Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close Book Report

For me, summer homework is telling myself all summer that I’m going to start reading next week until finally there is only one week left before it is due. If the books assigned to read were more interesting, I might have started this assignment earlier. Most times when I am forced to read a book, I absolutely hate every second of reading it. This was the case for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foers which drove me away after reading the first chapter, while Me Talk Pretty One Day by Dave Sedaris sucked me in to continue reading with mild enjoyment. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a drawn out story about nine year old Oskar and his adventure trying to piece together, what he believes to be, an adventure pieced together by his now dead father. The main theme of this

“I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.” (Foer, 86) This quote shows how Oskar felt small and how his life is just one drop in the massive bucket of the universe, which caused him to feel meaningless. His father dying on September 11th caused Oskar to feel even more depressed and empty, especially considering the fact that moments before death, his father called and Oskar did not pick up the phone. All of these events cause Oskar to question his purpose and consciousness through to the end of the book. “Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.” (Foer, 245) This quote from Oskar really shows that he has examined all aspects of existence and sees life very cynically in that everyone is going to do and nothing that