Primary Source Analysis: Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

Primary source analysis by Charalambos Poulikidis
Main topis is “9/11”

Primary Source Analysis of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer
The book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” was writer by Jonathan Safran Foer. He is a young author, born in 1977, Washington, D.C. Foer graduated from Princeton in 1999 with a degree in Philosophy and he is best known for his two novels, the “Everything Is Illuminated”, which took National Jewish Book and Guardian First Book Award, and the “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. Now he lives in Brooklyn of New York in United States of America. The second known novel (Extremely loud And Incredibly Close), was written on 2005. The book speaks about a nine year old child, Oscar
Schell, whose father died on 9/11, in the World Trade Center catastrophe. Two years after that, Oscar discovered a key in a vase, which belongs to his dad, and inspired him to search Manhattan about information for the key. Foer wrote that book to implicate the political element in the narration. Although he analyzes the personal drama of the victim and the impact of the event to the families who left behind. With an elaborately way takes this event as an example, detecting the extreme consequences of each violent death, but specifically all the death occurs under very extreme conditions. And because of the extreme rise and extreme emotions, he puts as a protagonist a highly sensitive nine-year old child, Oskar Schell, who lost his father at this event. The author of this book is trying to make us understand that the life continues after an experience or a tragedy that ends on a trauma, that when someone is on a bad situation, not to give up and try to forget it or leave with it, but have the idea that life continues.

Primary Source Analysis of “Betty Ong Phone Call”
A part from the conversation. (Full conversation and more information can be found here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Ong )
 Betty Ong: "Um, we're sitting in the back, um, and the cockpit is not answering.
Somebody is stabbed in business class-and um, I think there's mace-that we cant breathe-I don't know I think we're getting hijacked. A.A. Oper. Center: "Which flight are you on? Betty Ong: Flight 12 (Betty makes a mistake, but corrects herself later) A.A. Oper. Center: And what seat are you in? (Brief Silence) A.A. Oper. Center: Ma'am are you there? Betty Ong: Yes. A.A. Oper. Center: What, what, what seat are you in? (Brief Silence) A.A. Oper. Center: Ma'am, what seat are you in? Betty Ong: Well, we just left Boston, we're up in the air. We're supposed to go to L.A., and the cockpit's not answering their phone.

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Betty Ong was an American Flight attendant, and she was on the known Flight 11, which crashed on World Trade Center. She is famous because of her radio conversation, while she was on board of this fatal flight, with Nydia Gonzalez. Betty Ann Ong, who had Chinese origin, was born in San Francisco on 5 February 1956 and died on the crash in 2001. The thing that made her so special is her a stance of that difficult and scary moment, her heroic acts and that she never lost her composure, in a moment of confusion, in a place with lack of oxygen, she had the strength to pick up the phone and notify and describe exactly the situation to the American Airlines about the hijacking on that plane. When she was alive, her passion was the children. Her moto of the good, quality and healthy life was to have a positive self-image and to be self-confident. Her courage, her ideas and her power inspired many people , to take as an example the attitude of Betty. To grow up their children and adopt them the ideas of Betty. Her message, the positive “can do” attitude, can win the problems of the life and can make you stronger and more positive.

Primary source analysis of an ad by ACLU foundation, which posted on New York Times.

The ACLU, The American Civil Liberties Union consists of two nonprofit organizations.
First one is ACLU foundation and the second is American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU’s mission is (according to their history brief on their site) "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." This ad shows now president Obama morphing into previous president of United States of America, George W. Bush, and with tries with this method, to urge Obama not to act like Bush. The meaning of the picture is that Bush’s mistakes after 9/11, for example, somehow he could brain washed a big amount of Americans citizens, and made them to believe that for all the terrorists’ attacks, for all the bombings and for the World Trade Center tragedy, Iraqi and Afghan and generally Arab civilians were responsible. He added another one stereotype in worlds mind. And for that reason, many people say that he find the chance to start a war to Iraq, because of the rich oil. Obama promised that he is going to change Bush policies and restore the American values, justice and due process. The whole meaning of the advertisement, addressed to United States of America citizens to be suspicious about promises that can’t be kept and simultaneously to hope for a change that can retrieve or even change the value of the name of the United States of America, because, outside of United States, the hearing of “United
States of America” linked to something evil and heartless, a country doesn’t care about the other, but only for its expansion.