Everything is Illuminated, Lesson 5

Lesson 5

Memory and Legacy in Everything is Illuminated

What are an author's responsibilities towards telling a “truthful” version of the past?

● Alex comments that both he and Jonathan are involved in a process of taking liberties with the past when they are writing. Note that Alex continually raises questions about the role and purpose of writing as the novel goes on

● “We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes? The both of us? Do you think that this is acceptable when we are writing about things that occurred? If your answer is no, then why do you write about Trachimbrod and your grandfather in a manner that you do, and why do you command me to be untruthful? If your answer is yes, then this creates another question, which is if we are to be such nomads with the truth, why do we not make the story more premium than life?” (179).

The novel suggests both the importance of recording the past in writing as well as the impossibility of knowing the past through recorded documents:

● Only the various Trachimbroders who weren't, in Tova's estimation, worthy of an invitation were not at the reception, and hence not in the guest book, and hence not included in the last practical census of the shtetl before its destruction, and hence forgotten forever (163).

● He was so afraid of being discovered that even in his journal – the only written record I have of his life before he met my grandmother, in a displaced-persons camp after the war – he never mentions them once ... The day he had sex with his first virgin: Went to the theater today. Too bored to stay through the first act. Drank eight cups of coffee. I thought I was going to burst. Didn't burst. (169- 170).

● If Jonathan has no actual record of his grandfather's sexual escapades, why does he write them?

Can we see his creation of the sexual prowess of his grandfather in a similar way to Alex's own creation of his sex life?

Jonathan on his grandfather’s sex life: “There were some fifty-two virgins, to whom he made love in each of the positions he had studied from a dirty deck of cards...” (195)

Alex on his own sex life: “May girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle, and the Unyielding Zookeeper” (2)

Yet, there seems to be a desire from the general public to have an “authentic” version of the past, even if this may not be possible:

● Peanut Gallery

“This is so unbelievable. Not at all like it was” (174).

The novel also raises a question concerning whether or not we are determined by our past and the context that we live in. Is these things control our lives, can we be blamed for the things we do?

● “Wasn't everything that had happened, from his first kiss to this, his first marital infidelity, the inevitable result of circumstance over which he had no control? How guilty could he be, when he never had any real choice” (165, 166)

● “They all turned their faces away and hid. I cannot blame them...” (187)

● “Grandfather interrogates me about you every day. He desires to know if you forgive him for the things he told you about the war, and about Herschel. (You could alter it, Jonathan. For him, not for me. Your novel is now verging on the war. It is possible. He is not a bad person. He is a good person, alive in a bad time” (145).