Review Questions for Everything is Illuminated

Review questions: Everything is Illuminated

1. How would you describe the two voices that tell the story (Alex and Jonathan's)? How is their language different? In what ways do the narratives intersect or move away from one another? Why do you think the author chose to write the novel in this way?

2. Why does Jonathan travel to Ukraine? What is he searching for? What are Alex and his grandfather searching for on the journey? What does each character find?
3. In an interview, Jonathan Safran Foer said that “Everything is Illuminated is, above all things, about love – between parent and child, between lovers, friends, and generations, between what happened and what will happen.” Where do you see examples of each of these types of love in the novel? How does the theme of love influence the course of the novel?
4. On page 265-6, Jonathan writes, “Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after the years of pure and unwavering grief, to realize she has slept a good night's sleep, and will able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time.” How do the characters in the novel live their lives in wake of tragic events? How do we both move on and still remember these events? What roles do stories play in reconciling ourselves with the past?
5. Describe the blending of elements that are tragic and that are comedic in the novel. Why do you think the book does this? What does the book seem to think that the role of humor is in life and in the face of tragic events?