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Andrea Frost
Mrs. Herzog
AP English Literature 4
11 December 2014

Imagining I get a good grade on my Lit Ex

My Lit Ex focuses on how the structure of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
strategically relays certain ideas about grief. Ironically, the structure of my Lit Ex was one of my
biggest problems in prewrite three. I should take a page out of Jonathan Safran Foers book to
understand how to structure a book, or in my case a paper, to successfully convey my ideas.
Anyway, for my final draft, I worked a lot on playing around with the structure so that my ideas
made sense as they progressed through the paper. The backwards outline was a key component
in helping me fix my ideas so that they flowed fluidly through the essay.
However, as I was working through my backwards outline, I realized that my essay was
missing a huge component to it. What component was this you ask? It was the how part of my
thesis and thus the rest of my paper. I found that each paragraph was like a cake without any
frosting; each paragraph was almost there, but not quite. What I really needed to add was
synthesis from one paragraph to the next. I was forced to compare and contrast the grieving
processes between each character, which only further supported my thesis (Its crazy how things
work out!).
While the Lit Ex has been a long and somewhat tedious process, I have come out on the
other side alive, as a better thinker and writer. Although my paper might need a little more
synthesis here and there, I am proud of the final product because it is the first thought-provoking,
really insightful paper I think I have written (or at least I think so ).

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Imagining the Elimination of Pain

It is impossible to put a bandage on pain, especially the pain caused from loss.
Everyones bandage would need to be a different size, a different material, because everyones
grieving process is unique to their own tragedy, their own wound. Grief can be experienced in
five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. However, these phases
are just a framework for the emotions one feels when coping with loss. The phases are not
necessarily experienced in this linear fashion as ones grief is as individual as [his life]
(Kubler-Ross and Kessler 1). Each loss is unique, and thus there is no typical timeline for
experiencing grief or a typical grief experience; one might enter all the stages of grief or simply
only one. The novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer follows three
different narrators as they deal with their pain from loss during the bombings of Dresden and
9/11. Foer uses the three narrators coupled with a unique structure, varying from page layouts to
photographs, to represent how grieving is a unique, three dimensional process based on how one
responds to the pain and associated emotions.
The five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, describe
the psychologically defined framework for the rollercoaster of emotions one in grief may feel.
Denial is when one tries to ignore the reality of the situation; anger is experienced when intense
emotion overwhelm one due to their vulnerability as reality sets in; bargaining takes place when
one tries to compromise with the grief in order to gain control of the situation; depression occurs
when mourning and specifically sadness overwhelm the body; and finally, acceptance is reached
not when one feels OK but rather has the ability to move forward into a new reality. Foer
mimics the different stages of grieving through the structure of the book by allowing each unique
layout or organizational difference to represent a different stage of grief. However, Foer does not

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place the layouts associated with each stage in the systematic order that they are presented in
because [the stages] are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through
all of them or in a prescribed order (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 1). Thus, Foer replicates this idea
of grief being unique to an individual by presenting three different stories within the text that
follow three different grieving patterns. The book becomes multi-faceted and complex, working
in series or unique moments, repetition, flashbacks as it follows three different narrators; rather
than a simple, linear story, the narrators give the book and all the ideas within it dimension
(Dawes 528). Thus, the process of grieving becomes three dimensional through the three
narrators in conjunction with the unique layouts that represent the different stages within the
grieving process.
The first of the three narrators, the grandfather, struggles within the third stage in the
framework of grief, bargaining; his push for power and negotiation is shown through his
notebook entries. The grandfather is a survivor of the bombings of Dresden. However, the love
of his life, Anna, and his unborn child die in the bombings. As a result of this trauma, the
grandfather ultimately chooses to silence himself, only communicating through tattoos on his
hands and a notebook in which he writes his thoughts for people to read. The grandfather relays
his thoughts in this manner as he is grappl[ling] with the limitations of language in attempts to
convey experiences toward each other (Atchison 366) by communicating through
straightforward sentences like I want more rolls written in his notebook (Foer 20). It is not
what the grandfather is asking that is important, but the way in which he is asking. He is using
his hands, not his mouth, which makes him feel in control over the situation, a feeling he lacked
during the tragedy. While it may be tough to communicate in such a fashion, the grandfather
will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 2). Thus, he tries to
reallocate the power he obtains from his ways of communicating, ultimately hoping that his

