Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close Film Analysis

When a child experiences trauma, it stays with them for the rest of their life. When a child experiences abuse, one of the highest forms of trauma, they can do little to stop it from affecting everything they do. Tobias Wolff’s memoir, This Boy’s Life, Illustrates this. While it can be said that Rosemary, the mother of Jack, was in many ways responsible for his life, she herself can not solely be blamed. The trauma and abuse she experienced as a child contributed greatly to her choices, and her son’s life. This shows that adversity in Rosemary’s life lead to her not being able to act normally, and this caused the life of her son.

When one loses someone or something valuable to them, the grief can be intense. But what happens when what they lose is actually a piece of them? Novels depicting a witness account of The Holocaust (1941 - 1945) paint a picture of the violence and moral anguish, which is accompanied by a loss to the protagonist. The plot shows a process of events that ultimately leads to death and devastation. Both protagonists in Elie Wiesel’s Night and Wladyslaw Szpilman’s The Pianist gradually fall into the abyss of inhumane behaviour. Post Holocaust, they embark on a new life free from social restraints and become either unmindful or compliant to the losses they faced on their journey. Elie and Wladyslaw

There are three main characters that the reader gets to see deal with grief in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The first of which is the main narrator, nine year-old Oskar Schell. Oskar is in the denial stage of grief because he is keeping his father alive by going on one last grand adventure to find the story behind the key, thus keeping him alive. But of course, there is no reason for Oskar to have the key. Oskar tells Mr. Black, “There are so many ways to die, and I just need to know which one was his” (Foer, 257). Notice how his isn’t focusing on his father’s death here, he is focusing on the logic behind his father’s death. Right now, in his mind, it isn’t logical and therefore cannot be dealt with. Furthermore, it

Whenever someone experiences a traumatic event, especially at a young age, they tend to experience severe mental challenges including PTSD, and many other symptoms. In most cases such as war and the holocaust “the trauma quite obviously, did not end at liberation” (Bettelheim). Through the use of frightful imagery, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, and Night by Elie Wiesel, express the demand to become impervious to human emotion in order to survive barbaric and savage events.

The relationship between a father and son is one of the strongest relationships between family members. A son looking after his father might seem unusual, but in unusual circumstances, relationships are often forced to adapt. The father is the mentor and the son should look up to the father for support and guidance. This relationship plays out in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, through the concentration camps. Hitler and the Nazi’s have been deporting Jews to concentration camps and eventually killing them. Wiesel travels through the horrible circumstances. In 1944, Elie Wiesel lives in Hungary with his parents and his three sisters, but they deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and is split up, but remained with his father. Wiesel describes his experiences traveling through different concentration camps with his father, Shlomo. Wiesel tells about the different people he meets and events that happen. Wiesel meets other fathers and sons, whose relationships are not going well. Elie and his father stick together as they face many challenges. As time went on in the camps the fathers became weaker and their chances of survival decreased. The sons helped their fathers go on, but this would slow the sons down. In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses the motif of father-son relationships to show that while there are benefits to having a strong connection with someone amidst extreme circumstances, there are also disadvantages because the other person may become a burden.

In both The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, the main protagonists lose an irreplaceable family member. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell’s father, Thomas Schell, is killed as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Similarly in The Goldfinch, Theo Decker’s mother, Audrey Decker, is also killed as a result of a terrorist attack; this time, in an art museum. While both children are forcibly thrust into analogous situations, Theo and Oskar face their problems and experience their grief in different ways; some of which are more healthy and effective than others.

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

The author Wes Moore recounts the time in chapter one, “Is Daddy Coming With Us?” , when he met his father who at the time was just a strange man. Wes states that “[he] looked at his mother… [moving] closer to [her] hip” (Moore 25). He continues by telling the reader that he automatically felt safer next to her. The reason for this text is to help the reader understand how many families can help with the development of a person. The author describes this event in full detail to show how Wes’ family provided him with a sense of feeling safe and sheltered.

“If you get an infection, you get a fever; the fever is your body dealing with the infection. If you get traumatized, your mind and your brain have a reaction to that trauma” (Sebastian Junger). In Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer is a fourteen old boy living in Sighet, a small Jewish town. As the horrific events of World War II unfold, Eliezer is thrown into unknown situations that he must adapt to. Throughout the Holocaust, Eliezer endures many alterations in the associations with himself, his father, and god, demonstrating that if one experiences great trauma, one’s relationships with oneself and others may be modified.

Wolterstorff, N. (1987). Lament of a Son. In Lament for a son. Michigan, 49505, Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eearmans Publishing 2140 Oak Industrial Drive, N.E.

It is believed that children do not experience grief until one has been through adolescents and can distinguish thoughts and feeling from emotions. According to Glass (1991), a child can grasp the notion of death during early childhood; and can begin to grief as early as six months (Willis, 2002). Willis (2002) believes from a moderate perspective that children begin to understand death and grieve approximately at three to four years old. Many times, small children are affected by loss and their grief is often underestimated. Children between the ages of three to five years old fall into stage one. During stage one; children view death as a going away from one place to another. It is believed that the deceased person has just relocated and is living in a new location. Stage two consists of children between the ages of five to nine years of old. In this phase, death can be fixed. It is thought that if one

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

Oskar goes through a great deal of personal struggle and pain throughout the course of the film. Oskar’s closest friend, his father, dies in 9/11 and Oskar struggles immensely to recoup from his loss. Oskar’s father was a phenomenal father who truly understood Oskar and did everything in his power to cater to Oskar’s needs. Temple

In Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss gives life to The Four Corners of Civilization through his storytelling. Storytelling gives the author an opportunity to show their experiences and reflect their beliefs within the world they are creating. During the time this book was being written, there was the Iraq and Afghanistan War taking place which had been sending many soldiers back home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Rothfuss parallels this disorder within his book through the main character, Kvothe, when he experiences trauma and he shows how Kvothe copes with the persisting trauma through grief theory, “four doors of the mind” (135) . His four doors of the mind is similar to the Kubler-Ross Model, which is widely accepted by practitioners, but challenges it by believing the mind copes with pain through the central idea of numbing. However, this mindset of categorizing emotions experienced within grief can be destructive behavior towards any griever rather than helping them cope; stages of post-loss grief do not exist.

In the movies, there are a number of factors that will impact the quality of the film and the story. This is because producers and directors are using different techniques that will enhance their ability to entertain. The Sound of Music is taking numerous ideas and is integrating them together. To fully understand what is happening, there will be an examination of the film and various concepts. This will be accomplished by focusing on: the storytelling, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, style / directing, impact of the film on society / vice versa, genre, application of at least one approach and overall textual themes. Together, these elements will highlight the effects of the film and how it has influenced others inside the industry.