Trauma, Silence and Inexpressibility in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005)

Abstract

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) is primarily the traumatic account of Oskar, a nine year old protagonist, interlaced with his grandparentsthe Shells narratives. In the morning of 9/11 Oskar returns from school, and fails to answer the last phone call of his father who ultimately becomes a September 11 casualty. Thus, this dereliction causes his greatest trauma and the failure to attest to it. While as, the grandparents respective attempts to witness to their traumathey are the survivors of 1945, Dresden bombing; not only that, they lose their only son in the 9/11 attacks, Oskars fatheralso fail miserably. The paper shows how the three important characters have been silenced and muted by trauma, and how the rendering of it in words and language proves ineffective and inexpressible. It also exhibits how the ineffable trauma proves regressive even after the characters attempts of testimony: grandfather loses his speech, Oskar cannot convey his message of what happened on the day of 9/11 even after he puts it in Morse code, and the grandmothers producing of mere blank pages on the typewriter owing to her failure to recognize that its ribbon has been removed.

 Keywords: Trauma, Silence, Inexpressibility, 9/11, Jonathan Safran Foer, Narrative, and Ineffable.