Therapeutic Use of Image in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Post-9/11 Trauma Novel

Abstract

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close describes the trauma victims’ reworking of their painful pasts and sufferings caused by the historical events such as the Dresden bombing during World War II and the 9/11 terrorists’ attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Despite the criticism of Foer’s hypertextual approach in the novel, I argue that his use of photographs and other formal techniques, borrowed from a flip-book and a blog (web log), is essential to represent the traumatic experience and its cure. The controversial flip-book ending, reversing the order of the images of a man falling from one of the twin tower buildings, suggests how Oskar Shell, a boy who lost his father on 9/11, attempts to cope with his mental wounds by reconstructing the chronological order. Foer turns the notorious falling man photo, which exemplifies the mass media coverage provoking morbid sensationalism, into the beautiful flip book displaying the boy’s aesthetic trial to recover from the loss of his father. In addition, the whole book can be read as a paper blog in which Oskar’s commentary and the accompanying photos and other semiotic materials illuminate each other to demonstrate the daily occurrences of his life. These techniques produce the virtual reality experience to evoke the readers’ sympathy towards the characters and build a therapeutic relationship between the trauma victims and their audience through transference. Avoiding a simple generalization of human experience or chauvinist rhetoric, the novel depicts the boy’s interpersonal, intergenerational journey throughout New York City, connecting its residents who were affected by 9/11 and creating emotional bonding among the people of the same experience and beyond. In that sense, this novel is not just a book to read but an artifact to see and experience.