Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar’s grandmother, whose name is never revealed, is Oskar’s closest living family member. Oskar’s relationship with his mother is strained by his conflicted feelings about the loss of his father, and as a result it is his grandmother he depends on when he is upset or cannot stop inventing things in his mind. Oskar’s grandmother lives across the street from Oskar, in the same apartment she has lived in since she married Oskar’s grandfather. She can tell when something is troubling Oskar but does not press him, and she knows when he needs to talk honestly and when he needs to be distracted. On the day of the attack and his father’s death, Oskar spends hours with his grandmother as she comforts him and keeps his mind off Thomas.

Oskar’s grandmother writes letters to Oskar from the airport where she lives with her husband in 2003. She writes of their relationship, how it began, and why it ended for so long. Oskar’s grandmother married Thomas Schell Sr., a man she had known since they were teenagers and he was dating her sister, Anna. Oskar’s grandmother used to watch them kiss, and one day she asked her sister what it was like. In response, Anna kissed her sister, and Oskar’s grandmother felt a love unlike any she had ever known. Oskar’s grandmother was the only member of her family to survive the Dresden bombing. She eventually left for America and found Thomas in a bakery in New York. Traumatized by his own experience in the bombing and by the loss of his beloved Anna, he had lost the ability to speak. She was desperately lonely, and so they decided to marry. Their marriage was in many ways dishonest and unhealthy, as Thomas always sought a replacement for Anna, and Oskar’s grandmother could never bring herself to accept that role. Oskar’s grandmother became pregnant without her husband’s knowledge and against his wishes, causing him to leave her for 40 years.

They reunite after Thomas dies, and Oskar’s grandmother decides to accompany her husband to the airport, where they live from then on in a place that is “not coming or going” (312). In her last letter to Oskar, Oskar’s grandmother reveals a dream she had in which the events of her life unfolded in reverse, along with all of history: “At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed” (313). This wish plants the seed of Oskar’s own fantasy of restoration, in which his father lives his last day in reverse, returning safely home at the end.

Thomas Schell Sr. is Oskar’s grandfather, although Oskar remains unaware of this fact for years. Thomas Schell was born and grew up in Dresden, Germany. He met the love of his life, Anna, in his teens, and it was on the day of the bombing that she told him she was pregnant with their child. Thomas had never felt such joy and hope for the future, but it was almost immediately stolen from him by war. Thomas survived the bombing but endured severe trauma. He was made to shoot the animals of the local zoo, which sent him into a frenzy, and he witnessed people dying all around him. He was never able to find Anna, and never saw her again. After the war, Thomas gave up his dream of being a sculptor. He was never able to escape his traumatic memories, and his life remains limited by The Influence of the Past on the Present.

Thomas Schell moved to the United States and slowly lost his ability to speak. He recalls how his vocabulary slowly diminished until the last word he was able to speak was “I”. He had the words “YES” and “NO” tattooed on his hands and carried around a suitcase full of notebooks so he could have conversations. It was then that Anna’s younger sister found him in a bakery and asked him to marry her. Thomas was never able to let go of Anna or to love again, and though he tried to mold Anna’s sister into something that resembled the one he lost, he ultimately had to escape that life. His early, traumatic loss made him afraid to live.

Oskar’s grandparents have a complex relationship defined by rules, distance, and things unsaid. Although they have their ways of communicating through subtle touches and glances, they have never come to view one another as husband and wife. Thomas leaves his wife for decades, only returning after his son dies. It is then that he meets Oskar, but at his wife’s insistence, he never tells Oskar who he is. He follows Oskar around for weeks, and Oskar becomes his reason to live and his only remaining connection to his son. He goes with Oskar to bury his letters to his son in his coffin, and then leaves again. This time, his wife follows him, and they live out their lives at the airport together in a place between something and nothing.

Oskar’s mother, whose name is never mentioned in the story, is the remaining parent in Oskar’s life. While she is protective of Oskar and worries about him, she also trusts him and knows he has a maturity beyond his age. In order not to break his confidence or his sense of secrecy in his mission, she calls the people he plans to visit in advance to let them know he’s coming. Additionally, Oskar suspects that his mother asked Mr. Black to accompany him on his trips, but he never knows this for sure.

Oskar harbors anger and frustration toward his mother because he believes she is moving on from her husband’s death too quickly. In truth, Oskar’s mother cries often and is still in a deep state of grief, but she shields her son from her pain, which ironically upsets him more than honesty would. She has made a friend in Ron, a man who also lost his family suddenly, and the two are supporting one another through their grief. She continues to wear her wedding ring, signifying that she has yet to move on from Thomas’s death.

Oskar’s mother can always sense when something is wrong, but he remains closed off from her since his father’s death, at one point even telling her he wishes it was she who had died. Oskar does not connect to his mother on quite the same level as his father, but he loves and appreciates her as much as any child would. In the novel’s conclusion, Oskar’s mother admits that she talked to Thomas before he died, and she and her son share a moment of mutual understanding and sorrow. He comes to view her in the simplest and purest way possible: “She was looking over at me. I don’t believe in God, but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. But it was also incredibly simple. In my only life, she was my mom, and I was her son” (324).

Thomas Schell, Oskar’s father, died in the September 11 World Trade Center attacks. Nobody is certain exactly how Oskar’s father died because his body was never recovered, and the family chose to bury an empty coffin. The emptiness of Thomas’s coffin haunts Oskar until he and his grandfather fill it with the things that connect them to Thomas.

Thomas was intelligent like his son, and Oskar’s mother describes him as having a “yes or no” attitude. Thomas seemed to inherit this attitude from his father (whose hands were tattooed with “yes” and “no”) despite never knowing him. Thomas wanted Oskar to grow up with an honest and complete knowledge of the world and did not withhold information or truths from him. He would send Oskar on missions to find things in Central Park or around the neighborhood to help him gain independence and resourcefulness. At the same time, Thomas also encouraged Oskar’s imagination and sense of play, telling him the story of the Sixth Borough, for example, and frequently wrestling and joking with him.

A year after Thomas dies, Oskar finds a key inside a vase in his father’s closet. He hopes that finding the lock the key opens will somehow bring him closer to his father, and while in the end it does not, it does bring Oskar back out into the world, force him to confront many of his fears, and eventually lead him back to his grandfather, who helps him let go. Thomas’s death and its lingering effects on his family mirror the experiences of many real people in the aftermath of 9/11.