The Trauma of 9/11 and the Effects of Visual Writing in Jonathan Safran Foer's Novel "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Cultural Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), course: Writing the Unspeakable: Trauma in North American Fiction, language: English, abstract: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close tells the story of Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy with limitless imagination and creativity on the one hand and a troubled soul on the other. He loses his father, Thomas Schell Jr., in the attacks of 9/11 and tries to cope with his loss by navigating himself through a series of quests. In the following chapters, a short introduction to Foer's life and works will be given as well as a plot summary and an overview of the main motifs of the novel to build a knowledge basis for the chapters following. After that, the trauma of the characters will be described for the later analysis of the individual coping mechanisms. An analysis of Foer's writing style follows with focus on visual writing and photographs. On this basis, the effects of Foer's writing style on the reader will be outlined. The paper will be concluded with a summary and a personal reflection. The descriptive method will be used based on primary and secondary literature as well as the author's observations to elaborate the research objects, which are the analyses of the individual traumas of the protagonists as well as the effects of Foer's visual writing techniques on the reader.