Melancholy and mourning in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Abstract

Whereas melancholy (or 'acting out') entails a complete repression of all trauma-related memory, mourning (or 'working through') is an endeavour to remember the traumatic event and fit it into a coherent whole. In Extremely Load and Incredibly Close, these two ways of reacting to and dealing with trauma are embodied respectively by the protagonist's paternal grandfather and by his paternal grandmother, both survivors of the Allied firebombing of Dresden in 1945. Foer ties up this 'old' trauma with a fresh one -11 September 2001 - by having the Schells lose their only son, the protagonist's father, in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Aspects of both acting out and working through are in turn synthesised in the protagonist himself - Oskar Schell. In his behaviour, the boy displays characteristics of both a melancholic and a mourner. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.