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Book Discussion Guide
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NoveList Book Discusslon GuideNoveList/EBSCO Publishing @
2005
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Closeoy
Jonathan Safran Foer(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,
2005)
Author:lonathan Safran Foer was born in t977 and grew up in
Washington D.C. As a student at Princeton, he won theCreative
Writing Thesis prize each year he was an undergraduate. While a
junior, he began work on ananthology of works inspired by the bird
boxes of Joseph Cornell. Entitled A Convergence of Birds, the book
waspublished in 2001.
Foer graduated in 1999 with a degree in Philosophy. That same
year/ he traveled to the Ukraine to research hisfamily history.
Though he claims it was not planned, the trip eventually resulted
in his first novel, which hebegan writing as a thesis project under
Joyce Carl Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides. Following graduation,
Foerworked at a series of jobs including morgue assistant,
receptionist, math tutor, ghostwriter, archivist, farmsitter,
advertising consultant and receptionist, while continuing to
write.
The author's short stories began appearing in such noted
publications asThe Paris Review, The Review ofContemporary Fiction,
and Conjunctions, and he won the Zoetrope: All Story Fiction Prize
in 2OOO. Everything IsIlluminated, the book begun when he was an
undergraduate, was published in 2002. It is the story of a
youngJewish man's trip to the Ukraine to search for the woman who
may have saved his grandfather from the Nazis.Blending fact and
fiction, the young man is named lonathan Safran Foer.
Everything Is Illuminated was a bestseller and won numerous
awards, including the Guardian First Book Prizeand the National
Jewish Book Award; it was also named Book of the Year by the Los
Angeles Times. The filmversion of the book is due out in August of
2005, starring Elijah Wood.In addition to his writing, Foer
maintains a web site entitled The Project
Museum(http://www.jonathansafranfoer.com/). Part art piece, part
information, the site includes the record of archiveof the Empty
Page Project, which is his collection of blank paper from the desks
of authors such as SusanSontag and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Foer's second novel, Extremelv Loud and Incrediblv Close, was
published in 2005. It is the story ofnine-year-old Oskar Schell, a
jeweler, inventor, tambourine player and actor who searches for
clues about hisfather, who died in the World Trade Center attacks.
Foer lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Nicole Krauss, author ofThe
History of Love (2005). He also has two brothers in publishing.
Franklin Foer is an associate editor at theNew Republic, and loshua
Foer is a contributor to S/afe.
Summary:On September 11, 2001, Thomas Schell, father of Oskar
Schell, died in the second of the Twin Towers, but notbefore
calling home several times and leaving messages on the answering
machine. The family buried an emptycoffin. Two years later,
nine-year-old Oskar has developed coping mechanisms that include
avoiding elevators,subways, and boats, playing a tambourine to
soothe his nerves, and inventing in his mind rescue devices suchas
the birdseed shirt.
One day, Oskar finds a key in a blue vase at the back of his
father's closet, untouched since the worst day, ashe calls 9/11.
Thomas and Oskar used to have Reconnaissance Sundays, in which
Oskar would follow clues tofind objects that Thomas had hidden
somewhere in the city. When Oskar finds the key, enclosed in a
small
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envelope with the word Black written on it, he decides that this
is one last game left by his father and beginsthe search to see
what Thomas left him.
Oskar's story is alternated with the story of his grandparents.
Grandma, as he calls her, immigrated to theUnited States from
Dresden following the bombings in World War II. In New York, she
runs into Thomas Schell,who was originally engaged to marry her
sister Anna. Anna was pregnant with Thomas's child when she died
inDresden, a trauma that left Thomas mute. The two married, but
Thomas left when he learned Grandma waspregnant. He returned to
Dresden, but wrote letters every day to his son, also named Thomas,
never actuallysending anything but blank envelopes.
Determined to locate the lock that goes with the key, Oskar
deduces that Black is, in fact, a name. He beginsvisiting every
person named Black in the five boroughs of New York, working his
way through the phone bookuntil he finds the right one.
Early on, he meets Mr. Black, who lives upstairs in Oskar's own
building. Mr. Black is 103 years old, and has notleft the building
for decades, not since his wife died. Oskar encourages him to come
out, and for awhile he joinsOskar in his traveling through the
city.
