Though most people consider the primary focus of Foer’s novel to be the September eleventh terrorist attacks, the novel also references the bombing of Dresden in 1945 (Foer). However, the true core of the novel is centered around the ways in which people cope with loss. Foer’s novel provides an introspective look at possible progressions through the stages of grief by those who have lost loved ones to traumatic events. The novel highlights Oskar, a nine-year-old boy who lost his father in the 9/11 attacks, and his subsequent movement through the stages of grief (Foer). The novel also focuses on Oskar’s grandparents and their cycles through the grieving process after the bombing of Dresden and then again, after their son’s death on September eleventh (Foer).
The aim of this essay is to answer the following question: How and to what effect are the stages of grief explored in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? The grief process is defined as a series of five stages: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Axelrod). Typically, the stages are presented in this order; however, it is common for people to bypass certain stages or proceed through the stages in another order (Axelrod). The disorganized structure of Foer’s novel
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As time went on, the grandmother stopped fighting the grandfather, allowing them to continue in the denial and isolation stage. She says in her letter, “I would tell him I would do whatever he needed…We would never talk about the past” (Foer 83). Since the grandfather used to be a sculptor, he asked to sculpt the grandmother; however, “After only a few sessions, it became clear that he was sculpting Anna,”- the grandmother’s dead sister- “He was trying to remake the girl he knew seven years before…He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me” (Foer