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silence will silence the grief. Notebook entries like the one about rolls appear constantly
throughout the book, as the grandfather spends a long time bargaining his power and his speech
for the elimination of the pain caused by his tragedy.
However, at the very end of his story, the grandfather abandons the notebook pages as he
realizes they are not reducing his pain; he does not have enough power to silence the grief
because he cannot silence his thoughts. His mind is constantly filled with thoughts about when
he kissed Anna for the last time, [saw] his parents for the last time, [and spoke] for the last
time (Foer 281). While the grandfather realizes silence is not working for him, he does not
know how to express all the emotions overwhelming his insides. He calls the grandmother and
he tries to communicate by using the numbers on the telephone to relay his thoughts and spell
out words. He wonders after all his suffering what the sum of [his] life is and then proceeds to
list two and half pages of numbers (269). It is impossible to derive meaning from the numerical
list presented, as it is impossible for the grandfather to express the pain that has accumulated in
his life. As the chapter progresses, the words and lines gradually get closer and blend together.
The pages become so congested with words that it becomes black, like the grandfathers
smothered and unclear thoughts (284). The words on the page overwhelm the reader the way the
grandfather experiences his emotions, all at once and incomprehensible. In comparison to when
the grandfather tries to push away the pain in the bargaining stage, here the grandfather is
confronting his feelings. Although he is left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if
there is any point in going on alone otherwise known as a state of depression, he has made
progress because he has made sense of the pain inside of him (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 2). The
grandfathers grieving process does not exactly follow the framework because it revolves around
his ability to respond to his pain. He moves from the bargaining to the depressed stage because

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he learns that he needs to stop negotiating with his emotions and acknowledge the reality of his
pain and the associated feelings: mourning and sadness.
In comparison to the grandfather, the grandmothers grieving process is completely
different because she does not understand how to confront her pain. While the grandfather enters
two stages of grief, the grandmother only experiences one, which is represented through blank
pages. She is also a survivor of the bombings of Dresden and has been dealing with the effects of
this trauma for many years. Her whole family died in the attack and she feels guilty for living,
especially over her beloved older sister, Anna. Years after Dresden, the grandmother writes
down her life story and hands it to her husband, the grandfather, to read; however, as he picked
up the pages and wandered through them, trying to find the one which she was born, her first
love, all he saw were blank pages (Foer 120, 121-123). The grandmother leaves the pages blank
because she thinks the tragedy is her entire life. She has allowed it to consume her, making her
feel as if her life has become meaningless and overwhelming, letting this horrible misfortunes
in her life overtake the joyful events such as birth and love (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 1). The
empty pages mimic the feelings that overwhelm her because while the tragedy consumes her, the
grandmother is in denial of the feelings associate with it, causing her to feel nothing at all. While
the grandmother and the grandfather experience similar traumas, they deal with their emotions in
a completely different way. The grandmother is unable to move through multiple stages of the
grieving process because of her inability to fully come to terms with her emotions and respond to
them.
However, it is not just in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that characters grieve
based on their responses to pain; in the movie Crash, Dir. Paul Haggis, 2005, although the
tragedies are on a much smaller scale, each character experiences a unique grieving process to
the framework. Specifically, one character, Karen, deals with getting molested by a police officer

