"Never happy and honest at the same time": history, duality, and impossible choices in Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything is illuminated

Julie W. Ruth
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:51:49 PDT

"Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel, 'Everything is Illuminated', blends historical fiction, moral dilemmas, and post-modern techniques to examine the relationship between victims and perpetrators during the Holocaust and how this relationship affects later generations. Foer focuses on memory and stories within families and cultures, and within these records of identity, concepts of opposition and duality figure prominently. Although Foer implies a worldview is too simple when composed of opposites, such as absence/presence, good/evil, Jew/non-Jew, the ideas of opposition and duality signify conflict and unfilled potential for reconciliation. Patterns of opposites add weight and permanence to fleeting experiences and give purpose to memories; however, continual cycling of patterns in opposition creates heaviness or solemnity in memory and history. This heaviness and obligation can be seen in Holocaust Literature, where the need to write down accounts of collusion and atrocities has created a permanent place for second-and third-generation survivors, and also a place for examining the moral dilemmas within the human condition. Foer chooses Ukraine as his setting, and its unique role during the Holocaust makes it a vehicle for showing the tragedy of impossible choices and the relationship between two young men as they uncover truths about their families"--Leaf iii