Extremely+Loud+and+Incredibly+Close

October 19, 2009 Presenter: Noelle Morris




 * Chapter 1 of ELIC available here: []**

1. The context of your classroom 2. Attitude toward reading and reading ability 3. Subject matter 4. Escape/ fantasy 5. Perspective / Point of view (first person) 6. Physical Properties (paperback vs. hardcover) 7. Previous experience with a book/ author/ genre 8. Connection with adolescent subculture
 * To determine appeal, consider the following:**

· Published in 2005 · Written by Jonathan Safran Foer · New York Times Bestseller · Scholastic Journal named ELIC as one of their list of best adult books for high school students · Has been called gimmicky and pretentious · Critics have loved him and hated him · Taught at Yale and currently teaches a class called “Impossible Writing” in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU. //Citation:// []
 * Quick Facts:**
 * Jonathan Safran Foer:**


 * Plot Summary:**

ELIC is the story about Oskar Schell, whose life and purpose changes when his father is killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Oskar describes himself as “Oscar Schell, inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archeologist, collector of: rare coins, butterflies that died natural deaths, miniature cacti, Beatles memorabilia, semiprecious stones, and other things.” Oskar also happens to be nine years old. He has a scrapbook called “Stuff that happened to me” (the contents of which appear throughout the book), he only wears white, and he writes letters to his heroes, who include Ringo Starr and Stephen Hawking. He also bruises himself, will not go above the third floor of buildings for fear of them falling, and does not believe that his mother loves him or misses his father. Oskar is afraid of “…meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents... the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theatre, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper…domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them...my unpopularity at school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years…“ (page 38), among many other things.

He is an incredibly conflicted nine year old, and he grieves in his own ways. Jonathan Safran Foer looks at Oskar as “a very precocious, flamboyant, somewhat annoying, maybe, definitely exasperating, occasionally sympathetic, occasionally frustrating kid based on no one. He appeals to a certain idea of childhood, although if your test for whether a character is believable was, “Can I find such a person in the world?”, this character would fail that test” ([]).

A year after his father’s death, Oskar finds a key within an envelope labeled “Black” in his father’s closet. During his life, Thomas had constructed intellectual and lengthy scavenger hunts for Oskar, and Oskar believes that this is yet another scavenger hunt: “ A great game that Dad and I would sometimes play on Sundays was Reconnaissance Expedition. Sometimes the Reconnaissance Expeditions were extremely simple, like when he told me to bring back something from every decade in the twentieth century – I was clever and brought back a rock – and sometimes they were incredibly complicated and would go on for a couple of weeks.” (page 8)

With the name “Black” as his only clue, Oskar sets out to interrogate every person with the surname of “Black” in New York City about the key. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” follows Oskar on this quest as he profoundly affects everyone he meets, including (unbeknownst to him) his long-lost grandfather, Thomas Schell, Sr.




 * //Requirements://**
 * In what grade level/course would you teach this text? Are there other courses for which it might also be appropriate?**

· ENG3U (English, Grade 11, University Preparation) · EMS3O (Media Studies, Grade 11, Open) · ENG4U (English, Grade 12, University Preparation) · ETS4U (Studies in Literature, Grade 12, University Preparation) · EWC4U (The Writer’s Craft, Grade 12, University Preparation) · ETS4C (Studies in Literature, Grade 12, College Preparation)

· Personal experiences of students may conflict with the story. · Issue of media exposure: is it such a bad thing? · Very post-modern book. Includes: photographs, blank pages, whitespace, different sizes of fonts, artwork. This relates to September 11 as a visual, multimedia-driven experience. There is also the notion that children see the world in snapshots. · The narration often switches between Oskar, his grandmother and his grandfather without any warning; this could be confusing to the reader.
 * What are the issues/challenges you might encounter in teaching the text?**

//**KNOWLEDGE: Textual, Cultural, Social, and Topical**//
 * (a) Textual:** How is this text like or unlike other texts in its arrangement, purpose, voice, syntax, intended audience?

Purpose: To look at HOW the text works and what does it mean?

· Oskar’s scrapbook (“Stuff that happened to me”) is presented throughout the novel. · Postmodern format: photographs, blank pages, whitespace, different sizes of fonts, artwork. This also relates to September 11 as a visual, multimedia-driven experience. There is also the notion that children see the world in snapshots. · Critics say: “Why?” Foer says: “Why not?” ( [] · Great deal of figurative language (“heavy boots”; he zips himself up into the sleeping bag of himself). · Narration switches between the first-person experience of Oskar and letters by his grandparents to various people. Oskar’s quest is fairly linear, but the content of the letters switch between time periods.


