Five Stages Of Grief Essay

The great French philosopher Roland Barthes once said “each of us has his ownrhythm of suffering” and this cadence of grief that surrounds the mourning is unique and unpredictable in each individual (Barthes, 162). Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kesslerhave formulated a hypothesis predicting the reactions to personal losses, more commonlyknown as the Five Stages of Grief. Although every person experiences loss as unique as they are, the five stages “are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost.” (Kessler). Discussing the recent cataclysmic events of 9/11, Jonathan SafranFoer explores grief through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy fresh with despair as well asmany other characters touched by their own loss in the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Foer’s novel is an accurate portrayal of the overwhelming human experience of grief as numerous characters exemplify the Five Stages of Grief and each character deals with their loss individually and uniquely. As “grief is one of the most powerful emotional forces there is”, it is the process of healing that one must

Whilecleaning a storage facility filled with Thomas’s old possessions, Oskar is appalled that she would be willing to discard of a simple razor that Oskar is persistent in his desire to save. Enraged, he attacks her by saying “so it will be OK if I throw away all your things and forget about you after you die?” (102). Expressing his anger toward his mother, is his way of releasing all of the built up emotion locked up inside of him. However, “grieving is a personal and highly individual experience” and everybody expresses it uniquely (Smith & Segal). Likewise, the characters in Foer’s novel exemplify the first two stages of denial and anger of the five-stage model in a variety of ways, authentically conveying the first segment of the healing process associated with