Most people have difficulty coming to terms with death. It can be a traumatic and drawn out process.

This is why in 1969 Kubler-Ross wrote the book On Death and Dying. The book detailed five stages of death and grief and made quite an impact on the medical field. The theory it espoused has widely been accepted by the current day. It has become widespread and infused with a large segment of our lives, including literature. In Jonathan Safran Foers book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the main character experiences some of the stages of grief after his fathers death in the world trade center. His subconscious denial of his fat hers death leads him on a quest to defeat a baby space dragon through the boroughs of New York, leading him to find strange new people and eventually reach acceptance of his fathers death. Kubler Ross wrote her book because she was appalled at the lack of proper instruction on what to do with people who will definitely die for medical students. She was a volunteer at a hospital during WWII, directly preceding her becoming a medical student. In her books she outlines five main stages of Grief. These stages do not need to come in order, and a terminal patient may experience some or all of them. The first stage is denial. The patient simply doesnt believe that something like that can happen to them. Following comes Anger; He or she lashes out at the world for all the good that does. Its often difficult to care for a patient

who is angry like this, as he may direct the anger at his caretakers. The next stage is bargaining, when the patient feels he has some power in living or dying. Once that feeling of control is shown to be false, the patient enters a stage of depression. The final stage is Acceptance. At this stage the patient realizes his fate and accepts it, ceasing to struggle and making peace with the world. As with most systems with stages in them, it is the goal of the patient to reach the final stage and the caretakers to help him along. Oskar is a nine year old when his father dies in the Twin Towers on September 11 th. Like many of the families of the victims on that day, he never sees a body. This fuels his denial of his fathers death. His denial is never stated outright, but no seeing that body in the casket fuels his imagination and his quest. He admits that his dad is dead, but refuses to let go of his memories. He doesnt understand the necessity of the funeral since theres no body and acts weird enough to be suggested for intensive car by his doctor. He is not a particularly angry child. In fact, Oscar is much more mature than many kids his age. However, when the subject reaches his mother, he stops showing his calm self and gets quite upset. The reason is that his mother has found someone else to be with, and he hates that she has begun to move on. Its been several years, but Oskar refuses to allow time to move on and continues grieving. He is irritated by his relatives for this reason. His irrationality can be explained by his young age; or by the stage he is passing through. Much like most of the stages touched on by this book, bargaining is never overtly introduced by Jonathan. However, Oskars irrationality in dealing with his fathers death subtly weaves in that stage as well. He finds a letter with a key in it and assumes it was a hint for a scavenger hunt adventure like he had done before. His entire ordeal is one mad improbability

on another and yet he continues on, ignoring all failures and flaws in logic. He yearns for a connection with his father, and is willing to bargain anything for that. The child staves off depression through his quest, and does not pass through a depression stage. He has his family to thank for that. His mother, that he was angry at for not caring enough about the deceased father and himself, had actually been taking care of him the entire time by calling ahead of him and talking to strangers and making his quest seem more plausible. She knows whats right for her son and acts as the caretaker in this scenario, paradoxically standing up to his actual doctor. After an artificially elongated bargaining stage, he finds acceptance when he and his grandfather dig up the grave to put some of his fathers things into the empty coffin, getting some closure to that stage in his life. Overall this book does a wonderful job of interweaving the stages in a realistic manner. It helps the ambiance and the overall presentation, and works to make his characters more realistic. The book is highly dependent on atmosphere and its little things like this that really sell it.