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after her and her husband got pulled over. When she gets home she screams that she needs a
husband who will not just stand there (Haggis). Karen is humiliated and upset about what just
happened. Anger arouses within her as she tries to blame her husband for what happened.
However, her anger is only a faade for the vulnerability the situation made her feel. The next
day, once she has settled down, Karen goes to see her husband at work. She puts her arm around
him as she explains that she just got scared (Haggis). By placing her arm around him, Karen
shows that she wants him to protect her. She is negotiating her humiliation for his security as it
gives her comfort. Like the grandfather, Karen is able to enter multiple stages of grief because
she was able to acknowledge the fact that she got scared and felt unsafe. However, the reason
the grandfather and Karen have unique grieving experiences and do not enter the same exact
stages is because their losses or tragedies were different and triggered different emotions at the
onset.
Oskar, the last narrator, has a different grieving process and experiences different stages
compared to his grandparents and Karen because Oskar responds to his pain differently. Like
Karen, anger is the first of multiple stages in Oskars grieving process. Oskars anger is evident
from his reactions to the phone messages from his father, Thomas Schnell, right before he died in
the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. On September 11, 2001, Oskar comes home to his
father calling from the Twin Towers but does not pick up the phone, as he is afraid of what his
father is going to say. The father leaves five messages on the phone machine. Before Oskars
mother comes home that day, Oskar secretly records them and then deletes them from the
original answering machine. This causes Oskar to walk around with very heavy boots because
he feels guilty that he was the only one who had the chance to comfort and say goodbye to his
father, and he chose not to answer the phone (Foer 142). One day, Oskar listens to the messages
and hears his father say that the firemen will be. Up here by then (69). After hearing the

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message, he gave [himself] a bruise (69), punishing himself for not answering the phone. He
resorts to violence against himself because he is angry he abandoned his father and does not say
goodbye. Oskars anger is really just masking how troubled he feels from loosing his father as
underneath anger is pain (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 1). Thus, Oskars pain of missing his father
stimulates anger because he does not know how to handle the guilt and instability he feels from
his fathers death. However, the intensity of the anger is only an indication of the intensity of
Oskars love for the father, making the pain truly heart wrenching.
Unlike any other character, Oskar evolves to the last stage of the grief framework and
works towards acceptance of his fathers death by keeping a scrapbook of his experiences post
9/11. The scrapbook, Stuff that Happen to Me, is scattered with photographs of apartments, door
knobs, a rollercoaster, and even business cards Oskar sees or experiences in his journey through
New York City (Foer 92,134,148,158). The scrapbook of Oscars journey is used for the
preservation of personal artifacts to reinforce memories (Atchison 361) as he tries to find a
tangible part of his father. These visuals act as knowledge, something Oskar understands and
loves. Without his father, Oskar feels insecure; however the scrapbook helps him make a
connection with the world again because the visuals are memories he has experienced, providing
him with comfort. Similar to the use of the grandfather communicating with his hands, the
knowledge of the visual memories gives Oskar control and security. However, the reason the
grandfather enters a stage of depression rather than acceptance is because he confronts the reality
of his emotions but does not understand how to fully deal with them to find a viable solution.
Oskar is able to understand his emotions, understand that he feels insecure. Thus he is able to
work towards acceptance by using the solution of constant memories to provide him with
comfort and security, redefining normalcy.

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While the constant stream of photographs and memories in relation to Oskars search for
his father showcase that his acceptance can be achieved through the progression of constant
stability and security, it is still possible for Oskar to back track from his progression and re-enter
a previous stage of grief. The different emotions of grief are responses to feelings that can last
for minutes or hours as [people] flip in and out of one and then another (Kubler-Ross and
Kessler 2) Thus, Oskar has the ability to feel one stage, leave it, but then return to it, which is
what he does for the stage associated with anger. During his journey through New York as he
works towards acceptance, he listens to the fourth message his father left on the machine that
ends in nothing but a question: Are you there? (Foer 207). This question causes anger to
stimulate inside Oskar again because it rehashes previous feelings of abandonment from his
father. Oskar wonders why [did he not] say goodbye and thus he gives [himself] a bruise,
but then still questions why [did he not] say I love you (207). Oskar keeps hurting himself
because he is upset that his father died without formal closure. Although he is working towards
acceptance, the pain he feels from being deserted and abandoned does not disappear (KublerRoss and Kessler 1). Oskar especially exemplifies a nonlinear grieving process because while he
works towards acceptance, how he reacts to the emotions triggered by pain from certain
situations can cause previous phases to reemerge.
While Oskars responses to pain and thus emotions fluctuate, ultimately he comes to
terms with his father death by using his imagination, like he uses his memory, to redefine
normalcy. He takes the image of a man jumping out of the Twin Towers from Stuff that
Happened to Me, sprawls it over fifteen pages, and reverses it so that when [he] flipped through
[the pictures], it looked like the man was floating up through the sky (Foer 325). The reversal of
the photographs makes it seem as if the person is floating back up in the air like an angel. Oskar
thus uses this photograph to support a fictional story, created in his imagination, that his father

