"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer is a book about a young boy named Oskar who is trying to find closure after his father dies in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After 2 years, Oskar goes through a closet full of his father's old this things. In that closet, he finds a vase with an envelope containing a key. He sets out to find what the key opens, and ends up finding out that it has nothing to do with his father, but instead it opens a safe deposit box for a man who sold his father the vase and forgot that the key was in it. Oskar is devastated by this discovery, but it able to find some closure a different way by digging up his father's empty grave and filling with letters that his grandfather wrote to him.
I find the ending of the book a bit unexpected, at least from a writer's perspective. Because Oskar, the protagonist, is only nine years old, and he is put through so much to try to find an answer to this question, the ending comes off as a bit cruel. The only thing that this little boy wants is an answer that will bring him comfort over his father's death, and he is deprived of that. Oskar spent 8 months of his life looking for an answer that ends up not being worth looking for. There's really no way to sugarcoat that, because it's sad in every sense of the word.
As depressing as that may be, I believe that there is a message that Oskar learns which makes his journey worth it. He learns that sometimes you just have to learn to live with problems on your own. There isn't always going to be something to ease something to soothe your pain, and, as hard as it may be, you have to try to adjust to new living conditions. In the beginning of the book, Oskar refuses to allow himself to continue living without his dad. He is even angry at his mother for trying to move on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Oskar should just completely forget about his father. He is human, and sadness should be his reaction to as much of a loss as he went through. But he learns that you cannot spend your entire life looking to the past and sulking. Eventually, you have to embrace the present, and look forward to the future.
