Chapter Two: Why I'm Not Where You Are 5/21/63

Just by the title alone I think one can pick up that Oskar is probably no longer the character who is telling the story for it is dated in 1963, way before Oskar was born. The chapter begins with four simple words, "To my unborn child." As soon as the eyes hit the words the mind begins to wonder. Unborn child? Is this Oskar's dad? Who is this? Are they a father, or a mother? Was the child ever born? How does this person relate to Oskar?

The man goes on to describe his silence; how he can no longer talk. He mentions a girl named Anna. Someone he used to love, but lost somehow, and now because of that loss he has lost all words. It got so bad that he got the words Yes and No tattooed to the palms of his hands to make it easier for him to communicate with others. He also gets a notebook to write down other answers to questions that may not result in yes or no answers.

Then he says something that struck me a little, "I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it." I feel like this is something we all do. Our minds can be wonderful instruments, but sometimes they can be disastrous. We over think things and make them into things that they are not. Someone says something to us that is harmless but we make it into a threat. Someone compliments us, but somehow we make it into a bad thing. We convince ourselves that our lives are much worse than they actually are. Why is this? Why can't we just see life how it is? Why can't we talk ourselves into happiness? Things would be so much easier if we could. Some people believe that we can. Humanists, usually. Those who believe in the powers of the human, and how they can be whatever they want to be. I believe we can do it too. I believe that we can talk ourselves into happiness, but for some reason it becomes such a struggle to do so. Why? I guess there are two things I can get out of this. One, talk myself into happiness more often. Two, talk others into happiness more often. If it's so hard to talk ourselves into happiness that it just might take someone else to do it then why don't we be that someone for another person? As someone once said, "You don't need a reason to help people." But this could be a reason; to help others achieve what you wish you could achieve on your own, happiness.

Then the man discusses on how he met the unborn child's mother. He met her at a Bakery in New York. Then he mentions how they both came to New York. Which means they were originally from another place. Did they come together? Or did they just by chance find each other? Did they both come from the same place, or opposite places?

The man describes how the woman slid up next him while he was sitting in a booth. She told him that she could see he was suffering, and that she was suffering as well. She expressed how she knew that everyone could tell that they were suffering. She talked to him as if they knew each other. She continued to talk to him, but he could not respond. Finally, he wrote to her that he could not talk and he was sorry. She began to cry. She wrote a thing of her own onto the last blank piece of paper he had, something bold, "Please marry me." Then the two flipped back and forth between pages. Him pointing at pages that led to the answer no, and her flipping back to asking he would marry her.

Then the character goes on a flashback of his life within his head as he contemplated answering yes. Here you discover that his family was pretty wealthy, that he had a love of his life (most likely the Anna he mentioned earlier), and that he used to be a sculptor.

And then he says, "I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?"

Could there? Will we ever be happy enough? Is there a limit to happiness? Is there an unachievable bar of happiness? A bar that we want to reach, but can never be happy enough to reach. We often go on an on about happiness. What makes us happy. Why we aren't happy. How we should be happy, but for some reason we aren't. Is happiness what we evolve around emotionally? Is all that we want happiness? Or do we want sadness, and despair? Do we need sadness and despair? Could we ever be happy without sadness and despair? Think about it. We complain when we are sad, but how could we ever be truly happy without being sad every once and a while? I mean sadness is what drives us to appreciate happiness so much. Without sadness, happiness is just a norm, nothing to appreciate. But what happens when all there is, is sadness? Could there ever be enough?

Immediately after that quote the man states this, "The end of suffering does not justify the suffering."