Although Oskar does not know it, his grandfather returned to New
York on the day of the funeral for Oskar'sfather and has been
living in his grandmother's spare room. When Oskar meets him at
Grandma's, Oskar doesnot recognize his grandfather since they have
never met. Despite this, Oskar tells him the entire story,
includinghis finding the phone messages from his father on9/LI,
messages he never played for his mother.Oskar hears back from one
of the people he met during one of his earliest visits, a woman
named Abby Black,who held back information. The key belonged to her
ex-husband, William, who had sold the vase to Oskar'sfather not
knowing there was something in it. In short, none of this had
anything to do with Oskar's father.Abby also accidentally reveals
that Oskar's mother has been in touch, and in fact has been keeping
ahead ofhim throughout the entire search process, watching out for
him.
It is unclear when exactly Oskar figures out who his grandfather
is, but the two decide to dig up the emptycoffin and fill it with
the letters the grandfather wrote, but never sent to his son.
Questions:While answers are provided, there is no presumption
that you have been given the last word. Readers bringtheir own
personalities to the books that they are examining. What is obvious
and compelling to one readermay be invisible to the next. The
questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to
the text;the answers are intended to give you examples of what a
reflective reader might think. The variety of possibleanswers is
one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding
activity.
To what does the book's title refer?In young Oskar's vocabulary,
the words extremely and incredibly occupy a great deal of space.
For example,within just a few pages we get these references. Oskar
turns the dials on Abe Black's hearing aid "extremelyslowly" (p.
165). The birds fly by the window "extremely fast and incredibly
close" (p. 165). Oskar has an"extremely important rehearsal" for
Hamlet (p. 168). He tells his mother he is "extremely brave" (p.
169). Hewrites "EXTREMELY DEPRESSED" and then "INCREDIBLY ALONE' to
describe his feelings (p. 171).All of this describes a boy who is
living in a heightened state of anxiety. Events do not just happen
in Oskar'sworld. They take on an exaggerated sense of importance or
nearness or loudness; he is overreacting in the faceof a terrible
tragedy that is also a very personal one. He worries that his
mother will not be there in themorning. Try as she might to
convince him otherwise, he knows from experience that the
possibility of her notreturning from work one day is real. So
everything in his life is critical because it may be the last time
he goesto rehearsal, sees a flock of birds or walks down a
street'
Oskar transfers this to his feelings of grief, not recognizing
that others, especially his mother, might havesimilar feelings and
be of some comfort to him. That is why he feels incredibly alone
or, to use his metaphor,has heavy boots. In the same section as
above, his mother mentions that she cries too. Oskar asks her why
sherarely lets him see her cry, a question that really means he
needs to know that she hurts as much as he does(p.171).There are
other meanings that might be ascribed to the title phrases. One
refers to the seminal event of thebook, the 9/11 attacks. For New
Yorkers, the attacks were both loud and close. Though the book
suggests thatOskar was not close enough actually to hear the noise,
he may as well have been. His closeness to it is through
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his father's death. Certainly, Oskar and his father were
incredibly close,Another possibility is that the title refers not
to the characters in the book, but to us. In many ways, we are
stillas close to the events of 9/tt as Oskar is. This is one of the
first literary works to attempt to tackle the subject.As the war on
terrorism continues, we are not quite ready to let the noise of
those days die down.Finally, though, it might just be an apt
description of the book, which is, in its own way, screaming at the
readerwith the pictures, word play, and boldness of its major
character. Even if we are not always clear what it issaying to us,
it certainly feels like an in-your-face effort. The book demands a
kind of attention from us. perhapsit is Jonathan Safran Foer who is
extremely loud and incredibly close.Is Oskar believable as a
nine-year-old?Oskar seems remarkably capable for a nine-year-old
boy. He walks miles at a time, crosses all the boroughs ofNew York,
invents unbelievable contraptions, finds ways around his phobias of
elevators and subways, developsjewelry with Morse Code messages,
and interacts with adults easily. Truthfully, he seems beyond
precocious:Could a real child function so well?
What we learn, of course, is that Oskar is very bright, but that
much of his brilliance is simply his imagination.What he calls
inventions are really imaginative solutions to circumvent his
anxieties, but they remain in hishead. Certainly, he is no
brilliant musician. The tambourine is his outlet for shaking, a
form of security blanketas he goes about his day. He certainly is
no actor. The role he plays in Hamlet doesn't really exist; it's
justYorick's skull, with Oskar dressed in black to keep the rest of
his body from showing.What takes awhile for the reader to discover
is just how close Oskar is to some form of emotional breakdown.All
of his energy has been put into coping with his grief, though he is
not prepared to let it out until he meetshis grandfather, with whom
he has an immediate bond even without knowing who he is. He
struggles not onlywith the loss of his father, but with the guilt
he suffers from not having picked up the phone the last time
hisfather tried to call. It is that grief that ultimately leads him
to follow the so-called clues, clues that, on thesurface, appear to
suggest his father might be alive.By the end of the book, we know
that Oskar is living in false hope, but we see that he is beginning
to allow hisgrief to come through. His last invention, reversing
the pictures of a man plunging to his death from the TwinTowers,
cannot go far enough. Though it appears the man can fly, there are
not enough pictures to go back tobefore the attack.
