Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narratives in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated
2008; Indiana University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/jml.2008.32.1.54
ISSN1529-1464
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez
ResumoThis essay examines Foers structural strategies in Everything Is Illuminated and the implications they have for an ethical reading of the text. Divided into two narratives with two contrasting voices, the novel fluctuates between a story with mythical over tones about the creation and destruction of the shtetlofTrachimbrod, and an apparently more realist report of a characters quest for roots on a trip to Ukraine. The essay contends that the novels use of two narrators serves to evaluate the power of fiction as an ethical instrument. The two narrators permit a release of repressed trauma, and Foers use of them positions characters and readers as non-referential witnesses of the events reported.
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