 * (b) Cultural:** What questions can we ask and discover about our culture through the reading of this text?

Purpose: To look at how culture has affected who we are and how we have come to be who we are. In addition how different cultures share common values.

· How has media-driven hyper-saturation affected various generations of people, especially in the face of September 11? · How have tragedies been transformed by the media? · Although very different, how are Dresden, Hiroshima, and September 11 linked? · How are the children and youth of today different from generations past? · The notions of shared history and various perspectives of the same event are embedded in the novel.


 * (c) Social:** What knowledge of our own personal experience and our society does this text elicit / explain / describe?

Purpose: To look at what the text tells us about society and about ourselves.

· The aftermath of human tragedies: Dresden, Hiroshima, September 11, dealing with the loss of a loved one and strangers. · Investigation into how different people (especially children) are affected by various media forms. · Foer does not integrate politics, religion, or war into Oskar’s experience of September 11; very un-CNN of him.


 * (d) Topical:** What topics does this text introduce, explain or inform us about?

Purpose: To look at what knowledge about the world around us, historical, scientific, geographical, environmental, reading of this text offers.

· Most relevant: September 11 · Hamlet · “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking · Geography of New York City (especially from the perspective of a nine year old) · Oskar’s inventions: “I’m always inventing.” (page 256) · The Internet and access to information: “I found a bunch of videos on the Internet of bodies falling. They were on a Portuguese site, where there was all sorts of stuff they weren’t showing here, even though it happened here. Whenever I want to try to learn about how Dad died, I have to go to a translator program and find out how to say things in different language, like ‘September,’ which is ‘Wrzesien,’ or ‘people jumping from burning buildings,’ which is ‘Menschen, die aus brennenden Gebauden springen.’ Then I Google those words. It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can’t, because it happened here, and it happened to me, so shouldn’t it be mine?” (page 256)




 * Ongoing topics, themes, and issues:**




 * //The Quest://** The story is about the journey that Oskar takes to get closer to his father following his death. Oskar finds what he is looking for, but it is not what he wants: “I wish I hadn’t found it…I found it and now I can’t look for it…Looking for it let me stay close to him for a little while longer.” (page 304)

[]
 * //On 9/11://** “I think it’s a greater risk not to write about it. If you’re in my position—a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about—I think it’s risky to avoid what’s right in front of you. None of the ways people were talking about September 11 felt right to me. I don’t buy into the way Bush talks about it. I don’t buy into the way the 9/11 commission talks about it. It isn’t that I don’t believe them. It’s just that they’re not the tellings for me.”

- Deals with the aftermath of the events without being political. Oskar does not care about the perpetrators of September 11. There is no mention of the Middle East or foreign policy or religion. The novel focuses on the individual, the imagination, and the aesthetic.


 * //Multimedia saturation://** Something that comes up often in Foer’s interviews is the pervasity with which children are exposed to the world through mass media. Nine year olds have open access to beheadings, home sex videos, dog fights, babies being born, and footage of people jumping out of buildings. September 11 was visually documented across every possible medium, and was an incredibly visual experience. This visual experience is an everyday reality for today’s youth.

“It was actually an abbreviated modern version, because the real Hamlet is too long and confusing, and most of the kids in my class have ADD. For example, the famous ‘To be or not to be’ speech, which I know about from the Collected Shakespeare set Grandma bought me, was cut down so that it was just, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ (page 142)
 * //Hamlet://** Oskar plays Yorick in his school play. He carries his script with him to memorize the lines that he does not have, and he invites all of the Blacks that he meets on his weekend journeys.


 * //Dresden://** The parallel narratives are told by Oskar’s grandparents, who experience the Dresden bombing. Oskar’s grandmother writes him a letter throughout the book, and Oskar’s lost grandfather writes a letter to his own son, Thomas Schell (Oskar’s father), who he never gets a chance to meet.

**Describe one possible assignment/activity that you could use when teaching the text.**
[|Wordpress website](final project). //Name of website:// Extremely (adjective) and Incredibly (adverb) / Stuff that happened to me - business card - descriptive card (a la Mr. Black) with one word to describe self - letter to the student’s hero - movie trailer - ongoing journal questions/blog entries to correlate with chapters and Oskar's quest