Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Quiz

Answer: They are burying an empty casket.

Thomas Schell was one of the thousands of people who perished during the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. As his body was never recovered, his wife has no choice but to bury an empty casket at the funeral. Oskar watches the ceremony with his grandmother from a parked car, and is clearly preoccupied by the empty casket. "Doesn't anybody know there isn't anybody in the coffin?" he says. "We should have filled it with his shoes, or something." Oskar is a sensitive child with a strange outlook on life, and the film is filled with his pointed and often bizarre observations. "It's like a pretend funeral, for a goldfish or something," Oskar concludes.

His grandmother attempts to comfort him as he starts to get out of the car. "This is just what it is, Oskar," she says, but this only leaves Oskar dissatisfied. "It doesn't make sense," he says, as he slams the car door angrily.

He goes to sit on a nearby bench, so that he can face away from the funeral.

Answer: Asperger's syndrome

When Oskar meets Abby Black for the first time, he tells her that he was tested once to see if he had Asperger's disease, but that the "tests weren't definitive". He was told by his dad that the condition affects "people who are smarter than everybody else but can't run straight".

Oskar does exhibit some traits that are consistent with Asperger's. Public transportation makes him panicky, while bridges make him especially panicky. He favors the stairs over elevators, and uses a tambourine to keep himself calm. "I've always had a hard time doing certain things," he says in a voice-over, "But the worst day made the list of things a lot longer." Among the things that make him nervous are old people, running people, tall things, things you could get stuck in, ringing things, loud things, screaming, crying, and things with lights.

Oskar doesn't know it yet, but the journey he is about to embark on will test him in ways he cannot imagine, and ultimately give him the courage he needs to overcome many of his phobias.

Answer: The lost sixth borough of New York City

Thomas Schell's reconnaissance expeditions always involved a journey or quest of some kind, and Reconnaissance Expedition No. 6 was no different. "Dad once told me that New York used to have a sixth borough right next to Manhattan, but you can't visit that anymore, because it floated away and no one knows where it is," Oskar recounts.

The key to Reconnaissance Expedition No. 6 lay in Central Park, which Schell Sr. claims was originally located in the sixth borough. "Enormous hooks were driven deep into the ground, and the park was pulled by all the people of New York, like a rug across the floor, from the sixth borough into Manhattan," he tells his son. "It's only because of the clues in Central Park that we know the sixth borough existed at all." The expedition is designed to make Oskar confront the things that he has trouble doing, like talking to people. Thomas Schell intends for Oskar to talk to everyone he meets in his search for evidence of the lost sixth borough of New York City.

Answer: A blue vase

A year after his father's death, Oskar finds himself exploring his father's closet in an attempt to feel close to him. "If the sun were to explode, you wouldn't even know about it for eight minutes, because that's how long it takes for light to travel to us," Oskar explains. "For eight minutes, the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm. It was a year since my Dad died, and I could feel my eight minutes with him were running out."

He turns on the light and examines his father's clothes, smelling his coat and pressing it against his cheek. When he tries to retrieve his grandfather's camera from the top shelf, he disturbs a blue vase, breaking it in the process. Inside the vase, Oskar finds a key in a small brown envelope with the name "Black" written on it. Oskar resolves to find the lock that goes with the key, and to find the person named Black, because it is the only way he knows to deal with his father's death. "I would find it because he wanted me to find it, "Oskar rationalizes. "And I would find it because it was the only way that I could stretch my eight minutes with him. Maybe I could stretch them forever."

Answer: He does not speak.

Oskar's grandmother lives right across the street from him, and she takes in a tenant three weeks after 9/11. Oskar makes his acquaintance one night when he goes over looking for his grandmother, but finds her mysterious tenant instead. Known only as The Renter, he does not speak, choosing instead to communicate using hastily scribbled notes, or the words "Yes" and "No" which are tattooed on the palms of his hands. When The Renter offers to help Oskar in his search for the lock that accompanies the key, Oskar agrees against his better judgment. With the help of his much older companion, Oskar is forced to confront some of his worst fears, including riding on the subway and walking on bridges. He even finds in The Renter someone to confide in. As Oskar explains, "Even though he never said a word, for the first time since Dad died, I felt like I had someone to talk to."

Oskar can't be sure, but from the way The Renter walks and shrugs his shoulders just like his Dad, and from the little information The Renter shares with him about his life, Oskar is convinced that The Renter is his grandfather.

Answer: an absent parent

Oskar's search is going nowhere and instead of feeling closer to his Dad, Oskar starts to feel like he is losing him. He goes to his mother's room one night in a near panic, and begs her not to bury him when he dies. When she presses him to talk about what's been going on with him, Oskar closes up and refuses to meet his mother's gaze. "Why do you find it so hard to talk to me?" she pleads. "In case you haven't noticed, half the time you're asleep, and the other half the time you forget the first half," Oskar replies angrily. "You're what they call in the law 'in absentia'. An absent parent." Linda Schell is hurt but continues to press Oskar, who begins to take his mother to task for burying an empty casket. Linda tries to tell Oskar that there isn't always an answer for everything.

