Chapter Two "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

This chapter goes right back to what we were mentioning in class about how the way he thinks and the way he no longer speaks is his coping mechanism since the death of his father as a result of the attack on 9/11. In chapter two you can sense the immense pain and sorrow that our narrator feels on a daily basis and how alone he feels. The one part of this chapter that resonated with me and seemed to express this depression the narrator feels was on page 17 where he says "....everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go..." He is so caught up in the tragic death of his father that he has become silent, not speaking and communicating through pen and paper. This is not a rare coping mechanism at all, most of the time after the traumatic loss, people stop communicating using words, they just stop entirely. He mentions how being this way "breaks his heart" which tells the reader that he doesn't desire to continue living his life this way, but at this point in the book, this is how he will continue to live. It is heartbreaking to me to read this and get an insight as to what he goes through while grieving, unable to move past the death, and the great loneliness this narrator feels on a daily basis. However, when the woman at the coffee shop talks to him, he is so overjoyed to have the choice to carry on a conversation and she does not become disinterested even when he uses his notebook to talk to her. This is so touching and I see this developing into a good thing, perhaps even a way to get him to open up again.
While he may seem distant and shut off from the world around him, it is clear he is very sensitive to his own emotions that take place and very caring, since this incident with his dad caused such an intense psychological reaction.