Introduction
It often happens that the manner of the author’s narrative determines the overall success of this or that work. The way the author chooses to reveal his or her message either captures the reader’s attention at once or makes the book disgusting for a reader. I believe that the narrative style of the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer called Everything Is Illuminated is one of the main factors that determine the never ending interest of the readers towards the book.
Discuss
The novel under consideration is the first novel of the American author, published in 2002. The trip that Foer took to Ukraine and Prague to search for his ancestral shtetl and for the heroic woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis served as a springboard for the novel (Anderson 69). Actually, the author confesses:
“I still really don’t know why I went…I never wrestled with ‘Where did I come from?’ I guess it must have had to do with where I was in life – thinking seriously about what I wanted to do, and about writing. In a way, the trip became a trip about finding out why I was making the trip in the first place.” (Anderson 69)
The author’s experiences during his trip to Ukraine and Prague inspired him to resort to some original way of presentation of his story. The book, therefore, acquires a particular manner in which the writing switches between two story arcs. Namely, these are an imagined history of the shtetl from the eighteenth century to the twentieth (“a fanciful vision that owes a little to Fellini and a lot to Rushdie” (Foer, 2002 141), and the contemporary straightforward story of a search for Trachimbrod (that is very much like the author’s own) as told by a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer. The author has been criticized for naming his character after himself.
Some critics consider it to be self-indulgent and precious even. But the thing is that Philip Roth, the writer Foer is often compared to did the same in four of his books: The Facts, Deception, Patrimony, and Operation Shylock.
The narration from several points of view is also a peculiar feature for Foer’ second novel titled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Here the main narrator is an idealistic and naïve child Oskar, but the author also creates two other narrators in a parallel story. These are Oscar’s paternal grandparents who are even vaguer in their narratives. The stories of their childhood are often revealed through the letters they have written, some of them are addressed to Oscar and others to Oscar’s father. Therefore, in both works the letters serve as a tool which helps the author to tell his story.
In his trip to Ukraine Jonathan is accompanied by the Ukrainian native Alexander, or, Alex, Perchov, Alex’s grandfather and his dog. Alexander appears to be very fond of American culture and “a connoisseur” of the English language, he works as a translator. Both stories are tied together by the letters that Alex sends to Foer. The letters are written in the kind of broken Russo-English. Anderson claims that it must be Prague that filtered the lexicon that Foer’s character has: “Sit down in any restaurant, and you’ll find English-language menus strewn with Alex-isms: “fine poultry soup abounding with vitamins.” (Anderson 69)
Alex’s narrative becomes a peculiar feature of the book; his broken English makes the Everything Is Illuminated incredibly funny and the author demonstrates a marvelous mastery of English to evoke the reader’s laugh. Alex speaks as if a foreigner who has learned the language with a thesaurus without ever hearing it spoken:
I am burdened to recite my good appearance. I am unequivocally tall…. I have handsome hairs, which are split in the middle. This is because mother used to split them on the side when I was a boy, and to spleen her I split them in the middle (Foer 123).
The author demonstrates his virtuosity when he makes his character speak: Alex’s malapropisms are razor-sharp: “disseminating money” stands for spending money (Foer 1), “manufacturing Zs” means sleeping (Foer 78). The opening paragraph of the novel where the author presents an interesting version of Call me Ishmael is bursting with the devices the author resorts to for creating a humorous atmosphere:
Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother…. I have many many girls, believe me, and they all have a different name for me (Foer 1).
Isn’t the author’s style wonderful here? It makes the reader get involved into reading at once and find out what might happen to the character with such “perfect” English. The author’s experimentations with his character’s language include numerous metaphors common for an English learner who does not care of the context in which the words occur: Alex uses “rotated” for “turned”, “premium” for “important”, “luxuriated” for “enjoyed”, or “appeased” for “pleased”. Foer has Alex use superlative adjectives and adverbs in the place of moderate words; misuse of adjectives is also a common mistake in Alex’s story. All this makes the novel a very humorous one. I should also admit that the author resorts to various types of humor: from dirty jokes to complicated allusions that he creates throughout the work.
