Friday, April 11, 2008
Question #4--Extremely Loud...
As readers we do not get a clear picture of most of the relationships in the book until the very end, primarily because we see nearly everything from either Oskar's or the grandfather's point of view. This seems especially true of Oskar's relationship with his mother. What do you think Foer was trying to say about relationships?
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3 comments:
I think Foer is trying to say that everything is muttled by perspective. Oskar felt completely misunderstood. He couldn't understand why people wanted him to get over his father's death, move on, not mope around and be sad and depressed that his Dad had died.
Another great example was the "life story" the Grandma typed or did not type out...Grandpa feels guilty that he never believed how bad her eyes were and she keeps drumming away on the space bar, for who knows what reason.
Unless you can truly communicate, you can't understand another person or your relationship to them b/c we all perceive life and life experiences so differently.
I like this question, because I think it touches on one of the main themes throughout the book--how we all feel so alone at times but how at the same time we are all so very close. We are all experiencing life together and we all influence each other (either intentionally or not). I have gotten the feeling in modern literature and by observation that to many it appears that we are becoming more isolated - we are all individuals and we all have our own agendas and schedules, etc. So, even though we have hundreds of interactions with people all day long, we can go the whole day without actually sharing our lives and experiences with each other. A good example of this is how fewer kids even go out side and play with their friends any more, instead they will play warcraft online or with a computer. Another example is how you can be in a crowded subway, but with your headphones on, at the same time you can be completely alone.
So in the same way you have the grandmother, as a girl, watching her future husband and her sister experiencing their first love. She was intimately involved in that, and had the grandfather known, he may have loved the grandmother more because of it. Maybe it would have healed his heart with the loss of is pregnant wife, by seeing that the grandmother was someone who could teach him about who she was.
This is the same for Oscar, and I wish that there would have been more of an honest exchange between them, because I think it would have completed Oscar's search for his father, by finding his grandfather, who although he never knew his son, could give Oscar some great insight into who his father was.
All of these connections in the lives of the characters made the book very human for me, and realistic.
I liked how Oscar didn't have a TV or didn't play computer games or with an x-box, instead he went out and got to know people. He knew the name of the homeless people on his street and the post-man, etc. Because he was connected with people--and became more and more connected throughout the book--I think he realized that loss and suffering are human experiences and was able to grieve by experiencing life with other people, and sharing his life with them.
PS. This book was a great motivating force for me to write more of my own human experiences (i.e. my journal).
It's clear too, that while Oskar has serious problems, he is not going to become his grandfather because he maintains relationships with the people around him and pursues relationships with new people. Even though he does focus inward on his depression sometimes, when he is confronted by someone else who has problems, his instinct is to help them first. It seems like Oskar's relationships will save him in the end.
I think it is interesting that the mother is so misunderstood. The whole time I read this book I could not figure out what her problem was. She has this really troubled kid and does not seem to care all that much. And then at the end you realize how much she cares and how involved she was in Oskar's life the entire time. Only at the end do you appreciate how much she is actually struggling the whole time. It just makes me think about how much I assume about people--the things I think I know about them. Oskar assumed his Mom didn't care about his Dad because she was hanging out with Ron and he never saw her cry. She probably felt so much pressure to be strong for her son to help him move on, and Oskar assumes it is because she doesn't care. This especially shows how important communication is, but also reinforces what Adam said, how involved we can be in other people's lives without anyone noticing. Our actions affect how other people feel. We can be separate but intertwined.
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