This I believe to be true. We cannot free people and then say, "Well okay, we're good now right?" In the book, "Man's Search for Meaning", the author Viktor Frankl talks about the feelings and psychological mindset of the prisoners of Auschwitz after their freedom. He discusses how they couldn't really believe they were free, but more importantly he discusses how some began to act out on society with the mindset that they have the right to do harm because they have been harmed. They did not feel that just because their suffering had ended that their suffering was now over, and justified. We all do this. We do something terrible, apologize, and move on. We think that the ending of whatever terrible thing we have done makes up for the suffering, but it doesn't. Say you bully someone, and then one day you come to terms that it was a terrible thing to do. You find this person, and apologize. You give closure to the situation. You end it. Does this mean that all of the sudden all of that damage you caused them is gone? I believe in forgiveness. I believe in grace. But I also believe that as humans we are not like God in His way of forgiveness and grace, though we should strive to be. God forgives and forgets completely. Clean slate grace. But humans just don't work that way. Those years of bullying had an impact. Viktor Frankl says, and I'm paraphrasing this, that no one has the right to do harm, not even those who have been harmed. This is true. Two wrongs don't make a right. But just because this is true doesn't mean that it's reality. My point is the person you bullied most likely took that wrong doing, and did some wrong doing of their own. But now you've apologized, so everything's good right? Wrong. What about all of the things this kid did in reaction to your bullying? What about the relationships he/she has destroyed because of the social damage you have caused on them? What about all of the unseen after effects? Just because you ended the suffering does not justify the suffering.

Now the suffering that this character is describing is a more difficult kind of suffering, and internal suffering. When he reflects back on his life he finds that he had a pretty good life until a certain point, and then he became worthless. Ultimately he answered the woman by pointing to another page that simply read, "Help."

Chapter One: What the?

The book perfectly begins with the random wonderings of the main character, Oskar Schell. It also begins right away with a few words and phrases the average person might not know. Entomology, raison d'être, and Ce n'etais pas moi. Ever since rhetoric and research with Dr.Brown, where Dr.Brown gave us daily quizzes always involving a bonus question on the words in the book we read that most people don't understand and skip over anyway, I began to learn every word I didn't know.

Entomology is branch of Zoology that has to deal with insects. Oskar speaks about how he wants to invent a tea kettle that could talk so that he could get it to talk in his dad's voice, or sing Yellow Submarine by the Beatles. Then Oskar states how he loves the Beatles because entomology is one of his raison d'etre.

A raison d'etre is French, as you may have guessed. But what you may not have guessed is it's something most of us search for everyday. It's a reason or justification for existence, or the reason we are here and living.

And lastly, Oskar mentions Ce n'etais pas moi when he mentions that he wishes he could train his anus to talk when he passes gas. This way whenever he passes gas it would say, "Ce n'etais pas moi." Which in French roughly means, "It wasn't me." And that is one of the first borderline socially awkward slash socially inappropriate things Oskar says. You pick up from the very first page that Oskar is not afraid to say what he thinks, and it can be funny at times, but it can also be awkward even as a reader.

Oskar also later says Oeuf, which is French for eggs. He tells a joke to a limo driver about how he once kicked a chicken in the stomach and it responded with, "Oeuf." If you haven't been able to tell by now Oskar knows some French.

Then Oskar begins to speak on how everyone should have a microphone attached to their heart so that everyone could hear their heartbeat. He hypothesizes that eventually everyone's hearts would sync together. How interesting would it be though if our hearts were synced together? How would this affect things? For those who believe that our hearts are where we find emotions, would we all feel the same thing? Would we all learn to love one and another easily?

Then Oskar begins to discuss the idea of skyscrapers below the ground for those who are dead since there is beginning to be less and less space on earth for those who are dying. This is where you are first introduced to the idea that someone in Oskar's life has died. Most kids his age seem to only evaluate things that come with death when they know someone who has died. Otherwise most children his age let the idea of death go because it seems so abstract and so unlikely to happen.

You can tell from the start that the book may be a little hard to follow. It begins with Oskar's ramblings on his strange inventions that he creates within his mind. Then it goes into him traveling inside a limousine to someone's funeral. And then it leads into a conversation with him and his father. It's a great book, but I must say it is not something you can skim through and enjoy.

