I have just finished reading the book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and it was a reading experience that will stay with me. As a novel which deals with how the world has changed since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close tells us about its direct affect on one family. The novel begins sometime after that fateful day. Thomas Schell, father, son, and husband, perished in the attacks, and the novel is narrated by his son, Oskar.
The story goes the way when the nine-year-old boy, Oskar, lost his father in the attacks on Sep. 11th, after which he becomes a tortured insomniac. He gives himselves little bruises and he is always in “heavy boots”. One year after his father died, Oskar discovers a key enclosed in an envelope of his dad with the word “Black” written on its back. He begins his journey throughout the city to find the lock it belongs to. Step by step, Oskar gets to know many people and learns their lives, he also discovers the great tragedy happened to his grandparents who survived the fire bombing in Dresden, Germany in the Second World War. Compared to those who also survived in their own ways, Oskar finally finds out his tradedy is only like a single tiny star in the night sky.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a wonderful story about ups and downs in life, about how people handle horrible tragedies, about losing someone that you love and about coming to terms with this loss. The catch of the title is that it is tragedy that is loud and close, but the people who can share and relieve grief are all too quiet and far away. It's an intimate story tightly centered upon one family, but one that links itself to tragedies that happened to everyone around us.
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Dear Yingtao
ReplyDeleteYes. September 11th was a horrifying tragedy, a devastating event that should never have happened.
Your article has an appropriate ending in that the life story of one family is example enough for the rest of the world.
Well done. You keep up the good work.
I really appreciate your words. I think it is a entertainment to read your essay. As we know, some of the tragedies are very close to us. Some of the burden in life that we cannot bear. When such a tragedy happens around us, we do not even know that whether we can stand it or not. What we can do is just show sympathy to those people who are in sorrow. I believe that no matter how hard the things are, our humanity would not fall.
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