“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a compassionate novel. Moreover, the writing style of Jonathan Safran Foer is visual. He uses real-life pictures throughout his novel, he seems to use real-life experiences into an astonishing adventure. Moreover, Foer enjoys the use of various allusions, such as the as many literary references to William Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

One allusion appears when Oskar and his teacher have the conversation about the costume he will wear for his part of Yorick that he will play in the school production. She says, "It'll be terrific, you'll wear all black, and the makeup crew will create some sort of papier-mache skull for you to wear over your head, it'll really give the illusion that you don't have a body."

This novel is about a son who is grieving his father's death, and as it turns out his father's last words for him were on the answering machine he was too afraid to pick up. One day he finds a vase with an envelope and a key, and he is destined to find out where that key that he has found goes. The packet he found the key in says "black" in red ink; the main character, Oskar, has been running around his great city of New York to figure out where that key goes.

As any reader can see, the key that Oskar has found is a major symbol in the book. It is as if the key is one of the last ties that Oskar has with his father, and to him is it like a strand of freedom in order to find out more about his father. The key that Oskar finds is his strand of freedom because this way he believes he will somehow find a way to stop feeling guilty about missing his father's last call. His freedom lies within that key.

However, as Oskar is grieving through his findings of the key he creates a small boundary.

He says, "And maybe you could rate the people you knew by how much you loved them, so if the device in the middle of the ambulance detected the device of the person he loved the most or the person he loved the most, and the person in the ambulance was really badly hurt, and might even die, the ambulance could flash. GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!"

By saying, this Oskar creates a metaphor and a small border between grief and love. In addition, as the book goes on Oskar creates lists of people he loves with his father on the top, and this is his way of grieving for his father. With the list, Oskar's grandfather's letters, show Oskar that love is a real thing because his grandfather talks about how he fell in love with his grandmother. This creates the theme of love as well.

In a way, this reminds me of "1984" because it is how Winston had his diary as a way of representing freedom and rebellion.

Oskar has been a little rebellious in order to find out his answers, especially by lying just as Winston did, but in both cases, both of these main characters have gotten closure with their situations. Oskar got closure with his father by looking for the black that his father wrote in order to stop feeling guilty. Winston got his closure by writing in general because in the dystopian world of "1984" the paroles were not allowed to write. The key is symbolic because it represents the freedom that Oskar has gotten is a form of being one-step further in his continuing investigation. However, Winston did not succeed to find his freedom in the end, but hopefully, Oskar will.

The next thing that goes with this book is the number of themes presented in the book, but the two main themes are love/ family and death/grief. These are the two main themes because there was the death of the father and to overcome that grief the love of the family was needed. Death / grief is very common throughout the book it shows three perspectives in the book: the grandpa writing letter, the father writing letter and Oskar telling the story.

The grandpa and the father are both dead, and just like any person would Oskar fights with their death, especially his father's.

Oskar believes, "I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond or days, or months, or 76.5 years if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped."

This is Oskar's perspective about death, and in a way, it is true, but he looks at in a negative way. This theme of death is often reoccurring throughout the novel, and Oskar is the only character in the book that really truly gives death a meaning.

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is novel that is about a son grieving about his father. Foer is an author who uses many allusions. One of his main allusions being about "Hamlet" because that is the school production that they are doing. In addition, the key that Oskar uses to find closure to his father is a definite symbol in this first half if the novel. This novel is also closely related to the novel "1984"because it shows how both Oskar and Winston found an object that gives them their freedom; the diary is Winston's case, and the key is Oskar's case.