"I know it's an empty box. I know this, but I did it for me, and I did it for you so we can at least try and say goodbye to him, because he's gone, Oskar, he's gone and he's not coming back. Never. I don't know why a man flew a plane into a building. I don't know why my husband is dead, but no matter how you try, Oskar, it's never going to make sense because it doesn't. It doesn't make sense."

Answer: A safe deposit box

Oskar had kept a newspaper clipping with the words "notstop looking" circled on it that he found in his Dad's coat pocket. When he discovers his father had also circled the phone number of Abby Black on the reverse side of the clipping, he calls her and pays her a second visit, and learns about her connection with his father.

Abby Black's number was circled in a classified ad for an estate sale that her then-husband was holding to dispose of his recently deceased father's belongings. Oskar's father was looking for an anniversary present for Oskar's mother at the estate sale, where he obtained the blue vase that once belonged to William Black's father. William Black subsequently discovered that his father had bequeathed the contents of a safe deposit box to him, and had hidden the key to the safe deposit box in the blue vase. William had been looking for Thomas Schell and the key for over a year, unaware that Thomas had died. Thanks to Oskar's perseverance, William Black and his key were finally reunited.

Later, Oskar would write a letter to all the people named Black that he met to thank them for their help and to let them know that the key wasn't meant for him. "I was disappointed, obviously, but I'm honestly glad it's where it belongs," Oskar says in his letter. "And I'm even glad to have my disappointment, which is much better than having nothing."

Answer: He had been home on 9/11 when his father called, but he didn't pick up the phone.

Oskar had hidden the answering machine in his room, replacing the unit with an identical one he had purchased on the night of "the worst day", so that his mother wouldn't have to hear the six messages left by his father that day. He tells William Black why - he was home when his Dad had called for the sixth and final time. Oskar wanted very badly to pick up the phone, but he was too scared to do it. The answering machine picked up, and he heard his father's voice, saying "Are you there?" repeatedly.

"Why didn't he say 'anyone'? Is anyone there?" Oskar says to Mr. Black. "'You' is just one person. I think he knew I was there, and he kept saying it to give me time to be brave enough to pick up. ... I could hear people in the background crying. I could hear helicopters. I could hear glass breaking. Then it cut off." In a flashback, we see Oskar turning to the television in that moment, just in time to see the tower of the World Trade Center collapsing in a billow of black smoke. He falls to his knees on the floor.

With his secret finally out in the open, Oskar asks William Black for forgiveness. "Forgive you? For what? For not being able to pick up?" asks William. "For not being able to tell anyone," replies Oskar. William looks down at the guilt-ridden boy in front of him, and tenderly tells him that he forgives him. Oskar is relieved. "I can't tell you how much better that makes me feel," he says.

Answer: She knew what Oskar was doing all along.

Oskar is almost inconsolable, and he initially rejects his mother's efforts to calm him down because he thinks that she doesn't know what he's been going through. "I know how proud your Dad would have been that you didn't stop looking," she says, with a knowing look on her face. Oskar realizes that his mother has known what he was up to all along. "Sweetie, do you think that I would ever let you out of my sight?" she says. "Do you think that I would let anything happen to you? I always knew where you were. Always."

Linda Schell knew that Oskar was up to something when Stan the doorman told her about the phone books Oskar had taken. She found his stash of expedition materials in his hiding place and figured out what he was doing. She made a list of all the people named Black he was going to visit, called the people he had already seen, and went to meet the ones he was going to see next. "I knew you had to go make sense of things, and I got to go with you," she explains. Oskar is floored because he thought only his father could think like him, and he is amazed that his mother understood him. "So many of them had lost something or somebody, Mom," Oskar says, referring to the people he met on his quest. "Just like us," Linda replies.

Oskar had embarked on his expedition in order to feel close to his father, but in the process he found a kind of surrogate family in all the people he had met and whose lives he touched with his story. In so doing, Oskar finally finds peace after his father's death. As he writes in his letter to all the people he had met, "As much as I want him to, my Dad is never coming back, and I thought that I couldn't live without him, but now I know I can. I think that would make my Dad proud, which is all I ever wanted."

Answer: Under a swing in Central Park

Thomas Schell had brought Oskar to the Central Park swings and pointed out his favorite one (the third from the right), which he thought would go higher than any of the others. As a boy, Thomas Schell would sit on the swing and try to go as high as he could before jumping off. "For a moment, I would feel as free as a bird," he tells Oskar at the time. "You should give it a whirl, Oskar. It might change the way you look at things."

Oskar comes to the realization that the answer to his father's final reconnaissance expedition has something to do with the swings in Central Park. He runs to the swings his father had shown him, and finds a rolled up card wedged under the seat of his father's favorite swing. Scribbled on it in his father's unmistakable scrawl are these words: "Congratulations, Oskar. With unbelievable bravery and wisdom far beyond your years, you have solved Reconnaissance Expedition No. 6. You have proven both the existence of the sixth borough and your own excellence. Wherever they are now, the people of the sixth borough celebrate you, and so do I. Now it's time to go home."

The film ends with Oskar sitting on the swing, moving higher and higher in the air as the scene fades to black.