Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Mr. Black decides he is done with following Oskar, and no progress has been made. Oskar goes to see his grandmother, but she isn’t in her apartment. He sits and waits at first, imagining all sorts of horrible things that might have happened to her, and then he begins to look around. He checks all the rooms and snoops in her drawers, finding a stack of blank letters from his grandfather. Suddenly, he hears a noise in the other room and goes to investigate. He remembers his grandmother talking about having a tenant recently move into her apartment, but she never said much more than that. The man opens the door and writes on a piece of paper, “I can’t speak. I’m sorry” (237). Oskar notices the man has the same gap in his teeth that his dad had, and he shrugs his shoulders the same way. The man introduces himself as Thomas, and Oskar replies that he had a dad named Thomas, who died. Oskar feels like there’s “an invisible door” (237) between them, as neither knows what to say. Oskar asks the man if he’s a stranger, which the man seems not to know how to answer, but Oskar decides to trust him as they wait for his grandmother to return.