pathos throughout her essay. Her essay is full of emotionally charged words and phrases like death, suicide, motorcycle accident, abandonment and so on which create a sympathetic image. “Second-guessing is the devil’s game, for there are no answers and infinite questions. But it is an inevitable, inescapable refrain, like a bad song you can’t get out of your mind” (Roberts). This statement clearly supports her appeal to pathos because by the death of a loved one, we have all kinds of difficult emotions and it may feel like the pain and sadness will never go away. Her goal is to make reader feel sympathy for her by writing her personal experience of
In both Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrators are stuck in situations where the emotional burden takes over their psyche. Each protagonist suffers a mental disjunction from reality. The narrator in “The Things They Carried” recounts first-person events that took place during the Vietnam War. O’Brien tells of the various missions his company takes part in, as well as depicting the deaths of his fellow team members. The multiple deaths in O’Brien’s tenure begin to weigh heavily on his mind in his post-war adjustment as he struggles to adapt to life back home after his best friend’s death.
Death has feelings as much as any human, imagining, getting bored, distracted, and especially wondering (350, 243, 1, 375 respectively). Odd, one could say for an eternal metaphysical being. But then again, not that queer once having considered how Death spends his time. He is there at the dying of every light, that moment that the soul departs its physical shell, and sees the beauty or horror of that moment. Where to a human witnessing a death first hand (even on a much more detached level than our narrator) can easily be a life changing event, Death is forced to witness these passings for nearly every moment of his eternal life. Emotional overload or philosophical catalyst? Death gains his unique perspective on life through his many experiences with the slowly closing eyelids and muttered last words. Yet in this...
At the age of nine, Oskar was a troubled child trying to deal with the death of his father. He dealt with his grief through the use of his imagination. Oskar suffers from different neuroses and phobias. Since his father’s death, he has become depressed. Oskar starts off a journey to find the lock to his mystery key. Along his journey, he meets and inspires many people and eventually learns to deal with his grief. Being that grief is the main obstacle Oskar has to overcome, when he embraces the truth he is able to move on through his journey to find the lock.
events from a sentimental point of view rather than an objective one, Randall provides unique insight into the tragedy.
It is a conversation between an author and a reader. It makes the reader interests in his personal life and knows that they both have feelings and losing the loved ones. Angell makes the readers feel that he is answering their questions and wants to read more. This memoir makes the readers remember their friend or family who lost their lives. But Angell sends a message that life may be too short but the memories will continue. It is entertaining because it is like music box which opens the words and feel the
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her