Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close de Jonathan Safran Foer : (Im)Puissance de l’enfance à dire le trauma ?

Abstract

Based on the novel written in 2005 by Jonathan Safran Foer, this article explores the account of its young hero Oskar in order to detect the aesthetic ambition of an author in his way of circumventing the mechanisms generally used to evoke trauma. Indeed, by choosing a child as the hero of his post-9/11 narrative, Foer attempts to reinforce the power of the trauma of disappearance while exploiting the empathic power of the reader. Through the point of view of the child, through his narrative voice, we will see indeed that it is more largely the question of heritage, and thus of memory, which is examined in the novel. Because, more than a mere motif symbolizing innocence and the future, childhood in Foer’s novel falls within a story, a filiation, within an unremitting continuum between generations. These multiple connections, be they literary, textual and historical, lie at the core of our study.