Online Publication of Undergraduate Studies 2019, Volume 10, Issue 1
Personal- and National-Level Trauma in Children
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Personal- and National-Level Trauma in Children Michelle Hansen
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close debuted to immense success, and was deemed a notable book for adults by the American Library Association, as well as selected as a New York Times Bestseller. Despite the book’s many awards, honors, and positive reviews, a common criticism of the novel points out the precociousness of its young protagonist, Oskar Schell, and the potential insensitivity involved in depicting the events of 9/11 so soon after its occurrence. However, many critics (e.g., Aragi, 2005; Faber, 2005; Miller, 2005; Updike, 2005) have since responded by highlighting the ways in which Oskar’s descriptions of his experiences were heartfelt, and truly indicative of how a child would process the trauma of this national tragedy . Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a work of historical fiction narrated by a nine-year-old boy named Oskar whose father, Thomas, was one of 9/11’s nearly 3,000 victims. After finding a key in his father’s closet, Oskar embarks on a journey across New York City to find its corresponding lock in an attempt to make sense of his father’s death. Midway through the novel, the reader finds out that Oskar has voicemails on his phone that his father left for him while he was trapped in the second tower, and that Oskar has not told anyone about these voicemails. The reader learns that Oskar feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for not answering the phone when his father attempted to call him prior to his death, and Oskar does not know how to handle the intense emotions that arise whenever he thinks about that day. Oskar researches the events of 9/11 in detail and documents the gruesome images he finds from his research in a binder entitled Stuff That Happened to Me. He fixates on one picture in particular: a man falling from the building, presumably having jumped in order to escape being burned alive. Oskar convinces himself that despite the pictures’ pixelation, the man it depicts is his father. Oskar is obsessed with figuring out the way his father died, even telling his grandfather, “If I could know how he died, exactly how he died, I wouldn’t have to invent [how he died]...There were so many different ways to die and I just need to know which was his” (Foer, 2005, p. 356). This obsession is accompanied by fear, as Oskar is also afraid of anything that has even the slightest relation to the 9/11 attacks, including suspension bridges, fireworks, and smoke, showing the extent to which Oskar’s fears are generalized. Throughout the book, Oskar admits that these fear-inducing thoughts give him “heavy boots”– his way of saying he feels so exceptionally distraught that he cannot even pick his feet up.
Oskar is intelligent, vigilant, and well-read. He writes letters to people who inspire him, including Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall, which is one of his self-articulated “raisons d’être,” or reasons to live (Foer, 2005, p. 14). He also researches widespread man-made tragedies aside from 9/11, such as the bombing of Hiroshima. Subsequently, Oskar only wears white to absorb less heat in the case of another tragedy involving fire. He is also always conscious of other locations that are potential targets for another terrorist attack (e.g., the Staten Island Ferry, and the Empire State Building). In an attempt to rid himself of the negativity associated with these types of locations and situations, Oskar often invents solutions to possible threats, such as skyscrapers that can move out of the way of airplanes or trampolines at the bottom of elevator shafts. He is “panicky” when he cannot contact family members regarding their whereabouts, and once convinced himself that his grandmother was “unconscious at the bottom of the swimming pool at the Y” when she was not in her apartment (Foer, 2005, p. 320). With all of this in mind, one can see how Oskar has had trouble processing the events of 9/11 and the death of his father. Oskar exhibits symptoms of low emotional well-being associated with grief, and consequently, this paper explored the relevance of Oskar’s case study compared to the ways in which children respond to national- and personal-level trauma. Children’s Response to Large-Scale Tragedy Though Oskar is a fictional character, he is representative of the thousands of school-aged children who experienced the terrorist attacks that occured on September 11, 2001, both in person and through the media. These attacks were unprecedented and unparalleled both in death toll and their subsequent media coverage (Zelizer & Allan, 2011). Therefore, there had been relatively little research done regarding the psychological effects of large-scale catastrophes prior to this event. However, research examining the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing, another national-level traumatic event, found that a child’s emotional closeness to the victim of a widespread calamity is predictive of the level of anxiety they may display in the weeks following the event (Pfefferbaum et al., 1999). Additionally, Oklahoma City residents who had experienced the bombing directly through seeing, hearing, or feeling the blast were significantly more likely to show avoidant coping behaviors and experience strong feelings of grief than Oklahoma City residents who did not directly encounter the event, suggesting that an individual’s physical proximity 39 | Film and Book Reviews
