Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

New York City is the setting of the novel and also a central motif in exploring the characters, their conflicts, and the novel’s most important themes. The main story begins a year after the 9/11 attacks, and the people of New York remain in a state of mourning and, for many, false hope that their loved ones will still be found alive. Oskar’s family lives in Manhattan, just a few minutes away from where the attacks took place. Oskar’s life and worldview were shaped by these attacks, and part of his process of healing involves exploring the city on its deepest level. Oskar’s grief is compounded by unanswered questions, and his search for the lock to his mysterious key becomes a container for many other mysteries. The search gives him a sense of purpose and thus a way to avoid being swallowed up by his grief. Along his journey, Oskar visits many places he may otherwise not have, such as Coney Island, the Bronx, and Greenwich Village. His and Mr. Black’s visit to the Empire State Building is particularly significant, because “the feeling and spirit of New York City is embodied in the Empire State Building” (249). Oskar looks down at the city from above and feels like he is experiencing it objectively for the first time. He meets Ruby Black, who lives in the tower and is herself a symbol of New Yorkers’ devotion to their city. Finally, the story of the Sixth Borough that Oskar’s father told him the night before he died is a symbol of hope and imagination, and of the often cruel reality that children must grow up. By the time Oskar’s journey through New York is over, he has changed into a braver, kinder person, and has become all the wiser for it.

The key that Oskar finds in his father’s closet, and the lock that he seeks to match it with, are symbols of Oskar’s connection to his father and his reasons for living. When he finds the key, it awakens inspiration, drive, and a positive feeling in him that he had not felt since his father’s death: “Even though I knew that there were 161,999,999 locks in New York that it didn’t open, I still felt like it opened everything” (200). Oskar puts the key on a string and keeps it around his neck, hoping to somehow become closer to his father by solving his mystery. While the key does not bring Oskar to his father, it does bring him back into the world, out of his fears, and toward Mr. Black and Oskar’s own grandfather. It is because of his search for the lock that Oskar meets all the people named Black, sees parts of the city he may never have otherwise seen, and learns of the hopes and griefs of others. In seeing that others grieve too, Oskar is able to accept his own grief and begin to heal from it. In the end, Oskar’s key leads him to a man named William Black. Like Oskar, William has also lost his father. William has been searching for Thomas, hoping to retrieve the key. As it turns out, the key opens a safe-deposit box left behind by William’s father: Oskar has been hoping the key would unlock the mystery of his father’s life, but in fact in unlocks the life of another man’s father. Despite this apparent disappointment, Oskar realizes that the key has already unlocked the city for him, bringing new people into his life and leading him to know his loved ones more deeply than he otherwise would have. Oskar feels a deep connection to William due to their mutual need to find something that cannot be found. Oskar ultimately decides to bury the key in his father’s empty coffin as a way to fill the empty space and keep himself close to his dad.

Secrets define the Schell family and The Complex Nature of Relationships within it. Oskar keeps many secrets from his mother, although he is not aware that she in fact knows about most of them. When he finds the vase in the closet, he decides not to tell her, as though he wants it to be kept between him and his father. Still, the vase is placed in an unusually obvious way, and it is later revealed that Oskar’s mother knew about all his travels in advance, so it is possible that she is the one who placed the vase there for him to find. Oskar doesn’t tell his mother where he is going, and for a long time he thinks she no longer worries about him; in truth, she is protecting him more than he knows. Oskar also has difficulty sharing how he feels, and his emotions often come out in angry bursts, such as when he tells his mother, “If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you!” (171). Oskar’s biggest secret as well as his biggest regret is the series of voicemails he heard from his father on 9/11 and his failure to answer Thomas’s last call. When Oskar finally confesses this to William in the novel’s conclusion, he feels a sudden wave of relief. Oskar’s mother has her own secret about that day: She talked to Thomas before he died, and he lied and told her he was already out of the building.

Oskar’s grandparents’ relationship is built on secrets that they keep from one another. Thomas Sr. never tells his wife about all the horrors he experienced or why he cannot speak or love again; instead, he writes all of this in letters to his son—letters he never sends. Thomas also gifts his wife a typewriter but forgets it has no ink in it, and when she presents him with a blank book, he pretends to read it, never letting on that he is seeing blank pages. Similarly, his wife never mentions that she knows the pages are blank, or that her eyes are fine. She also keeps the secret of her need to have a child, and when she tricks Thomas into it, it causes him to leave her for 40 years.

Photographs are a way for Oskar to record, understand, and appreciate the world around him. Oskar takes photographs with his grandfather’s old camera, a gift from his grandmother. The photographs thus take on a blurred, black-and-white appearance suggestive of a nonexistent past. Oskar puts his photos in his “Book of Stuff that Happened to Me” (52), which he looks at when he feels confused or alone. Oskar’s photographs take on symbolic meanings and relate to what he is experiencing at that moment. For example, he takes a photograph of the wall of keys at the locksmith, symbolizing his long journey ahead and the millions of locks in the city. He takes a photograph of the sky on his way to the graveyard with Thomas Sr., symbolizing eternity and his connection to it. Oskar also photographs the flock of birds that fly past the window at Mr. Black’s apartment, and this two-page photograph symbolizes the emerging freedom from grief they both are experiencing. The reader is taken along with Oskar on his journey, as if he is sharing his story with them side by side. Oskar also collects and prints photographs of things he cannot personally capture, such as Stephen Hawking, a jumping cat, and the Falling Man at the World Trade Center. In the final moments of the novel, Oskar takes the pictures of the Falling Man and reverses them, and the reader is left with a flip book of an impossible hope.

Oskar’s inventions are the scenarios he imagines in order to cope with his fears. Oskar’s inventions are sometimes intentional and controlled, while other times seem to run in an endless loop that he cannot stop. In the story’s exposition, Oskar describes a desire for people to have microphones attached to their hearts. This seems strange at first, until the reader learns that Oskar’s father died in the World Trade Center attacks and was never found amongst the rubble. Oskar is expressing a fear of being trapped and never found, and a mourning for those who were, although he never states this directly. Oskar also invents a “Reservoir of Tears” (38):

In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots. And when something really terrible happened—like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack—an extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central Park to put sandbags around the reservoir (38).

When Oskar is experiencing a high level of fear, his inventions come without warning or invitation. This occurs on the day he finds his grandmother’s apartment empty and imagines all the terrible things that might have happened to her, and when he goes to the Empire State Building and thinks about all of the ways he could die.