Inside the limousine you begin to get a little more feeling into who Oskar is. He discusses how his grandmother touching him, even though she does so as a way to try and comfort him, makes him feel uncomfortable. He discusses how one of his raison d'être (which as you can remember means a reason to live) is to make his mother happy.You get some insight on what he believes to be humorous when he cracks jokes with the limousine driver. You even begin to learn a little bit of his own version of swear words.

The next thing that really hit me occurred during a conversation b/w Oskar and his Dad. Oskar's dad used to tell him he was too smart for retail, which was exactly the job his dad obtained. Oskar argued that his dad was smarter than he was, and therefore his dad, a retail worker, should be too smart for retail as well. His dad responds back, "I'm not smarter than you, I'm more knowledgeable than you, and that's only because I'm older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents." I love this quote. It states truth. Most people believe knowledge and intelligence is the same, but it's not.

In "The Know it All" a book by A.J. Jacobs, the author reads through encylopedias from front to back in order to become as smart as he once was. Which is interesting to think that he lost his own intelligence. Jacobs discovers many things, but one major thing is that knowledge and intelligence are different. Knowledge is to know something. Intelligence is to know what to do with knowledge. And wisdom is to know something, what to do with it, and how/when you should do it. This quote from ELIC (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) states the same thing. That the two are different.

Also Oskar's dad, Thomas Schell, states that children are always smarter than their parents and parents are always more knowledgable then their children. I believe this to be basically true. There are always exceptions to rules, especially social rules. I have no way of explaining why this philosophy is true, but I do believe it to be true. I also believe that this is what parents should want. Parents often play the Matilda-like concept "I'm smart, you're dumb; I'm big, you're small; I'm right, you're wrong; and there's nothing you can do about it." Especially when in an argument with their children on why their children should listen. I argue however that parents should want their children to be smarter than them. They should want their children to have a better life. Isn't that the reason behind parenthood? To raise your children to be better people, in a better world, with a better life, doing better things? At least that's what I believe the point is, and I think Thomas Schell shares this belief. I appreciate that Thomas Schell shares this belief.

Then Oskar talks about the adventures he and his dad used to have. His father used to tell him that things were connected and Oskar would have to find out why they were connected. With these very basic adventures you begin to read through a concept that I think most of us have, even if it is, as Freud would say, subconsciously within us. The concept that everything is connected in someway. That everything has a meaning. And what is that meaning, or that connection? This is what Oskar strived to find out.

On time Oskar came to his dad with "evidence". He asked his father about the evidence, and if he was on the right track. His father just shrugged his shoulders. Oskar becomes upset and wonders how he can ever be right if his father won't tell him so. His father then circles something in the newspaper that he is reading and says to Oskar, "Another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?" And then his father walked away. Oskar looked down at the paper and saw what his father had circled. He had circled the phrase, "never stop looking." It was his father's way of hinting to Oskar to never stop looking. To keep pressing on. A kind of spin off of "try, try, try again." Basic words that inspire someone to never give up on what is important to them. Words I believe most of us hear within our childhood, but forget to remember in our adulthood when things get rough and we want to give up.

Then Oskar reveals that after "the worst day" he began to write letters. I think this is an incredibly fascinating part about his character. That a child his age is not afraid to write letters to anyone. Honestly, even if I could get myself to do the same I wouldn't even know where to begin to find out how to send letters to some of the people he sent letters to. Some of those people being Stephen Hawking, Ringo, and others I am sure. I once heard about a girl who for her english assignment decided to write letters to people for thirty days. I found the ideas, both Oskar's and this girl's, fascinating. I often wonder what it would be like if I began to write letters to people I didn't know. Would they ever respond back? Do we still live in a world where I could write a letter to a random person and receive a response? I believe so. If I write to the right person.

