While Oskar seems like an unreliable narrator in parts of the novel, I still thoroughly enjoyed the novel as a whole. One theme that I found in the novel was the importance of human bonds and connections. Characters in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, specifically Oskar and his granparents, cope with disaster and trauma in a variety of ways, most effectively through re-evaluating relationships and making healthy connections with other human beings.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close acknowledges the universal idea that one can never truly make sense out of death and tragedy. There are things that people will never fully understand. Therefore, the goal of people should be to try to really live life to the fullest by making healthy connections and establishing bonds with other human beings. Oskar, in his journey through the five boroughs, makes such connections. He forges bonds with family and with countless denizens of New York. These friendships are crucial for Oskar’s recovery of 9/11 because they offer a source of hope and support. Mr. Black, a resident in the same Manhattan apartment building as the Schell’s, accompanies Oskar through many of his travels throughout the city, as Oskar tries to find the answers to the mysterious key. He continually looks out for Oskar and even thinks of him as a son. Many of the other “Blacks” in the novel similarly care deeply for the boy. They attend his school’s production of “Hamlet” to offer support as Oskar plays the role of Yorick. During his performance, he glances at the crowd and sees “Albert and Alice and Allen and Arnold and Barbara and Barry. They must have been half the audience. But what was weird was that they didn’t know what they had in common” (143).
Oskar is able to forge a bond with such diverse people because they each share “a common bond of victimization.” Oskar, his grandparents, and even strangers such as Ruth are able to establish connections with one another in that they are all victims of tragedy. Oskar’s father died in the twin towers on 9/11. Thomas Schell lost his pregnant girlfriend during the bombing of Dresden. His wife, Oskar’s grandmother, also lost her sister during the attack on Dresden and eventually lost Thomas when he abandoned her. Ruth, a tour guide for the Empire State building, also lost her husband in unknown circumstances. Oskar, in particular, is able to make connections with strangers such as Ruth. While at the top of the Empire State building, Ruth discusses how her husband used a spotlight and shined it upwards from the city at night so that Ruth could locate him as she looked down from the skyscraper. She recounts to Oskar and Mr. Black how “when he died, I came back up here. It’s silly” to which Oskar replies, “No. It isn’t” (252). Oskar is able to empathize with her because he knows the pain of losing a loved one.
I definitely agree that the novel is preoccupied with human bonds and the formation of human connections. Like many of the other novels we’ve read this semester, the novel seems to be asking what counts as an authentic community. The whole Sixth Borough fable could be this way.
I wonder, though, if Foer is as optimistic about the possibility of forging long-lasting, healthy connections as he might at first appear in this exuberant narrative. According to the terms of the novel, what would count as a healthy relationship?