Arianna

|| //Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close// was written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published in 2005. The novel is set in New York City shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It tells the story of Oskar, a very unique boy who lost his father in the attack. He is trying to make sense of his life subsequent to the attack by embarking on a quest in hopes of finding the answers to his unanswered questions about his father’s death.
 * Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close [[image:http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327879967l/4588.jpg width="191" height="279" align="center"]]
 * About the Book

Conflict The story begins with Oskar, a nine year old boy who enjoys inventing, and talking about ideas for things he would like to make. As the story progresses on we learn more about Oskar and his quirks, the way he writes letters to all the people he looks up to, like Stephen Hawking, and the way he uses expressions like "wearing heavy boots" and "one hundred dollars" to express his emotions. Oskar's father, Thomas, died in the twin towers on September 11th, what he calls "the worst day." All Oskar wants to do is learn how his father died, and one day while he was sitting in his closet he notices a vase, inside the vase is a key simply labeled "Black." Oskar, being as desperate and inquisitive as he is, sets off on a mission to contact every person in the New York City area with the last name Black. His journey lasts eight long months until at last he is helped by Abby and William Black, who had an encounter with his father just days before the terrorist attack. Frustratingly enough for Oskar, the Black's have little helpful information for him and he is still left questioning his father's last few moments on earth. Throughout the story Oskar meets many other interesting characters such as the old man who lives upstairs that helps him, and the renter, who lives with his grandmother but actually is his grandfather. Also, the plot line is mixed with letters from Oskar's grandfather to his father and from his grandmother to him that complement the story and eventually gracefully merge together. ||
 * About the Author

Jonathan Safran Foer is a very well known American author. He is a Jewish-American and was born in Washington, D.C. Foer attended Georgetown Day School and Princeton University, after graduating from Princeton he attended Mount Sinai School of Medicine before he dropped out to  pursue writing instead. He is most well-known for writing //Everything is Illuminated// (2002) and a nonfiction work called //Eating Animals// (2009). Foer has been won many awards such as, the [|Zoetrope: All-Story] Fiction Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and he was included in [|Granta's]Best of Young American Novelists 2. Because Foer’s style is so different from most author’s he recieves both criticism and praise for his writing style. Some critics feel the illustrations and “typographical tricks” are pointless, while others feel his use of “modernist literary devices” is worthy of praise and admire him for it. || Thomas Schell- Thomas Schell is Oskar’s father who is killed before the book begins in the terrorist attack on 9/11. Oskar describes him as being very caring, kind, and intelligent. Oskar’s mother- She is never named in the story, but she cares deeply for Oskar. She promises him she will never fall in love again and even helps him on his journey. She also was very much affected by Thomas’s death and is struggling just as much as Oskar to cope. Oskar’s grandfather- In the novel he is referred to as “the renter” or Thomas Schell Sr. He does not speak after the death of his first love and writes everything he needs to say in daybooks. Towards the end of the novel he meets Oskar for the first time and the two devise a plan to learn more about Oskar’s father’s death. Oskar’s grandmother- She is a typical overprotective grandmother and constantly needs to be reassured that Oskar is “OK.” When she came to America she married Oskar’s grandfather, which creates a subplot within the novel. ||
 * Characters Oskar Schell- (main character) He is a very peculiar and wise-beyond-his-years nine year old boy who is simply trying to cope with the death of his father. He is incredibly intelligent and enjoys inventing things that would make life easier. He is more of the loner type, he doesn’t have friends his own age, but easily befriends strangers.
 * Theme In his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer conveys the message that every one loses loved ones, whether they are physically together or not, and in the end every one is alone.  [[image:http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/12/23/arts/23EXTREME_SPAN/23EXTREME_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg width="468" height="200" align="center"]] ||
 * Style Analysis  The book is written in an extremely stylistically unique way, making it very memorable for readers. It contains things such as letters, pictures taken by Oskar, varying sentence, paragraph, and chapter structure, journal pages, and even blank pages. Also, Foer uses higher-level diction and character development to add to the novel's quirks.

