Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Chapter 12 Summary

How It All Goes Down

My Feelings

  • Grandma writes about where she was when planes hit the World Trade Center.
  • She sees it on the news, then Oskar's mother calls, wondering if she had heard from Thomas (Oskar's dad).
  • Neither of them have, and they're worried.
  • Grandma goes across the street to Oskar's apartment and finds Oskar under his bed.
  • She nervously knits a scarf longer and longer until Oskar's mother comes home.
  • Mom decides to hang posters of Oskar's dad all over the neighborhood.
  • After Oskar falls asleep, Grandma turns on the TV and sees the footage over and over again. "Planes going into buildings. Bodies falling" (12.163-12.164) over and over and over.
  • Grandma writes about the funeral, the one to bury Thomas's empty coffin, and how that night, she has a visitor: her husband has come home.