Analysis Of The Film Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

Have you ever experience a moment when you were unable to communicate your words, or couldn’t think of the word to use the feeling you were trying to describe? Everyone has felt this way before, possibly multiple times per day. But the reality is for the people in our community with autism, this is a constant feeling of difficulty to communicate effective with others. The people that are diagnosed with autism face the daily obstacles of being unable to use their voice and having to learn different ways to read body language and tone of voice, something that comes fairly easy to most of us. The communication barriers facing people with autism enable us to work past the differences and find a new way of communicating that is effective for them.

In “Carly’s Voice”, a book written by the father of an autistic child, the chapter “From the Horse’s Mouth” is Carly’s own words on her experience with autism. The challenge to understand autism comes from a lack of communication with autistic individuals but as Carly walks through her processing she explains her behaviours. The overstimulation that autistic individuals experience and the need for audio filtering, sorting out sensory information, helps tear down barriers of the view of what autistic individuals are capable of

Viewing this documentary, opinions of this individual with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) did, in fact, change the opinion of who they are. ASD can start from when they were born to a mature adult. This film presented lessons on how families and the individuals have gone through a daily lifestyle. One lesson that shown in the movie is that they understand going on however it may take the time to process through their brains.

September 11, 2001, was an unforgettable day that changed America forever. Thousands of lives were lost in this tragedy, like Oskar’s father. In the beginning of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar mentions the Reconnaissance Expedition he and his father used to play on Sundays. After his dad passed away, Oskar’s determination to complete expeditions remains, but now a different goal arises: to find the lock to the key found in his father’s room that will help Oskar to stop missing his father. Even though Oskar knows his father is dead, this adventure is Oskar’s way of receiving closure and coping with the loss of his father. During his journey of finding the lock, Oskar often gets “heavy boots” which is his metaphor of being burdened with emotions due to everything in his life that weighs him down. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer’s use of the motif “heavy boots” throughout the novel highlights that it is normal to experience grief, but there are various ways to do so.

Communication is significant issue for many children with autism. They do not contact with other people clearly, and they also have many issues in using the language correctly. In the article “Cerebellum, Language, and Cognition in Autism and Specific Language Impairment” Hodge (2010) writes that children with autism have difficulties at the individual understands (receptive language) as well as what is actually spoken by the individual (expressive language) are significantly delayed or nonexistent. In other words, children with autism face difficulties to express their thoughts clearly or response to other people. However, In the article “Making Meaningful Worlds: Role-Playing Subcultures and the Autism Spectrum” Fein (2015) claims that there

“...perceptions of and attitudes towards autistic people may be largely based on stereotypes” (Wood 132). Usually, people are quick to judge others. If anyone were to see someone different than them, they would be considered weird. Taking this into account, there are many stereotypes of autistic people. Stereotypes that classify autistic people are to have poor social skills, communication, and a lack in empathy. Moreover, being introverted, withdrawn, and highly intelligent are common stereotypes of ASD. According to Australian and British print media (2011), “‘Autistic people are often portrayed as unstable or dangerous”’ (Wood 132). However, many of these stereotypes are inaccurate. Howlin, Goode, Hutton, & Rutter (2009) give us an example of how the stereotype of every autistic individual having a high intelligence is overstated. “‘...it is very difficult to think of an example of a character in a film or television series who is autistic but who does not have some form of intelligence...in reality less than 30% of those who are autistic actually possess such a skill”’(Wood 132). Speaking of films, a college student was called “Rain Man” because he is autistic. Rain Man is a character with autism, in a movie called “Rain Man”. Kerry, the college student, describes how he doesn’t fit the stereotype of being good at math or having poor verbal communication. “Some think people with autism lack social interaction and

This breakthrough Hollywood film is based on the real-life story of Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman’s performance enabled his character to assert his presence with the intensity which helped humanize not only his self-centered brother Charlie, played by Tom Cruise but also the audience. This allowed us to better understand how individuals with autism perceive the world. This success of this file enabled the use of this film as an assessment for measuring how succeeding depictions of autism have changed or remained the same.

