Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Literary Devices

Explanation and Analysis:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close blends two distinct genres: the postmodern novel and the bildungsroman or coming-of-age story. Its postmodern qualities are immediately visible in its experimental structure. Photographs, redacted passages, typographical play, and even an inserted flip book disrupt conventional narrative flow. The story's form is as non-linear as its chronology, moving between Oskar's voice, his grandparents' letters, and other textual artifacts. These metafictional and fragmented elements place the novel firmly in a postmodern tradition.

At the same time, the novel shares the DNA of a bildungsroman. Oskar's quest to find the lock that fits his father's key is both a physical journey across New York and an emotional journey towards understanding loss. Each encounter forces Oskar to navigate the complicated terrain between childhood and adulthood. His search becomes a process of self-discovery.

Yet Foer deliberately refuses the neat arc of a traditional coming-of-age tale. The novel's postmodern disruptions fragment Oskar's growth, just as grief resists closure. His emotional development is recursive, looping back to pain even as he moves forward. In this way, the novel poses a provocative question: what does it mean to "grow up" in the shadow of a world-shaping catastrophe? The tension between postmodern form and bildungsroman content reflects the fractured nature of healing, suggesting that in a post-9/11 world, coming of age might mean learning to live with the unresolved.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Genre 1 key example