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Welcome to the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wiki!

I reorganized the home page around the five major categories of literary elements I introduced in class. If you feel something belongs in another category, add a link in that category too! If you're looking for something, use the search bar or the All Pages link.

Themes and Central Purposes we are following


Central Purposes


Life is meaningless
Every moment before this one depends on this one
Experiencing the world can be overwhelming, so sometimes we need distance from the world
Every person handles their pain differently
One thing can mean the world to someone
From where one person is standing they see things completely differently than someone else standing in another place.
You can fight it all you want, but loss is out of your control
Deaths impact effects everyone differently
Not being able to put what you feel into words
life is full of unanswered questions
Every moment before this depends on this one
Fragility of Life
Dont greive forever, grow from it

Not central purposes, but interesting questions about literary elements (added by Mr. Proctor)


What is the significance of doorknobs
Why doesn't he include more emphasis on 9/11
What does the key and mystery lock Oskar has been searching for symbolize?
Why does Oskar only wear white?
How do "nothing and something" spaces relate to Oskar's "sleeping bag"?
What is the significance of the inventions Oskar creates?
Why does Oskar continue to answer with "I'm OK" whenever his grandma says his name?

Themes


Death
War
Heartbeats
Letters/Writing
Safety
Time
Parts and wholes
Search
Disappointments
5 Stages of Grief
Insignificance of people
Significance
Loss of people you care about
Colors
Inventing
Religion
Counting
Money
"I love you"
Trust
Life in one word
Suffering
Lying
Birds
Remembrance

Literary Elements



Characters


Memories of his father

One hundred dollars
Oskar
Oskar's Dad
Oskar's Mom
Oskar's Grandmother
Oskar's Grandfather
Anna
Blacks
Jimmy Snyder

Plot


Keys
Foreshadowing
Letters
Constant Search

Point of View


Amorphous thought process of young children
Letters
Unexplained Events
Writing your life in a book
Writing your life on a card
Wanting to know everything
Wishing you didn't know about things
Memories of his father
Definitivity
Picture Pages
Thinking out loud
Regret
Constantly writing on blank sheets of paper for conversations
Patterns
Intelligence
Day Book (how grandfather communicates)

Language Use


Imagery we are following

Rough hands
Writing on oneself
Writing on the world
Writing being erased
White
Flight

Symbols we are following

Doorknobs
Keys
Phonecalls
Swearing
Locks
Ambulances
Numbers
White
Pictures -- this page is broken!
Tambourine
Crying
lieing
Birds

Allusions we are following

Hamlet
Stephen Hawking
Beatles
The Odyssey
A Brief History of Time
Harry Potter
Aztec Mythology
Gone With the Wind

Motifs we are following

Birds
Heavy Boots
Uncovering/Hiding
Stars
Pockets
Elevators
French
Music
Adverbs like "extremely" and "incredibly"
Elephants
Television
Raisons D'étre
Tambourines
Skyscrapers
Fears
Kissing
Limos
Regret
Boots
Lying
Bruises
Crashing and breaking
Oskar knowing things he shouldn't know or wishes he didn't know
Tortoises
Google
Teakettles
Sex
Suicide
Love
Opening up to strangers
Voicemails
Similies
Privacy
Inventions
Nonexistence
Time
My eyes are crummy
Violence
Idioms
Wise
Arguments with Oskar's mom about Oskar's dad
Inappropriate
"OK"
Trouble Sleeping
Telling everyone that they are beautiful
"What about..."
Disappointments

Setting


New York City
September 11
Fire-bombing Dresden
Hiroshima