Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Blog Post

With my book club, I have just recently finished the powerful and symbolizing "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book is about a boy named Oskar. Oksar is funny, wise, street smart, and pretty much anything a kid could be. On the 9/11 attacks, his dad unfortunately passed away. Now, Oskar has found a key in his dad's stuff and is determined to find where it came from. The story starts there. To go into a more deeper level of thinking, I have been noticing a lot about Oskar's character traits and how he as many of them.

To begin, I first recognized his trait obsessiveness. Oskar has a thing where once he is interested in something, he will be obsessed for that period of time and do whatever he can to accomplish what he is obsessed with and then it will pass. To kind of side track that note, I have been noticing with now finishing the book that Oskar never really gave up on the key the whole way through, even though I noticed that he had given up on more stuff prior to this obsession. He makes things clear with everyone around him that he is going to do the things he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and that what makes his character so unique and interesting.

Secondly, I have been noticing that Oskar is not very good at creating or even keeping relationships. He is very cold and he keeps to himself. The story is not set around his father and him, but from the anecdotes he shares with us, it seems Oskar and his father had a very strong relationship before he passed away. Maybe this means that because of making a good relationship with someone, they die eventually is what drives Oskar to be this way and have this trait. In addition, throughout the book, Oskar doesn't really talk about any real friends that he has. He does talk about kids in his class and people that he likes in general,  but never really about anything else.

Lastly, I recognized and inferred a trait and then what the scientific name is for that trait. Overall, from everything in the book, me and my book club inferred that Oskar may have ADD. It is never said in the book, but because of his constant state of moving, and not being able to stand still, may be ADD kicking in. Oskar never really in the book is doing nothing. He is either going on a journey, talking to someone, screaming at someone, telling people what to do, fiddling with his fingers, etc. I don't remember one time in the book where the author explained how Oskar was doing nothing.

In conclusion, Oskar has many different character traits, even beyond the ones I have discussed that are shown in the book. The interesting thing about Oskar and his traits is never once did the author say what one of the traits are. When you are reading the book, you have to infer about these traits, they are not just sitting right in front of you.