this document composes of a chapter by chapter summary as well as a detailed examination of each chapter. The notes contain theme analysis, postmodern features and examples, character analysis etc.
Extremely loud and incredibly close
Chapter 1-2
Oskar Schell is a nine year old boy who has a restless mind. Throughout the
narrative, he jumps from one idea to the next and seems to never be able to focus
on one thing. His dad used to leave him secret puzzles all over the city and his dad
becomes a key figure in his life, telling him stroies and teaching him about the world.
he seems to provide meaning to a world he fears might be meaningless and so his
dad becomes a coping tool. he dies in 9/11 attacks and Oskar receives voicemails
from the day he died. The chapter switches to Thomas Svhell, his grandfather, who
writes a letter to his unborn child. He decribes how he lost his ability to speak
starting with the word Anna and ending with the word I. he keeps notebooks with
phrases to communicate and has tattooed yes and no on his palms. He meets oskars
grandmother in a bakery and she can see his pain and all that he has lost. She
proposes marriage and he reponds with “help”.
Chapter 3
Oslar asks if his mom is in love with her friend Ron and believes she shoudlnt be
happy as it is unfair to his farger. While searching in his fathers closet, he knowcks
over a blue vase. It contains an envelope with the word “black: written on it and a
key inside. He fakes being sick and takes it to a locksmith who says it belongs to a
lock box or safee. He cannot search every lock in the city and so takes the more
literal approach and goes to an art store. The manager says that the word is written
in red which is abnormal as most write in the color of the word. she suggests the
word is someones surname. He notices his dads name is in one of the test books in
the store. He begings searching all of the surnames with black and estimates it will
take him 3 years to visit them all. He doesn’t tell his mom about the key and his need
to find out who it belongs to and instead says hes going out and will be back later –
her lack of interest in hiw whereabouts brings him closer to his dad and further from
his mom who seems to have forgotten him. he bruises himself in order to cope with
things such as listening to the voice calls which he has moved to another phone to
keep his mo from hearing them. Oskar finds the thought of accepting a world
without his dad and moving on impossible. He seems to feel guilty about his father
death, for reaons unknown.
Chapter 4
Olsras grandma writes a letter dated 2003, where she says she wants to explain
everything to him. she grew up in Dresdin with her sister Anna. Thomas, her
husband, was in love with anna and she caught them kissing in the field once. He
wants to marry her and be a sculptor. She moves to america where she bumps into
thomas in a bakery. She knows it is thomas from dresden and asks if he ever became
a sculptor. He shows her his palm saying no and she asks if he would sculpt her
naked. He agrees to this if she speaks german and they head to his apartment. She
poses for him and it becomes clear he is trying to sculpt Anna. He tries to sculpt
grandma so that he can fall in love with her like he did with anna and they evebtually
have sex and get married the next day, agreeing to never have children or speak in
german again. The chapter seems to be more about the truth and reality, than
, fantasy and beauty. The story of grandma is not beauitful, but it is what happened.
Thomas can only love her as lng as she resembles Anna and so he refuses to
acknowledge and deal with his grief. Grandma seems to be a character in every
persons story but her own and we still do not know her name.
Chapter 5
Oskar hunts down Aaron Black, who is the first name alphabetically. He promises to
only lie when he has to. He doesn’t use public transport and so must walk. He is in
the middle of two boroughs and wonders what that is called. Aaron cannot come
down to Oskar and oskar cannot go to the 9th floor and so he flees. He meets Abby
Black who does not know his father, but invites him in because he tells her he is
diabetic and needs food – he promises to donate his nect allowance to a diabetes
organisation to make up for the lie. Abby does not recongnize the key or envelope
but he invites her to his play Hamlet. He then goes to his grandma who has been
crying despite saying she used up all her tears when grandpa left. She says she has
been talking to the renter again. He can hear footsteps in the apartment but she
insists no one is here. Grandma, in fact, explains that making large changes or
inventions sometimes creates harm when she says that the inventor of the atomic
bomb was great but not good. By disconnecting the idea of being great from being
good or moral, Grandma suggests that greatness is a distinction of dubious value.
Chapter 6
Thomas and grandma agree to never speak about the pas in their marriage and have
various unspoken rules. He likes going to the aiport to pick up grandmas newspapers
because he can see people reuniting and finding happiness again. they mark areas of
their apartment as “Nothing Places,” where either of them could go when they
wanted to be nothing. This becomes more complicated when a shadow in a nothing
area falls in a something area and so the apartment ends up having more nothing
than something areas. Before he leaves her, he places his hands around her face and
tries to tell her she is soemthing. He recalls the dfays he had with anna – their
parents were friends and that’s how they met. They kept trying to see each other for
6 days only to find out they were both going to each others houses. He asks grandma
to write her life story on a type writer and she says her eyes are bad and cant write.
She promsies to try and after months of working on it, he gives it to him and its blank
because tehre was no ink – he realizes her eyes are very bad and feels he has failed
her. Back in time, he recalls his first time sleeping with anna and how her father was
trying to hide a man named Simon Goldberg who is presumably a jew. He protects
simon despite the risk it takes on him. In time, thomas says he is keaving and will be
back soon. Grandma has chosen to live and he can no longer do that. He plans to get
on a plane and never write again. She follows him to the aiport. Both thomas and
oskar seem to try process their grief by quanifying their emotions. He thinks he can
deal with grief by creating something and nothing areas. Oska tries to rank the
people he loves in order to cope. Thomas believes he cannot live in the present,
where grandma lives and so he must go back to Dresden. He does not love grandma
because she is not anna, but she is something because she is a connection to Anna.
Anna and thomas fall in love in a time of war and pain and so despite the pain in the
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