Everything is Obfuscated
The narration of Everything is Illuminated is all over the place.
- We have chapters written in first-person from the point of view of Alex, the Ukrainian translator.
- We have letters from Alex to Jonathan.
- And we have a story that takes place about two hundred years ago told in an omniscient POV, but really written by Jonathan Safran Foer (the character, not the author, although since the author is writing the character… man, anyone got some Advil?).
Everything is Illuminated is as much about how the story is told as it is about the story. To be frank (Anne Frank, if you will) there are a ton of World War II and Holocaust stories out there. They're all tragic and terrible in their own way. If this book were written as a straight-forward piece of fiction, would it have been as popular? Or would it have gotten lost in the amount of both fiction and non-fiction out there, overshadowed by things like Schindler's List and The Book Thief?
Everything is Unreliable
And then there's the question of the narrator—and we're not talking about Alex. We trust that guy. But we don't trust this Jonathan Safran Foer fellow. Anyone who would put himself into a fictional novel is not to be trusted. (We're looking at you, Tim O'Brien.)
So, just how true is Jonathan's story about Trachimbrod and his ancestors? Remember: it's pieced together from the pieces of Not-Augustine's box… a box which was stolen on the train. How much of it is historical fact, and how much is all made up? (Yes, we know we're talking about fiction, but within the world of the book it's supposed to be real.)
And if it's all made up, which it probably is, why does he make it so tragic, instead of making it a love story the way Alex suggests? Is it simply a different kind of love story?