Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Sometime the journey is more important than the destination. This holds true in Jonathan Safran Foer’s work Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His novel is about a young boy named Oskar who loses his father on September 11th. He finds a key inside his father’s vase and decides to go on a hunt for what the key opens, his only clue being the word “Black” written on the little envelope it came in. The process of searching and finding the lock the key opens is more important to the novel, and more important to Oskar than finding the lock itself. Oskar is a young and very curious boy. He is constantly trying to learn new things and inventing. He is very open to new people and not at all shy. He is so comfortable with strangers that he even gives the mail woman, pizza man, and doorman keys to his house. He talks to everyone he sees and loves to get to know them including the homeless man in front of the museum. Oskar was extremely close to his father, they seemed to get each other, so when his father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 he was never able to come to terms with the loss of his father. Oskar could never understand why he never saw his mother cry and how she could laugh and be happy with another man. One day he wanders into his father’s closet hoping to be close to him and he accidently breaks a vase. Inside the vase he finds an envelope with the word “Black” on it and a bulky key inside. Oskar’s imagination immediately goes wild and he is determined to find the lock that the key opens because he thinks whatever the key opens will be from his father and will help him get over his loss. Oskar begins to form a plan to solve this mystery. Going with the only clue he has, the word “Black” on the envelope, he decided to question every person with the last name Black in the New York City phonebook. Oskar goes down
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