55 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan Safran FoerEverything Is Illuminated
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Metafiction
Metafiction is a style or strategy of narrative construction in which the author purposefully draws the reader's attention to the narrative itself, its conception and process, and its reality as a work of fiction. By doing so, the author continually reminds the reader that what they are reading is a fictional narrative and blurs the boundaries between the realities of the book and the reader. The most obvious example of this device in Everything is Illuminated is a character named Jonathan Safran Foer whose appearance, lifestyle, occupation, and history seem to closely parallel the author. Metafiction highlights the space between the two Jonathans. By putting a character with his own name into the work, Safran Foer plays with the distinction between this fictional world and our reality. The metafictional strategy works with his use of magical realism to create a more layered narrative. This strategy also brings up questions of genre, leaving the reader to wonder if the novel is autofiction, complete fiction, or somewhere in between.
Magical Realism
Magical realism is a style of fictional narrative in which the world of the novel is presented as realistic, but fantastical elements present in the world make it clear to the reader that the reality on the page is not exactly our reality. Safran Foer uses magical realism in Jonathan’s fictional history of Trachimbrod. This is apparent from the opening scene of household items bubbling up from the water, surprising the two little girls playing nearby. But in the same event, this style is even more firmly established with Brod, Jonathan’s ancestor, appearing in the river. Her birth is magical, rising up out of the water as a newborn, alluding to both Venus and Moses. This establishes a strong sense of the fantastical elements of this world. In addition, Safran Foer’s colorful descriptions of the various inhabitants of Trachimbrod, and their unconventional traditions and celebrations, contribute to the sense of a magical, not quite realistic, world. Later, as events in Trachimbrod grow darker, this sense of the fantastical creates tension with the dark, violent, and historically true events that befall the town.
Nonlinear Narrative
A nonlinear narrative does not move forward chronologically through time, moving back and forth through time instead. The setting, characters, and point of view may change as well. Safran Foer uses this structure to underscore the thematic points of the novel. The novel is structured so that Jonathan’s fictional history of Trachimbrod moves forward, and meets Alex’s narrative at the point where Lista and Grandfather are telling their stories about the past. The two narratives meet in the middle, during the fateful time during World War II when the Nazis attacked the area. This point in history is cataclysmic for Trachimbrod, which is destroyed, but also for Grandfather and Lista, whose lives are never the same again. The day of the Trachimbrod massacre is the climax of the book, and the nonlinear narrative structure allows Safran Foer to create a picture of the unique and magical Trachimbrod before its destruction, creating emotional impact through a rich story that contradicts the flat, anonymous field that is left behind today. Likewise, he is able to move Alex’s story toward the revelation of Grandfather’s terrible act, an event that has shaped the generations that follow. If the various narratives of the novel were presented linearly, the tension would be lost along with much of the impact and meaning of the events. To underline one of the book’s major themes, sometimes facts are less truthful than fiction, and this nonlinear structure works in the same way.
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