Okay, I'm sorry, but I might go one a little bit of a faith rant right now. So just a heads up. Oskar talks about how he used to lie in bed and talk with his father as his father would tell him stories. Oskar then looked at his dad asked why we exist. His father's response was, "We exist because we exist." ... "We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened." I'm sorry, and I don't mean to offend anyone by what I am about to say, but how can someone believe in this? How can  someone truly believe that things just all came together? One small change, and everything we know could collapse. How does something that fragile just come together and stay that way? Yes, I am a Christian, but a fairly new one at that. Before I became a Christian I still don't believe that I was completely agnostic or an atheist for I knew there had to be something out there that created the stars and brought everyone exactly where they were. My biggest problem I have with the idea that things just all came together is what is one to do when they fall apart? Who do they call on to help save things? I once knew someone who was having surgery and people were praying for them. They didn't believe in God and prayers so their response was, "Thank you all I except all of your positive energy." I truly don't mean to mock anyone, and I really wish that typing could convey absolute emotion so that you could see I am not completely aggravated, but rather curious. How can someone believe that there is positive energy, and that it makes a difference? Don't get me wrong, I think I could completely fall for the big bang theory and evolution, but it's the other part that gets me. The fact that this world as I said is so fragile. We see it, global warming, comets, black holes, gravity, and even the humans who live amongst it destroying it. So what does one do when they try to explain miracles? When they see a disaster about to happen who or what do they pray to? How do they have faith that everything is going to be okay? I used to be one of these people, who knew no where to go when things went wrong and it almost led to my death. The idea that there was no where to go, and things would never get better almost caused me to take away the life I had. I am so thankful that I didn't. I guess that now that I am on the other side, now that I have finally found the answer to the questions I was asking all along, I just can't understand how someone could say, "We exist because we exist."

Lastly, if you haven't figured it out already, Oskar ends the chapter with giving insight into "the worst day". Oskar describes a story I am familiar with. The day that we (being children in elementary school) were let out early, and the only explanation I was given at least was a plan had crashed. He describes coming home and remaining calm because he knew where his parents were. But then he checks his phone messages, and you read the first message. It's his dad asking if anyone was at the house. He describes that something had happened, but he was told to remain where he was and wait for the firemen. It was a call to insure his family that he was okay. Then the chapter ends when you discover that his father was calling him as he was standing by the phone.

Reason I Started Reading It

When 9/11 happened I was eight years old in third grade. Though I do remember the day like it was yesterday, and all that went with it I have a fascination with it, I want to know every detail that went with that day. Who was killed? Who went missing? Were they found? Why did this happen? Where were you when this happened? Were you in New York? Did someone you know die? If so I am so sorry. How did this day make you feel? What would make someone do this? Who else in this world did this day effect? Did it only affect the U.S.? I had many questions I wanted answers to. I wanted to try and understand the day. 

I am also a HUGE fan of movies. If you have any suggestions for movies I should watch, please put them below. I would love to watch them. I used to be a film major at Towson University. Now I am double major in Youth Ministry and Telecommunications at Lee University. (Not official, but hopefully I will take care of that soon) So I love going to movies. I don't remember which movie I was watching when I first saw the previews for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I do remember the time. It was close to 9/11 itself. My church was doing a drama about the event. I was in it. I was playing a woman who's husband was in the building the day of the attack. Once I saw the papers fall in the previews I knew what it was because at the end of our drama we threw papers up to indicate the rubble. We discussed how on the day what now seems like pointless paperwork floated on to the streets of New York. I was hooked. Right then I knew I wanted to see this movie, and I did. I saw it in theaters only a few days after it came out. Then one day in Walmart (or Target. I don't remember) I stumbled upon the book, and I bought it. And so this is why I am reading it. I love everything it has to offer. A story involving a tragic moment I lived through and wanted to know more about, an interesting character of a kid, and quirky things to go along with him. It's an exciting adventure of a book, and I can't wait. 

Starting Off

Just a spoiler alert this is a blog about the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close written by Jonathan Safran Foer. I will also be making relations to the movie. So if you do not want to know what happens in the book. GO READ IT, and then come back.

Basically, every time I read a book I have a lot of ideas but no where to put them. Where are the mandatory english papers at the end of a book you actually wanted to read? So I decided to blog it. I haven't finished the book yet, so this will be a process of me finishing the book. I will list book pages with the post's title so you can follow along. Hope you enjoy! Thank you for reading!