Grief is
something everyone has to deal with at one point in their life. With the
passing away of my Uncle last semester it is easily noticeable that it plays a
role in other people in the family in different ways. It not only affects the
entire family to some point but when is it a little too far or a little scary
how hard it hits someone. There are several things that play a role on how an
individual mourns. These will be listed in no particular order. First, it
mostly depends on the type of personality one has. Another one is your gender. And
a third one all depends on your age/role in the family. When one experiences
death and mourns over a person’s death, there are mainly 3 types of mourning
patterns. Instrumental mourners are people who speak about the grief they are
feeling. Intuitive mourners are the ones who touch upon every bit of emotions
that there is. These people are the ones that seem to be the most hit because
they cannot hold back their emotions like other people. Another one is dissonant
mourners. These people are most of the times the Dads in the family because
they struggle with how they should handle it. They hold in their emotions and don’t
know how to express it. They do this most of the time to seem strong. A lot of
the times, this comes down to stereotypes that we set up for our society. The men
hold in their emotions because it is said that real men don’t cry. There is so
much on this website (http://www.griefhealing.com/column-different-grief-patterns.htm)
that helps us see how others should handle with mourning. If the person is an
adult or our person is a child like Oskar. This website states something that
makes me feel as if it relates to Oskar on such an understanding of what he is
trying to do. “Children and
adolescents may be reluctant to express their thoughts and feelings verbally.
Encourage them to express their grief and preserve their memories in a variety
of ways, including art, music, journal writing, story-telling and picture
collecting”. This is him trying to preserve his memory through the game he
played with his dad and the key. It’s just something that takes their mind off
of the troubles and burdens. Something that makes him relaxes.
I think I'd disagree with your point that Oskar is not vocal with how he feels about his dad's death. It's obvious that he misses him more than a lot and he's angry with how everybody has been able to (how he sees it as) move on from not only his father's death but his life as well.
ReplyDeleteI personally know a bit about grief. When, a few years ago, my grandmother, who I was very close to, had died of complications from chemotherapy. I'd have to say that not only is grief different for every person but different from case to case because I just had an uncle die who we (me and my close family) only saw over holidays and when the vacuum or washer or drier needed fixing (which wasn't often) and I can honestly say that I wished I felt worse about his passing, but different emotions felt for different people.
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ReplyDeleteWhen I read this, I noticed that most of the characters in the book “Extremely loud & incredibly close” have lost someone and find their own way of handling the situation. For example, Oskar makes this adventure trip through the five boroughs of New York and meets several people in the search for the lock of a key he found in his fathers closet, sort of in a way in which he thinks he can connect with his dad. His mother has a new relationship with Ron, which helps her not to think too much about her pain. But what caught my attention the was the story of Oskar`s grandfather. At the beginning you have the impression he is probably looking for Anna and he’s going through the world without a plan, but I suppose he actually isn’t just looking for her at all. I believe the reason for his restlessness is that he has lost himself and his personality too. That’s also why he never finds his peace of mind and isn’t able to come to rest and accept what happened. Just looking for Anna, in my opinion does not explain his reaction. My idea is that he gave himself up for Anna. I think that there are a lot of people who, when they have a relationship, try to merge with the soul of another person, because I’ve met people like this. They start to live in the mind of someone else and give themselves up, without really noticing. When they finally lose their partner there is nothing left but emptiness inside of them. I don’t mean that it has to be like that. I’m just trying to give a possible reason for the behavior of Oskar`s grandfather. Looking at your post and looking closer at these character’s reactions made me realize that there are “sub-categories” of mourning, when I used to categorize it as just one thing.