Of course, Oskar seems unrealistic in his abilities. His grief,
however, is very real, and his need to find ways tocope is
appropriate. The fantastic part of his life is not his imagination;
it is how much he is capable of actuallyaccomplishing. What we
read, then, is more along the lines of what would happen if you
combined a brightnine-year-old's incredible ability to live out his
imagination with his need to make sense of an unspeakabletragedy.
Put those two together and you have Oskar Schell.
How does the author enhance the story telling through visual
means?Foer departs from the narrative form of most novels at
several places in the book and the reader is left to guessat what
he is trying to convey. Even before the title page, we see
full-page photographs of a keyhole, a flock ofbirds, and a fire
escape on the side of a building. The title of the first chapter is
"What The?," a wonderfulrecognition of exactly what the reader is
already feeling.
Eventually, of course, we learn that the grandfather took
pictures of all the doorknobs for insurance purposes,and that he
watched Grandma and Oskar through the closet door keyhole. We soon
learn about Oskar's"invention" of a birdseed shirt that could have
saved the man jumping from the Twin Towers, and that Oskaralways
looks for ways out of buildings and takes the stairs because
elevators could stall. In other words, wehave been prepared through
the pictures for a few details of the book,Some graphics serve as
simple illustrations. When Oskar visits the art supply store and
sees his father's name-
really his grandfather's, as we later learn -
on the writing pads, we are just as likely to notice that what
thesalesperson says is true about what people write when testing a
pen. They either write their names or the colorof the ink.
Certainly they do not write a different ink color (pp. 45;
47;49).The montage of pictures beginning on page 53 seems to be a
jumble of ideas. It reflects the disconnectecthinking in Oskar's
head and the variety of activities that draw his attention,
beginning with the keys in thehardware store. Most, though, are
pictures of death, such as Hamlet with Yorick's skull and the
close-uD of thefalling man.
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Rather than just tell us what is on each page of the notebooks
the grandfather uses ro communicate, Foershows each page a sentence
at a time. when Grandma types blank-pages whileiompiling her
memoirs, we seethem in the novel as the grandfather sees them in
the typescript, i.e., ieveral puju, that are blank (pp.72r-123)'
when the grandfather attempts to communicate through the phone,
r6e,. grves us more than twopages of typed numbers to represent the
b.uttons on the telephon-e, stariing *itn "neito" and ,,Is it
really you?,,(pp' 269-271)' Foer must know that only the most
determined of readers,iilt attempt to translate the entiremessage;
at any rate, Grandma fails to s9! the message. Later, after saying
there is not enough space to tellhis son everything he needs to
say, Grandfather's woris literally run togeth-e, on in" page,
producing severalcompletely unreadable pages (pp. 2gt-284).All of
these latter instances simply illustrate much of what the book has
been saying about the inability tocommunicate' oskar releases his
fears in a series of gestures, but cannot speak of them to his
therapist,Grandfather Thomas has been mute since world waill, and
could not even mail the letters he had written tohis son' In his
journeys through the city, oskar hopes to find one last
communication from his father; eventuallyhe learns no such
communication exists. The book is full of failed attempts to
communicate.The last message' though, is clear' A sequence of
photographs, printed in reverse order so that we might viewthem as
a child's flip book, depict a man rising up from the'worlb Trade
centeri-.tn". than falling from it. Ifonly oskar could turn back
time the same way, his father would still be alive.why does oskar
hide his father's phone calls from his mother?The reason oskar is
having so much difficulty coping with his father's death is
partially wrapped up in his havingbeen home to hear his father's
last phone calls. ror one thing, oskar passed up the opportunity to
pick up thephone the last time his Dad called, which occurred after
oskir had gotten nome- oskar feels very guilty aboutthat.Though
oskar may have been closer to his father, he is still very
protective of his mother. we see the protectiveside in his
resentment of Ron, the friend from his mother's grief support
group. It is not just that he doesn,twant a replacement dad or that
he doesn't want his mother to forget his iather
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[n" usual reasons chilorenresent their parents' love interests
-
he also doesn't want her to get hurt. Though it was not
immediately clearwhat was happening on the taped messages, oskar
knew they were the last words his father wouro iiv. He
didi::[Xit,H;.to feel what he felt listening to the father's
desperate atrempts to make contact with his famityIt takes some
time, but we finally learn the third reason that oskar hides the
calls. It is because of what hisfather did not say. "why djdn't he
say goodbye? ...why didn't he say'I love you,?,, (p.207). without
thosewords, oskar is unable to let go, but he also cannot bear to
think that his father would not have said them,especially since his
last call was after the first tower fell. oskar is obsessed with
the calls, on the one hand, andashamed on the other' It is not
