"The Silence Was a Mountain": Forgiveness and Post-Holocaust Memory in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated

Mei-Yu Tsai

《小說與戲劇》 20卷2期 (2011/01) Pp. 99-130

並列摘要

Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel Everything Is Illuminated is a meditation on what happened when the world failed to address and respond to the Jews' call of distress during the Holocaust. Published in 2002, the novel describes how the protagonist also named Jonathan Safran Foer makes a journey to the shtetl of Trachimbrod in Ukraine in search of a Jewish girl Augustine who might have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by his Ukrainian translator Alex and Alex's grandfather, Jonathan travels to the site of Trachimbrod only to find that nothing is left there except for a memorial to the dead. Written after the journey, the novel comprises three narrative levels: (1) Alex's letters to Jonathan in the US, written in comically poor English, (2) Alex's account of the trip to Ukraine, and (3) Jonathan's magic realist historical account of 200 years in the life of Trachimbrod. While existing scholarship has convincingly argued that Alex's letters to Jonathan serve as a plea for forgiveness, few comments have been made on how the Trachimbrod narrative level also presents a strong plea for mercy. This essay attempts to redress this imbalance. Just as the trope of silence plays a pivotal role in Jonathan's response to Alex's letters, Jonathan's magical-realist account of Trachimbrod also illuminates the silence of the world in the face of Jews' calls for help. This essay seeks to explore the significance and repercussions of silence in terms of Emmanuel Levinas's notion of ethical responsibility. Part Ⅰ of this essay seeks to explore how the shtetl narrative employs an anxious historicity by presenting the self's plea for help. Yet the voice of Jonathan's plea for mercy for the Jews goes unnoticed by Alex and the world, and this failure to respond to another's call for help must be thought of as a metaphor for a fall from the face of ethics. Part Ⅱ will discuss how Alex Grandfather's silence to the ethical demand of his Jewish friend brought fatal results: first, his silence caused the death of his friend; second, the silence renders post-Holocaust forgiveness impossible. This essay argues that post-Holocaust forgiveness should be read along with the-yet-to-be-worked-through trauma of Holocaust survivors. In this respect, Jonathan finds ”forgiveness” an impossible gift to give-at lest, ”not here, not now.”

並列關鍵字

Everything Is Illuminated ； ethics ； silence ； post-Holocaust forgiveness ； confession ； Jewish shtetl ； trauma

參考文獻

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