Significance of the Elephant

I think that the elephant is an extremely important symbol in this book.  There are many similarities between the elephant and Oskar, such as having an incredibly strong memory creating an inability to forget.  They also both seemingly have the inability to cry.  Where elephants are suspected to be physically unable, Oskar simply chooses not to.

The elephant is first discussed by Oskar and Abby Black in the chapter The Only Animal.  Oskar sees a picture of an elephant's eye on Abby's apartment wall, and tells her that he loves it, but clarifies to the reader that he wasn't just saying this because he wanted her to like him.  I think he makes this clarification because he wants the reader to realize that he felt a real significant connection to the picture.

In a way, I think that Oskar can really relate to the elephant.  He explains that elephants have memories much stronger than humans, which I suspect is where the phrase "elephants never forget" comes from.  The theme of "never forget" not only applies to Oskar's struggles with his fathers passing, but also was and is the theme for the 9/11 memorial campaign.  When explaining that elephants have strong memories, Oskar talks about the scientist who is doing research on elephants by playing recorded "calls" from other elephants, to see how they react.  He talks about how the scientist would play the calls of a dead loved one, and the elephants would remember.  I thought that this was significant because of the way Oskar is so attached to the recordings left by his dead father.  I also found it important that Oskar could not remember how the elephants reacted.  In my mind this is because Oskar does not quite know how he is handling the passing of his father.

Although he doesn't remember how the elephants reacted, he knows that they didn't cry.  Oskar doesn't see real emotion as an option.  He would symbolize his emotions with phrases such as "heavy boots."  When Abby argues that the elephant is crying, Oskar dismisses it by saying that the photo was "manipulated in Photoshop", but he takes a photo of it just in case.  I think that this is representative of Oskar's inner battle, of whether or not he can show emotion.  He dismisses the idea that elephants can cry, because he wants not crying to seem justifiable, but he takes a picture of the crying elephant, because he wants crying to be an option for him in the future.

I think that Oskar feels that he and the elephant have a mutual understanding, and in a way, Oskar feels sympathy for the elephant.  Oskar knows what it is like to have the blessing of strong memory, but also the curse of not being able to forget.

How to Deal With Mourning

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.

Distracions

It seems to me that a common device for Oskar and Thomas in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is distraction. They are all trying to distract themselves from the harsh realities they are facing. Oskar tries to distract himself from the fact that his dad died with his mission of finding the lock to the key he has. It almost seems as if he is using random facts and leads to find this key (ie. Finding people whose last names' are Black merely because it said it on the letter.) One of the people that Oskar visited pointed out the semi-insanity of his mission. Oskar said:

"I found a key...and it was in an envelope with your name on it."
"Aaron Black?"
"No, just Black."
"It's a common name."
"I know."
"And a color."
"Obviously."

This just supports the fact that Oskar is just choosing to distract himself by going on a mission to find an imaginary lock that was related to his father. He also tries to make shallow relationships with the people he meets. This is shown in the scene when he has conversation and a cup of coffee with Abbey Black.

Somewhat similarly, Thomas cannot live his life normally ever since his girlfriend died. So when he met Oskar's grandma he could distract himself from the reality for a while. When they first met he described how originally she posed for him and he sculpted her as art. Eventually she caught on.

"He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me."

Thomas wanted to fall in love so that he could be distracted. We are never really sure that it is ever a genuine love. They both get married and create a world of rules for themselves. It is rather insane-like. They seem distant from each other. Right before he decides to leave her we can see his shallowness. He says,

"I knew I was about to destroy what she'd been able to rebuild, but I had only one life to live."

Did he ever really love her or was she just merely another distraction and source of pleasure in his life?

Oskar's Freakout

In response to Mike's post, I thought it might be helpful to understand the five stages of grief. According to the Kubler-Ross model, introduced in the book "On Death and Dying," the five stages of grief are:

1. Denial--"I feel fine," or "This can't be happening"

2. Anger--"Why me?" or "It's not fair!"

3. Bargaining--"I'll do anything for a few more years!"

4. Depression--"I'm so sad" or "Why bother with anything?"

5. Acceptance--"It's going to be okay."

While we're still watching the story unfold, I think we can gather a lot of information about the characters from this model. I think, most importantly, we can understand a lot about Oskar by measuring his progress throughout these stages.

