Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A photograph of a doorknob and the words “I’m sorry” (264) are followed by another letter from Thomas (Oskar’s grandfather) to his son (Oskar’s father). In this letter, which comes after what he thought would be his last letter, Thomas Sr. is living with his wife again. He tells of how he negotiated his way back into her life and how she agreed he could stay if he only occupied the guest room. Thomas then tells of how he came to America after finding out about his son’s death, and how he realized he must spend the last years of his life with his wife. He called her on the phone, but was unable to speak, so he spelled out each word with its corresponding number.

What follows are two pages of numbers as Thomas told Oskar’s grandmother everything. Thomas recalls, “I was trying to destroy the wall between me and my life with my finger, one press at a time” (272). Thomas writes about 9/11, and how everyone gathered around televisions to watch it before they even knew what was happening. He remembers seeing the lists of the deceased as they were released, and how upon seeing Thomas’s name, for a second, he thought he himself had died. Afterward, he felt compelled to return to America, noting his reason for entry as: “To try to live” (273). In his suitcase are all the letters he wrote to his son but never sent. For the first few weeks, his wife did not speak to him or even open the door, but slowly that began to change.

One day, Thomas got the courage to ask her to pose for him again, and she agreed. At the art store, he became alive and signed his name everywhere. Thomas recalls how his wife was still distant and unforgiving, refusing to refer to Thomas Jr. or Oskar as “theirs,” only as “hers,” and reverting to her old rules quite quickly. She also refused to let him meet Oskar, so he took to following Oskar around on his mission to meet everyone named Black. Watching Oskar did nothing but confuse him, not knowing what he was doing or why. One time, he even sat across from Oskar on the subway, and the man he was with stared. On the day of the Empire State Building visit, Mr. Black approached Thomas without Oskar knowing and told him to stay away from them. Thomas was desperate to know his grandson, as he could not bring himself to ever know his son. After the day he met Oskar, he and his wife made love for the last time. After this, Thomas begins to run out of pages, and the rest of the letter is typed over itself several times, making it illegible.

Oskar goes to visit Mr. Black but finds a realtor there instead. She explains that his apartment is being emptied and sold. Oskar goes inside to Mr. Black’s collection of names of important people and finds the one for Mr. Black himself. He then searches for his dad’s name, finding instead a card that Mr. Black made for him: “Oskar Schell: Son” (286). After losing Mr. Black, Oskar continued visiting others for a while, but it felt like it was no longer leading anywhere. The last Black he saw, Peter Black, let him hold his baby, which Oskar found to be a special moment.

That night, Oskar feels unmotivated and pessimistic, but he receives a phone message from Abby Black, who asks him to call as she was not fully honest with him last time they met. Oskar decides to go straight to her instead and wonders why his mother doesn’t seem concerned about where he is going. When he gets to Abby’s place, she explains that her husband knows something about the key, but at the time they were fighting and she didn’t want to admit it. She tells Oskar about how she called his mother after he visited the first time, and Oskar realizes why his mother never asks where he’s going: She already knows. Many of the people Oskar met knew his name because his mother had called to tell them he was coming. Oskar wonders if everyone was in on it, including Mr. Black and his grandmother and the man who lives in her apartment.

Oskar next goes to see Abby’s now ex-husband at work. The man, named William Black, is completely shocked to see that Oskar has the very key he has been looking for. After the death of his own father, whom he did not have a close relationship with, William was left with all his father’s belongings. Wanting to get rid of them, he had an estate sale, and that was where Oskar’s father bought the blue vase. Not until much later did William find out there was a key inside the vase that opened a safe-deposit box. He spent two years searching for Thomas in an effort to retrieve the key and answer the question of his father’s life—just like Oskar. Oskar wants to know everything about the day William met his dad, and William admits he doesn’t remember much except that Thomas seemed like a good man. Oskar feels like he can trust William and admits something he has never admitted to anyone: that he was unable to answer the phone when his father called for the last time. Instead, he sat there frozen as he listened to his father ask, “Are you there? Are you there? “(303). Oskar asks William for his forgiveness, which is granted, and Oskar leaves confused about where to go next. Now that he is no longer in search of the lock, he worries he will drift away from his father. When Oskar gets home that night, he finds Thomas Sr. outside waiting for him with a letter that Stan left. The letter is from Stephen Hawking, a response to the dozens of letters Oskar has sent over the years. Stephen Hawking expresses how bright Oskar’s future could be and reminds him of the importance of poetry and of recognizing simple beauties in front of oneself.

In her last letter to Oskar, written from the airport, Oskar’s grandmother tells Oskar of how his grandfather left again. After he and Oskar unearthed the coffin and buried the letters and key with it, Thomas Sr. once again felt the need to leave. He told his wife he was going to buy magazines, but she knew better. She followed him to the airport that day, feeling that she had spent her whole life watching him. She and Thomas Sr. could not reach a decision, could not figure out whether to be something or nothing. Thomas wanted to leave because his wife reminded him of what he had lost in Anna, something he never learned to cope with. His wife proposes that they stay in the airport forever, in the space between something and nothing.

Alongside this story, Oskar’s grandmother tells of a dream she had in which her entire life and then the existence of the world happened in reverse: “At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed” (313). Oskar’s grandmother tells Oskar of the day that Anna and her parents died, and how she was the only one to escape the house that came down on top of them. She talks about how she thought she had more time with Anna, and that her last night with her was a night like any other. She regrets not telling her sister how much she loved her. She ends her letter by reminding her grandson that “it’s always necessary” (314) to tell people you love them.

At dinner, Oskar sits with his mother and Ron. He is becoming more accepting of Ron’s presence and asks about his family. Oskar finds out that Ron had a wife and daughter who died in a car accident, and he met Oskar’s mother at a support group. That night, Oskar’s mother tucks him into bed, and Oskar lies awake waiting for midnight. He goes down to the street to meet his grandfather (who he still thinks is just a tenant). Oskar arranges for the same limousine driver that took them to the funeral to take him to the cemetery, and on the way there, he takes pictures of the sky. When they arrive, Oskar and his grandfather find Thomas’s grave and start digging. They don’t get far, and soon the limousine driver is volunteering to help. After an hour and a half, they finally reach the coffin, and upon opening it, Oskar feels like he is staring at “the dictionary definition of emptiness” (321). The renter opens his suitcases and reveals the letters, explaining that they were for the son he lost. He lost him while he was still alive because he was “afraid of losing him” (322). Looking back on this moment, Oskar thinks he must have known, on some unconscious level, that the man before him was his grandfather.

That night when Oskar gets home, his mother doesn’t ask where he’s been. Instead, they sit together as she confesses that Thomas called her that day and told her he was already out. It wasn’t true, and he was only trying to protect her. Oskar and his mother cry together, and the next thing he remembers is being tucked into bed. He takes out his scrapbook and rips the pictures of the man falling out of the tower from the book. He reverses the order so it looks “like the man [i]s floating up through the sky” (325). Oskar imagines September 11 in reverse, as the planes leave the buildings and his father walks backward from work and ends up besides Oskar, telling him the story of the Sixth Borough from its end to its beginning.