Oskar Schell “Has Come Unstuck in Time”: Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Abstract

This paper analyses the intertextuality between Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer; a subject still relatively unexplored in academic considerations. By reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close through the lens of Slaughterhouse-Five, this paper will argue that Foer’s postmodern literary devices that are often discarded as gimmickry or ornamentation should be seen as a conscious effort to uphold the conventions of the trauma genre partly established by writers like Vonnegut. By highlighting the unspeakable nature of trauma and the constraints of language as a mode of representation, combined with their departure from realism both in content and form, these novels stay true to the fragmented experience of trauma.