Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close Grandpa's Journey

The novel ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ by Safran Foer is a book about three character’s quest journey/cycles and how they are intertwined. Foer does a brilliant job of combing the stories into one big overall message about overcoming loss. In the book Foer doesn’t lay out Grandpa’s cycle as chronologically as Oskar; the different stages of Grandpa’s cycle are not chronologically ordered throughout his letters. The reader sees Grandpa’s normal life change drastically, the troubles he goes through to find himself again and finally gain knowledge of something that he was unaware of at the beginning of his quest. Grandpa’s quest cycle is about how he deals with loss and the way he mends his relationships with various people like Grandma
Act 3 is all about the character facing his issues and solving them and eventually finding the thing that they longed for. Foer was able to show the reader just that, in Grandpa’s story. Grandpa comes back to New York, this is him returning to his problems. Grandpa returned to New York and his old life after he found out that his son had died, this prompted him to want to find closure once and for all. The first step in recovering was when he became a father figure to Oskar and helped Oskar find closure from his dad’s loss. But by helping Oskar find closure he also found closure in his son’s death. The second step in completing the quest was him reconciling with his wife, Grandma. At the end of the novel they decided to live together in the airport, they overcame the lack of intimacy and fixed their communication problems. “I was afraid of him living”. “Why??” He wrote, Life is scarier than death.” In this quote, Grandpa finally reveals what has been holding him back all these years. Seeing that he admitted what was wrong with him, he was then able to recover from it and become a new person. At the end of the quest, although Grandpa didn’t find something tangible he did find something with substance which is peace and final