until the end that he learns that his mother did talk with his
father and hadattempted to shield her son from worrying.why would
oskar's mother allow him to go on these adventures?Any parent
reading this story would be aghast at the idea of a nine-year-old
boy traveling all over New yorkcity's five boroughs alone' For most
of the story, we are led to believe that this is exacly what has
happened.we might first be tempted to interpret this as oskar's
mother being so consumed by ner own grief that shecannot be of much
help to her son. we could also follow oskar's betief tnat she has
somehow moved on quickly,finding a new boyfriend named Ron, whom
oskar refuses to accept.The first good clue that something else is
going on is revealed in Dr. Fein's office. As oskar listens through
thedoor to the bits and pieces of the conversation, we find that
his mother is fighting for her son, oisag.eli;gvehemently with the
doctor, who wants to hospitalize oskar (pp. 203-202). r-atei we
discover that she hasbeen.keeping an eye on oskar all along,
including recruiting lvi. etack from upstairs to go with him on
histravels.still, it seems extraordinary for such a young child to
be watched so little, especially in the post-9/11 world.one good
reason for allowing the adventure is that it gets oskar interested
in life aiain. Up to this point, itappears that oskar has simply
developed phobias and coping mechanisms to mask"his grief.
Interestinjiy, whenhe has a cause, he begins to face those fears.
Riding the IRf out to Brooklyn or going up the elevator in
theEmpire State Building may be hard for him, but he Jccomplishes
both on rris qr"-rt.In short, these journeys are healthy for oskar.
we hear less and less about his tambourine as the book
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progresses, with only an occasional mention when he is feeling
particularly stressed. By the end/ we suspectthat his mother has
spent many an afternoon worrying about Oskar/ even as she knows
exactly where he isheaded next. She knows that Oskar's quest is
giving him one last chance to feel close to his father, which mayin
turn give him the strength to let go. The pictures of the man
rising instead of falling from the World TradeCenter may suggest
Oskar's desire to make time go backward, but they also represent
flight, a symbol forletting go.
Why does the author include the story about the grandparents in
Dresden?At first glance, the story of how the grandparents met,
lost each other in the war and then re-meet in a newrelationship in
New York seems almost like an intrusion into Oskar's story. Though
it provides a way ofintroducing the grandfather, there are
certainly simpler ways in which that task could be accomplished.The
elder Thomas Schell, though, knows something about the pain Oskar
is feeling. Though he was older whenthe bombing of Dresden
occurred, Thomas lost not only his family, but the love of his
life, Anna, who waspregnant with his child. This is the pain that
keeps him from speaking for decades.It is also the pain that
ultimately draws Oskar to him. Though Oskar knows him only as the
renter in thegrandmother's apartment, on first meeting he tells
Thomas everything about his quest and even plays thephone calls,
something Oskar has hidden from his mother. Though there is little
in the text to explain theconnection, it is immediate and
powerful.The only explanation we do get is recognizable to the
reader, but not to Oskar. He notices the similarities to hisfather
such as the gap in his front teeth, the way he shrugs his
shoulders, and, of course, the first name (p.237), but it is only
sometime later that he realizes that this is his grandfather
because he is never told Thomas'slast name. Even without that
knowledge, Oskar opens up.What Oskar does know is that this man
seems to understand what he is feeling even more than Grandma.
Thesilence of the elder Thomas Schell provides a perfect outlet for
Oskar to say the things he has been unable toshare with Mom, Dr.
Fein, or anyone else. Fortunately for Oskar, in that silence, he
also finds acceptance.The book's description of the bombing of
Dresden, as seen through Thomas's eyes, is no less horrific than
weimagine the Trade Center attacks were for those who were present.
By juxtaposing the two events, Foer bringshis characters closer. At
the same time, though, he manages to provide some perspective for
Americans whoseexperience of the horrors of war may have been
limited to television coverage of the first Gulf War.Why does Oskar
write to scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall?Early
in the book, we read Oskar's letterto Stephen Hawking asking to be
his prot6g6 (p. 11).Oskar indicatesthat he wrote a lot of letters,
and for the rest of the book, we are occasionally treated to the
responses. Most ofthe responses come from famous scientists in a
variety of disciplines.It becomes clear that Oskar has turned to
science for two different, though related reasons. The first is
that hewishes to understand what has happened. It soon becomes
clear that Dad was the one to whom he would turnwith all those
questions that children have. The several flashbacks to
conversations in the book are more or lesslike this one, in which
Dad attempts to tell the story of the sixth borough of New
York:
"Once upon a time, New York City had a sixth borough." "What's a
borough?" "That's what I call aninterruption." "I know, but the
story won't make any sense to me if I don't know what a boroughis."