Another peculiar feature of the book is that the author’s narrative is revealed slowly, in stages. At each stage the reader becomes more and more surprised at the events described. It is interesting that the sections of the novel refer to other sections so that the connection between the events is easier realized. The author has high degree in the reader’s intelligence: he believes that the reader is able to understand the plot even when two ways of narrative are presented.
Despite of this manner of narration the book is an assembled unity, as the two voices do not simply relate events independently, but also dialogue with each other. Alex’s letters are clear enough for the reader as Alex confesses, “As you commanded, I removed the sentence ‘He was severely short,’ and inserted in its place, ‘Like me, he was not tall’” (Foer 53), thus admitting Jonathan’s pardonable vanity over his appearance.
One more peculiar feature of Foer’s narrative is that the names of cities throughout the novel are given their Russian version (for instance, Lvov), whereas the Polish or Ukrainian naming seems to be more appropriate for the scenes in Trachimbrod and Ukraine.
I can see that there are many similarities between the Everything is Illuminated and the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Both of them are told in different points of view that are not all in the same timeline. When the novels start the reader cannot predict how the different story lines will merge in the end. Both novels are somehow related to the Second World War: in the Everything Is Illuminated the grandfather’s flight from a Jewish shtetl in Ukraine before the Nazis arrive, in the second Foer’s novel it is the bombing of Dresden that has a vital importance for the main character’s grandparents. What is more, in both novels the paternal grandfathers are depicted as curious characters who cannot exist outside the novel. In the two works the main characters strive to find out something about the deceased family member and it often serves as the start of the story.
I suppose that the authors of the film based on the Everything is Illuminated strived to render the peculiarities of the author’s narrative in their work. The movie Everything is Illuminated (2005) is written and directed by Liev Schreiber and Elijah Wood starring for Jonathan Safran Foer and Eugene Hutz starring for Alex. Though the film’s plot is very much like the one of the novel, Foer admits that “The film moves very far from the book.” He estimates that only about 25 per cent remains the same (Anderson 69).
The first and the most drastic difference between the film and the book is that in the film the humor is presented in the smaller portions if compared to the book. Still, the actors manage to demonstrate successfully some other traits of the characters.
Further, some differences in the plots can be noticed. For example, the film suggests an episode where Alex smacks Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., and he is then assaulted by his grandfather. The book does not have this. Alex’s grandfather acquires a portrayal that differs from the one in the book. When the book’s story finishes, Alex’s father leaves the family, whereas in the film he is seen only at the interment of his father. The authors of the film depict Lista as Augustine’s sister and in the book she does not even know her.
In the film Alex refers to Jonathan as “The Collector” (because he accumulates bits and pieces of his life and stores them in Ziploc bags, carefully labeled) rather than “The Hero”.
Thus, the differences between the film and the book it is based on are rather significant. Still, Foer admits:
I think it’s good. It’s not how I would have done it, but that’s that whole point: if Liev would have done it as I would have, there would have been no need to do it at all (Anderson 69).
I am inclined to believe that Foer’s style is unique and there are no film creators that can either render this style or change it somehow. But no one would deny the fact that both the film by Liev and the book by Foer deserve the audience’s attention. The skill the two works were created with makes them really unfading.
Works Cited
“‘Illuminated’: Less Is More; Much of Book Is Cut, but Story Retains Interest.” The Washington Times. 2005: D10.
“Light in Times of Darkness; Alison Jones Talks to Liev Schreiber about Everything Is Illuminated.” The Birmingham Post (England). 2006: 50.
Anderson, Hephzibah. “Road Fiction Takes a New Direction; (1)THE ARTS (2) Jonathan Safran Foer Based His Best-Selling Novel, Everything Is Illuminated on His Student Quest to Find the Mystery Woman in a Family Photograph. Now He Is Retracing His Steps for a BBC Documentary, and Hollywood Is Making the Film.” The Evening Standard (London, England) : 69.
Everything Is Illuminated. Dir. Liev Schreiber. Perfs. Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz. Film Warner Independent Pictures, 2005.
Foer, Jonathan S. Everything Is Illuminated. Harper Perennial, 2003.
Foer, Jonathan S. “Everything Is Illuminated.” The Atlantic Monthly. 2002: 141-2.