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is this angel, an angel that watches over him (Siegel 6). Unlike the other narrators, Oskar is able
to accept his new reality. Oskar now feels safe because he imagines that his father is a guardian
angel. Thus, Oskars use of memory and imagination lets him make new connections between
his innocent childhood pre-9/11and his traumatic childhood post 9/11, allowing him to feel
protected again (Kubler-Ross and Kessler 1). It is the fictional angel that redefines normalcy and
gives him the security to move towards his new reality. The grandfather, grandmother, and even
Karen all lack the creativity that Oskar uses to confront his pain to accept their new normalcy.
As the grandmother, grandfather, and Oskar each manage their individual tragedies, Foer
uses their three narrations in conjunction with the books structure to exemplify that ones
grieving process is based on how one reacts to the pain of loss; each persons reaction is unique
yielding different processes of grieving. While there are similarities between each character, the
grandfather, grandmother, and Oskar have a different grieving experience because they choose to
respond to their emotions in a different fashion causing each character to move through, stay
stationary, or even fluctuate on the grief continuum. Overall, each stage of grief, denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance are all represented in different layouts that are scattered
throughout the novel in a non-linear order, showcasing that grief as a whole is not a linear
process with a set start and finish line. In fact because processing grief is not formulaic,
acceptance is not always reached. The person grieving must learn to respond to pain in a way
using the surrounding and the things they love to redefine normalcy. What truly differentiates
Oskar from the grandfather and the grandmother is that he does not let the pain stop his
imagination and thus his love of knowledge and life. Oskar doe not put a bandage on his wound
but is able to stitch it up; while there will always be a scar, each and every day, Oskars wound
heals a little more.

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Works Cited
Atchison, S. Todd. "Why I Am Writing from Where You Are Not: Absence and Presence in
Jonathan Safran Foers." Journal of Postcolonial Writing 46.3-4 (2010): 359-68.
Literary Reference Center. Web.
Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Lions Gate Entertainment, 2005. DVD.
Dwes, Birgit. "On Contested Ground (Zero): Literature and the Transnational Challenge of
Remembering 9/11." Amerikastudien / American Studies 52.4 (2007): 517-43. JSTOR.
Web.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Boston, MA: Mariner, 2005. Print.
Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, and David Kessler. "The Five Stages of Grief." (2004): 1-3. Gentle Care
Hospice. Web.
Siegel, Elizabeth. "Stuff That Happened to Me: Visual Memory in Jonathan Safran Foers
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005)." Current Objectives of Post Graduate
American Studies 10 (2009): 1-9. Web.

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LitEx Grading Rubric

Name: Andrea Frost

_____ Thesis clearly encapsulates a specific, provable argument.

_____ Paper is logically-organized to persuasively make your argument.
_____ Conclusion summarizes and adds insight without being repetitive.
_____ Each point is thoughtful and supported with well-chosen evidence from your text,
criticism, and/or illuminating text.
_____ Quotes are blended and cited.
_____ MLA format is followed, including for Works Cited page.
_____ Language is clear, concise, and precise; tone is scholarly.
_____ Paper is well-edited for grammar and mechanics.
Rough Draft Grade: ______________
Focus for Revision and Editing:

Final Draft Grade: ________________

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