Oskar Schell in many ways attempts to answer the existential questions hat face any atheist. Many times throughout Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close he searches for meaning in a world that constantly presents him with awful situations. From his father dying in the world trade center to 9/11 in general he begs the question: Why? He discusses various opinions on how everything came to be and is adamant about the fact that he does not believe in a higher power. He discusses how Stephen Hawking portrays the universe in his book A Brief History of Time, yet even Hawking himself cannot answer Oskar’s questions about why things are the way they are.
An interesting complication to this idea that Hawking himself was an atheist is the fact that when Hawking is describing the beginnings of the universe in his book, he uses the terminology “first mover” to explain how it all started. I read Hawking’s book about a year ago and was blown away that even he did not understand how it started. He describes everything that happened from a second after this “first mover” started the universe until are current state of existence in the universe. He stands in complete awe of how unlikely the situation we are in is, but still believes that it is all explainable through science.
I believe that Foer gives s his answer to the problem of how to create meaning in the meaningless. When Grandma sends the letter this time she ends it with, “I love you.” This is what many authors have determined is the meaning of life in a Godless universe. Kurt Vonnegut reaches a similar conclusion at the end of his book Sirens of Titan. If we are nothing more than a tiny speck of meaningless particles in the middle of a meaningless universe, it doesn’t matter. The fact that we love and can be loved makes it all worth it. The capability for two humans to bond and communicate makes the entire universe worth living in. It is worth experiencing even if there is no afterlife. This is why Oskar is so upset about the last moments of his father’s existence. He and his father did not get to communicate the only meaningful thing the universe has to offer just one last time.
I think the whole idea that this story is trying to get across in terms of the significance of humans in this vast universe is, “what if we don’t matter?” What if we are just an accident? There is no higher power or being, we’re just blobs of chemicals that became self-aware or however you want to put it. I think this story suggests that we accept this idea that we don’t matter. If we accept this, then we just have to care about what we care about.
ReplyDeleteI know I probably haven’t been clear up to this point, so I’ll try another approach. Oskar’s father was always giving him clues to inspire him to go on quests. Oskar was really focused on accomplishing the task at hand, but that wasn’t why his father was doing that. His father was sending him on these quests to teach him things. It didn’t matter what the quest was, so long as he got out in the world and experienced it.
This is the whole idea of the quest to find the lock for the key he found. In the end the key and what it unlocked wasn’t important. What was important was the things Oskar learned when he was looking for it. He learned how to communicate with people. He went to places he’d never been before. He met people who had stories about things he had never experienced. He learned about himself and his mother and his grandmother and his grandfather and Ron and came out with a better understanding of everything because of this quest for something that didn’t even matter in the end.
And that’s the whole point. The point is that if our actions don’t matter in this gigantic universe, then we might as well enjoy the time we have here. We might as well go out and talk to people and go places we’ve never been and do things we’re afraid to do and embark on quests that seem so daunting we may never finish them, because so what if we fail? We’ve already established that what we do doesn’t matter. So we might as well go out and do it.