Everything Is Illuminated: What happened (or didn’t happen) and what it might (or might not) mean; or, What the hell?!

This has to be one of the most ambivalent books I’ve ever read. There was much that I enjoyed about it, and some that was less enjoyable, and some that left me scratching my head. But I admire the book for tackling a lot of the big questions head on, and for being genuinely moving (I thought). The ending of the story was terribly anguishing. At any rate, I guess I would like to approach the book on three levels, namely story/plot, meaning/symbolism, and theme.

I had fun with the three different parts of the book (Alex’s narrative, Alex’s letters to Jonathan, and Jonathan’s story of Trachimbrod). They played off of each other in entertaining ways, each throwing light on what was going on in the others. I guess I would consider Alex’s letters and his narrative together as one half of the book, and the Trachimbrod story as the other half. And the two stories are really just parts of the same story, as we find out in the end. The Trachimbrod sections were interesting, I thought, due to the whimsy and folk-tale elements. Even so, I found them less engaging than Alex’s parts of the story. That voice and its mangled English were hilarious, and the present-day story line seemed more accessible, somehow, probably due in part to the contrast with the folk-tale style of the Trachimbrod sections.

The plot seemed (mostly) fairly straight forward. But I was left wondering what really happened, which is odd considering it’s a work of fiction to begin with. Foer played around a lot with themes of truth and fiction, or truth and lies. Alex’s letters pointed out ways that he had altered his story, and ways that Jonathan had, or should have, altered his. And, in the Trachimbrod portions, Foer seemed to incorporate several anachronisms. (I doubt many people in the 18th century were taking vacations, or were vegetarians. Even Alex pointed out the anachronism of the saw-blade at the flour mill.) It seemed like Foer was purposefully drawing attention to the artifice of the Trachimbrod story. (Or would it be ifactifice or maybe ifactifartiface?) The part of the plot that did confuse me was when Jonathan wrote something in his diary about Alex and his father which didn't actually occur until the end of the book. I

I mentioned the story seemed ambivalent; perhaps ambiguous would be a better word. Or if not better, at least equally applicable. In any case, Foer definitely set up a ship-load of dualities. The one that I noticed the most was the duality between remembering and forgetting. There’s the whole contrast between Jonathan’s choice to recover the memory/memories of his family from Trachimbrod and Grandfather’s ultimate choice to sever the thread of memory or of history. I don’t know if Foer was saying you have to remember, or it’s better to forget, or if he believes both. Then, there’s the whole question of whether memory is real or just an invention. Like Yankel’s make-believe wife; or like Trachim Day, for instance - a celebration of an event about which nobody really knew what happened but that was determined by community decree.

Some of the other dualities that I noticed included

Hanah and Chanah (who really seemed indistinguishable)

• Trachimbrod and Sofiowka (interesting that the name of the shtetl on maps and for Mormons was the same as a rapist)
• Uprights and Slouchers (and related dualities such as Torah/Book of Dreams, Ark/Oven, etc.)
• The Kolker’s split brain and the loving v. violent aspects
• Love/hate (or love/not-love).
• Life/death
• remembering/forgetting

Some of the symbolism that I found interesting (or just obvious, but not necessarily understandable (to me (yet))) includes:

• The whole bread motif (Brod sounds like Brott, which is Yiddish for bread; and Yankel kept Brod in his oven when she was a baby; and the flour mill)
• The Brod River (but not sure what it means, or how or if it relates to the bread motif)
• The Garden imagery (all the stuff floating up from Trachim’s wagon was “like a garden”.)
• The house which was made up of two houses, and was always being worked on or re-invented.
• The butterflies

Well, I don’t have much more to say tonight. I’m getting distracted and am starting to ramble a bit. (I may, though, post a little bit later about the issue of antisemitism.) It will be fun to hear everyone else’s take on the book.