"It's like a neighborhood. Or a collection of neighborhoods" "So,
if there was once a sixthborough, then what are the five boroughs?"
"Manhattan, obviously, Brooklyn, Queens, StatenIsland, and the
Bronx." "Have I ever been to any of the other boroughs?" "Here we
go." (p. 13)
Since Dad's death is the very thing Oskar is trying to
understand, it is not surprising that he would turn toscience for
answers (the other common choice being religion, of course). It
then makes sense for him to turn tothe most brilliant scientific
minds in the world as surrogate parents. It becomes clear, though,
thatunderstanding is not his only goal. Control is. Oskar keeps
"inventing" objects that will give him control, such asthe birdseed
shirt or the implanted microphones to let everyone know your heart
is still beating, In the end, herealizes that his inventions have
come up short, at least to this point. Though he can reverse the
image of thefalling man, he cannot make time go backwards to before
his Dad's death. He writes to the scientists in hopesthat they will
be able to help him find the answers that elude him.This also
explains why Oskar has become an atheist, though he never really
talks about it. He has put his faithin the scientific because that
is at least concrete, and has not failed him. It is God who has
failed Oskar bytaking away his father for no apparent reason. What
is ironic, of course, is that when he finally gets a letter
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from Stephen Hawking that is not a form letter, the response is
largely philosophical, and bordering ontheological in nature:
I'm sure i don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the
universe is composed of dark matter'The fragile balance depends on
things we'll neveibe^able to see, hear' smell' taste' ortouch'
Lifeitself depenos on them .what's reali what isn't real? Maybe
those aren't the right questions to bedsking. What does life depend
on? (p' 305)
For oskar to heal, he will have to begin to accept the reality
of unanswered questions'
Further Reading:Nicole Krauss, The Historv of Love (2005)Leo, a
polish survivor-of world-rld war II now living in New York, lives
alone, but searches for his son' He is alsolooking for his ILeo,s ]
book, The History of tov-e, which was published in chile under
another man's name'Kraus is lonathan Safran Foer,s wife, and her
novel and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have beenreviewed
together as having similar themes and plot threads'
Ian McEwan, Saturdav (2005)A day in the life of Henry perowne, a
surgeon in London, rendered in a fast-paced stream of
consciousness
and
about a world on the brink of the Iraq war. Early in the
morning, Henry sees a plane with its wing afire headed
for Heathrow Airport and wonders if the terrorism seen on 9/11
in the US is coming to England'
Dave Eggers, How We Are Hunqrv (2004)This collection of
snoEEries echoes the tonruiions and disjuncture of Generation X and
Gen Y America'Eggers, who collaborated on editing The Future
Dictionary oiAmerica with Foer and Krauss, is the creator
of
Mcsweeney3 magazine and authoiof the pulitzer prize-winning
memoirA Heartbreaking work of staggeringGenius.
Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (2002)sibylla is the singte
;offi-r L"oo, *no is a lenius. By the age of five, Ludo has studied
Homer in the originalGreek, learned probability theory, and is
now-working on learriing Japanese. Fascinated with the frlmThe
seven
Samarai, Ludo embarks on a search of London to find his
father'
Kate Wenner, Dancinq with Einstein (2004) ---
...:!L L^-r^lhar,a:raa+'r aAt age thirty, lu1area-ll6ffill
returrs to New yorkcity and tries to make peace with her father's
death eighteenyears earlier. Her father, a Holocaust ruruiuor,
worked on the Manhattan Project and died in a car crash'
Severaltherapists, her father's diary, and memories of "Grandpa"
Einstein help her in the healing process'
Gi,inter Grass, The Tin Drum (1962)Apart from the obvious
parallels betweenthe main character of Grass's novel, oskar
Mazerath
(a dwarf whobeats a tin drum), and 6skar schell (a boy who plays
a tambourine), Grass's critique of 20th century historyfinds
connections in the story of oskar schell's grandparents'
September, 2OO5; revised, November 2005This Book Discussion
Guide was developiA Oy xevin Matthews, an Episcopat priest and
former Duke Universitywriting instructor now living in Durham,
NC'
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