Foer is well known for experimenting with what is considered "normal" in his novels by including unorthodox things such as pictures. * "The distinct writing styles of the three narrators are interspersed with photos taken by Oskar of doorknobs, birds and hands, a copy of a sheet of paper where people tested pens, pages of only numbers, letters with red pen circling the errors, blank pages, and, at the end, a series of photos of a person falling from a window in reverse. Together, these weave an interesting narrative unlike anything I've read before" (Spangler). Throughout the novel Foer experiments with different types of sentences, paragraph and chapter structures. * "The novel's two supporting stories - told in the form of long letters to posterity from Oskar's German immigrant grandparents, and pivoting on the firebombing of Dresden, because Foer loves to play his aces in pairs - link up with each other just as neatly. Both letters are styled as high-art prose poems. The grandmother's letter is one long pregnant pause chopped up into a thousand or so full stops...that make it sound like a Buddhist affidavit. The grandfather's letter is dense, oblique and manic, its web of minutiae and oracularities Velcroed together with zillions of hook-shaped commas..." (Kirn). Also, Foer effectively uses many different dictions and tones for all of his narrators, such as a naive, but wise-beyond-his years diction for Oskar. (Locations are from Kindle Ebook version)
 * At the end of the novel there are 15 photos in reverse order of a body falling from the World Trade Center (Oskar wonders if it is his Dad). Also throughout the novel there are other pictures from Oskar's "Stuff That Happened to Me" book. (Foer, Locations 4146-4170)
 * "I didn't eat lunch. Seconds passed. The afternoon left. The evening came. I didn't eat dinner. Years were passing through the spaces between moments" (Foer, Locations 2177- 2189).
 * "I walked with my head bowed, my broad brimmed cap pushed low, when you hide your face from the world, you can't see the world" (Foer, Locations 1324- 1332).
 * "And so it begins, and doesn't ever stop - a rain of truisms, aphorisms, nuggets of wisdom and deep thoughts tossed off by Oskar and the other characters as if they were trying to corner a market in ironic existentialist greeting cards" (Kirn).
 * "...Oskar turns his naively precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy..." (Aragi).
 * ""Do you know 'shit'?'" "'That's a curse, isn't it?'" "'Not if you say 'shiitake.''" '"Guess not."' "'Succotash my Balzac dipshiitake'" (Locations 112-119 & 119-127).

|| Movie Trailer  media type="youtube" key="Z_quK9SEGYE" height="315" width="560" <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Interview with Jonthan Safran Foer []
 * <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Review <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close//, written by Jonathan Safran Foer, tells the story of Oskar Schell, a boy who lost his father in the terrorist attack on 9/11. Ever since his father's death Oskar has had "heavy boots," his way of expressing his depression, and he is convinced that his father left him one final message that he must uncover. He sets out on a quest through all of the New York City area to find the lock that is opened with the key he found in his father's closet. Oskar's story is filled with pain, lonliness, desperation, and a young boy's desire to be close with his dead father one more time. The book is very stylistically unique because it features images, letters, journal pages, and different sentence and chapter structures. I reccommend it to anyone who enjoys reading a tear-jerker.

<span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Works Cited <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",cursive;">Aragi, Nicole. "EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE." Rev. of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Publisher's Weekly. PWxyz, 31 Jan. 2005. Web. 16 May 2012. [].

<span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",cursive;">Kirn, Walter. "'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close': Everything Is Included." Rev. of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 3 Apr. 2005. Web. 16 May 2012. []. <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",cursive;">Safran Foer, Jonathan. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. Print. <span style="color: #ff009a; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",cursive;">Spangler, Charlotte. "Oscars Book Review: "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" Is A Heartbreakingly Beautiful Story." Rev. of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Neon Tommy.University ofSouthern California, 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 May 2012. []. ||