3 paragraph ELIC

“I am more interested in the future than the past, since I intend to live in it. “ These true words spoken by Albert Einstein are very much of concern to the main characters in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The primary protagonists, Oskar and his grandparents, are not able to let go of past in order to live a normal life in the present and future and them being trapped in the past is one of the main motives throughout the whole novel. Oskar is trapped the day his father died, especially in the moment he did not dare to pick up the phone, not allowing him to live the life of a normal nine year old boy. He keeps remembering the last moments with his father, such as the bed time stories and the phone calls. Only when he learns that his mother has spoken to his father before the building collapsed he starts accepting his life in the present. With the quest being the only purpose in Oskar’s life, he skips school and French classes for it; he lives only for the past. He cannot let go of time his father was alive, he keeps revisiting that time in his thoughts. The purpose of the quest is alone to find out more about his father, isolating him more since he starts to have problems with his mother as well, because he cannot accept that she is moving on in life. The fact that he hides the messages from her adds a component of guilt, so Oskar moves away from human relationships. The important key moment that helps him to accept that the past is gone is not the encounter with the owner of the key, but the conversation with his mother about the phone calls. From there their relation is restored and Oskar can even start to accept Ron, so there is still hope that Oskar can fully leave the past behind and return to a life that is as normal as possible for him.

In contrast to Oskar, who can carry on with life, his grandfather, Thomas Sr., has greater problems with letting go of the past. For him the shocking events in Dresden are marking the time he is caught in. Through the horrible experiences he made he was unable to free himself from that time and could not live a normal live with his wife. In almost every chapter about Thomas Sr. Anna, his fiancée who he lost in the bombing at that time is mentioned. During the bombing of Dresden he lost her, his family and his unborn child and he was not able to live a life with human relationships. His marriage was ruined by his incapability of leaving the past, his wife constantly reminded him of Anna and he could not love as the women she was but only as the sister of Anna. The daily life routine was designed so that they did not have to remember the time in Dresden, but this desperate attempt pushed Thomas further into isolation through the past. When Oskar’s grandmother told him that she is pregnant this reminded him even more of the situation in Dresden and he leaves her behind. He loses his voice, the opportunity of a happy marriage and the time with his son because he cannot leave the past and ruins his live until he gets to know Oskar.

While Thomas Sr. does little to escape the curse of his past, his wife does everything she can to life a normal life and as soon as her husband leaves her she actually manages to, but just like her grand son and husband she sometimes also haunted by the ghosts of the past and the events of Dresden in 1944 and she suffers under the memories of the bombing and the loved ones she lost. For example she has times in which she thinks back to Anna instead of letting the dead rest. Nevertheless she works hard on forgetting by first establishing rules and then by forgetting her husband. During the years of their marriage one of the problems is that he cannot forget and she wants to forget. The result of this problem is an obscure set of rules, but she cannot let go completely of the past, the daily routine is just an artificial image to try to create this new live that she does not want to be influenced by the past. However only when her husband is gone she can let go completely of Dresden, since he always represented the memories of that time. All the years of his absence her life is normal and when he returns she first does not want him back because she is afraid that he will bring back the past into her life. In the end she is not strong enough to keep the past completely away because she allows him to become the renter. The tragic events she, her husband and Oskar lived through had great influence on their lives, simply with different effects. Oskar is on the brink of recovering, while Thomas Senior, who ruined his life by living in the past, found a bit back by meeting Oskar. The grandmother clearly is the connection between those two and is the one who can let go of the past the best. Eventually it takes simply a different amount of time for everybody to heal their wounds.