Facing Trauma In Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

After the terrorist attacks of 9-11, thousands of Americans were left to deal with the tragic loss of family members and friends. This includes children whose mother or father died that day, creating a profound sense of trauma and leaving them searching for answers. This topic was explored in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which tells the story of a young boy named Oskar, whose father was killed in the World Trade Center. Foer wanted to explore how people, individually and collectively, confronted the trauma of 9-11 like other major tragedies of the 20th century. This paper will explore Oskar’s attempt to deal with his trauma, how it differed from his mother and the void that often accompanies the tragic death of a loved one.

Oskar’s quest to find the owner of a missing key is symbolic of his desire to deal with his own trauma. He is looking for answers or a message and therefore looking into his father’s past is really about filling a void in his life (Codde 244-246). This trauma is also impacting his identity, which is posing a challenge considering that he was already an eccentric child who is both intelligent and yet odd and fearful. In his analysis of trauma in the film, Matthew Mullins states, “Trauma and identity have a complicated relationship in which both seem to play a role in creating each other” (Mullins 3). This is evident in the personal stories of Oskar’s grandparents whose identities have been drastically impacted by their shared trauma in Germany. Each of them has struggled to move on from their past and Oskar losing his own father sets them on path for closure. This is an example of how the impacts of a traumatized mind can be very similar, creating a collective experience where entire groups of people are struggling with pain, their identity and a void that seems difficult to fill, if not impossible

For Oskar, he simply does not know how to respond, and this has a major impact on his relationship with his mother. She has her own way of dealing with the death of her husband and states to Oskar “Maybe that’s because I don’t want you to see me cry a lot…because that isn’t fair to either of us” (Foer 171). Throughout the film, we can see that Oskar is struggling with his mother response and is confused about her feelings of the situation. At one point while at a storage facility, Oskar gets mad because his mother wants to throw away some of his dad’s belonging and he responds by saying “So it will OK if I throw away your things and forget about you after you die? (Foer 102). This is another example of Oskar’s inability to cope with his loss, as he fears that he will forget his father. Oskar has also assumed that his mother doesn’t understand his grief, but we soon find out that she has been guiding him on this quest for the owner of key because she knows that he has to deal with his trauma in his own way. Part of the challenge is finding words to talk about what has happened and therefore Oskar has to learn to express his pain and find the language to make sense of his father’s death.

When talking about the book, Philippe Codde states, “The inaccessibility of one’s own traumatic past becomes one of the important themes of the novel…” (Codde 244). Not only is this part of the film as well but very common for people dealing with trauma and this is why Oskar’s quest was something he had to do. It also why his mother was behind this adventure for she knew that talking his grandparents, meeting other people and ultimately finding out whom the key belonged to was a form of healing. For example, when talking about his dad, his mom tries to re-enforce positive ideas about his death when she states, “His spirit is there. . . ” to which Oskar responded, “Dad didn’t have spirit. He had cells!” (Foer 169).

Here, Oskar is talking about what happens after we die because he is trying to understand his father’s death. In another situation, when talking about the buildings that collapsed on 9/11, Oskar states, “Everything that’s born has to die, which means are lives are like the skyscrapers” (Foer 245). Again, this is how Oskar is internalizing his trauma by trying to explain to himself the meaning of death. There is a void and he needs answers and thus Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was about how a young boy aims to make peace with his father’s death in a very personal and age specific manner. We all deal with trauma differently and for Oskar, this was the only way to begin moving forward from the trauma he has experienced.