Chasing Death’s Memory: Representational Space in &lt;i&gt;Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close&lt;/i&gt;

Wayne E Arnold

doi:10.16995/c21.49

Abstract

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, approaches the emotional complexities of death and mourning within New York City in wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Set after the death of young Oskar Schell’s father in the World Trade Center, the narrative follows Oskar on a quest for an understanding of loss. Situated in the confines of the city, the novel is an urban exploration for self-identity while faced with the unrecoverable loss of both human life and the iconic image of the city: the Twin Towers. Due to the absence of a physical body, Oskar perceives his father’s gravesite as a meaningless memorial, and he searches the metropolis for an alternative sense of resolution to his mourning. Foer’s narrative proffers an analysis of modern man and the shifting urban territory, where the complexity of place-identity, the individuals interaction with persons and locations, becomes embroiled in the post-9/11 memories and an altered urban fabric. Foer augments the story with photographs, including the iconic ‘falling man’ image that starkly silhouettes an imminent death against the tower. Oskar blends the falling man into a semblance of his father; in doing so, he places his father’s body at a temporal and identifiable place—although now shattered—within the metropolis and moving toward a more conscious engagement with the real, determinedly preserving remembrance of his father. Within this context, I utilize Foer’s novel to argue that our post-9/11 world has altered our cognitive understanding of space in the metropolis, demonstrating the continuing shift in the psychological mindset for coping with both urban life and death.

Highlights

The 2011 publication of The Police Chief magazine contained an article detailing technological advancements in methods used to identify bodily remains of mass fatalities
Through the first half of the novel, one grounding responsibility in Oskar’s life is his role in the school production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; significantly, Oskar is assigned the role of Yorick, the skull of the court jester, a bodiless representation of death
His unique part in the play, I contend, is symbolic his father’s empty grave. Another key element for my focus is a scrapbook, entitled Stuff That Happened to Me, wherein Oskar places the photograph of the Falling Man—photographer Richard Drew’s agonizing image of a man forced to jump to his death from the North Tower—and onto this photograph Oskar imposes the identity of his father

Summary

Introduction

The 2011 publication of The Police Chief magazine contained an article detailing technological advancements in methods used to identify bodily remains of mass fatalities. Through the first half of the novel, one grounding responsibility in Oskar’s life is his role in the school production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; significantly, Oskar is assigned the role of Yorick, the skull of the court jester, a bodiless representation of death. His unique part in the play, I contend, is symbolic his father’s empty grave. Another key element for my focus is a scrapbook, entitled Stuff That Happened to Me, wherein Oskar places the photograph of the Falling Man—photographer Richard Drew’s agonizing image of a man forced to jump to his death from the North Tower—and onto this photograph Oskar imposes the identity of his father. During the final moments of the novel, Oskar’s mourning is revealed to have evolved through an awareness of a larger community that is grappling with life and death within the city

The Towers on the Page

Yorick and the Open Grave

The Grave as Representable Space