Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Modern
Literature, grade: 2,0, Fontys University of Applied Sciences Venlo
(International Business), language: English, abstract: In Jonathan
Safran Foer's novel "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" photographs
help the main character, Oskar Schell, to document his thoughts and
feelings. Oskar is an intelligent and curious boy, so the photographs he
collects in a scrapbook named "Stuff That Happened to Me" are rich in
diversity. First there are many pictures which refer directly or
indirectly to family members, like his father and his grandfather.
Moreover, Oskar collects pictures of people he is not related to but
admires a lot, like Stephen Hawking or his cat. The third group of his
photographs includes strangers whom the boy briefly or never met at all.
Although not every photograph in the novel can be divided into these
three groups, I will only focus on selected photographs according to the
three groups. This report will argue that every single group has its own
function and reveals different things about Oskar. While photographs
connected to his father or grandfather give away something about Oskar's
past and his way he of dealing with his loss, the second group, pictures
about admired ones helps to become a better image of Oskar's personality
and his emotions. The third group that contains photographs of strangers
represents his social interaction with foreigners and his interests.
Through analyzing some particular photographs in their contexts, I will
achieve a deeper look into Oskar's inside, so that I will gain more
information about this character than the written pages in Foer's novel
offers. Moreover, I want to prove that most of the chosen photographs
which appear in the protagonist's scrapbook, whether they are taken by
himself or by others, are connected to Thomas Schell Jr. and underline
Oskar's emotional instability after his father's death.
