IRA 18

So I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and all I can say is wow.

Where I left off last time, Grandpa and Oskar were together. Oskar still doesn’t know that it is actually his grandpa but they are friends nonetheless. They finally found the person who owns the key, it is a man named William Black. It is the wife of the lady who had the elephant picture in her house. She had lied to Oskar when she asked him about the key, her husband actually knew something about it. William and her had were going through a divorce and she wanted to spite him. It turns out William had sold the blue vase to Oskar’s dad. That William’s dad had written letters to everyone in his life during his last months, he had been diagnosed with cancer, and William didn’t get the courage up to read his letter until after the estate sale. Only after he read the letter did he learn about the key on the bottom of the vase. This was a few days before 9/11, after the accident William finally read the letter and learned that the key opened a safety deposit box, and his father didn’t tell him what was in it. He searched for Oskar’s dad but couldn’t find him. Mostly because of the chaos of 9/11 but also because he was dead and didn’t know how else to contact him, and ironically Oskar’s mom was putting up signs looking for her husband the same time William was putting up signs to look for Oskar’s dad also.  

                Oskar also tells William something he hasn’t even told his grandpa, that the last message from his father. It rang but Oskar didn’t pick it up, he let it go to the machine.  Oskar stood there and heard his father just kept asking “Are you there?” like he knew Oskar was standing there. He said it eleven times, in-between the third and the fourth where Oskar heard screaming and crying, breaking glass. I think this explains why Oskar has become so introverted, he was interesting before but he has been internalizing his failure.  His failure from not answering his dad when he needed him.  I feel for this kid, my heart broke when I read that.

                It talks about his grandfather and him digging up his dad’s coffin (he wasn’t in there) and grandfather filled it with letters. All of the letters he had written every day of his son’s life.  He put in the coffin. That is very profound, all of his hope and love putting in the shell of his son’s life.

After Oskar returns from burying the letters he talks to his mom, she tells him that Thomas called her too on 9/11. She told Oskar that he lied to her and said he was out of the building and not to worry. That’s why she didn’t rush home. Oskar finally forgives her and forgives himself.

Then in his book he has still frames of a man jumping from the Twin Towers, he imagines it is his dad. He takes all the pages out and flips them around so the man is floating upward.

“Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body.

                Was it Dad?

                Maybe.

                Whoever it was, it was somebody. I ripped the pages out of the book. I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last. When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky. And If I’d had more pictures, he would’ve flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would’ve poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of. Dad would’ve left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would’ve flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston. He would’ve taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would’ve walked backward to the subway, and the subway would’ve gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop…..He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from “I love you” to “Once upon a time…”    We would have been safe. “ (325-326)

                This family has gone through many tragedies; first with Oskar’s grandparents they survived some of the harshest bombings in World War II and now 9/11. All of the sadness makes them into stronger people. They become more real when you know they feel pain just like you.  

This book is wonderful. I don’t feel I can adequately explain all of it, you’ll just have to read it for yourself.  It has ups and downs and really puts you inside of a head that has gone through unimaginable tragedy.  I learned a lot from it, besides Oskar’s experience he is also spouting off lots of quotes and facts.  This is one of my favorite books and I would recommend it to anybody.