I recently read one of my favorite scenes in the book, one which, in my opinion, exemplifies Oskar's progress in his stages of grief. The scene comes from the chapter, "Heavier Boots," when Oskar recounts a scene he imagines happening during his play. The excerpt reads:

[I pull the skull off my head. Even though it's made of papier-mache it's really hard. I smash it against JIMMY SNYDER's head, and I smash it again. He falls to the ground, because he is unconscious, and I can't believe how strong I actually am. I smash his head again with all my force and blood starts to come out of his nose and ears. But I still don't feel any sympathy for him. I want him to bleed, because he deserves it. And nothing else makes any sense. DAD doesn't make sense. MOM doesn't make sense. THE AUDIENCE doesn't make sense. The folding chairs and fog-machine fog don't make sense. Shakespeare doesn't make sense. The stars that I know are on the other side of the gym ceiling don't make sense. The only thing that makes any sense right then is my smashing JIMMY SNYDER's face. His blood. I knock a bunch of his teeth into his mouth, and I think they go down his throat. There is blood everywhere, covering everything. I keep smashing the skull against his skull, which is also RON's skull (for letting MOM get on with life) and MOM's skull (for getting on with life) and DAD's skull (for dying) and GRANDMA's skull (for embarrassing me so much) and DR. FEIN's skull (for asking me if any good could come out of DAD's death) and the skulls of everyone else I know. THE AUDIENCE is applauding, all of them, because I am making so much sense. They are giving me a standing ovation as I hit him again and again...]

The reason why I enjoy this scene so much is because I feel like the emotion seems very real. I don't feel like Oskar's feelings seem manufactured by a writer, but I do feel like his thoughts reflect the ideas of a grieving child.

With that being said, I think that Foer captures Oskar in a couple stages of grief. First, I feel like Oskar shows signs of still facing denial. The fact that he includes his father as an actor in the play says, to me, that he still considers him as an integral part of his life, with equal significance to someone living. Additionally, Oskar obviously faces anger in this stage, as he reacts very violently in response to nearly no provocation. He outlines his anger to the reader:he's mad at Ron, his mother, his father--most interestingly--, his grandmother, and his therapist. And for Oskar, all of his anger makes sense.

I'm curious to see Oskar's healing process unfold throughout the story; I want to observe closely to see if and how he follows the stages of grief.

Adrienne Rich 1929-2012 RIP

Poetry is Dr. Metres' metier, but I didn't want to let Adrienne Rich's passing go without comment.  If you don't know her work, spend a little time searching out her poems on the web.  Here is one that is worth pondering in relation to our class.

Personal Mourning

Since the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is being used in class to highlight the ways that people deal with personal grief, I thought it might be helpful to point out the ways various characters are grieving in the novel. The two most obvious grievers in the novel thus far are the two narrators of the first three chapters. The first narrator, Oskar, is dealing with his grief primarily by trying to hold onto his dad’s memory, but also in trying to replace him. Oskar mentions that he wanted to give the Morse code jewelry (which he ended up giving his mother) to the man at the French embassy, or a person in a wheelchair, among others. However, while Oskar tries to connect more with some people, he shies away from others. He doesn’t like Ron very much, for obvious reasons, but he also starts to lie to his mother in order to pursue his dad’s key.
The second narrator we have been introduced to, Thomas, is mourning the loss of Anna. While Oskar’s mourning brings him into contact with more and more people (the Blacks as well as the woman in the art supply shop), Thomas is “losing words”, and eventually comes to the point where he cannot speak. While Oskar is being more social, Thomas is shutting himself off from the world.
Those aren’t the only grievers in the novel, however. Oskar’s mom and grandma also mourn the loss of Oskar’s father in distinct ways. Oskar’s grandma seems to be clinging to Oskar more and more. In the limousine, for instance, she is becoming so attached that Oskar feels the need to climb in the front seat with the driver. Oskar’s mom, on the other hand, exhibits a bit of contradiction. On the one hand, she is shown squeezing her hands in the limousine, apparently out of anguish. On the other hand, she seems to be moving on at home, still playing board games and laughing and being around Ron, her “friend”. Although this is a bit of a simplification of the different ways of grieving in the novel, I hope its helpful as we learn more and more about these characters.

U.S. Moves to Ease Limits on Use of Data in Counterterror Analysis

U.S. Moves to Ease Limits on Use of Data in Counterterror Analysis

The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may access, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats. 
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected on Thursday to sign new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 2004 to foster intelligence sharing and to serve as a clearinghouse for terrorism threats, according to officials. 
The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the center’s ability to retain private information about Americans when there is suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and “data-mining them” — using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat — than it currently does. 
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/politics/us-moves-to-relax-some-restrictions-for-counterterrorism-analysis.html?emc=na

I think this little excerpt of news really says a lot and it definitely relates to what we've been talking about in class. Many people in class expressed fear about the government watching over them, well here you go I suppose. The government has extended the amount of time they can hold your private information when terrorism is suspected. They have eased these restrictions as well to aid in data mining, searching for threats in large data. However, I'm going to make the extremely contentious argument that I'd rather have the government doing these things rather than not searching for terrorists. If there is a slight chance that this data could help prevent a terrorist attack, then I think it's worth it, especially since I don't have anything to hide. In the technologically connected world we live in today it is naive to think that anything you do on the internet is private or safe anyway.