ReplyDeleteI think i agree with you Chad. I believe playing the game and searching for whatever the key unlocks is definitely Oskar's way of keeping his dad alive. The article you posted is a very interesting read. I found a quote in it that i think somewhat summarizes Oskar, though its kind of taken out of context. "In general, men are more often instrumental mourners. When men suffer the loss of a loved one they tend to put their feelings into action, experiencing their grief physically rather than emotionally. They deal with their loss by focusing on goal-oriented activities which activate thinking, doing and acting." Obviously this describes the way an adult male would react who has a hard time showing his feelings, but i believe it also works the same for Oskar in a way. He is playing the game to find whats at the end of the key and that's definitely "thinking, doing and acting". Also, i can relate to the beginning of what you wrote in that how you react to a loss depends on those three factors that you list: personality, gender, and age/role in the family. Everyone reacts to a loss differently.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Chad and Jon above. Mourning is not just a the way we feel , but it is the taking of certain actions to deal with it, in Oskar's case the key. Grieving on the other hand is the set of feelings and the sadness that one enters when he or she loses a loved one.Oskar was more into acting. He wanted to keep himself busy in a way to tell himself that he can do something about it to cope with his dad's death.
ReplyDeleteI think the whole theme of the book is mainly centered on this toppic. Mourning and the ways people deal with loses. At the same time, I think that the three ways that Chad mentioned in his post are not necessarily separate. I feel as if those three co-exist, so that in certain situations and certain places,depending on what kind of people one is surrounded with, he or she may choose one way of acting over the other. So that people who are mourning a death can go through all the different ways of doing so, but not necessarily at the same time, but rather through cerain stages. For example, Oskar, he was secretive and somewhat silent when coping with his dad's death around his mother, regarding the mission he is set himself onto, and yet, very active and expressive around strangers.
In a way his way of coping is interesting and certainly varies considering who he is in contact with at certain points of times, but the main idea is constant, he is doing either to feel satisfation and seeks the conscious that tells him he has achieved something.
I agree with Chad on the three ways to do with mourning and how they all coencide with eachother. Like others have stated above, i have dealt with mourning and seen the ways, actions of others and how they dealt with the same problems i was going through. To see how others keep the emotions in and how that negatively affected their lives to how, on the other side, others i know spoke out about their feeling, either gender, and it drastically helped their mourning. This was especially true for my male friends, even though society has this set rule that males have to keep their emotions inside and not speak on them, my friends who vented their emotions to others coped with the whole situation better. I believe the best way to deal with mourning is speak about what is troubling you because no matter your size, gender, or strength an incident as troubling as death can detrimentally affect anyone. With Oskar, he does not express all of his emotions in words, face to face with someone, and i wonder sometimes if he would take the game so seriously if he did. I do not think it is healthy for him to go through his life with these worries and burdens on his back. I like how Sona talked about mourning being the overall theme of the book and i have to agree with her. Every character in the book has dealt with mourning and in many different ways. We can take this aspect of how each deals with their troubles and analyze the positive and negative ways of mourning if we would like. This would definitely show how the three aspects of one's self play a role in their mourning; gender, age, and personality.
ReplyDeleteThe overall consensus of this blog is that Oskar uses the game to keep his dad alive. My opinion is that keeping the game alive is a way of coping, as we talked about in class. However, it isn’t a way of overcoming the situation at hand. Oskar’s game has no end, no solution and to keep it going can be harmful. The longer the game is in play, the longer it grows on him. It could be something that goes on into his 20’s. It could lead to major psychological issues especially when someone does finally decide to tell him.
ReplyDeleteI don’t really have a solution for Oskar’s plight. All I can do is analyze the situation and try to connect part of his life to mine or another’s. My tragedy that required coping occurred when I was thirteen. One of my better friends at the time had a brother that was fifteen. He was also one of my really good friends; offered a lot of insight. He decided to get in a car with an inebriated driver. Needless to say the rest is quite horrible. He lost his life and I felt guilty. I knew that avoiding the acceptance of his passing was not doing me or his memory any favors.
My way of coping was immediately accepting the fact and pushing on with life as he would have wanted me to. This is probably the route that Oskar should take. Those close to you (like a father) would never want you to be sitting in a room crying all day. Let alone take a game that was meant for entertainment and turn into gospel. Oskar can use the game as something to remember his father with however he shouldn’t use it to reincarnate him.