Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer Essay Example
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Barnaby T. Chuckles
Mr. Kubacki
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is a tightly woven web of interrelated metaphors and thematic elements. Getting into every single one could take between a life-time and forever so for the purposes of this essay I will only focus on the few main themes; growing into adulthood, which is the quest that Oskar takes on when he sets out to find out about the key, accepting the unknowable in the universe, the random and the unquantifiable that separate life from mathematics, and duality. The last is the trickiest to wrap ones head around and, as typified by the interrelatedness mentioned earlier, ties in to the other two themes. As Oskar grows up he has to come to accept the way in which not everything in the universe can be explained, learn to make his scientific mind can come to grasp a chaotic world, and come to understand how humanity can be essentially illogical. It would be pointless, of course, to point out that Oskar’s quest is as crazy as you can get, but that being said we can begin to grasp that his journey is to get in touch with and become accustomed to his own craziness as a human being. And he way in which Oskar gets a palate for his own madness is by tasting the insanity of others. Each Black that he visits throughout the course of the book not only teaches Oskar something about people, but also mirrors his struggle. The first four Blacks he visits seem relatively insignificant, they can’t give him any information on the key. Yet, each somehow reflects Oskar’s journey into adulthood. When he goes to visit Aaron Black, after setting foot in Queens for the first time, symbolizing how the quest is the catalyst that sends Oskar out of his shell into the big, bright world, he finds that the man is literally paralyzed and can’t come down to greet him. Aaron Black’s literal paralysis mimics Oskar’s inability to come out into the real world, or as the
Barnaby T. Chuckles
Mr. Kubacki
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is a tightly woven web of interrelated metaphors and thematic elements. Getting into every single one could take between a life-time and forever so for the purposes of this essay I will only focus on the few main themes; growing into adulthood, which is the quest that Oskar takes on when he sets out to find out about the key, accepting the unknowable in the universe, the random and the unquantifiable that separate life from mathematics, and duality. The last is the trickiest to wrap ones head around and, as typified by the interrelatedness mentioned earlier, ties in to the other two themes. As Oskar grows up he has to come to accept the way in which not everything in the universe can be explained, learn to make his scientific mind can come to grasp a chaotic world, and come to understand how humanity can be essentially illogical. It would be pointless, of course, to point out that Oskar’s quest is as crazy as you can get, but that being said we can begin to grasp that his journey is to get in touch with and become accustomed to his own craziness as a human being. And he way in which Oskar gets a palate for his own madness is by tasting the insanity of others. Each Black that he visits throughout the course of the book not only teaches Oskar something about people, but also mirrors his struggle. The first four Blacks he visits seem relatively insignificant, they can’t give him any information on the key. Yet, each somehow reflects Oskar’s journey into adulthood. When he goes to visit Aaron Black, after setting foot in Queens for the first time, symbolizing how the quest is the catalyst that sends Oskar out of his shell into the big, bright world, he finds that the man is literally paralyzed and can’t come down to greet him. Aaron Black’s literal paralysis mimics Oskar’s inability to come out into the real world, or as the