Deception in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and its Effects
In Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell and his Grandfather lie to their close ones, which creates emotional distance between others, as they believe truth can be more painful to share.
Throughout the novel, many of the major characters lie to each other to avoid confrontation. There are different size lies for different situations. Most of these lies aren't malicious, they are used as emotional protection, either to protect the speaker from the truth or hide the truth from the listener. At the beginning of the novel, Oskar Schell, the central protagonist, is a firm believer in absolute honesty. As the story progresses, he begins telling numerous …show more content…
The one time in the story when Oskar is completely honest with his mother, he tells her, "If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you!". He reveals that he would rather have lost his mother on 9/11 than his father. Obviously, this truth hurts Oskar's mother deeply, and it raises the question of whether or not absolute honesty is more important than consideration for another person's feelings. At the end of the novel, Oskar and his mother return from his father’s empty grave and Oskar goes to her room, crying. She comforts him, insisting that it was okay to feel sad about Dad. She also confessed that she had spoken to Thomas Jr. before the building collapsed and that he had lied to her, telling her he had made it out to the street and would be home soon. She described the lie as an expression of love, similar to Oskar's lie about the key, which she, in turn, pretended not to know about. While for the Schell family, lying is used to protect themselves from sharing the truth with each other, it is also a tool to protect themselves from the pain they feel. The novel end with the lie of the Falling Man, as Oskar creates a story of his father still living in order to protect himself from the truth, but as a
In Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar Schell and his Grandfather lie to their close ones, which creates emotional distance between others, as they believe truth can be more painful to share.
Throughout the novel, many of the major characters lie to each other to avoid confrontation. There are different size lies for different situations. Most of these lies aren't malicious, they are used as emotional protection, either to protect the speaker from the truth or hide the truth from the listener. At the beginning of the novel, Oskar Schell, the central protagonist, is a firm believer in absolute honesty. As the story progresses, he begins telling numerous …show more content…
The one time in the story when Oskar is completely honest with his mother, he tells her, "If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you!". He reveals that he would rather have lost his mother on 9/11 than his father. Obviously, this truth hurts Oskar's mother deeply, and it raises the question of whether or not absolute honesty is more important than consideration for another person's feelings. At the end of the novel, Oskar and his mother return from his father’s empty grave and Oskar goes to her room, crying. She comforts him, insisting that it was okay to feel sad about Dad. She also confessed that she had spoken to Thomas Jr. before the building collapsed and that he had lied to her, telling her he had made it out to the street and would be home soon. She described the lie as an expression of love, similar to Oskar's lie about the key, which she, in turn, pretended not to know about. While for the Schell family, lying is used to protect themselves from sharing the truth with each other, it is also a tool to protect themselves from the pain they feel. The novel end with the lie of the Falling Man, as Oskar creates a story of his father still living in order to protect himself from the truth, but as a