Michael’s Comments (group member since May 02, 2011)

Michael’s comments from the extremely awesome and incredibly cool group group.

Some people may say speech is very important in life like saying, “I love you.” Others may disagree and say touch is more essential to everyday life than speech. Touch supersedes all types of speech because expressing your love and showing a person how much you love them goes a much longer distance than words. Touch doesn’t just help in showing love, but comforting too when people are sad and depressed. Words can be dramatized through touching. Words cannot describe how people really feel a lot of the time; therefore, it is necessary for touching and different acts of emotion to express how you really feel to that certain person.

Thomas Schell, Oskar’s grandfather, is a man that almost only shows his emotions and love through touching. When Oskar’s grandmother told Thomas that she loves him, he didn’t say anything back to her. He actually showed her how he felt by moving her hands closer till they almost touched. He explains it by saying, “I held her hands out to her sides. I pointed her index fingers toward each other and slowly, very, slowly, moved them in, the closer they got, the more slowly I moved them, and then, as they were about to touch, as they were only a dictionary page from touching, pressing on opposite sides of the word “love,” I stopped them, I stopped them and held them there.”(pg. 135) Even though Oskar’s grandmother might not have even known what his grandfather meant by what he did, that was his way of showing her that he loved her. She knew this and she didn’t have to understand why he does the things he does, she just knows it is the right thing and that he loves her.

The title of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book is Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. “Extremely loud” refers to the speech of people and the different sounds in the book, while “incredibly close” refers to all of the touching done between the characters, especially Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather. Foer has a picture of a hand and fingers also on the cover of the book, which goes to show how important touch is no matter if it is making love, holding someone, or someone’s fingertips running across another’s skin. Oskar’s grandmother explains how important touch is to her, especially when it comes to Thomas. She says, “I put my hand on him. Touching him was always so important to me. It was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches. My fingers against his shoulder. The outsides of our thighs touching as we squeezed together on the bus. I couldn’t explain it, but I needed it.”(pg. 181) Thomas cannot speak and has to write everything down on a piece of paper. Oskar’s grandmother doesn’t “need” to talk to Thomas and never asks why he can’t talk anymore. She knows that it won’t affect anything and everything will be ok. But what she cannot live without is being able to touch Thomas because it was something that she lived for.

Words cannot describe everything a person feels. So to fully describe it, people touch one another and show many different acts of emotion. When Thomas was making love with Anna, he says, “She touched my ears, which meant their voices would keep us safe. She put her hands all over me, I didn’t know what she was doing, I touched every part of her, what was I doing, did we understand something that we couldn’t explain?”(pg.127) Without even speaking to Thomas, Anna touched his ears and he knew that hearing her dads voice would keep them safe. Thomas and Anna expressed their emotions to each other not through words, but a more meaningful way, touching each other and making love. They understood each other through their minds and bodies, not their words.

Thomas is a sculptor and this is why he uses more touching then actual speech to talk to people and describe how he feels. He almost wants to sculpt his own life through his own hands. He wanted to sculpt Oskar’s grandmother one more time since he is back, so she agreed. He explains, “I asked her to lie on her back, but that wasn’t right, I asked her to sit, it wasn’t right, cross your arms, turn your head away from me, nothing was right, she said, ‘show me how,’ I went over to her, I undid her hair, I pressed down on her shoulders, I wanted to touch her across all of those distances.”(pg. 275) Thomas tried to tell Oskar’s grandmother how he wanted her to be but nothing was right. He had to physically touch her and show her exactly how he wanted her to pose for her. The touch between them two connects them together so much that they can understand each other better through that then speech.

Not only does touch help more with expressing love, but it also helps with caring for people who are suffering. When people are very sad or depressed, especially over a death, words cannot make people feel better. Touch on the other hand can though. Comforting people with hugs and kisses and love is what cures sadness. Oskar grandmother says, “I could not stop touching you. I could not touch you enough. I needed more hands. You made jokes with the driver, but I could see that inside you were suffering.”(pg. 232) She knew words could not do anything to make Oskar feel better so she tried to do everything she could to stop Oskar from suffering by holding his hand and touching him and comforting him.

Touch plays a bigger role in human interaction then words do. No one can really express how he or she truly feels without the essence of touch. Touch goes way beyond words because you can actually feel the love and connection between you and that person instead of just hearing the words through speech. Words are expressed through touching and acts of emotion and can stay with someone much longer in life than a few words can.

I do not feel like he is trying to change to unchangeable, but he is trying to get out of a hole that he has already dug so deep. It is like he is in quick sand and the harder he tries to get out, the deeper and deeper he sinks into destruction of his own life and his relationship with Oskar's grandmother.

Yes that is true but I find it odd that Oskar, one of the strangest characters I have ever come across in a book, actually has one of the strongest relationships with another character I have ever experienced. Every relationship in life has some sort of problem, whether it is small or large. Nothing is perfect except for in your mind, which is why Oskar, and his grandfather uses such a strong imagination to create their own "perfect" world. And it sucks to say this, but Oskar's relationship with his father was pretty much perfect until he past away, which goes to show you there are broken pieces in every type of relationship in life.

Yea he is holding onto the very last breathe of her just like Oskar is holding onto the last breathe of his dad. Actually, it seems like Oskar is trying to do CPR on his dad and almost bring him back to life.

Yes I agree, except you can only sculpt a sculpture to a certain point until you cant anymore and I feel like he has crossed the limit. A good metaphor I think is he was sculpting the grandma when they were young and he feels like he is missing something so he picks away at the masterpiece he has made of her to make it better, but all he is really doing is making it worse and picking the wrong pieces off and it just gets worse and worse no matter how much harder he tries to make it better.

Hahaha sorry professor Fox. :). Yes, it does seem like you are someone I could trust. They also both lost something they love. Oskar lost his dad when he wishes it could have been his mom that died in the tower, and the grandfather lost the love of his life, Anna, and wishes that he could be with her instead of Anna's sister. Both of their minds "RUN" wild.

I feel like the rules were more of his wife's because do you remember how he got naked in front of her and she got mad even though it was a nothing space. I think he is the one that is hurting inside because his true love, Anna, is out there and he is with someone he isn't in love with. She is just an obstacle to get through to the light at the end of the tunnel.

the grandpa is a sculptor and i think that he has a way of not just sculpting people but a way of sculpting his life in his own view and his wife's life in the way he wants it to be. That is why he is always using hand gestures and touching things especially his wife to communicate and express his love for her. Oskar also uses his hands and touches a lot of things like when he went into the ladies house and touched the counter top and it had the dust all over it. He and his grandpa are very much alike and i think they both are trying to create almost their own type of world in their mind thats why Oskar also thinks of all of these new inventions to use in life.

i think that Anna is the grandma's sister and the grandpa is talking to Oskar's dad in those letters and he left the grandma to go find Anna, his true love.