Oskar's father was a man who looked on the brighter side of life, and once he is killed in the 9/11 attack, it becomes increasingly difficult for Oskar to continue his life throughout the aftermath of the tragedy. To cope for the horrific loss of his dad, Oskar goes out to solve the mystery of his father's lock. His intuition is shown in the ways he perseveres and is able to move beyond his fears in order to think logically to achieve a goal. His quest consumes his thoughts and he ultimately spends less time in the reality of his post-tragedy world, and more immersed in the idea of solving the mystery of the one thing that connects him with his father (52). He is a straightforward character who focuses his attention on the task at hand, yet

Have you ever felt misunderstood or isolated from the people around you, just because you’re different from them? In Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, the main character and protagonist, Christopher Boone, is a 15 year old boy who struggles to cope with the effects of Autism. Although Mark Haddon never directly expresses that Christopher has autism, it is very easy to realize that Christopher is different than most people. And because of that, and through Christopher’s self-narration, readers are quick to realize that he struggles with Autism. When a person has Asperger’s Syndrome their skills are different than people without Asperger’s Syndrome. In the novel, Christopher Boone is accurately portrayed as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome by him having social impairments such as repetitive routines, trouble with social interactions and socially inappropriate behavior, and always feeling the need to have a logical reasoning and explanation for the events in his life. This is often is found in people with autism (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). Other reasonings to prove that Christopher has Autism include, the need for trust and the inability of showing emotion.

This story is centered around Caitlin, a 10-year-old girl suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, struggling to find closure after a school shooting in her elementary school. Her family was directly impacted when her brother, Devon, was innocently shot in the shooting. Her dad struggles to cope and move on while Caitlin struggles to understand. Since she sees the world in an entirely different light, it is difficult for her to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. She tries her best to make sense of social interaction and nonverbal communication; however, this is

I choose this topic because it is a subject close to my heart. I have always wanted to know more about autism and how I can help individual with autism. The other reason is because, there have been a number of developmental theorists who have written about the growth of life through the life cycle, but none has addressed it from the view of someone with ASD. Erik Erikson (1963), is one of these theorists who saw development as a self-motivated process resulting in changes that were needed to rise above a variation of struggles and states of uncertainty encountered as one age. In his view, transition from adolescence into adulthood was conceptualised as the need to resolve the struggle designed identity versus role confusion during adolescence and move on to work on the basic concept of intimacy versus isolation, isolation being an undesired state that one could well imagine as a major risk for adult with an ASD, Reber (2012).

This first hand lived experience book is written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart and charismatic autistic Japanese child, explaining the harsh, mind altering experience of autism. For people born with autism this unedited and unfiltered reality of a world is home, this disease people with autism experience would cause most of us would be forcefully hospitalized or sedated. The functions that genetics bestows on the rest of us” the editors” as a birthright, people with autism must spend their lives learning how to simulate. Naoki explains that people with autism have to deal with slang terms such as where special needs means retarded too many people, people with autism go through an insurmountable amount of fighting each day, they are the true heroes.

One regarded as rare, autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) – which includes autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), have received a great deal of professional and scientific attention (White, Oswald, Ollendick, & Scahill, 2009). ASDs are characterized by impairment in social communication as well as the presence of repetitive behaviors and restricted interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Up to one-half of the individuals with autism are functionally nonverbal and individuals with autism who have adequate language have a variety of other types of communication impairment (Leyfer et al., 2006). Thus, creating a barrier between youth identified with ASD and their peers in terms of the necessary skills in developing relationships in the school setting.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a single umbrella disorder, where individuals’ symptoms fall on a continuum in different ways; some display mild symptoms (high-functioning autism) while others exhibit much more severe symptoms (low-functioning autism). In addition, individuals with ASD tend to have difficulties communicating and relating to typically developing (TD) individuals. According to Wing, Gould & Gillberg (2011) the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) identifies problems underlying autism, such as: “impaired social interactions and communication...and restricted behaviour (p. 768)”. There are several organisations relating to ASD, which are dedicated to funding research into the causes, preventions, treatments as well as many other aspects of ASD. ‘Autism Speaks’ is just one of these organisations that have grown tremendously since the group was founded in 2005. This movement presents the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for symptoms relating to emotions, these are known as: “deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication...to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication” (DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, 2015) in addition to other criteria. Decades of research on recognising and understanding emotions in autistic

The documentary of Autism: The Musical showcases children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their families throughout a twenty two week program ending with a live performance. The documentary not only highlights the growth the children experience socially and emotionally throughout the program, but the challenges faced by the families and the strategies they employ to overcome them. There are five children focused on over the course of the documentary, Neil, Lexi, Henry, Adam, and Wyatt. Each child is at a different place on the spectrum therefore each family is effected differently by it. In fact each family can be seen at a different stage of acceptance ranging from sock, denial, anger, loneliness, sadness, to acceptance (Autism & Your Family, 2015). Lexi’s father Joe nicely describes some of the stages he experienced starting with denial which he said ended up taking over his whole life for a period of time, a period he describes as fix it mode, then depression because the parent realized that no amount of money or wishing can change the fact that the child has ASD and will always be living with it and finally comes acceptance.