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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Atonement:
Guilt is one of the heaviest emotional burdens in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, one that characters cope with by seeking atonement. This search becomes a motif in the novel.
Oskar's personal phrase for his burden is "heavy boots," which he uses to describe the sadness and guilt he carries after 9/11, especially his guilt for not answering the phone when his father called from the World Trade Center. Oskar obsesses over whether he could have said goodbye, or even saved his dad somehow, if he had picked up. That self-blame is so intense that he sometimes punishes himself physically: "Even though I knew I shouldn't, I gave myself a bruise." Hurting himself becomes a way to deal with pain he can't put into words. Thus Oskar's quest to solve the mystery of the key is partly an act of atonement. If he can solve it for his dad, maybe it will make up for not being able to help him on the day he died.
Atonement also shapes the novel's second storyline. Oskar's grandfather carries survivor's guilt from Dresden and from abandoning his family in New York. When he finally returns to New York, he buries letters in his son's coffin, a symbolic apology for a lifetime of absence.
The novel shows that guilt can weigh people down, but that expressing it can be a step toward healing. Foer suggests that atonement doesn't necessarily erase guilt, but love and understanding can make it easier to carry.
Related Themes:
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—What Can't Be Said:
Silence runs through Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close as both a symptom of trauma and a form of communication in its own right. After surviving the bombing of Dresden, Oskar's grandfather stops speaking entirely. He fills notebooks with his thoughts and tattoos the words "YES" and "NO" on his hands to answer simple questions. His muteness carries with it the weight of everything he cannot bring himself to say.
Oskar, in contrast, talks constantly, but he keeps one secret locked away: the voicemails his father left from the Twin Towers. On the day his father died, Oskar heard the phone ring and couldn't pick up. He also couldn't tell anyone, carrying the silence like another version of his "heavy boots."
Grandma, too, lives inside deep, unspoken grief. She types her autobiography as pages and pages of blank spaces, a literal record of all she cannot or will not put into words.
These silences are not empty. They are charged with memory, guilt, and love. Foer suggests that some experiences resist language and that absence can speak as loudly as sound. In the end, silence becomes its own kind of connection: an acknowledgement between people who understand without needing to say anything.
Related Themes:
Chapter 17, “Beautiful and True”
Explanation and Analysis—The Reverse Falling Man:
At the end of the novel, Oskar describes a series of photographs of a man falling from the Twin Towers on 9/11 that he found on the internet and keeps in his scrapbook, which he calls Stuff That Happened to Me.
Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body.
Was it Dad?
Maybe.
Whoever it was, it was somebody.
I ripped the pages out of the book.
I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first was last.
When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky.
Foer closes the book with these images, arranged as a flip book, so that if the reader flips through them, the man appears to rise rather than fall. This moment transforms one of the most devastating images of 9/11 into a small miracle. In the real world, falling represents disaster and loss, both in New York and in Dresden. Oskar's reversal is a way to imagine an outcome where tragedy is undone.
Throughout the novel, Oskar imagines ways to prevent falling, like a birdseed shirt that could make someone float away. These inventions are whimsical, but they come from a desperate wish to make the world safer. Falling is tied to Oskar's "heavy boots," his metaphor for grief that keeps him weighted down. Flight, by contrast, stands for escape and the hope of rising above that heaviness.
The motif of falling and flight captures the novel's tension between despair and imagination. Even though the man in the photos could never really fly back up, Oskar's flip book gives him a way to rewrite the ending.
Related Themes:
