JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER an Analysis of the Novels and Selected Short Stories

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JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER An Analysis of the Novels and Selected Short Stories

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Sandra MALLI

am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: Ao. Univ. – Prof. Dr. Martin Löschnigg

Graz, im Dezember 2011

CONTENTS

1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 List of Abbreviations ...... 3

2 Everything is Illuminated ...... 4

2.1 Introduction ...... 4

2.2 Formal Analysis ...... 5 2.2.1 Structure ...... 5 2.2.2 Narrative Situations ...... 9 2.2.2.1 Alexander Perchov – Letters ...... 9

2.2.2.2 Alexander Perchov – Narration ...... 11

2.2.2.3 The History of Trachimbrod ...... 13

2.3 Character Analysis ...... 19 2.3.1 Jonathan Safran Foer ...... 19 2.3.2 Alexander Perchov ...... 20 2.3.3 The Grandfather ...... 22

2.4 Everything is Illuminated as a Metafictional Novel ...... 23

2.5 Holocaust Literature and Jewish American Literature ...... 26

2.6 Final Remarks ...... 28

3 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ...... 30

3.1 Introduction ...... 30

3.2 Formal Analysis ...... 31 3.2.1 Structure ...... 31 3.2.2 Photographs and Illustrations ...... 32 3.2.3 Capitalization / Corrections ...... 39 3.2.4 Spacing and Paragraphs ...... 40 3.2.5 Numbers ...... 44 3.2.6 Red Circles in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 4/12/78 ...... 45 3.2.7 Letters and Messages ...... 46

3.3 Character Analysis ...... 47 I

3.3.1 Oskar Schell ...... 47 3.3.2 The Grandfather (Thomas Schell) ...... 49 3.3.3 The Grandmother ...... 50

3.4 Conclusive Remarks ...... 51

4 Tree of Codes ...... 54

4.1 Final Statement ...... 63

5 Selected Short Stories ...... 65

5.1 Rhoda ...... 65 5.1.1 Conclusion ...... 70

5.2 A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease ...... 72 5.2.1 A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease in the Context of Foer‘s Work 82

6 Once upon a Life and Something Happened – Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s work ...... 84

7 Conclusion ...... 89

8 Bibliography ...... i

1 Introduction

Since 2001 the name Jonathan Safran Foer has become more and more popular and familiar to a readership all over the world. Two of his books have been turned into Hollywood movies, the latest of which will hit the box office right about now, in December 2011. Foer, only 34 years old, has become a much discussed literary figure who has not only been praised for his work but who has also met with some not so friendly criticism. He is as much loved and admired as he is hated by critics and readers, mostly because his style is somewhat out of the ordinary. Where Foer‘s first novel was mostly Jewish American holocaust literature, without unusual literary devices, his style has developed over the years, resulting in Tree of Codes, a cubistical, dada-like interpretation of Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodile – a book that actually has holes in it.

However, Foer does not only fascinate readers all over the world because of the stylistic gimmicks that are included in his novels but also because of the kind of stories he tells. Most of his stories share one major theme: how to overcome the most terrible experiences through love, which is a theme that always fascinates readers. Foer‘s characters are extraordinary depictions of incredible personalities, all of which are less than perfect and yet one cannot resist them. The stories Foer tells in his books are extremely gripping, hilariously funny at some points and yet unbelievably sad at others. I believe it is this mixture combined with the right ‗looks‘ (included flipbooks, colored pages, photographs and holes) that makes Foer‘s work so successful.

This thesis now aims at giving an overview of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s work, focusing on his three novels Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Tree of Codes, two selected short stories (A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease and Rhoda) and an interview (Something Happened) as well as an essay Foer wrote himself (Once upon a Life). An emphasis shall be put on structural aspects, common underlying themes as well as characters. In the following chapters I will try to show that although Foer‘s style has developed enormously over the years, the underlying themes are still basically the same, as are the characters. Further I will make an attempt to illustrate that Foer‘s work is heavily

influenced by his life, thus proving that all of Foer‘s work autobiographical (some more and some less).

The short stories have been selected because of their significance in the greater picture, Rhoda serving as a representative for characters and narrative techniques, and A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease functioning as an example for the use of unusual stylistic devices. The interview titled Something Happened and Foer‘s essay Once upon a Time have been included because I consider them to be two important means to properly analyze Foer‘s work. I believe that without taking them into account, no successful and correct analysis can be done, as they present the key to why trauma, loss, memory, love and silence are such prominent themes in Foer‘s stories and novels.

By analyzing the novels and short stories by Foer I also want to find out where Foer is going with literature. His style has significantly developed throughout the years and is getting more and more abstract. In an interview Foer stated that by using more and more abstract and unconventional literary devices he wants to explore the boundaries of contemporary literature, to explore what is actually possible in literature and with paper. Foer does not believe in definitions, his novels (especially his latest one) cannot simply be attributed to one specific genre. They are partly holocaust literature, certainly Jewish American literature, without doubt metafictional, somehow a collage, a picture book and finally an object d‘ art. Taking into consideration that Foer is only 34 years old, he has already made an incredibly leap towards the ‗final frontier‘ of contemporary literature. Despite his (recent) success, there are also many critical voices who claim that with his love for the unusual and his daring style Foer is risking his literary career. Finally, I will therefore try to find a reason for Foer‘s willingness to ‗risk‘ his writing career and his need to explore the boundaries of contemporary literature.

1.1 List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in this thesis:

Everything is Illuminated EI Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ELIC Tree of Codes TC Rhoda R

2 Everything is Illuminated

2.1 Introduction

Everything is Illuminated was Jonathan Safran Foer‘s first novel to be published. It was an immediate success, praised by critics, loved by the readers and The Times titled ―An astonishing feat of writing. […] Extraordinary.‖ (Foer. EI: blurb)

The book, published in 2002, is based on a journey Foer went on during his last year at university. He had set out to find the woman – Augustina - who had saved his grandfather from the Nazis during World War II, and planned to write his thesis about it. He did not find the woman, however, he wrote a book about his experience. It has to be mentioned that nothing that is featured in the novel has actually happened - the only similarity is that the translator‘s name was indeed Alex.

The book is challenging in different ways. Not only are the intermingling storylines and narrative modes confusing sometimes, it is foremost the language of the narrator Alexander Perchov that challenges the brains of the readership. When authors introduce a character who is not good or fluid in English, they might just write that the character utters his messages in broken English. Not so Jonathan Safran Foer. He puts an immense effort in his main character‘s language to make it sound authentic to the reader, and indeed it sounds incredibly like someone from the former Soviet Union speaking very bad and strange English. As great an achievement this authenticity is, as difficult it is for the reader to get used to. Another demanding device is the mixing of plots and narrative modes. The story of the journey to the Ukraine is constantly interrupted by lengthy stories full of Jewish names about a small village called Trachimbrod, the story of which is not even presented chronologically. In addition, there are several letters in the novel, which tell what happened after the trip to the Ukraine which makes the reader sometimes loose the notorious red thread during reading.

However, the novel presents a magnificent story about a journey into the past and characters you simply have to love. It also makes you burst out with laughter and cry at the same time which might be unusual for a book that deals with such a significant event as World War II.

This analysis will look at the structure of the novel, the used narrative and literary techniques, and a character analysis will be given as well. A focus will also be put on recurring themes in the various narrative strands.

2.2 Formal Analysis

2.2.1 Structure

The book consists of a number of chapters, narrated by different characters. To make the further analysis easier to understand, a table of contents will be given at first, in which the chapters have been given numbers as well (although they do not originally have numbers).

1. An Overture to the Commencement of a Very Rigid Journey page 1 2. The Beginning of the World often Comes page 8 3. The Lottery page 14 4. 20 July 1997 page 23 5. An Overture to Encountering the Hero, and then Encountering the Hero page 27 6. The Book of Recurrent Dreams, 1791 page 36 7. Falling in Love, 1791 – 1796 page 43 8. 23 September 1997 page 52 9. Going forth to Lutsk page 56 10. Falling in Love, 1791- 1803 page 75 11. Recurrent Secrets, 1791 - 1943 page 86 12. A Parade, a Death, a Proposition, 1804 – 1969 page 90 13. 28 October 1997 page 100 14. The Very Rigid Search page 105 15. The Dial, 1941 – 1804 – 1941 page 119 16. 17 November 1997 page 142 17. Falling in Love page 146 18. The Wedding Reception was so Extraordinary! or It All Goes Downhill after the Wedding, 1941 page 161 19. The Dupe of Chance, 1941 – 1924 page 165

20. The Thickness of Blood and Drama, 1934 page 169 21. 13 December 1997 page 178 22. What We Saw When We Saw Trachimbrod, or Falling in Love page 181 23. Falling in Love, 1934 – 1941 page 194 24. 24 December 1997 page 215 25. An Overture to Illumination page 219 26. Falling in Love, 1934 – 1941 page 229 27. 26 January 1998 page 240 28. Illumination page 243 29. The Wedding Reception Was so Extraordinary! or The End of the Moment that Never Ends, 1941 page 253 30. The First Blasts, and Then Love, 1941 page 256 31. The Persnicketiness of Memory, 1941 page 258 32. The Beginning of the World often Comes, 1942- 1791 page 267 33. 22 January 1998 page 275

The book can be divided into three parts, each of which is told by a different narrator in a different narrative mode. Part one forms the basic storyline. It tells the story of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s trip to the Ukraine, his teaming up with Alex and the grandfather and their adventures during the trip. This part is told by Alexander Perchov and includes the chapters 1, 5, 9, 14, 17, 22, 25 and 28. The base story is interrupted by, or intertwined with letters from Alexander Perchov to Jonathan Safran Foer. These letters form the second narrative strand of the novel and include chapters 4, 8, 13, 16, 21, 24, 27 and 33. The third part of the novel consists of chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 29, 30, 31 and 32. These chapters tell the history of a little village in Ukraine, Trachimbrod, which is also the village the characters in the novel are looking for. The chapters cover a time period of about 150 years, from 1791 to 1969, and are actually parts of a book Jonathan Safran Foer writes after the trip to the Ukraine. Most chapters are part of the narration about Trachimbrod, but it has to be kept in mind that this does not mean that this part of the novel is also the longest, as many of the chapters are very short.

Chapter Titles or Love in Everything is Illuminated

5 chapters of Everything is Illuminated share the same title, ―Falling in love‖ (chapters 7, 11, 18, 23 and 26). Except two, namely chapter 17 and 18, all of the ―Falling in love‖ – chapters are part of the narration about Trachimbrod. Although the title basically is the same, the date following the title varies.

Falling in love 1791 – 1796

Falling in love 1791 – 1803

Falling in love 1934 – 1941

Chapter 17, which is part of Alexander‘s narration, does not have a date at all, whereas chapter 23 and 27 share the exact same title and date.

The major theme in these chapters is love in all its varieties. In chapter 7, Yankel falls in love with a fantasy, a woman he imagined for his adopted daughter Brod so she would never find out about the real circumstances of her birth. Although the fantasy woman was meant to be for Brod, Yankel falls in love with her himself. In chapter 11 it is revealed that Yankel truly loves Brod, but the girl is not capable of loving. Instead she becomes obsessed with the idea of falling in love. The longer Brod and Yankel live together, the more she becomes a reflection of her father. She moves and behaves like him, which can be seen as her way of love and appreciation for Yankel. Nevertheless, only Yankel is able to tell her that he loves her. Chapter 18 is the third chapter titled ‗Falling in Love‘. It is the one of two which is not part of the narration about Trachimbrod. In this chapter, the group meets an old woman, not Augustina, who hoards a huge number of boxes with all sorts of remains of Trachimbrod. The old woman is the only survivor of the village and she has collected everything she could save from the village. She admits that she is ashamed that she is only one who survived, and her collecting can be seen as remorse, too, but first of all as love for everybody who died in the village. She explains how Trachimbrod was like one big family where everybody loved each other. The theme of love is very subtle in this chapter, only surfacing from time to time and is hardy recognizable due to the sadness the woman‘s story causes. It is also revealed that Grandfather and the woman share some dreadful memories about the past. Grandfather is very happy to see the woman, and constantly tells her how beautiful she is, although he might not

really mean her but the memories of a happier past which her presence brings to life again. He is almost in love with these memories and becomes very upset when the woman goes on to reveal the secret of his past. The theme of love often comes in disguise in this novel and is – as this chapter illustrates - sometimes difficult to recognize. In chapter 23, love is even harder to see. The group reaches what is left of Trachimbrod and the woman tells them how the village was destroyed in one day. She tells them that the men of the village were told to spit on the Torah in order to save their families, and how all of them except her father did as they were ordered by the Nazis. Her father seemed to love the Torah more than his family and his religious believes were stronger than the urge to save his loved ones. The woman explains that the Nazis shot her pregnant sister in the womb and left her to die, but she survived, went back to Trachimbrod after the massacre and saved what she could – hair, fillings, glasses. It finally becomes clear that she is the pregnant woman from the story and that she still believes she has a baby girl to take care of. Love and death are very close in this chapter. It is hard to see love amongst all the terrible things, but nonetheless it is there. The woman‘s father‘s refusal to spit on the Torah does not mean that he does not love his family, but simply that his love and trust in god are greater than his fear. He probably also knows that the Nazis are going to kill all Jews anyway, and he tried to keep some dignity, also at death‘s door. Love is also visible for a short moment when Grandfather proudly introduces Alex as his grandson, and when Jonathan thinks about his grandmother and whether he should tell her about his trip or not. He does not want to hurt her because he loves her almost too much. Chapter 28 ventures back and forth in time, covering eight years of Jonathan‘s grandfather‘s life. The chapter tells the story of his grandfather‘s affair with the gypsy girl and his wedding to Zosha, the woman he has for some time been engaged to. Although Safran believes that he has been in love with the gypsy girl, he realizes on the evening of the Nazi bombing that he does not actually love her, that he has never really loved anyone. The gypsy girl on the other hand is devastated by Safran‘s leaving and commits suicide. She has truly loved him and when he leaves her, loving him becomes unbearable. Safran‘s and Zosha‘s wedding night coincides with the Nazi bombing of Trachimbrod. He has his first orgasms when the bombs hit the village and when his first daughter, who is the first and only person he truly loves, is conceived. Love is presented in every possibly variety in these chapters. It comes in disguises, is sometimes hard to recognize, but it is always there. Brod has once defined 613 different sadnesses, and the novel presents almost as many types of love – sad love, painful love, true love or love for the past. 8

2.2.2 Narrative Situations

There are three different narrative situations in Everything is Illuminated. Three narrators narrate three different narrative strands and the following chapters will take a closer look at the used narrative modes, the content of the different narrations, as well as their significance to the novel.

2.2.2.1 Alexander Perchov – Letters

The novel includes 8 letters, 7 of which are by Alexander Perchov. They appear in chronological order, presenting details of the relationship between Alex and Jonathan. The last letter, number 8, which is also presented out of the chronological order, has not been written by Alex but by his grandfather and will be discussed later in this chapter.

The first letter, dated 20 July 1997, explains why the story of the journey is told by Alex. Jonathan has asked him to write about the trip from his point of view. He has sent Alex a thesaurus to make writing easier for him, however, this only leads to a greater misuse of words. The letters fill some of the gaps the main narration has left. We learn that the chapters about Trachimbrod are written by Jonathan, who also pays Alex for his writing. Alex does not only write about their journey but in his letters also tells Jonathan how his grandfather is coping after the trip. He mentions that grandfather has become very depressed after their trip and has finally moved in with the family. Alex‘s letters also give insight into the still growing relationship between him and Jonathan. The relationship has developed from a simple business relationship (Alex being the translator and Jonathan being the customer), to a deep friendship. The fact that Jonathan has asked Alex to write for him, and the fact that they correct and criticize each other‘s writing makes clear that they have become equals. Nonetheless, Alex is sometimes still concerned that Jonathan might laugh at him because of his English. At the same time, he starts to criticize Jonathan‘s writing less and less, finally begging him to stop criticizing each other‘s work.

Alex continues to tell Jonathan that Grandfather is way worse after the journey, crying over old photographs most of the time. The grandfather constantly asks Alex about Jonathan and

wants to be forgiven for what he did during the war. We further learn that Alex and Jonathan have asked each other to change certain parts in their narrations. Through the letters it is also revealed that Alex was not truthful about himself and his life. He pretends to be someone he is not, lying about his appearance and his life style, as he is very concerned that his family might look bad in the narration. The Perchov‘s family dynamics, which is sometimes mentioned during the chapters narrated by Alex, is also mentioned in the letters. We learn that life with Alex‘s father is a daily struggle and that Alex wishes he was gone.

Alex also argues with Jonathan about changing facts, making the story a happier one. ―I do not think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.‖ (Foer. EI: 180) Both of them have encountered some things that happened to be very difficult to cope with and to write about, and try to get around those topics in their own way. The letters now show a slight shift in tone, criticism not always being friendly but more harsh and personal. Finally, Alex asks Jonathan not to criticize each other‘s writing anymore. In Alex‘s last letter to Jonathan, dated 26 January 1998, the promise not to criticize the writing of the other is broken. Alex insults Jonathan and his writing and is clearly frustrated. We learn that Grandfather has asked him for money to continue the search for Augustina but Alex refused. Alex has finally found the courage to stand up to his father and to throw him out of the house. He is now the man of the family. At the end of the letter Alex tells Jonathan that Grandfather committed suicide. Where Alex has signed all of his previous letters with ‗Guilelessly, Alexander‘, this one ends with ‗Love, Alex‘. Alex and Jonathan have finally reached a level, where they have both overcome their past and where they both have been truly truthful to each other.

Page 274 features another letter, dated 22 January 1998. This letter has been written by Grandfather and is actually his suicide note. He tells how Alex threw out his father and how proud he is of his grandson. He, too, has finally found truth and thus peace. Now that he knows that peace is possible, he can go on. The final part of the letter is meant to be for Alex. Here he says that he can finally die because he was able to find happiness in the end.

2.2.2.2 Alexander Perchov – Narration

This part of the book is characterized by Alex‘s imperfect but hilarious English. Alex has studied English at school but obviously learned most of it from a thesaurus, not knowing that there is a distinction between common, demotic and poetic words. He uses synonyms incorrectly and therefore creates a sort of Pidgin English which is, though difficult to read at first, incredibly charming. Reading about Alex ―disseminating so much currency‖ (Foer. EI: 1) or his ―miniature brother‖ (Foer. EI: 1) one cannot help laughing. Mark Lawson from The Guardian put it that way: ―Don‘t try to read them at night while someone else is sleeping unless your relationship can survive frequent wakings by deranged laughter.‖1

Although everything Alex utters throughout the novel is funny because of its mistakes, it does not make him look stupid. There is never a point when he cannot be taken seriously – on the contrary, sometimes his language is almost poetical when he explains that ―[…] the hero had small rivers descending his face, and I wanted to put my hand on his face, to be architecture for him.‖ (Foer. EI: 154) Another passage that underlines the poetic quality of Alex‘s narration can be found on page 5. ―[…] a Seeing Eye bitch is not only for blind people but for people who pine for the negative of loneliness.‖ (Foer. EI: 5)

Content of Alex‘s narration:

Although the chapters are interrupted by the two other narrative strands, they form a gapless retelling of the trip through the Ukraine. Chapter one ends with Alex and grandfather watching TV at the end of the day, talking about the upcoming journey and the second chapter continuous on the next morning. It ends with ―[…] masticating her own tail.‖ (Foer. EI: 35) and the next chapter starts with ―Sammy Davies, Junior, Junior converted her attention from masticating her tail […]‖. (Foer. EI: 56) The chapters told by Alex could very well be a story of their own, presented collected at the beginning of the novel.

1 Lawson, Mark (2002, June 8). ―Guile by the mile‖. The Guardian. Books Section. [Online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jun/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview28 [2011, Dec. 22].

Alex starts his narration by introducing himself at length and we learn about his life and habits and his little brother Igor. Father and grandfather are introduced as well, and Alex tells how they got to tour around with Jonathan Safran Foer in the first place. Alex explains that grandfather is not at all happy with the prospect of driving around a Jew and that he is not blind either. The first chapter also gives an insight into the family dynamics of the Perchovs.

The reader learns how the group (Alex, Jonathan, grandfather) experiences several difficulties on their journey, including cultural misunderstandings, getting lost and the fact that grandfather, Jonathan and Alex are three very different personalities. Throughout the story the reader finds out that grandfather might have some knowledge about Augustina and Trachimbrod that he does not share with his companions, and that he is struggling with memories from the war. After driving countless hours, the group finally finds a woman who claims to be the only survivor of Trachimbrod. She produces a number of collected things, pictures and jewelry, all remains of the shtetl2 of Trachimbrod. These things also include photographs of Jonathan‘s grandfather, who he learns had a wife and two babies. The woman also tells the story of two men, Herschel and Eli, which makes grandfather extremely upset. In the end, she leads the group to an empty field where Trachimbrod used to be, and explains how the shtetl was destroyed by the Nazis. Only a monument proves that the shtetl ever existed. Finally the woman states her name, claiming she is called Lista. In chapters 26 and 29 it is revealed that grandfather actually is one of the men Lista told them about. He is not from Odessa but from Kolki, and his name is not Alexander but Eli. He explains how he betrayed Herschel when the Nazis occupied Kolki and that his betrayal got Herschel killed.

This narrative strand also includes a passage that has been heavily criticized.

―The Ukrainians, back then, were terrible to the Jews. They were almost as bad as the Nazis. It was a different world. At the beginning of the war, a lot of Jews wanted to go to the Nazis to be protected from the Ukrainians.‖ ―This is not true.‖ It is.‖ ―I cannot believe what you are saying.‖ ―Look it up in the history books.‖ ―It does not say this in the history books.‖ ―Well, that‘s the way it was. Ukrainians were known for being terrible to the Jews. So were the Poles. Listen, I don‘t mean to offend you. It‘s got nothing to do with you. We‘re talking about fifty years ago.‖ ―I think you are mistaken,‖ I told the hero. ―I don‘t know what to say.‖ ―Say that you are mistaken.‖ ―I can‘t.‖ ―You must.‖ (Foer. EI: 62)

2 a small town or village with mostly Jewish inhabitants 12

The Prague Post has claimed that this passage is a total misrepresentation of the history of Jews in Ukraine. Also the fact that Trachimbrod is based on the actual village of Trochenbrod, where an actual massacre occurred during the Second World War, was heavily criticized. The Prague Post further argued that Foer‘s description of the Ukrainians as being ―almost as bad as the Nazis‖ (Foer. EI: 62) was exceedingly wrong. ―[…] in fact it was Ukrainians who helped the escape of the few Jewish survivors from Trochenbrod, and suffered brutal retaliation themselves as a result.‖3

2.2.2.3 The History of Trachimbrod

The narration of the history of the shtetl of Trachimbrod forms the third narrative strand of the novel. As Alex‘s letters reveal, these chapters are written by Jonathan after their trip through the Ukraine. Trachimbrod is the village, or shtetl, to which Jonathan has traced his paternal roots. Its history begins over 200 years ago, in 1791. The name of the shtetl is based on a legend: a man called Trachim allegedly crashed into the river Brod with his horse wagon and did or did not die during the accident – a body was never found. Only a baby was recovered from the river. The first chapter on Trachimbrod –the second of the book – already shows that the narrative voice of this narrative strand is totally different to Alex‘s narration and his letters. The style is magical and poetical, the language sophisticated and profound.

It was March 18, 1791, when Trachim B‘s double-axle wagon either did or did not pin him against the bottom of the Brod River. The young W twins were the first to see the curious flotsam rising to the surface: wandering snakes of white string, a crushed-velvet glove with outstretched fingers, barren spools, schmootzy pince-nez, rasp- and boysenberries, feces, frillwork, the shards of a shattered atomizer, the bleeding red-ink script of a resolution: I will … I will … (Foer. EI: 8)

The fact that nobody really knows whether Trachim is actually dead or not, or if he has been in the wagon at all, or if someone else died in the accident, also refers to the theme of not- knowing which is very prominent in the book. The (hi)story of Trachimbrod, the name of which is actually Sofiowka, is an invention, a fantasy brought to life by its narrator, Jonathan

3 „Everything Is Illuminated―. Wikipedia. [Online]. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Is_Illuminated [2011,Dec. 22]. 13

Safran Foer the character, and although there are documents and photographs that prove the village‘s existence, it somehow, in some other way, only exists because Jonathan has chosen to write about it. In his letters to Jonathan Alex repeatedly asks him to change the story of the village but Jonathan refuses. For him the story is true, and changing it would mean to betray it and thus himself as he would have never been born without the village. The last sentence of chapter 3 is: ―We were to be in good hands.‖ (Foer. EI: 22) ‗We‘ does not only include the people of the village but also Jonathan. This passage once more makes clear how much the village and the rewriting of its story means to him.

Trachimbrod is divided into two parts, the Jewish Quarter and the Human –Three Quarter, although both parts are inhabited by Jews. This could also be a symbol for the relationship between Jonathan, Alex and grandfather. The people of Trachimbrod have chosen to divide themselves into two groups, although they all share the same cultural heritage and religious believes. For them it is a matter of identity. Cultural identity is a major theme of the novel. Alex desperately wants to appear American and only thinks about when he will be able to move to the United States. Jonathan on the other hand is American but wants to know more about the origins of his family and his cultural roots. He also has difficulties to establish a (cultural) identity which becomes clear when he tells Alex that he does not really know what he wants to be. (see chapter 3.)

The shtetl of Trachimbrod is located at the Polish-Ukrainian border, which is interesting in connection to the division of the shtetl itself, yet the location is not important to the villagers. The centre of their lives is the shtetl and what goes on in the rest of the world is of no importance to them. It is also interesting that the shtetl does not have a name before it is called Trachimbrod and later Sofiowka. This reminds one of the old woman who Jonathan, Alex and grandfather encounter later in the novel. Claiming to be the only remaining survivor of Trachimbrod, she also does not state a name at first and, too, has no idea of what is going on in the world. She has never seen an airplane or a car, but this does not matter to her. Also, she claims to have a baby girl (which she actually used to have but who died decades ago), which could be a reference to the baby girl that rose from the ground of the river Brod. The villagers are members of two different congregations. One of the groups (the Uprighters) has regular services and uses a regular prayer book, whereas the other (the Slouchers) has a rather unusual service and prayerbook. The Sloucher‘s prayerbook is called ‗The Book of Recurrent Dreams‘. The book includes the members‘ dreams and is updated every month. There is a 14

similarity to Jonathan. The Slouchers writing their own prayer book can be compared to Jonathan writing his own family‘s story. Jonathan puts himself in the context of the story when he states that ―He [Yankel] had been given a baby, and I a great-great-great-great-great- great-grandfather.‖ (Foer. EI: 42)

Chapter 7 reveals that Yankel‘s real name is Safran. He has been left by his wife and lost two children. Now that he has been chosen to be the baby girl‘s father, he has a chance to reinvent himself. He names the baby Brod and tells her fantastic stories about her mother and how they had been in love. He starts to write fake love letters from the mother to comfort the girl, but instead he falls in love with the fantasy woman he created for his daughter. Reality and fantasy start to merge, which reminds one of the letters Alex writes to Jonathan. Alex wishes so much for the story to have a happy ending, so that everybody could be happy, that it seems he, too, forgets that it is just a story.

Chapter 7 also explains that the shtetl only got an official name because authorities from Lvov demanded that. After a public vote the shtetl is named Sofiowka, but because nobody calls it Sofiowka, a second vote is organized. Finally, the shtetl is named Trachimbrod, like Yankel suggested. The importance or unimportance of names is a major theme in the novel. Yankel is actually called Safran, which is Jonathan‘s grandfather‘s name, and Alex‘s grandfather‘s name is not actually Alexander but Eli. This also poses the question of what the revelation that grandfather‘s original name is Eli does to Alex‘s identity, because after all he has been named after his father who has been named after his father. Also, Jonathan‘s return to Trachimbrod can be seen as the closing of a (life)cycle – Yankel/Safran represents the beginning of the cycle and Jonathan, being the last of the Safrans, represents the end of it. Thus with his return and his writing the story comes to an end and finally to existence. It is kept alive forever.

The story of Trachimbrod also tells the story of Brod. She grows up to be a very sad person. Although she is still very young she has already discovered 613 types of sadness.

[…] each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One‘s Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release. (Foer. EI: 79)

In his narration Jonathan describes her ―like a drowning person‖ (Foer. EI: 79) which is very significant for the story. Sadness is a recurrent theme in the novel. Grandfather is sad, crying a lot on his own, Little Igor is also found crying in front of the TV once and Jonathan is full of sadness too, although he might not recognize it at first. Even Alex gets sadder and sadder the more the story progresses. Chapter 11 also mentions that Yankel/Safran is losing his memory. It is hard for him to remember things and so he starts to write notes on the ceiling. This fear of forgetting reminds one of Jonathan and his need to collect things. He, too, is afraid to forget things. The chapter further includes a passage where Brod seems to see the future. She learns that she will be raped by Sofiowka but cannot get enough information about her future. This passage is very interesting – everyone else in the book is lamenting about the lost past, only Brod is desperate to find out about her future although she knows she cannot change it. Jonathan on the other hand is desperate to recreate his family‘s past. He, too, turns to fantasy and imagination when there are no more facts to rely on. Having in mind that the author Jonathan Safran Foer actually went on a journey to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather in World War II, it is interesting that he, too, recreated a past through fantasy and imagination by writing Everything is Illuminated.

The importance of names is once more mentioned in chapter 16. The chapter starts off at Jonathan‘s grandfather‘s wedding day. Safran spends time at the sundial of Trachimbrod, which is a bronze statue. Here, the story of Brod is reopened. After Yankel‘s death she marries Shalom the Kolker, who is Jonathan‘s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. An accident at a saw mill leaves the Kolker with a saw blade stuck in his head. Despite his injury he survives and lives with Brod but soon becomes abusive. They spend the rest of their short marriage in different rooms, with only a small hole in the wall between them (which is, as we later learn, a lie, an invented story, which reminds the reader of the importance of stories and inventing in the novel). When the Kolker‘s condition gets worse, Brod asks him to change his name to confuse the Angel of Death so she can spend more time with him. He changes his name to Safran, a name Brod remembered from Yankel/Safran‘s notes on his ceiling. Brod herself keeps her father‘s name alive by naming all her children Yankel. The Kolker dies just as his first child is born, which is a reminder for how Brod rose to the surface after Trachim did (or did not) die in the accident. In chapter 24 we learn that the names of the men born into the generations between Brod and Safran (Jonathan‘s grandfather) are all

combinations of the original names – Trachimkolker, Safranbrod, Trachimyankel and Kolkerbrod.

In 1941 Jonathan‘s grandfather marries Zosha although he believes he is actually in love with her sister Maya, the Gypsy girl. Jonathan also includes his grandfather‘s love life in his part of the narration. Safran had many affairs with a lot of women, thus infidelity is a major theme of this chapter. Alex responds to this part of Jonathan‘s narration with incomprehension, as he cannot see why Jonathan would let his grandfather appear morally unfit when he could write anything he wanted. Here it is also mentioned that Safran once had an affair with a woman called Lista.

Chapter 24 gives details about ‗The Book of Antecedents‘, a book that has been written by the people of Trachimbrod. At the beginning only important things were written down but soon it became more of a journal, where every detail was written down. If nothing happened, the people would just write ―We are writing … We are writing ...‖. (Foer. EI: 212 et seq.) People seemed to be afraid that if they did not write, they would cease to exist. As long as they write they and their lives have meaning. The final one and a half pages of this chapter consist of the phrase ‗we are writing …‘ repeated over and over again. Jonathan, too, has a need to write. He writes to recreate his past and to find meaning in his life again. The Book of Antecedents includes some of the major themes of the novel. It includes an entry titled ―JEWS HAVE SIX SENSES‖ (Foer. EI: 198). Here it is claimed that Jews have an additional sixth sense – memory. Memory plays an important role in the novel. Jonathan collects things because he is afraid he will forget something, grandfather fears his memories of the war, and Yankel actually loses his memory and writes daily notes on his ceiling to remember. The question comes up what we are without memories and to what extent do our memories define us and what if we cannot remember? A further prominent theme is the theme of beginnings and endings. It seems that with each death a new life begins which emphasizes the image of a constant cycle of life. Trachim dies and Brod is born, Yankel dies and Brod gets pregnant. Safran leaves the shtetl to go to America, which is the beginning of Jonathan‘s life. When grandfather commits suicide in the end, he does so only after Alex has found the courage to stand up to his father.

Chapter 27 is yet another chapter that shows that writing is very important. Before Safran marries Zosha, he has a seven-year affair with a Gypsy girl. They spend their time together in

deep forests and write notes for each other. Safran cuts out his notes from newspaper articles about the war, which is also a symbol for the closeness of death and love. It can also be seen as the attempt to create something beautiful (love notes) from something horrible (articles about war). The Gypsy girl does not write down her love notes on paper but carves them into the surrounding trees. These notes are forever, they are probably still there when Jonathan, Alex and grandfather reach Trachimbrod, and thus keep their love alive.

So far memory and remembering have always been a good thing for the people of Trachimbrod. This changes during the last four chapters of this narrative strand. Chapters 30, 31, 31 and 33 tell the story of the destruction of Trachimbrod. Safran and Zosha are finally married. One day when they have sex, Nazi bombs come down close to the village. It is only now that Safran has his first orgasm and Zosha gets pregnant with their first daughter. Safran realizes he is in love but does not know yet with whom. He consults the statue of the Kolker, the sun dial, and realizes that the only person he can and will ever love – and with whom he already is in love – is his yet unborn daughter. Although the bombs have exploded near Trachimbrod, the Nazis do not attack until nine months later. This time span is significant as it is also the time a woman is pregnant. This can be seen as a symbol for an approaching change. A new world will be born together with Safran‘s daughter, although nobody yet knows what this world will be like.

After the bomb attack on the village the people change. They get caught up in their memories and desperately try to piece them together. Daily life comes to a halt because people are so obsessed with their memories that they forget how to do things, even how to communicate. The Jews sixth sense, memory, is finally what costs them their lives. Because of their (obsession with) memories they are unprepared when the Nazis finally attack Trachimbrod on Trachimsday nine months later and destroy the village, killing all the villagers. They drown them in the river Brod and amidst death and destruction Zosha‘s baby girl is born and rises to the surface as Brod once did. But unlike Brod, the baby girl dies. Only Safran survives. He has a lame arm and does not jump into the water like the rest of the people because he cannot swim (although this information is not confirmed as Lista/the woman later states that Safran left Trachimbrod before the Nazi attack – again, not-knowing, fact and fiction become apparent in the novel). He is the one that rises from death and chaos to begin a new life somewhere else. The story of Trachimbrod comes to the end where it began three hundred

years ago, on the banks of the river Brod. The only things that remain of the village and its villagers are memories.

2.3 Character Analysis

There are three main characters in Everything is Illuminated. Alexander Perchov, the narrator of a significant part of the book as well as the writer of the letters included in the novel, his grandfather, also called Alexander, and Jonathan Safran Foer. To avoid misunderstandings, the grandfather will be referred to as ‗the grandfather‘ here. Jonathan Safran Foer, the third main character, shares the name with the author and is based on him as well, but is not to be mistaken for the author, as the story is clearly fictional, although based on personal experiences of the author. A further character that will be mentioned in this analysis is Alexander Perchov‘s father, who is also called Alexander. To avoid misunderstandings he will be referred to as ‗the father‘.

2.3.1 Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan is a young Jewish American in his twenties. In chapter 5 Alex describes Jonathan as they meet for the first time at the train station.

[…] I was very flabbergasted by his appearance. This is an American? I thought. And also, This is a Jew? He was severely short. He wore spectacles and had diminutive hairs which were not split anywhere, but rested on his head like a Shapka. […] He did not appear like either the Americans I had witnessed in magazines, with yellow hairs and muscles, or the Jews from history books, with no hairs and prominent bones. […] I was underwhelmed to the maximum. (Foer. EI: 31-32)

It is not only Jonathan‘s appearance which causes confusion in Alex. Jonathan is also a vegetarian, something Alex has never heard of before. Jonathan is also terribly scared by dogs, although he cannot really tell why and admits that his mother has been afraid of dogs and probably transferred her fear onto him. When asked about his future career plans he states that he does not yet know what he wants to do. He likes to write but seems to be uncomfortable when he is asked about his writing. 19

―You are a writer!‖ ―Shhhh.‖ ―But it is a good career, yes?‖ ―What?‖ ―Writing. It is very noble.‖ ―Noble? I don‘t know.‖ ―Do you have any books published?‖ ―No, but I‘m still very young.‖ ―Do you have stories published?‖ ―No. well, one or two.‖ ―What are they dubbed?‖ ―Forget it.‖ ―This is a first-rate title.‖ ―No. I mean, forget it.‖ (Foer. EI: 69)

Jonathan further states that ―I don‘t even like them [the stories].‖ (Foer. EI: 69) This illustrates that he is not only uncomfortable with being asked about his writing but also with the writing itself. He calls his stories ―apprentice pieces‖ (Foer. EI: 69) and adds that he was just learning how to write. When asked why he writes Jonathan answers that he thought that he was born to write but immediately after admits that he never really believed this. He confesses to Alex that he feels that he has difficulties expressing himself and says that ―I want to express myself. […] I‘m looking for my voice.‖ (Foer. EI: 70)

Looking for a voice can be interpreted as looking for an identity, which is a major theme in the novel. The following passage illustrates this rather well. ―‘Do you write because you have a thing to say?‘ ‗No.‘‖ (Foer. EI: 70) Jonathan feels as if he has nothing to say and this may be another reason, one that he is not even aware of, for his journey and his need to recover his grandfather‘s past. For Jonathan, memory is very important. He has an almost desperate need to find out where his ancestors lived and through his writing tries to recreate their story. Through creating the story of Trachimbrod, he is also able to find an identity for himself.

2.3.2 Alexander Perchov

Alexander Perchov is in his twenties. He lives with his parents and his younger brother in Odessa. He speaks a very charming variety of English and thinks of himself as a ―premium person to be with.‖ (Foer. EI: 2). He describes himself as ―unequivocally tall‖, with ―handsome hairs, which are split in the middle.‖ (Foer. EI: 3) He has an ―aristocratic smile‖ (Foer. EI: 4), ―blue and resplendent‖ (Foer. EI: 4) eyes and his ―stomach is very strong, although it presently lacks muscles.‖ (Foer. EI: 4) Alex pretends to be a very outgoing person who likes girls and parties and is up all night touring through Odessa‘s most famous nightclubs spending money, when in truth he saves all his money for his future and spends the nights sitting on the beach. Alex is obsessed with America. He dreams of emmigrating to 20

America one day together with his little brother Igor because he believes in the American Dream. Everything he knows about America he knows from magazines and the trends he follows are rather old-fashioned. He is very excited about Jonathan but very disappointed when he finally meets him, because Jonathan does not meet his expectations at first. Although Alex pretends to be very ‗cool‘, he is actually a very troubled young man. His father is abusive and Alex feels that he fails as an older brother because he cannot protect his little brother from being abused too.

It is interesting that Alex is the translator of the group. His misuse of English constantly leads to misunderstandings and complicates the relationship between him and Jonathan. Also, he seems to have difficulties with communication in general. He sees that his grandfather struggles with his memories, he knows that something has to be said to end the father‘s abuse of the family but he is not able to find the courage and strength to talk to his grandfather or to stand up to his father. Only after the journey to Trachimbrod is over, does Alex find his voice and is thus able to fight for his brother and a better life without abuse. Although language is somehow an obstacle, Alex bonds with Jonathan over time. It is their relationship and the fact that Jonathan asks him to write about the trip and to review his own writing that provides Alex with a voice. And it is this voice that makes him strong enough to face his father.

Jonathan and Alex can be seen as different versions of each other. The question comes up what would have happened if not Safran but grandfather had escaped to America.

―I want to see Trachimbrod,‖ the hero said. ―To see what it‘s like, how my grandfather grew up, where I would be now if it weren‘t for the war.‖ ―You would be Ukrainian.‖ ―That‘s right.‖ ―Like me.‖ ―I guess.‖ (Foer. EI: 59)

Alex can be seen as the Ukrainian version of Jonathan and so Jonathan presents the American version of Alex. One has what the other desires but in the end they realize that although they are so much alike, staying in contact is not a possibility. They have shared an experience that has left both of them changed. They have both taken a look into a world that could have been theirs, but they have to realize that not knowing is sometimes better. In the end, Alex has to acknowledge the fact that he is never going to emmigrate to America with Igor. Nevertheless, after his father has finally left, Alex finally has a new and better life ahead of him, and again

the theme of a life-cycle is introduced. Alex‘s new life starts at the same time his grandfather ends his life. The new generation can begin change to the world.

2.3.3 The Grandfather

Grandfather is eighty years old by the end of the novel. His name is Alexander, which is, as is revealed later, not his real name. He is described by Alex as fat, with gold teeth and ―ample hairs on his face‖. (Foer. EI: 4) Grandfather is retired and lives on the same street as Alex and his family, later moving in with the family for good. He was married to Anna, who died of cancer and since then Grandfather claims to be blind. He does not like Jews and, according to Alex, he has never left the Ukraine and only went as far as Kiev. Like every character in the book, grandfather has secrets. His real name is Eli and he was not born in Odessa but in Kolki, a town close to Trachimbrod. He witnessed the massacres in World War II but managed to escape alive. Grandfather carries around a lot of guilt. In the war he betrayed his best friend in order to save his wife and child and since then he has been haunted by the memories of the day when his friend was killed because of him. He cries a lot when he is alone (or thinks he is) and is full of shame when someone notices his sadness. He cares a lot for Alex and Igor but is unable to communicate his feelings. He cannot face his past and thus decides to become blind, but he is not able to turn a blind eye to the grievances in his family. His guilt, however, bars him from doing something about it. After Jonathan has returned to America, grandfather still wants to find Augustine. It turns out that finding her is of more importance to him than it ever was to Jonathan. Grandfather is only able to overcome his guilt and shame by returning to Trachimbrod and Kolki, and by reliving what happened there fifty years ago. It is only after the journey to Trachimbrod that he finds something that might be best described as closure and is finally able to leave the past behind – which in his case means embracing death. In the end he commits suicide, not because ―I cannot endure. […] I am complete with happiness, and it is what I must do, and I will do it.‖ (Foer. EI: 276)

2.4 Everything is Illuminated as a Metafictional Novel

Metafiction is defined as a form of fiction in which the text is ‗aware‘ that it is a work of fiction. A metafictional novel does not attempt to persuade the reader that it is not a work of fiction but deliberately addresses its fictional character, and is also full of irony and self- reflection. Although metafiction is connected foremost with postmodernist literature, it can already be found in Cervante‘s Don Quichote (1605/1615) and Laurence Sterne‘s Tristram Shandy (1759-67). Contemporary metafictional works include Paul Auster‘s The New York Trilogy and Philip Roth‘s Operation Shylock. According to Wikipedia, some characteristic devices in metafictional literature are: - A story about a writer creating a story [… - A story about a reader reading a book […] - A story which features itself […] - A story containing another work of fiction within itself […] - A story addressing the specific conventions of story […] - A novel where the narrator intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story […] - A book […] which seeks interaction with the reader […] - Narrative footnotes, which continue the story while commenting on it […] - An autobiographical fiction in which the main character, by the last parts of the book, has written the first parts and is reading some form of it to an audience […]4

Foer‘s Everything is Illuminated is clearly a metafictional work. It is the story of a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer who searches for the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather in World War II. There are three narrative strands in the novel, each of which presents a different part of the story. First, there is the ‗hero‘ Jonathan Safran Foer, who is also the author of the chapters on Trachimbrod. The second narrator is Alexander Perchov who, as it is revealed throughout the story, wrote the chapters that tell the story of the trip through the Ukraine. The third narrative strand consists of letters that Alexander writes to Jonathan after their trip. Everything is Illuminated is also somehow autobiographical, as Jonathan Safran Foer has indeed made a trip to the Ukraine for the same reason the character

4 „Metafiction―. Wikipedia. [Online]. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction [2011, Dec. 22]. 23

Jonathan Safran Foer has. However, we know that in reality Foer never found the woman and all the events he presents in his novel are invented. The novel therefore uses several of the above listed metafictional devices. Everything is Illuminated is a) a novel about a person creating a story, it b) contains a reader reading a story, it c) incorporates another work of fiction within itself, d) the narrators expose themselves as narrators of the stories included in the novel, and e) it is also partly an autobiographical fiction. a) A novel about a person creating a story In the novel, the character Jonathan Safran Foer writes a story about the village of Trachimbrod. The story is based on facts the character has gathered before and on his journey to and through the Ukraine but is itself fictional. At the same time the second main character in the book, Alexander Perchov, turns the events of the journey into a story. b) A novel about a reader reading a story This feature of metafiction is indirectly presented in the novel. We know from Alex‘s letters that Alex and Jonathan read each other‘s work, as Alex writes about the journey on Jonathan‘s behalf and reads Jonathan‘s chapters on Trachimbrod because Jonathan has asked him to. c) A novel that incorporates another work of fiction The chapters on Trachimbrod include several works of fiction written by the people of Trachimbrod throughout the centuries. These works are featured repeatedly in the novel and can count as fictional works included in the novel. d) A narrator who exposes himself as the narrator In his letters, Alex frequently comments on his writing, thus exposing himself as the narrator of one of the narrative strands. e) An autobiographical novel Although the character Jonathan Safran Foer and the author Jonathan Safran Foer are clearly not the same person, the book is still based on autobiographical experiences. Like Foer the character, Foer the author went on a trip to the Ukraine for the same reason and just like the character the author afterwards writes a book about it. The fact that the novel is at least based on the life of the author leads, with regard to the metafictional quality of the book, to the questions, how much of what Alex says about Jonathan in the novel and how much of what the character Jonathan says about his writing is a reflection of the author Jonathan Safran Foer. In an interview with HarperCollinsPublisher Foer states that ―Now, as for the particular 24

JSF [Jonathan Safran Foer] who wrote the book, and the one in the book, they are profoundly different people who happen to share a profound amount.‖5 However, Foer does not deny that there are times when the ‗two Foer‘s‘ are closer together than usual. Foer wonders if he will ―[…] grow away from the JSF in the book, or will we grow toward each other? In 20 years […] will we be like strangers? Or will we know each other completely?‖6 There is a similarity between the character Foer and the author Foer that cannot be denied. It is not only the biographical facts they share (both are graduates from university on a search for a woman that might or might not have saved the grandfather from the Nazis), but also how they feel. Foer (the author) admits that it took him a week to write the first sentence of Everything is Illuminated and that he was constantly wondering about the things he was writing about. In the interview with HarpercollinsPublisher he states that the problem ―was imagination – the initial problem, and ultimate liberation, of imagining.‖7 As his journey to the Ukraine had not borne any fruits, he found himself in a position where he actually had nothing to write about, nothing to say. On page 70 in the novel Jonathan (the character) says: ―It‘s so hard to express yourself. […] I‘m looking for my voice.‖ (Foer. EI: 70) He also admits that he does not write because he has something important to say. Reading the interview brings to mind these passages of the book as they seem to be a reflection of the feelings the author had when he started to write the book. Despite all the similarities between the character Foer and the author Foer it has to be kept in mind that the two are not the same person. It is of course tempting to think that there is more of Foer in the book than there actually is, but the fact is that the book, although (loosely) based on personal experiences of the author, is not an autobiography – it is a metafictional piece of literature written by an author who, as Foer said, happens ―[…] to share a profound amount‖8 with his main character.

5 ―Jonathan Safran Foer on Everything is Illuminated – An Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer”. HarperCollinsPublishers. Authors Section. [Online]. http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=25419&isbn13=9780060529703&displayType =bookinterview. [2011, Dec. 22] 6 ibid. 7 ibid. 8 ibid.

2.5 Holocaust Literature and Jewish American Literature

The term holocaust literature denotes a genre in literature which, according to a model that has been developed at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, comprises a variety of text types. Despite various differences in form all of these text types share a thematic and content-wise connection to the Holocaust. Included are fictional as well as non-fictional (or authentic) texts. The author is often connected to the Holocaust, either being a direct witness or a member of the next generation, but this connection is not an exclusive criterion for holocaust literature. Everything is Illuminated is clearly part of the genre holocaust literature. Foer‘s grandmother had survived the Holocaust, which makes him a member of the second generation, and not only Everything is Illuminated but also Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close deal with the Holocaust and/or the events leading up to it. Foer‘s novels feature two types of characters. There are those who are direct witnesses to the Holocaust and its terrible events and there is the second generation who either writes or is told about the events before, during and after World War II. Yet, all characters are invented and the author has never experienced the horrors of war himself. The question arises how much truth is in the depictions of the Holocaust that are imbedded in the novels? Although the University of Gießen does not list fact and truth as criteria for holocaust literature, one must wonder how somebody who has not experienced World War II (or similar horrific events) himself can possibly write a book about something as horrible as the Holocaust. Foer once stated that he experienced great difficulties when he started writing Everything is Illuminated. He says that

What made beginning so difficult […] was imagination. […] I wondered, is the Holocaust exactly that which cannot be imagined? What are one‘s responsibilities to ―the truth‖ of a story, and what is ―truth‖? […] The Holocaust presents a real moral quandary for the artist. Is one allowed to be funny? Is one allowed to attempt verisimilitude? To forgo it? What are the moral implications of quaintness? Of wit? Of sentimentality? What, if anything, is untouchable? 9

Many books have been written about the Holocaust, a great number of them by writers from the second and third generation. They have all taken on the task to portray the ‗not – portrayable‘, and they have succeeded. Maybe it is the fact that all these writers are Jewish. Jewish-American literature is an important part of American Literature. It dates back as far as

9 ibid. 26

the 17th century, when Sephardic immigrants wrote down their memoirs, and has developed into a well flourishing genre that includes fiction, poetry and drama. Among the most important and famous Jewish literary figures are Gertrude Stein, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth. In their works they explore the voids between secular society and Jewish tradition. Assimilation, the Holocaust and cultural identity and the rediscovery of their roots have always been major themes in their works. Malamud, Bellow and Roth all wrote about Jews who have managed to establish a good life in America, yet they have to deal with alienation. Contemporary Jewish writers often discuss the effects of the Holocaust on children of Holocaust survivors, something that has, although the Holocaust has always been a powerful force in American Jewish Identity, only recently come to the attention of the writers. Jewish American writing entered the mainstream only in the middle of the 20th century, although it has been a major part of American literature for decades. Leslie Fiedler is said to have stated that finally ―Jewish authors have become ‗representative Americans‘‖10 when they started to write about the nature of alienation. Pulitzer prizes and book awards were given to Jewish American authors and ―A Jewish ethos surged to the fore, almost regional in its accent – urban, ironic, richly wordy […]‖11 Where being Jewish was not too important for the first major Jewish American writers it became, from the 1970s onward, ―as natural as breathing, sleeping and sex.‖12 Jewish guilt and a deliberate rejection of Jewish things were common to all works written in this period. The writers from this period represented the voice of ―the American Jew moving into the mainstream.‖13 The works of authors such as Cynthia Ozick represent another kind of Jewish voice, a voice that is again filled with identity, that is traditional and that draws on a rich Jewish vocabulary. Being Jewish became natural again, taken as given by this group of Jewish American writers. In the 21st century a new group of Jewish American writers emerged. Mysticism became a theme and writers such as Dara Horn put a focus on characters who struggle with traditional Judaism, whereas Leegant or King deal with the transformation of Jewish life and Jewish (American) Literature by the foundation of

10 ―Mainstream American Jewish Literature. At mid-century, Jewish writers connected with American readers by writing about alienation.‖ MyJewishLearning. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Jewish_American_Literature/Into_the_Literary_Mainstre am.shtml?CLAA [2011, Dec. 10]. 11 ibid. 12 Roiphe, Anne. (1999) ―Jewish American Literature: 1970-2000. For this crop of American writers, being Jewish is as natural as breathing, sleeping , and sex.‖ MyJewishLearning. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Jewish_American_Literature/1970-2000.shtml?CLAA [2011, Dec. 10]. 13 ibid.

the state of Israel in their stories. Social realism is still found in Jewish American Literature but it is not as prominent as it used to be. Existential questions appear again in Jewish American Literature, the most important example here is Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Everything is Illuminated. Together with his wife, Jewish American writer Nicole Krauss, he is the ―New […] Kid[s] on the Literary Block.‖14 His first novel deals with the question of identity, of „Who am I? and ‗What am I to do?‘. Saul, Malamud and Roth have dealt with the split between secular society and Jewish tradition, something that Foer is familiar with. ―There was a split – a strange and exhilarating split – between the Jonathan that thought (secular), and the Jonathan that did (Jewish).‖15 Foer follows a long tradition of Jewish American writing and although he has drifted away from typical Jewish topics with his latest novels, a Jewish background or influence cannot be denied. Guilt is still a prominent theme in Foer‘s work, although the Holocaust has been replaced by other horrific events. Immigration, although never a prominent theme, has faded into the background even more, and the theme of alienation has become more personal than societal. ―‘Look at me,[…]I‘m going everywhere!‘‖16, said Saul Bellow‘s Augie March in his praised novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), and that is indeed what Jewish American Literature has done in the 21st century, and it is what Foer is still doing.

2.6 Final Remarks

Everything is Illuminated is a magic piece of literature that fascinates readers all over the world. Stylistically diverse it features a number of major themes such as love and death, the importance of memory and chance. What started as a major thesis for university turned into a novel that Foer describes as a collage. The book is a representative of the metafictional genre

14 Pinsker, Sanford. ―Jewish-American Fiction in the 21st Century. Vibrancy and diversity mark the new crop of novelists and story writers‖. MyJewishLearning. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Jewish_American_Literature/The_21st_Century.shtml?C LAA [2011, Dec. 10]. 15 ―Jonathan Safran Foer on Everything Is Illuminated - An Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer‖. HarperCollinsPublishers. Author Section. [Online] http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=25419&isbn13=9780060529703&displayType =bookinterview [2011, Dec. 10]. 16 Pinsker, Sanford. ―Jewish-American Fiction in the 21st Century. Vibrancy and diversity mark the new crop of novelists and story writers‖. MyJewishLearning. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Jewish_American_Literature/The_21st_Century.shtml?C LAA [2011, Dec. 10].

as well as a strong voice of Jewish American Literature. When he started to work on the book Foer wondered if a story about the Holocaust was allowed to be funny – the answer is easy: it is. Among many other works that belong to the genre of holocaust literature this novel strikes the reader with hilarious comedy and tragic sadness at the same time. Foer, a Jewish American writer of the third generation, has managed to write a ―quixotic misadventure, at sharp turns comedic and tragic‖17 using what he ―[…] had seen [on the trip through the Ukraine] as a canvas, rather than the paints.‖18 The metafictional story about a young Jewish man searching for answers about his grandfather‘s past is as much a story about the Holocaust as it is a story about the search for Jewish identity, a theme that has been prominent in Jewish American Literature in one way or the other for decades. A passage in Everything is Illuminated describes a glow that comes into existence when many people make love at the same time. The glow is so strong that it can be seen from space, and it says ―We are here, and we are alive.‖ (Foer. EI 96) In some way Foer‘s novel says the same: We (the Jewish American writers) are here, and we are alive.

17 ―Jonathan Safran Foer on Everything Is Illuminated - An Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer‖. HarperCollinsPublishers. Author Section. [Online] http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=25419&isbn13=9780060529703&displayType =bookinterview [2011, Dec. 22]. 18 ibid.

3 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

3.1 Introduction

Jonathan Safran Foer‘s second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been praised by critics all over the world. The book and its main character have been called ―[…] utterly engaging […]‖19, ―[…] dramatically original […]‖20 and is said to be ―[…] exceptional writing‖21. However, the book has also met with some harsh criticism. Harry Siegel from the New York Press calls it ―[…] extremely cloying and incredibly false […]‖22 and states that ―[…] Foer is supposed to be our new Philip Roth, though his fortune-cookie syllogisms and pointless illustrations and typographical tricks don't at all match up to or much resemble Roth even at his most inane. […]‖23.But despite all the discussions Foer has triggered with his second novel, the book sold briskly and has also, like his first novel, been adapted into a Hollywood movie. It is thus obvious that becoming one of the most polarizing figures in modern literature did not harm his success.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is indeed not a typical novel. It is packed with pictures, odd typefaces, drawings and even blank pages, all of which make it somewhat more than just a book. If it were possible to put sound and smell on pages, it is very likely Foer would have done that. Reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an adventure – it requires an open mind and is not always easy. The book combines traditional narrative with visual techniques that are not normally found in novels and thus challenge the reader in a unique way. Yet although the visual devices used are the reason why the book has been much criticized, they are also the reason why readers love it. Another point of criticism is that Foer ‗borrowed‘ a little bit too much from other writers. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is indeed a collage, a collection of words, pictures and drawings. Foer himself once said that ―[…] Jay-Z samples from Annieone of the least likely combinations imaginableand it changes music.

19 Glazebrook, Olivia [2005, June 11). ―Wearing heavy boots lightly‖. Spectator. Books Section. [Online]. http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/21468/part_2/wearing-heavy-boots-lightly.thtml [2011, Dec. 22] 20 Adams, Tim (2005, May 29). ―A nine-year-old and 9/11‖. The Observer. Culture Section [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/29/fiction.features [2011, Dec. 22]. 21 Foer.ELIC. Blurb. 22 Siegel, Harry [2005, April 20). ―Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False‖.NewYorkPress. [Online] http://www.nypress.com/article-11418-extremely-cloying-incredibly-false.html [2011, Dec. 22]. 23 ibid. 30

What if novelists were as willing to borrow? […]‖24.One might argue that doing so would be mere plagiarism, but what Foer means is borrowing ideas, visions, not copying whole paragraphs from other novels. Nevertheless, Harry Siegel, writer for the New York Press believes that Foer ―[…] pillages other authors‘ techniques, stripping them of their context and using them merely for show […].‖25 He recognizes the illustrations and the parts about Dresden from Sebald, the division of the grandparent‘s apartment into something and nothing from Borges, the tale of the sixth borough form Calvino‘s Cosmicomics and the Yes and No tattoos from Night of the Hunter. Similar criticism came up after Foer had published his latest novel Tree of Codes, which he literally cut out from Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodiles. Critics argued that Foer has not written a single word on his own in the novel and that the book can therefore not be called a piece of literature on its own. Tree of Codes will be discussed in chapter 4, but now Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close will be examined more closely.

3.2 Formal Analysis

3.2.1 Structure

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close consists of 17 chapters. Neither are the chapters numbered nor is there a table of contents at the beginning of the book. For an easier understanding of the following analysis, an overview and table of contents shall be given first.

Table of Contents

1. WHAT THE? page 1 2. WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63 page 16 3. GOOGOLPLEX page 35 4. MY FEELINGS page 75 5. THE ONLY ANIMAL page 86 6. WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63 page 108 7. HEAVY BOOTS HEAVIER BOOTS page 142

24 ibid. 25 ibid. 31

8. MY FEELINGS page 174 9. HAPPINESS, HAPPINESS page 187 10. WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 4/12/78 page 208 11. THE SIXTH BOROUGH page 217 12. MY FEELINGS page 224 13. ALIVE AND ALONE page 234 14. WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 9/11/03 page 262 15. A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM page 285 16. MY FEELINGS page 306 17. BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE page 315

The chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17 are told from the main character‘s point of view, whereas chapters 2, 6, 10 and 14 are told by the grandfather in the form of a letter. The remaining chapters 4, 8, 12 and 16 are told by the grandmother. Reading the novel, the reader might not even be aware of this tight, mathematical structure. Only after adding numbers to chapters does the structure reveal itself: all chapters with uneven numbers are told by main character Oskar Schell, every fourth chapter by his grandmother and between the chapters told by the grandfather there are also always three other chapters. In other words, there is a recurring pattern in the novel with regard to the narrator: Oskar – Grandfather – Oskar – Grandmother – Oskar – Grandfather – Oskar – Grandmother – Oskar – Grandfather – Oskar – Grandmother – Oskar – Grandfather – Oskar – Grandmother – Oskar.

3.2.2 Photographs and Illustrations

All together, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close includes 68 photographs, 50 of which are imbedded in the narrative. The other 18 photographs can be found in an unpaginated appendix to the story. The very first three pages of the novel – even before the title page or dedication page – show three motives: a keyhole, flying doves and a three-storey building. The last 15 pages come as a flip book, which shows a human figure flying backwards through the air to the top of one of the burning towers of the World Trade Center. Not all the photographs in the book are unique. Some of them appear again in later chapters. The first photograph appears on page 29 in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63, which is the second chapter of the book. It is the photograph of a lock. The photograph, like all the others in the book, is 32

black and white. The very same lock appears again on page 134 in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63. The two photographs are not identical. Although they show the same lock the position of the key changes. The chapters in which the two photographs are included have the same title and date but are not to be mistaken for the same chapter. On page 115 in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOUR ARE 5/21/63 the reader comes across another picture of a lock, but this one is different to the ones on pages 29 and 134. The most important difference is probably that the key is missing. Two more photographs of locks are found on page 212 in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 4/12/78 and on page 265 in WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 9/11/03. They show locks that seem to be identical but the second one shows a keyhole too. All photographs of locks are found in chapters told from the grandfather‘s perspective. In the first photo the key is half turned, in the second it is missing altogether. In the third photograph, the key is there again, in a vertical position, in the fourth photograph there is not even a keyhole, and in the fifth photograph the lock seems to be upside down, with the keyhole over the doorknob, and again the key is missing. That all the photographs of (door)locks are found in the chapters told by the grandfather is a very important fact. The grandfather, who has lost his ability to speak, feels locked away from the people and life surrounding him. He is desperate to get in touch again with his environment (which is also why he came back to his wife), but is not able to open the doors he slammed decades ago when he surrendered to his past and left his wife and unborn son. There have been a lot of discussions about the positions of the keys in the locks – discussions about whether the position is connected to the story or not. This question is not that simple to answer. First of all, the photographs show different doors, one of which does not even have a doorknob. This could of course mean that the grandfather fails to communicate with the people surrounding him in every possible way, each door representing a person. The doors can also be interpreted as doors to the present, the past and the future – the grandfather has not overcome his past but it is still waiting for him behind a door, lurking out, constantly shadowing his life preventing him from reconnecting to the people he loves (doors to the present) and also preventing him from starting a new life (doors to the future). The change in position of the key can be seen as differently successful attempts of the grandfather to reconnect and communicate with his family. It is, however, more likely that the photographs cannot be interpreted at all, as the chapters told by the grandmother reveal that the grandfather took numerous pictures of everything in their first apartment, including the doorknobs and locks. It is further revealed that the grandfather has put the photographs into his daybook, through which he flips every 33

day. It is the aim of the photographs and illustrations in the novel to create a life-like experience. Whenever the characters look through photographs, the reader sees the same pictures, which should add to the feeling that the reader is actually seeing what the characters see. Therefore the photographs of locks and doorknobs, and the position of the keys in the very same, might not carry meaning at all but is just a mere device to create a feeling of reality.

The theme of keys is taken on in the chapters narrated by Oskar. On page 53, in GOOGOLPLEX, the reader finds the picture of a wall full of keys. It seems to be a picture taken in a key maker‘s shop. Another picture of a key is found on page 303 in A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM. The photograph shows a key, probably silver (the top part is not fully shown), on a piece of rope. It is an interesting fact that all keys are included in chapters narrated by Oskar, whereas all photographs of locks are found in chapters told by the grandfather. The grandfather has locked himself in a prison of guilt and shame. He is not able to connect to the people surrounding him. He has closed all doors behind him when he left his wife, his unborn child and America decades ago, and now, having lost language, he cannot open them anymore, cannot reconnect or communicate to and with others. His inability to speak is the reason why he cannot overcome his past, why he cannot start his new life. Language might be seen as the key to a new life, and as he has lost language, he cannot open any door, thus cannot start a new life. The grandfather is only able to connect to Oskar in some way. For him, Oskar carries the key he is looking for. On the other hand, Oskar is looking for the lock that fits the key he has found in his father‘s cabinet. He, too, has lost the ability to communicate to others. Oskar cannot talk about how he feels, about what burdens him so much and why he is suffering. Only when he meets his grandfather he is able to talk about his father‘s messages on the answering machine, his guilt and shame about not having picked up the phone that day. In this context, the grandfather represents the lock that Oskar is searching for, and Oskar represents the key that can open the doors his grandfather has locked a long time ago.

Another recurring motive is flying doves. A photograph of flying doves is found right at the beginning of the book, on the second unnumbered page. It shows a flock of doves accelerating into the air. In the middle of the book, on pages 166 and 167, there is another photograph of a flock of doves. On a closer look, the reader can see that the pages show part of the picture on the second unnumbered page at the beginning. The second dove motive is 34

included in HEAVY BOOTS HEAVIER BOOTS, a chapter told by main character Oskar Schell. Pages 166 and 167 also come very close to the middle of the book (which would be page 163). Doves are generally a symbol of peace, which is also a sub-theme in the novel. Both Oskar and his grandfather are trying to find peace, to make peace with their past. The picture of the flying doves is included in HEAVY BOOTS HEAVIER BOOTS, a chapter in which Oskar is clearly depressed, very sad and lonely. The chapter also contains one of his father‘s answering machine messages, which are the main source for Oskar‘s loss of peace. The photo is in a strong contrast to the content of the chapter, especially the end, when Oskar confronts his mother about being in love with Ron (doves are also a symbol for love) and finally tells her he wished that she had died on 9/11. The flying doves appear at a point of the story where the relationship between Oskar and his mother is more strained than ever. Also, Oskar is sadder and more desperate than ever before. The photograph of the doves seems like a sheet anchor, but neither Oskar nor his mother is able to reach it. Peace seems to fly away, seems to become unreachable, and this is emphasized by the flock of doves that descends into the air.

A further recurring motive is the motive of a human-like figure falling from the top of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The motive first appears on page 59 amidst a handful of other photographs in the chapter GOOGOLPLEX, told by Oskar Schell. It then appears again on page 62 in the very same chapter. The two stills are not identical, the second one being an extreme close-up from the first, only showing the figure falling from the tower. Between the two photographs, spread over pages 60 and 61, is a double page photograph of New York, showing a wide white hole in the middle. The reader again encounters the photograph of a falling figure on page 205 in HAPPINESS, HAPPINESS, but this time the figure is a little further down in the picture. Again, the chapter is told from Oskar Schell‘s point of view. At the end of his novel Foer included 15 pages (unpaginated) which form a flipbook. The flipbook shows a figure ascending into the air to the top of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. The last photograph shows only the tower but not the figure. The narrative wants the reader to believe that all the photographs in the novel are either part of Oskar‘s journal or grandfather‘s daybook. Oskar himself says that he found the photograph of the falling man on the internet. He is constantly wondering if it is his father who is falling from the tower. The photograph symbolizes all of Oskar‘s problems. His father‘s death weighs heavy on his shoulders and he is not able to overcome it. The photograph of New

York presents itself with a big blank spot in the middle. This spot symbolizes the empty lot that the destruction of the Twin Towers has left, and also the emptiness that Oskar‘s father‘s death has left in him. It is a blank spot, a hole that has to be filled again. The double page photograph is embedded between two shots of the falling man, one full size the other a close up. These three actually extremely terrifying photographs are part of a series of pictures of all sorts. The pictures – a couple of primitive men, an astronaut returning to earth, a box of jewels, etc. – represent everything that Oskar actually is: His family owns a jewelry business, he is very interested in history and what goes on in the world, he used to reflect with his father. With the attacks on the World Trade Center Oskar‘s life has been turned upside down, the attacks have torn a hole inside his life. The photographs, reminders (or remains) of a once happy life, are violently interrupted by the horrific image of a man falling off the World Trade Center. Yet, life goes on and the unsettling images of 9/11 are followed by usual motives. The photograph on the third page of the book (unpaginated) shows part of an apartment building. It is slightly blurred and together with the picture of the flying doves (second page, unpaginated) and the close-up of the lock (first page, unpaginated) forms the beginning of the book. On page 103, there is photograph of a blurred window, and on a closer look the reader recognizes that the photograph is just a close up from the one on page II. The picture here shows the window on the middle left, where someone seems to be standing at the window. The picture is included in THE ONLY ANIMAL, told by Oskar Schell.

Included in GOOGOLPLEX are 4 pages (pages 45, 47, 48 and 49) that show the sheets of a paper pad that sits next to a display in an art supply store. The pages are, unlike the photographs, in color, and each page is unique. On page 63, also in GOOGOLPLEX, the word ‗purple‘ is written capitalized and green. It does not appear on any of the 4 pages that show the sheets from the paper pad. The illustrations aim at creating a reality-experience. The reader is supposed to get the feeling that he is in indeed in the art supply store and not only reading about it. For Oskar, the presented pages are the first hint at what the words on the envelope from his father‘s closet mean. This importance for Oskar is emphasized by the fact that the pages are in color. It is also a great gimmick to get the full attention of the readers. The woman at the supply store explains to Oskar that most people who try out a pen would write either the name of color of the pen or their own name. She adds that it is very hard to write the name of a color in a different color and points out that the word ‗Black‘ is capitalized, which adds to the assumption that it is not the color black but the name Black.

Reading this passage the reader feels the need to check out this theory by going back to the colored pages. The illustrations invite the reader to check out every single word on the pages before reading on. They create an illusion of reality, of actually being right at the arts supply store with the main character, which is one of the most fascinating features of the novel.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also includes a number of pictures of people. On page 54 in GOOGOLPLEX there is a photograph of Stephen Hawking followed by a photograph of an actor posing as Hamlet on page 55. Page 64 features the photograph of a tennis player lying on the court, page 67 shows a French astronaut after having safely returned home while page 246 shows a photograph in which we see the reflection of people on a glass surface, a fence, a meter and some garbage bags. Except for the photograph on page 246 (ALIVE AND ALONE), all those pictures are found in GOOGOLPLEX. The chapter also includes a picture of two early humans on page 66. Until 9/11, the most important person in Oskar‘s life was his father. With the father‘s death, Oskar suddenly finds himself alone in the world. His interest in famous, successful people – interestingly a lot of them are scientists of some sort – can be seen as the search for a new idol, a father figure that will lead him through this difficult period of his life. Oskar seems to seek advice from everybody but his closest family. He writes to Hawking and Godall with a certain boldness, asking if he could be their protégé. This strongly indicates how alone he feels and how strong his need for guidance is.

GOOGOLPLEX also includes the folding pattern for a paper airplane (page 56), a photograph of two mating turtles (page 57), a photograph of a pair of hands holding a small box full of jewels (page 58) and a photograph of a set of fingerprints (page 65). All the photographs and illustrations are supposedly part of Oskar‘s journal. They, too, are part of the illusion that the reader is actually with Oskar. Especially interesting is the folding pattern for the paper airplane, as it were airplanes in the first place that destroyed Oskar‘s life. Still he clings on to the folding pattern of the plane. It is not unusual for traumatized people to cling on to something that constantly reminds them of the horrible thing that happened to them. For Oskar, for whom memory is also extremely important and who lives with the constant fear of forgetting, the folding pattern might be important because it is what reminds him the most of his father. The folding pattern could be the one thing that brings back the strongest memories of his father.

On page 98 in THE ONLY ANIMAL, there is a photograph of a woman‘s head from behind. A similar photograph, the photo of a man‘s head from behind, appears on page 294 in A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM. Both chapters are told by Oskar Schell. It is interesting that both photographs show people from behind. In the context of Oskar‘s life, the man and the woman might symbolize Oskar‘s parents. He feels he has not only lost his father on 9/11 but he believes that with each day he loses a bit more of him. At one point he explains to his mother that he cannot remember his father and be happy at the same time. His mother encourages him to go on with his life but Oskar believes that this would mean to forget his father. For him, to remember his father is extremely important. He fears that the memory of his father will vanish completely if he allows himself to be happy again and to go with his life. The portrait of the back of the man‘s head could be a symbol for this fear. People who have lost a loved one often find themselves unable to remember the loved ones voice or smile. To see a person from behind also indicates that the person is walking away, probably leaving, and that there is a distance between two people. The fact that Oskar is unable to talk to his mother about his problems and feelings causes a crack in their relationship. They are drifting apart, distancing themselves from each other. The back of the woman‘s head might be a symbol for the distance and also the misunderstandings between Oskar and his mother.

ALIVE AND ALONE includes a CNN screenshot on page 246, a photograph of New York at night on page 153, a photograph of a left hand with the word ‗Yes‘ tattooed on it as well as the photograph of a right hand with the word ‗No‘ tattooed on it (pages 260 and 261). The photographs of the tattooed hands separate the chapter ALIVE AND ALONE from WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOUR ARE 9/11/03. They can be seen as a symbol of the change of narrators (ALIVE AND ALONE being told by Oskar, WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE by his grandfather), and also as a symbol of the change in narrative techniques (Oskar telling his story, the grandfather writing his story down). The photographs of the two hands are especially interesting. Oskar‘s grandfather has lost his ability to speak, language has deserted him and he has had to find different means of communication. It is interesting that he chose to have ‗Yes‘ and ‗No‘ tattooed on his hands. Before the war the grandfather used to be a sculptor. A sculptor‘s hands are his tools with which he makes his living. For the grandfather his hands are not simply tools for crafting and sculpturing, for him they have also become tools for communication. The grandfather seems to have cut down his life to yes and no. It is

almost like a binary code by which he masters everyday life, his daybook being a temporary aid where he can write sentences down when the simplest words – yes and no – are not enough anymore. Breaking life down to yes and now also means to ignore all the things that lie in between the two extremes. This reminds the reader of Oskar and his dilemma that he is not able to remember his father and be happy at the same time. For Oskar it is either happiness or the memory of his father. It seems unthinkable for the boy that both things can exist at the same time. His grandfather is in a similar dilemma. He has survived the allied bombing of Dresden and suffered a severe trauma, the exact cause of which remains unrevealed. He has left his wife and unborn son because he, too, could not believe that he could go on with his life without losing (or accepting) his past. Breaking down a life to yes and no might seem to simplify it, but in the end it only makes it more complicated. Both Oskar and his grandfather have to acknowledge the fact that life is full of pain and sadness, but that at the same time there is also happiness and hope. Both of them have to make peace with their past, have to realize that not everything is their fault and they have to learn to let go of their past to be able to start a new life.

3.2.3 Capitalization / Corrections

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is not only a fascinating read because of the 68 pictures that are included in the novel but also because Jonathan Safran Foer used some unusual literary devices in his second novel. Colored parts, circled or crossed out words, unusual spacing between sentences or only one sentence per line are common throughout the book. Foer plays with language, explores it, trying to find out what can be done with words and paper. Foer tries to create a reading experience that is much more like a movie than a book. If the narrator corrects himself during the story, we find a crossed-out word on the page. If the narrator writes something in capitalized letters, it is also capitalized in the book. Instead of explaining how a character writes something or describing it, Foer simply writes it down as it is. The first crossed out word in the book is right in the title of chapter 7 HEAVY BOOTS HEAVIER BOOTS (Foer. ELIC: 142). The chapter is told from Oskar‘s point of view. The chapter‘s title is, as we find out later, taken from Oskar‘s feelings book, a kind of diary, in which he notes down his daily mood, giving each page/day a rating. On page 170 we find MEDIOCRE crossed out and replaced by OPTIMISTIC, BUT REALISTC, followed by

another correction, OPTIMISTIC, BUT REALISTIC crossed out and replaced by EXTREMELY DEPRESSED on page 171. A further correction follows immediately on the same page: EXTREMELY DEPRESSED is crossed out and INCREDIBLY ALONE takes its place. On pages 172 and 173 follows a whole text from the feelings book, all capitalized and the headline, INCREDIBLY ALONE, crossed out. However, Oskar is not the only one in whose narration crossed out or capitalized words appear. On page 179, in MY FEELINGS, told by Oskar‘s grandmother, three words are crossed out. ―Everything will be OK perfect‖ (Foer. ELIC: 179) and ―Everything will be OK perfect.‖ (Foer. ELIC: 179) Crossed out words also appear in chapters told from the grandfather‘s point of view. In WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 9/11/03, on page 268, the word mourn is crossed out: ―To mourn try to live.‖ (Foer. ELIC: 268) The same sentence with the same crossed out word appears again on page 273 in the same chapter.

Capitalization is also a very common stylistic element in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Not only are all chapter titles capitalized, Oskar‘s narration also includes a handful of capitalized messages. Some of them have already been stated (cf. above). Chapter 3, GOOGOLPLEX, includes two more pages with capitalized phrases. On page 72 Oskar fantasizes about a big sign on the roof that could flash messages such as ―DON‘T WORRY! DON‘T WORRY!‖ (Foer. ELIC: 72), ―IT‘S NOTHING MAJOR! IT‘S NOTHING MAJOR!‖ (Foer. ELIC: 72), ―IT‘S MAJOR! IT‘S MAJOR!‖ (Foer. ELIC: 72), and ―GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!‖ (Foer. ELIC: 72). The last message is repeated on page 73.

3.2.4 Spacing and Paragraphs

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer works with different narrative styles. Although there is a main character, Oskar Schell, he does not narrate the whole book. Schell only serves as a narrator in 9 of the 17 chapters, leaving four of the remaining 8 to be told by his grandfather and 4 by his grandmother. Foer uses several narrative techniques to make each character‘s voice distinct and unique.

Oskar‘s narration:

Oskar is a nine year-old whizz kid, deeply disturbed by his father‘s death. Therefore he keeps a feelings book, some kind of diary in which he notes nearly everything: moods, ratings of the days, photographs and all sorts of illustrations. Reading the chapters Oskar narrates, feels like reading in this feeling book. The use of capitalization and crossing out seems appropriate for a nine-year old. In chapter 9, HAPPINESS, HAPPINESS, Oskar eavesdrops on a conversation ( pages 203 - 207) of his mother and his psychiatrist by using a stethoscope on a table. He is not able to hear everything that is spoken inside the psychiatrist‘s office. Foer presents the conversation as follows:

expect too much too quickly I know you? What me? you doing? I‟m not the point. Until you‟re feeling to be impossible for Oskar to […](Foer. ELIC: 203-204)

The depiction of the conversation is only interrupted by the photograph of a figure falling from a tower (page 205).

Grandmother‘s narration:

The chapters that are told by Oskar‘s grandmother (all titled MY FEELINGS) are totally different to Oskar‘s narration. The chapters consist of letters the grandmother writes to her grandson. The stream of consciousness technique is used in these chapters. Where one might hesitate when writing a letter, there is an unusually big gap between words.

They are announcing flights over the speakers. We are not listening. […] I miss you already, Oskar. I missed you even when I was with you. That‘s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing. (Foer. ELIC: 174) 41

The four MY FEELINGS chapters form some kind of epistolary novel within the book, telling a sub-story to the novel, namely the story of the grandmother‘s life. The chapters can be read independently from the rest of the novel, they can also be taken out, leaving no gap in the remaining narration of Oskar.

Grandfather‘s narration:

The four chapters narrated by the grandfather are the most abstract in the book. They all share the same title - WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE - but have a different date added to them. The chapters too are themselves some form of epistolary novel, consisting of letters the grandfather writes to his (unborn) child, Oskar‘s father. Unlike the grandmother‘s narration, which shows too much spacing, the grandfather‘s narration which follows uses normal spacing between words and sentences.

However, there is not a single paragraph in all four chapters. Instead, the narrative sometimes stops after a quarter of the page, only to be followed by a page with only one sentence on it. Foer hereby emphasizes the fact that the grandfather at some point in his life refused to speak another word. Instead, he has the words ‗Yes‘ and ‗No‘ tattooed on the palms of his hands and writes on the empty pages of his daybook. Altogether, there are 26 one-sentence pages in the book, eleven of them are included in chapter two, WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63.

I want two rolls page 19 And I wouldn‘t say no to something sweet page 20 I‘m sorry, this is the smallest I‘ve got page 21 Start spreading the news … page 22 The regular, please page 23 Thank you, but I‘m about to burst page 24 I‘m not sure, but it‘s late page 25 Help page 26 Ha ha ha! page 27 Please marry me page 32 Help page 34

All the sentences, except the ones on page 32 and 34, are messages the grandfather wrote during the day. ‗Please marry me‘ on page 32 has been written by the grandmother and page 34 is the same page as 26. The next singe-sentence pages appear in chapter 6, WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 5/21/63.

Excuse me, do you know what time it is? page 112 Do you know what time it is? page 118 Do you know what time it is? page 125 Do you know what time it is? page 129 Excuse me, where do you get tickets? page 131 I want to buy a ticket to Dresden. page 136 What are you doing here? page 137 You have to go home. You should be in bed page 138 Let me take you home. page 139 You‘re being crazy. You‘re going to catch a cold. page 140 You‘re going to catch a colder. page 141

This chapter also includes three empty pages (121,122,123). They form part of the text as the last sentence is

I picked up the pages and wandered through them, trying to find the one on which she was born, her first love, when she last saw her parents, and I was looking for Anna, too, I searched and searched, I got a paper cut on my forefinger and bled a little flower onto the page on which I should have seen her kissing somebody, but his was all I saw: (Foer. ELIC: 120)

This passage is followed by 3 empty pages, before the narrator goes on ―I wanted to cry but I didn‘t cry […]‖. (Foer. ELIC: 124) The fourth chapter titled WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE includes 4 other one sentence pages. I don‘t speak, I‘m sorry. page 262 My name is Thomas. page 263 I‘m sorry. page 264 I‘m still sorry. page 266 43

The fourth WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE chapter includes a further striking device. At the end of his letter, the grandfather runs out of paper and the words merge closer and closer together from page 275 onwards. The only interruption is found on page 280, where Oskar‘s father‘s last voice message is written in bold, capitalized letters, with large spaces in between.

MESSAGE FIVE. 10:22 A.M. IT‘S DA S DAD. HEL S DAD. KNOW IF EAR ANY THIS I‘M HELLO? YOU HEAR ME? WE TO THE ROOF EVERYTHING OK FINE SOON SORRY HEAR ME MUCH HAPPENS, REMEMBER – (Foer. ELIC: 280)

Immediately after this message the small type size reappears, again being one size smaller than before and by the end of page 281 words begin to overlap, finally become illegible. This goes on over the next three pages, leaving the reader with a black block only, not one word can be deciphered anymore.

3.2.5 Numbers

In chapter 14 WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 9/11/03 the reader encounters an endless sequence of numbers. From the previous text we learn that the grandfather used to call the grandmother but, unable or unwilling to speak, just presses the numbers on the number pad to communicate. Most readers of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have probably tried to decipher this number code, using the number pad of their mobile phones as help. It says in the text that 5, 6, 8, 3 stands for love and 3, 3, 2, 8, 4 for death, but the rest stay numbers. The first number-sentence on page 269 reads as follows: 6, 9, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 7, 3, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 8, 6, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3, 3, 2, 8, 8, 4, 3, 2, 4, 7, 7, 6, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 3, 3, 8, 6, 3, 4, 6, 3, 6, 7, 3, 4, 6, 5, 3, 5, 7! (Foer. ELIC: 269)

It can be deciphered to the following text:

6, 9,/6, 2, 6, 3,/ 4, 7,/ 3, 5, 4,/ 3, 2, 5, 8, 6,/ 2, 6, 3,/ 4,/ 5, 8, 7, 8, /2, 7, 7, 4, 8, 3,

my name is eli dalto and I just arrived 3,/ 2, 8,/ 8, 4, 3,/ 2, 4, 7, 7, 6, 7, 8,/ 4,/ 6, 3, 3, 3, /8, 6,/ 3, 4, 6, 3/, 6, 7, /3, 4, 6, 5, 3, 5, 7! at the airport I need to find ms Finkels

There are also repeated passages and passages that make no sense at all. On May 17th 2006, gwerty428 posted the following message on imdb.com:

My students and I received this reply from the author himself, via his agent. This is posted with Mr. Foer‘s permission:

―I'm flattered you have taken the time to try and decode the pages, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid the numbers are random and cannot be deciphered. At its heart, the novel is about people failing to communicate with each other, sending messages that can't be understood. That you had such a hard time, while frustrating, is very much in the spirit of the book. That having been said, one is only young once and I hate to think of you spending anymore time trying to decode these pages.‖26

This reply by the author makes it somewhat clearer what he is willing to do to emphasize the message, the ‗spirit‘ (cf. quotation above) as he calls it, of the book.

3.2.6 Red Circles in WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE 4/12/78

This chapter is again a letter written by the grandfather. The pages are, with one exception (page 212, which shows a photograph), full of red circles. At the beginning, the circles mark grammar mistakes in the letter, for example ―actreses‖ (Foer. ELIC: 208) or ―your mothers‖ (Foer. ELIC: 209). The longer the letter gets, the more red circles appear on the pages, finally almost every second word or sentence is circled in red. These circles do not only mark mistakes in the text, they seem to be set arbitrarily. What is the reason for this rather unusual device? Why do the red circles not only mark mistakes in the end? One reason might be that the grandfather finally sees his whole life as a mistake, marking sentences that seem wrong to him in their meaning. The red circles could also be a reference to the grandfather‘s dead son (Oskar‘s father). On page 9 of the novel it is mentioned that Oskar‘s father used to read the New York Times and mark every mistake he would find with a red pen. Not only is this

26 gwerty428 (2006, May 17). Imdb the Internet Movie Database. Board:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). [Online]. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477302/board/thread/35862687?p=2#first [2011, Dec. 22]. 45

narrated by Oskar, but we also find an excerpt of a newspaper article on page 9 and page 10, where the words ―not stop looking‖ (Foer. ELIC: 10) are circled in red.

The circled words and phrases could also be an indicator of what happened to the grandfather long ago. As the reader already knows at this point, Oscar‘s grandfather has experienced something very traumatic and is now a mere captive of his trauma, unable to overcome it (his being not able to speak is another indicator of this trauma). Towards the end of the letter phrases and words like ― refugee camp‖ (Foer. ELIC: 215), ―dead‖ (Foer. ELIC: 215) ,―Life is scarier than death‖ (Foer. ELIC: 215), ―bombing and then killed himself‖ (Foer. ELIC: 215), ―afraid of losing‖ (Foer. ELIC: 216), ―I lost a baby‖ (Foer. ELIC: 216), ―impossible possible‖ (Foer. ELIC: 216) and ―I know I won‘t be able to send‖ (Foer. ELIC: 216) are circled in red, probably giving a short insight into what the grandfather had to go through. However, what he actually experienced and what caused his trauma stays a mystery throughout the novel. It has also been argued that the red circles are just a mere eye catcher (that has also been said about the photographs and illustrations), serving no purpose at all (cf. 2.5. Numbers).

3.2.7 Letters and Messages

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also includes several letters. Some of them are written by main character Oskar Schell, some are replies from the people he wrote to. The letters are in italics and indented. The first letter is to Stephen Hawking (page 11). The letters to and from Hawking are an important part in Oskar‘s life and appear frequently throughout the novel. On page 12 a reply letter from Hawking is printed. It is not a personal response. The same letter is found again on page 106, page 200 and page 242. On pages 304 – 305 another letter from Stephen Hawking can be found, this time it is a personal response. Further letters are one from Ringo on page 40, a letter written by Oskar to his French tutor on page 51, one from Patricia Roxbury on page 151 and another from Marty Mahaltra on page 193. Page 197 features a letter from Gary Franklin, followed by one from Jane Goodall on page 199.

Oskar‘s father‘s last messages on the answering machine are also mentioned in the book a few times. On page 68 the reader finds a list of the messages (a total of 4) the father left. On page 69, the second message is presented. Page 301 obviously features the last message left by Oskar‘s father.

3.3 Character Analysis

3.3.1 Oskar Schell

Nine-year old Oskar Schell is the main character of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close who tries to cope with the loss of his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Oskar is a very complex character. He is a thinker and an inventor, sometimes almost too smart for a child his age but on the other hand an extremely vulnerable and confused individual. It is typical of Oskar‘s way of talking to combine adult thoughts with infantile language and the other way round. Oskar knows words like ‗pacifist‘ (page 2), which children his age normally have not even heard of. Because he knows this, he immediately explains these words to others. This habit of showing off makes him appear arrogant from time to time. The novel starts with Oskar inventing.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone‘s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone‘s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don‘t really want to know about. (Foer. ELIC: 1)

This passage already shows the diversity within Oskar‘s way of talking. Naïve thoughts and ideas are combined with knowledge of a woman‘s body which is unusual for his age. Inventing things, fabricating fantastic ideas in his mind are Oskar‘s way of coping with the loss of his father. It‘s not only that the boy has a curious nature, he needs to think. On page 36 he compares his mind to a beaver‘s teeth:

I started inventing things, and then I couldn‘t stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it‘s because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn‘t constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That‘s how my brain was. (Foer. ELIC: 36)

Oskar constantly seems to be afraid of what could happen if he stopped thinking. It becomes clear rather early that the boy is actually very troubled, his arrogance and cynicism only covering his hurt self. Oskar is afraid of a lot of things, which is normal for a nine-year old

and more than just normal for traumatized children. He is scared and feels alone and confused. Oskar even analyzes himself in some, for a boy his age, unordinary way.

Even after a year, I still had an extremely difficult time doing certain things, like taking showers, for some reasons, and getting into elevators, obviously.[…] (Foer. ELIC: 36)

Oskar knows exactly why he is afraid of certain things, yet other fears stay a mystery to him. His list of fears includes suspension bridges, germs, airplanes, Arab people, sewers and shoes – all in all it seems to be an arbitrary mixture of things and people. Because of all his fears and constant feeling of loss, Oskar‘s narration is also always accompanied by a notion of depression. This is mostly expressed by Oskar‘s most favorite idiom ‗heavy boots‘. He mentions that about 15 times in the novel, and the phrase is even the title of a whole chapter (chapter 7). But Oskar is not only driven by fear or depression. Guilt is also something that weighs heavy on his young shoulders. Oskar feels guilty foremost about two things, the first one being his not answering the phone when his father called during the attacks on 9/11, the second being the fact that he hides those messages from his mother and the rest of the world. Oskar is also a loner, the kid who is always bullied at school and has no real friends. During the story he gets to know many people with whom he develops some kind of relationship, however, all those people are adults. He also shows no real interest in getting to know other children his age. Overwhelmed with pain and a feeling of loss Oskar keeps it all to himself, unable to talk about what bothers him about his mother or grandmother. This is a striking similarity to his grandfather, Thomas Schell, who also suffers from a trauma he is not able to talk or write about. Although Oskar can‘t talk to the people closest to him, he – for some reason – tells a total stranger about his trauma. This man later turns out to be his lost grandfather, Thomas Schell. Finally, Oskar finds the strength to tell his mother about his father‘s voice messages on the hidden answering machine. He is able to talk, something his grandfather will never be able to do again and by this he can manage to get back to a normal life. A life in which he can accept the death of his father for what it is – a tragedy, and nothing he is guilty of.

3.3.2 The Grandfather (Thomas Schell)

The grandfather shares his name with Oskar‘s father, though neither a senior nor a junior are ever added to the names. Thomas Schell is a very melancholic and sad person. He is traumatized, too, as is his grandson, but unlike Oskar he has personally witnessed the event that traumatized him. Four chapters of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are narrated by Thomas in the form of a letter to his (dead) son. All four chapters are titled WHY I‘M NOT WHERE YOU ARE but have a different date added to the title. The first two letters are dated 5/21/63, the third one 4/12/78 and the last one 9/11/03. These chapters are also the only ones containing photographs of locks. Grandfather Schell is a survivor of WW II. Reading the novel the reader realizes that Thomas survived the allied bombing of Dresden, in which he has lost his first love, Anna, and his unborn child. He suffers from so called survivor‘s guilt, with which he is unable to deal. It might be due to the experiences in Dresden that Thomas stopped talking. He appears to suffer from aphasia that leaves him unable to utter a word or sentence. In the very first letter to his (unborn) child, he describes the loss of language and explains that he hasn‘t always been silent.

[…] I used to talk and talk and talk and talk, I couldn‘t keep my mouth shut, the silence overtook me like a cancer, it was one of my first meals in America, I tried to tell the waiter, ―The way you just handed me that knife, that reminds me of –― but I couldn‘t finish the sentence, her name wouldn‘t come […] (Foer. ELIC: 16)

We also learn that language did not desert the grandfather all at once. ―[…] ‗And‘ was the next word I lost […] ‗Want‘ was a word I lost early on […]‖ (Foer. ELIC: 16) Thomas struggles for language, tries to keep as many words as possible, substituting the ones he has lost with synonyms, but gradually he loses all the words he has ever known and then he ―[…] lost ‗I‘ and my silence was complete.‖ (Foer. ELIC: 17)

Thomas always carries a day book, some sheets of blank paper around. He starts to write down the most important messages and has ‗Yes‘ and ‗No‘ tattooed on the balms of his hands. But somehow this does not seem to be enough. He starts to write a letter to the (first unborn, later dead) son he has and will never see. After over forty years he returns to New York, trying to start a second life. He wants to meet his wife, Oskar‘s grandmother, and his grandson, who he first meets without knowing that this is his grandson. It is then that he starts to open up, showing Oskar the letters he wrote but never sent to his son, while in return Oskar

lets him listen to the voice messages from 9/11. Like Oskar, Thomas is overcome with sadness, grief and guilt. He suffers not only from aphasia but also from depression. ―Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me.‖ (Foer. ELIC: 215) This passage points out another similarity between Thomas and his grandson Oskar. The phrase ‗thinking is killing me‘ can be directly compared to what Oskar says about beaver‘s teeth in chapter GOOGOLPLEX. Both, Thomas and Oskar, feel the urgent need to distract themselves from the trauma they experienced, but at the same time feel that their distraction harms them even more. When Thomas opens up to Oskar, the reader gets the feeling that this is the point where he finally allows a healing process to begin. This again is a similarity to Oskar. His healing process can only start when he opens up to his mother at the end of the novel.

3.3.3 The Grandmother

The grandmother is the third narrator in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Like Thomas and Oskar, she is deeply troubled. Being a survivor of WW II and having lost her son in the attacks of 9/11 has left her with two traumas to cope with. She, too, experiences feelings of guilt and emptiness which she rather chooses to ignore. In her first letter we learn an important fact about her when she recites the last paragraph of a letter her grandmother wrote to her. Like her grandmother, she feels that she made bad decisions in the past and now feels responsible for everything bad that has happened to her and the people she loved.

The grandmother, whose name is never given in the novel, although the doorman once calls her Mrs. Schmid (obviously her maiden name), has an overwhelming need to get to know people. On page 79 she recalls that she collected letters from everybody she knew. These letters are a result of her being too shy to talk to people. This is a curious link to Thomas Schell, who is not able to talk to others. However, later on the grandmother becomes a talker. This also becomes clear from her letters to Oskar, which includes a striking staccato-like writing style. In her letters she talks about her life in Germany as well as her new life in America. The reader finds out that her guilt partly resulted from never having told her sister, Thomas‘s first girlfriend and mother of his unborn child, how much she loved her. The grandmother is actually a very emotional person, full of love and the need to be needed, and although she has staccato-like writing, it is very objective and unagitated. This objectivity might be a result of her suppressing her own trauma, the long spaces she leaves between

words, a sign for the emptiness this trauma has left inside her. The grandmother also shows signs of depression, which again link her to Thomas and Oskar.

How big and dreadful the emptiness inside her becomes clear when Thomas writes that he once gave her a typewriter to write down the story of her life. She sits at the typewriter all day only to reveal to the reader later on that she has only pushed the space bar ―[…] again and again and again. My life story was spaces.‖ (Foer. ELIC: 176) Nevertheless she seems to be able to actually write to her grandson Oskar, telling him the story of her life in her letters. Again, the contact to Oskar seems to be the basis for a healing process, a chance to finally do what she always wanted to. It is interesting that although the grandmother seems to be in a constant struggle, she deals with certain situations rather ‗cool‘. When Thomas leaves her after she gets pregnant, she expresses a strong notion of ‗everything will be alright‘. It is this ‗easiness‘, this strength to overcome at least one disturbing event at once that distinguishes her from the other characters in the book.

However, the grandmother has still not overcome her past. She dreams of her life back in Dresden, and this dream is yet another link to her grandson.

In my dream, all of the collapsed ceilings re-formed above us. The fire went back into the bombs, which rose up and into the bellies of planes whose propellers turned backward, like the second hands of the clocks across Dresden, only faster. (Foer. ELIC: 306-307)

The presented passage is clearly similar to what Oskar says at the end of the book.

[…] he would‘ve flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would‘ve poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of. (Foer. ELIC: 325)

3.4 Conclusive Remarks

Where Everything is Illuminated has clearly been holocaust Literature, it is not as easy to classify Foer‘s second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Although the story is mainly about a nine year old boy, Oskar, who is looking for the lock that fits a key he found in his dead father‘s closet, the Holocaust is still present as a theme in the second and third narrative strand of the novel. The first narrative strand features the main character Oskar

Schell, who tries to overcome the loss of his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The second narrative strand is narrated by the grandmother in form of a letter, and the third narrative strand is formed by letters written by Oskar‘s grandfather. These last two narrative strands deal with many themes, among them the Holocaust, more precisely the allied bombing of Dresden. However, these strands are basically background stories, as the main story is centered round Oskar. Yet these strands are much more than just background stories, as there is a strong connection to Oskar‘s story. Common to all narrative strands is the theme of trauma and how to cope with it. All main characters – Oskar, the grandmother and the grandfather – live with some sort of trauma, which they have not been able to overcome yet. Trauma manifests itself in different ways in the characters. Oskar becomes depressed, sad and angry. He is obsessed with the key he finds in his dead father‘s closet, certain that it will lead him to something meaningful that will reconnect him with his father. The grandmother is overwhelmed with love and guilt for the loved ones she lost in World War II and for Oskar, who is the single reminder of her dead son. The grandfather has completely lost his voice and manages daily life by writing into a daybook. Only when the three of them come in contact it is possible for them to at least try to deal with their traumata.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also works with what is called visual writing. Foer uses several unique techniques in his novel, such as depicting photographs, illustrations or red corrective marks. The book wants the reader to believe that the photographs and illustrations are part of Oskar‘s journal, as are the corrective marks part of the grandfather‘s letter to his son. These gimmicks create a kind of realism, they give the book a third dimension that you normally only have in movies. The reader actually sees what the characters see, which is supposed to make the novel appear as close to reality as possible. The variety of photographs and illustrations make the book indeed an interesting read, although sometimes the mind might wander off, being concerned more about the visual devices than the story. Also extremely interesting are the used literary devices such as spacing and paragraphing. In the grandmother‘s letters Foer has decided to throw over board conventional paragraphing, adding blank spaces between sentences or starting each sentence in a new line. Interestingly enough, this technique is not as disturbing as one might expect. It adds another dimension to the narration, making it almost seem as if you could hear the narrator speaking. The spaces are not set voluntarily but take the place of silences in a monologue, the place of pauses a speaker would make during a long speech. The grandfather‘s letters on the other hand are 52

characterized by no paragraphing at all. The text goes on and on for pages, only interrupted by photographs or blank, respectively one sentence-pages. In the final part of the grandfather‘s last letter, the typeface slowly becomes smaller and smaller as do spaces between lines. Finally, the lines start to overlap, in the end creating a blackened page. The grandfather has run out of paper but is still trying to write down all he has to say, everything he needs to say, thus erasing parts of what he has already written by overtyping it.

It is difficult to put Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close into a certain category. As it deploys various modern techniques such as visual writing, yet still is about established topics such as the Holocaust (but not exclusively, which makes it difficult to place it in the genre of holocaust literature), it might be referred to as visual holocaust literature that happens to deal with 9/11. In the end, it does not matter if the book is holocaust literature or a novel about the attacks on the World Trade Center because beyond this it is basically one thing: an amazing story about a search for love, memory and healing, which, although the book received mixed reviews, is an incredibly good read. Foer has continued the journey he began with Everything is Illuminated and has created a fascinating tale about how to overcome trauma and about how to go on with life despite all the horrific things that might happen to you – and, above all, about love.

4 Tree of Codes

Tree of Codes is Jonathan Safran Foer‘s third novel and was published in 2010. The book is extraordinary in every way and ―takes the integration of writing and design to a new level.‖27 The publisher, Visual Editions, believes that ―the book is as much a ‗sculptural object‘ as it is a work of fiction‖.28 For his latest coup Foer has taken his favorite book, Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodiles, and used a visual technique called die cutting to create a new story. The result is a book full of holes, a book that is not appreciated by everyone. The combination of the visual arts and literature is not entirely innovative. Foer has already experimented with it in his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which combines a great number of pictures and illustrations with a variety of literary techniques. Foer himself admits that ―It was hardly an original idea: it‘s a technique that has, in different ways, been practiced for as long as there has been writing‖29. He mentions Tom Phillips, who has accomplished a very similar piece of literature in 1970 with A Humument. He, too, used an already existing novel, W. H. Mallock‘s A Human Document, and created a new story by painting over the original pages, leaving only parts of the text untouched. Ronald Johnson is another one who has experimented with what art critic and poet Barry Schwabsky calls subtractive composition. Unlike Phillips, he has chosen a highly popular piece of literature, Milton‘s Paradise Lost, and created Radi Os.

Subtractive composition

In his review of Tree of Codes for bookforum.com Schwabsky explains the characteristics of the genre that he calls subtractive composition. According to Schwabsky, the genre is characterized by two fundamental polarities. The first polarity is erasure through overlapping vs. erasure through extraction, the second polarity is the use of a rather unknown source text vs. the use of a highly acclaimed one. Tree of Codes is clearly characterized by erasure through extraction, but what about the second polarity? Bruno Schulz is certainly not an entirely unknown author, yet most people

27 Heller, Steven (2010, Nov. 24).‖Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Book as Art Object‖.The New York Times. Arts Section.[Online]. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/ [2011, Dec. 22]. 28 ibid. 29 ibid. 54

have probably never heard of him. Schulz is better known in literary circles and his home country, Poland, where he is one of the most intriguing writers of the century. It is therefore difficult to say whether the source text is unknown or highly acclaimed. Foer has used radical means to erase words from the source material. He literally cut out words from the manuscript, leaving the pages filled (or unfilled) with holes. This seems rather drastic. Ronald Johnson has also chosen to erase through extraction, however, he simply left white spaces where words used to be. Foer goes one step further: He removes what has been left after removal, erasing the white spaces that are themselves already the result of erasure, by cutting a hole into the page. This process could be described as ‗double erasure‘. The holes become an object d‘ art, they carry as much meaning as the words in the book. They also open up two very interesting ways to read the book.

Two ways to read a book:

Reading Tree of Codes is not always a pleasure. Most pages feature more holes than actual text, which makes it really difficult to handle the book. Due to the percentage of paper that has been cut out, the pages are terribly fragile - quickly flipping pages is out of the question as there is always a risk of tearing them. To be actually able to read the text, a blank sheet of paper has to be slid between the pages, a process that strains the patience of the reader. Another problem is that due to the number of gaps it is also extremely difficult to read a sentence coherently. Reading Tree of Codes is a little bit like reading a book in a foreign language you are simply not proficient in. So why create a book that is so difficult to read? Why not write down the ‗new‘ story without leaving gaps? Foer could have just stated at the beginning of the novel that the story is entirely drawn from an already existing novel. Why not spare the reader the effort it takes to read this book? He could also have followed Johnson, who left white spaces where words used to be.

Foer admits that his book is ―not a book that looks like any other books in a bookstore.‖30 His intention was to create a three-dimensional piece of literature, and he compares the process of cutting out words and phrases to carving a stone. In a video published by Visual Editions,

30 VisualEditions, Publisher (2010, Nov. 15). Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. [Video]. [Online]. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsW3Y7EmTlo [2011, Dec. 22]. 55

Foer states that he hopes ―Tree of Codes in some ways contributes to this conversation we are now having about what‘s possible in literature and what‘s possible with paper.‖31 What he tries to accomplish is the breaking down of the boundary between literature and art. He sees the current definitions that clearly distinguish between the two fields as unnecessary, adding that ―Definitions have never done anything but constrain.‖32

Tree of Codes uses erasure by extraction. But it is not only white spaces that fill the gaps between the words, it is holes. Not only does Foer erase words from his source text, he even erases the resulting white spaces. This provides the reader with two possibilities to read the novel. One can either insert a sheet of blank paper, reading one page after another, or one can look at the pages as they are, seeing as much as 8 pages through the holes at one time. This of course does not result in a coherent story, but is nonetheless not less interesting. Reading the book this way offers the possibility to dip into the book at any page, reading a passage here and then flip to a passage there.

spre screamed half- the hoarse Apart from them, from growing in this emptiness, king, windows and all, into back rising and fall the mother and I wanting to s . the passersby over a keyboard less day. the normous of gr paving stone had their eyes half- closed . Everyone clumsy gesture. whole generations wore his mask . fallen asleep the children greeted each other with jar masks painted on their faces pain with we pass ; they smiled at each other‘s secret of The sleeping smiles (Foer. TC: 8-16, read without blank paper inserted)

31 VisualEditions, Publisher (2010, Nov. 15). Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. [Video]. [Online]. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsW3Y7EmTlo [2011, Dec. 22]. 32 Heller, Steven (2010, Nov. 24).‖Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Book as Art Object‖.The New York Times. Arts Section.[Online]. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/ [2011, Dec. 22]. 56

The narrative transforms when being read without inserted paper, it becomes a poem, a faint vision of what is originally told. This version of the book has its very own magic. It allows the reader to change the text by looking at more or fewer pages at a time.

Apart from them, growing in this emptiness mother and I wanting to The passersby over a keyboard the of paving stones had their eyes half-closed . Everyone whole generations wore his mask . fallen asleep the children greeted each other with jar masks painted on their faces pain. we pass; they smiled at each other‘s smiles (Foer. TC: 8-11 read with blank sheet inserted after page 11)

The book almost seems to transform itself, it appears to be alive, changing its content whenever it is opened. It seems to contain dozens of different stories, all hidden behind and in the holes, that just wait to be discovered. In times of the e-book, Tree of Codes challenges the reader in many ways. It is not just some book you read by the way. It is not just words on paper. It is an adventure. It is something that needs to be touched, something that is totally different to any other book and yet more book than any other. Olafur Eliasson has said about Tree of Codes that it is a book “that remembers it actually has a body.‖ (Foer. TC: blurb) The book does not even have to be actually read – it can just be looked at, or touched. This ‗version‘ of the book strongly reminds one of concrete poetry, which is characterized by the importance of the typographical arrangement of words. The arrangement is as important as the meaning of the words, rhyme and rhythm. The holes in the story too carry as much meaning as the words do. 57

However interesting it may be to just dip into the book as one wishes, reading it with a blank sheet inserted is also fascinating.

The passersby had their eyes half-closed. Everyone wore his mask. children greeted each other with masks painted on their faces; they smiled at each other‘s smiles. growing in this emptiness, wanting to resemble the reflections, whole generations had fallen asleep. (Foer. TC: 8-9)

Tree of Codes describes the last day in the life of an unnamed narrator. His father is losing his mind, but the narrator does not fall into despair but appreciates the constant changes in life. The story, only about 3000 words long, is a vague shadow of Bruno Schulz‘s The Street of Crocodiles, from which it originates, and also reminds one of Schulz‘s own life. The language is incredibly magic, creating fascinating images of ―houses, sinking, windows and all, into their gardens‖ (Foer. TC: 9-11) and a narrator who ―Amid the fragments of the extinct landscape […] yawned toward the sun‖ (Foer. TC: 121). Sometimes only single letters are left from the source material, sometimes it is whole sentences that have been taken from The Street of Crocodiles. Foer‘s goal was to find a new story within an existing one, but whether you read the novel as a coherent text by sliding a blank sheet of paper between the pages, or just dip into it where you want, what you read always strongly resembles the original. Tree of Codes is like a shadow of The Street of Crocodiles, which poses the question whether Foer has achieved his goal or not. Foer states that ―For about a year I […] had a printed manuscript of The Street of Crocodiles with me, along with a highlighter and a red pen.‖33 and that ―100 people would have come up with 100 different books using this same process […]‖34. So why did he choose to create a story that resembles the source text in so many ways? Maybe it just happened per chance that the two narratives are so much alike, maybe the similarity is intended and Tree of Codes is just meant to be an homage to the author‘s favorite writer.

The question of fictionality: In his review of Tree of Codes for guardian.co.uk, Michael Faber has raised an interesting and important question. ―Does Tree of Codes function as fiction?‖35 This question is not easy to

33 ibid. 34 ibid. 35 Faber, Michael (2010, Dec. 18). „Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer - review―. theguardian. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/tree-codes-safran-foer-review. [2011, Dec. 22]. 58

answer and is, for sure, not the only thing that needs to be discussed in more detail. Foer has also been accused of plagiarism since he actually has not written a single word in the book. Foer himself clearly states that ―This book is mine‖36. He believes that every book ever written is like this – everything has already been written somehow and somewhere. It is a thin line between working with a source material and plagiarism. On the one hand it can be argued that Foer has just used words from Schulz‘s work to create new phrases that carry a new meaning, yet on the other hand it can also be said that he simply copied whole phrases without quoting them properly. Where is the mentioned thin line here? Has Foer overstepped the line or did he just find a loophole? The answer may be in how you perceive Tree of Codes. It can be compared to a collage, which is a piece of art of its own, no matter what materials have been used to create it. It is not considered to be plagiarism if an artist cuts someone else‘s photograph into stripes and uses them to create a collage. In some way Foer has done the same with Schulz‘s book. By carving into the original text, by extracting, he has created a collage that functions as a work of its own. Therefore, if you view Tree of Codes as a collage, a piece of art, the accusation of plagiarism is untenable. But, to get back to Faber, does it also work as fiction?

According to thefreedictionary.com fiction is defined as a) An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented and b) A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.37 Tree of Codes is certainly not based on facts, but is its content produced by the imagination? The story resembles the source material so much that it is hard to say whether Foer actually invented the storyline of Tree of Codes. On the other side, a collage, too, still resembles the used photographs. Perhaps this is the crucial point: Treated as a book, Tree of Codes may not be fiction and the accusation of plagiarism is not far-fetched at all, but treated as a piece of art, it works perfectly. The book seems to slip through the definitions, claiming its own space in the grey area between art and literature. It cannot solely be seen as a book or a piece of art. It is at the same time both and neither. With regard to this Foer has accomplished what he intended.

36 ibid. 37 cf. „fiction―. thefreedictionary. [Online]. The Free Dictionary. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fiction [2011, Dec. 10]. 59

―Definitions have never done anything but restrain.‖38 Foer once said. With Tree of Codes he has gotten rid of these restraints, simply by creating something that escapes all definitions.

The book in different contexts: It has been proven that it is not possible to assign Tree of Codes to a certain category. Therefore the book has been reviewed with regard to literature, painting and crafting with very different results. Olafur Elliason, Danish artist and creator of the blurb of Tree of Codes, is famous for his sculptures and large scale installation art and looks at Tree of Codes in the context of crafting. Barry Schwabsky, an American art critic, sees Foer‘s novel in the context of painting, and Michel Faber, fiction writer and journalist, reviews it in the context of fiction.

Eliasson sees the book as an ―extraordinary journey that activates the layers of time and space involved in the handling of a book and its heap of words.‖ (Foer, TC: blurb), which is a rather abstract way to describe a book. How many ways are there to handle a book? Many, when it is a book like Tree of Codes. It is not only about words and meaning, it is also about materials and techniques. Tree of Codes cannot be handled like a normal book. It feels different and looks different, and it has to be handled with care. The holes in the book form the layers, and it is the reader who chooses how many layers he sees at one time or how many layers he removes by inserting a blank sheet of paper. Eliasson adds that ―[…] Foer deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story.‖ (Foer. TC: blurb). This strongly reminds one of Foer stating that what he did was very similar to ―carving a stone‖39. Eliasson uses crafting terms to describe the book and adds that ―In our world of screens, he [Jonathan Safran Foer] welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers it actually has a body.‖ (Foer. TC: blurb)

Barry Schwabsky, who reviewed Tree of Codes for bookforum.com, has taken on a very different approach. He focuses on the two possibilities to read the book (as a coherent text or like a concrete poem) and compares both ways to the art of painting. In the story that appears when the book is read with a blank sheet of paper inserted between the pages, Schwabsky

38 Heller, Steven (2010, Nov. 24).‖Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Book as Art Object‖.The New York Times. Arts Section.[Online]. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/ [2011, Dec. 22]. 39 ibid. 60

sees a Cubist transmutation of the source material. In art, Cubism is seen as the final line between modern painting and classic painting. A cubist painting does not present the real world but tries to formally divide the space of a painting. Cubism is also seen as a conceptual break with the common rules. Perspective, traditional chiaroscuro and exquisite brush strokes lose their importance. It is also said that Cubism is the greatest adventure in 20th century art. Tree of Codes also breaks with traditional writing, although the techniques are not new. It provokes a reaction that is similar to the reaction when you see a cubist painting for the first time. The first thing that the watcher/reader notices are the geometric forms/rectangular holes of the painting/book. The words are not what draw your attention in Tree of Codes, it is the hundreds of rectangular holes in the book. The holes are also what allow the reader to read the book in a very different way. Peeking through the holes, reading more than one page at a time, is what Schwabsky refers to as ―Dada demolition.‖40 Dadaists revolted against art itself, society and the common moral believes. Rules were substituted through random actions and all past art was questioned. Sound poems were one of the creations of Dada. Here, words are divided into singe phonetic syllables and the sense of language is destroyed.

. nything left it. ev We e wish (Foer. TC: 51-66) Me draped av now re in the ci colored cloth r. (Foer. TC: 118-121) only v the wrong staircase, er the, so pl . I heard the windows shake durin and familiar were av finally faded eonies, nigh unexp . (Foer. TC: 20-30)

These quick glances through the holes of the book are fascinating and disturbing at the same time. What is revealed is a brain teaser. Sometimes whole phrases are revealed through the holes, sometimes it is only a random collection of syllables and hacked words. This version of the book does not follow any rules. It does not present coherent text or coherent meaning, there is no guideline for how to read it. It is common sense that a book is read from the first page to the last page, from the first line to last, but Tree of Codes even dismisses this rule. It is the reader that chooses what he wants to read, and it is also the reader who can change passages by reading more or fewer pages at a time.

40 Schwabsky, Barry (2011, Jan. 14).‖Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer‖.Bookforum. Review Section. [Online]. http://www.bookforum.com/review/6998 [2011, Dec. 22]. 61

Michael Faber, writer and journalist, is extremely hard on the book. He sees Tree of Codes as a book that „[…] if you‘re an average reader, might make you think a wad of defenseless print has been fed through an office shredding machine,―41 and complains that although all the words are actually Schulz‘s own, the book is credited to Foer. He also doubts that the book works as fiction and believes that it ―will be appraised more as an artifact than as a story. And, as an artifact, the most remarkable thing about Tree of Codes is how very fragile it is.‖42 As a writer Faber naturally looks at Tree of Codes within the context of literature, raising the questions of plagiarism and fictionality. Faber is also the only one that takes a closer look at the content of the story. He figures that the book ―follows the ghostly outline‖43 of Schulz‘s The Street of Crocodiles although Foer‘s narrative ―pursues divergent agendas.‖44 Where the father in Schulz‘s work is obsessed with work, Foer‘s father has become obsessed with the mother, which is reason enough for Faber to consider Tree of Codes to be some sort of psychoanalysis of the story. Schulz‘s texts are also characterized by autobiographical images, which are completely missing in Foer‘s altered version. However, there is still the notion of Holocaust and catastrophe in Tree of Codes, which remind of Schulz‘s very own fate – he was shot by a Nazi officer in his hometown and most of his works vanished. Despite all criticism, there is also something that Faber appreciates. For him ―the idea of The Street of Crocodiles surviving in disguise, chopped to within an inch of its life but still clinging to its soul, strikes me as a bittersweet irony, an oddly fitting homage.‖ Although he basically (re)viewed Tree of Codes in the context of literature, he describes it as ―the most potent work of art that Jonathan Safran Foer has yet produced,‖45 which is a silent concession that the book might not only belong to one category, that it is more than literature – a piece of art, that escapes all categorization.

41 Faber, Michael (2010, Dec. 18). „Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer - review―. theguardian. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/tree-codes-safran-foer-review. [2011, Dec. 22]. 42 ibid. 43 ibid. 44 ibid. 45 ibid. 62

4.1 Final Statement

Tree of Codes is Foer‘s most recent and also most astounding work. The book, which has been produced by using a technique called die-cutting, has been reviewed with different results. It has been called a bad novel, a great sculpture and an incredible object of art. It is indeed difficult to place the book in a category, as it is not simply a book but also too much a book to be a sculpture. Perhaps the most appropriate term to describe Tree of Codes is indeed ‗object of art‘. Foer has always wanted to create a new story from an existing one and at the beginning even thought about using the dictionary or one of his own books as source material. Finally he settled for Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodiles, a collection of stories that happens to be Foer‘s favorite book. By erasing not only single words but often whole passages Foer has created a new story, that is, although most of the original has disappeared, still a faint shadow of Schulz‘s book. The story of the last day in a life is gripping though incredibly difficult to read due to the literal holes in the story. The pages seem so fragile, that the reader must fear to tear them when he flips a page. It is the holes that make the book so fragile, which also provide the reader with a second way to read the book. You can either slip a blank sheet of paper between the pages (which will allow you to read a coherent story page by page), or you can do without it. This way you can dip in and out of the book where and when you like, however, what you will see is more concrete poetry or sound poetry than a coherent narrative. Yet this possibility is equally fascinating. Whatever way the reader chooses to read the book, it has to be kept in mind that Tree of Codes is not a book you read in bed before going to sleep. Although the story is merely 3000 words long and thus a quick read, it still takes time to read it. The pages have to be slipped very carefully, the blank sheet of paper inserted with as much care and the hundreds of holes make reading coherently very difficult. It is not unusual to lose the notorious red thread of the story more than once. Sentences, although mostly very short, often stretch over at least one page (because of the cut out holes), making it extremely difficult to focus on the whole narrative. Tree of Codes is definitely one of those books that you might want to read more than once to make sure you did not miss anything.

Foer had to face several accusations when the book was published. It was claimed that he was guilty of plagiarism, as he had not actually written one word in the book, that the book is not fiction, as it does not meet the literary criteria, and that it was totally overrated (something

that has also been said about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and would destroy Foer‘s career. Although it is true that Foer has not actually ‗written‘ one of the words in Tree of Codes, and has sometimes taken whole phrases and sentences from the source material without any changes, the accusation of plagiarism is out of question, as the book can also not be defined as fiction, as it does not meet several criteria that apply to fictional works. The book is more a collage, or a sculpture, a piece of art, and therefore literary criteria cannot simply be applied to the book. It is because of this that plagiarism cannot and must not be a problem. The book as an object of art does not fall under the regulations of common literature. If you cut out letters or sentences from a newspaper and arrange them to form a sentence or a story, it is not plagiarism either.

In Foer‘s opinion ―Definitions have never done anything but restrain‖46. By creating Tree of Codes Foer does this statement justice. The book can simply not be assigned to any literary category or genre. It escapes definitions and therefore is not constrained by anything. It exists as a work of art, a sculpture that happens to be full of words, or as a book that happens to be more a sculpture. It is not solely the one or the other, but it is exactly this diversity that adds to the charm of the book. It is something you need to put effort in, something that wants to be appreciated not only for the story it tells but for the experience it provides to the reader. Tree of Codes is an adventure, an invitation to the reader to see a book not just as pages filled with words but as something real, a ―book that remembers it actually has a body.‖ (Foer. TC: blurb)

46 Heller, Steven (2010, Nov. 24).‖Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Book as Art Object‖.The New York Times. Arts Section.[Online]. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/ [2011, Dec. 22]. 64

5 Selected Short Stories

Jonathan Safran Foer has also published numerous short stories. Two of them are to be discussed in the following chapters, with regard to themes and narrative devices, to explore similarities between Foer‘s short stories and his novels.

5.1 Rhoda

Rhoda, published in The Book of Other People in 2008, tells the story of an old woman, who is visited by her grandson. She is dying and her grandson has brought a recorder to tape an interview with his grandmother. The story is presented as a monologue by Rhoda. There is no description of her by other people, yet the story paints an incredibly vivid picture of the woman. It is the language that makes the character come to life and it is how Rhoda talks and what she says that provides the reader with information about her.

The narrative starts in the middle of a conversation. Already the first sentence makes it clear that it is an old woman, probably a grandmother, talking. ―Have a cookie.‖ (Foer. R: 183) tells the reader so much more than just the fact that someone is offering a cookie. It is a typical female utterance, and it is most likely something a grandmother would say. It is the choice of words – ‗Have a cookie‘ instead of ‗Do you want a cookie‘ or ‗Would you like a cookie‘ – that reveals the age of the speaker. ‗Do you want a cookie‘ might have pointed to a mother speaking, or a friend, ‗Would you like a cookie‘ implies that the relationship between the person offering the cookie and the addressed person is a more formal one, probably not close enough for family. To say ‗Have a cookie‘ though is typical for a grandmother. The choice of words immediately brings the story to life - it is almost possible to hear the woman speak. The first paragraph further illustrates that the persons in the story are closely related. Here, Rhoda immediately addresses the other person‘s marriage, stating that the other person‘s wife may be a little too intelligent. This might be seen as rather forward, but the context – old woman talking to young grandson – mitigates the rather brutal honesty of the utterance. Seniors often show this kind of honesty, they are often very direct when it comes to private matters. The utterance therefore helps to develop the character of Rhoda and to get a clearer image of her. The passage also reveals the first private detail about Rhoda‘s life, namely that she has been

married to an ignorant man. The paragraph ends with ―It‘s none of my business.‖ (Foer. R: 183), which is a rather sudden end to the topic.

The structure of this passage seems unusual. It starts with the offering of a cookie, turns to a rather private matter all of a sudden and is abruptly ended by the speaker. There are no obvious transitions between the addressed topics, yet it provides an amount of information about the two persons involved in the conversation. The sudden turn to the other person‘s marriage indicates that the two characters are very close, either mother and son or grandmother and grandson. Because the topic follows ‗Have a cookie‘ it is much more likely that it is grandmother and grandson talking. The harsh sounding final sentence of the passage is another hint at age of the speaker. It is typical for members of an older generation to state that something is none of their business only after they have stated their opinion on the topic. Although the sentence sounds harsh at first it only further indicates that the speaker shows great affection for the addressed person. Older people often feel the need to be involved in their offspring‘s life and find that their experience must be shared in order to guide and advice their loved ones. Stating that something is none of their business does not actually mean that it is none of their business but is rather a request for the other person to take interest in their lives.

There are no blank lines in the narrative that would separate paragraphs, instead new paragraphs are only intended, which emphasizes the monologue situation of the narrative. The second paragraph sheds more light on the age of the speaker and the family situation of the other person. ―It‘s good to see you, from what my eyes can make out. […] Your brother is growing a bosom, but you still have all of your hair!‖ (Foer. R: 183) indicates that it is indeed an older person speaking. It is probably known to the addressed person that Rhoda has bad eyes, yet she mentions it which is another characteristic feature of older people. Older generations often grew up with the belief that showing emotions and/or talking about problems is not right, yet with advancing age they seem to feel an urge to tell other‘s about their constitution. Rhoda does not state directly that she is having troubles with her eyes, instead the information is a mere attribute to the strong ―It‘s good to see you […].‖ (Foer. R: 183) Thus it does not sound like a complaint but is almost covered by the strong notion of happiness and gratefulness that is conveyed by the prior phrase.

The third paragraph again begins with an offer. ―Have a drink. Lemme get you a soda from the basement. Go get a soda from the basement.‖ (Foer. R: 183) The choice of words is again very interesting. The same syntax is used for the offer of the cookie and the beverage. ‗Lemme‘, a colloquial version of ‗Let me‘, is characteristic for the language of older people, who do not care about grammar or haven‘t learned it another way. It can also be seen as an indicator for the close relationship of speaker and listener. The paragraph also shows that Rhoda really cares for the other person. Within three lines she offers him soda, orange juice and bread, which is also a symptom of old age. Older people want to care for their loved ones, they want them to be happy and healthy. The phrase ‗have a cookie‘ reappears on page 185, ―I got a popsicle in the basement‖ (Foer. R: 183) and ―[…] drink a little Coke for me.‖ (Foer. R: 185) are followed by ―[…] you wanna fresh sliced tomato?‖ (Foer. R: 183). This constant offering of food and drinks could indicate that Rhoda is a survivor of World War II, and it is revealed later, that she indeed immigrated to America in 1950. The generations born before and during World War II know how it is not to have enough to eat and therefore tend to ‗over care‘, for which her offers illustrate. Rhoda also constantly complements her opposite, saying ―You‘re gorgeous […]‖ (Foer. R: 183), ―How could I be unhappy with that hair of yours!‖ (Foer. R: 185) and ―whenever I think about you I go crazy. You‘re so gorgeous!‖ (Foer. R: 186). She cherishes youth and health, things she no longer possesses.

Rhoda frequently addresses the private lives of the members of her family. She mentions her grandson‘s cousin Daniel in paragraph four, although the passage actually starts with Rhoda mentioning her recent heart scan. But she abruptly changes the topic, turning to Daniel‘s career at Brown University and the fact that he has a new girlfriend, ―not a schwartze‖ (Foer. R: 183), as she does not forget to point out. ‗Schwartze‘ is a misspelled version of the German word ‗schwarz‘ and here describes an African American person. This and the fact that Rhoda ―can‘t remember the American word‖ (Foer. R: 183) for the girl‘s field of study indicates that she emigrated from Germany after World War II. Again, Rhoda‘s very straightforward when she states that ―[…] her family lives in Philadelphia and belongs to Congregation Beth David, which is Reform, but that‘s none of my business. […] she‘s a little overweight, but otherwise very nice.‖ (Foer. R: 183-184) Rhoda even knows on how many dates Daniel and the girl have been so far and she also has a picture of the girl. She seems to be very curious, one might even say nosy but this is just another characteristic behavior of older people. They want to be a part of their children‘s lives as their own world is beginning to shrink. Due to their

physical conditions they have less and less possibilities to go outside and take part in everyday life. A passage on page 185 underlines this theory.

Can you drive me to the bank when we‘re done? And then to the supermarket? And then to the other supermarket? And then to the bakery? […] Your father would put me in a taxi. He thinks I‘m cheap, but he‘s the cheap one, because he won‘t come out here to get me. (Foer. R: 185)

Rhoda‘s world has almost shrunken to the size of her apartment. She cannot leave the apartment on her own anymore and has to rely on others for daily errands, and her prying into her family‘s life is a result of her being more and more restricted.

A story from Rhoda‘s first day in America forms the main part of page 184. She tells how they came over in 1950 and that she had not known that there were people with black skin. The passage also reveals that Rhoda came to America with ―your grandfather‖ (Foer. R: 184) – which proves that it is indeed her grandchild she is talking to – and her baby daughter. On arrival she saw the first black person in her life and mentions that she thought that the person was ill. The family settled in a black neighborhood and opened a grocery store. Rhoda is convinced that the ‗schwartzes loved them and says that she does not have problems with African American people. Thus, her calling them ‗schwartzes‘ is not to be mistaken for a racist utterance but one of the few remains from her past in Europe. Rhoda describes her past as ―[…] the kind of life Spielberg could make a pretty good movie about.‖ (Foer. R: 185) which confirms the assumption that she survived World War II.

The further the story progresses, the more is revealed about Rhoda‘s actual condition. She has already mentioned her recent heart scan but it is only on page 185 that she admits to being in pain sometimes. She states that as a fact, adding that she is ―[…] not complaining. There are worse things than pain.‖ (Foer. R: 185) Her son-in-law has told her that her heart scan was good, but she suspects that he lied to her. ―The scan said nothing is wrong. […] Who do you trust? My body isn‘t good anymore. What did I expect?‖ (Foer. R: 185) The passages shows no sign of her being scared that she might actually be ill but reveals that she has her suspicions about her condition being worse than everybody admits. The penultimate paragraph of the narrative proves that Rhoda already knows what is going on.

You thing I‘m dying. It‘s OK. You don‘t have to say anything. I know. I know you all have been lying to me. When they bring out the tape

recorder, it‘s either because of a school project or because you‘re dying. And you graduated from Princeton University nine years ago. (Foer. R: 186)

Rhoda is perfectly aware of what is going to happen and why everybody pays (probably all of a sudden) attention to her. She seems to have accepted that she will die soon and also appears to be very calm. The passage ―It‘s OK. You don‘t have to say anything.‖ (Foer. R: 186) also indirectly describes the emotional state of her grandson. ‗It‘s OK.‘ is a very comforting statement, indicating that the grandson (and for all we know the whole family) is more upset by Rhoda‘s condition than she is. Rhoda has known for some time that everybody tries to keep the seriousness of her illness from her, yet she has waited till that day to admit that she knows what is going on. Although she knows that she is dying, she only wants to take care of the people around her, and except her sporadic mentioning of her failing health, she seems not to pay too much attention to the topic. The final paragraph rounds off the description of Rhoda‘s character. She asks her grandson for a favor, but not before stating that she has never asked him for anything. ―I beg you, no matter what happens, no matter where you go in life or how many millions you make, no matter anything, I beg you: never buy a German car.‖ (Foer. R: 186) The use of the word ‗beg‘ illustrates how important the topic is to her. ‗Beg‘ is a very strong word that not only emphasizes the urgency of her request, but also provides further insight into her past. As ridiculous as the request may seem, for Rhoda it is of great importance. As a member of the generation that experienced World War II she is reticent towards everything German, even if it is just something as ordinary as a car.

Although it is never actually mentioned that Rhoda is Jewish, there are many hints hidden in the narrative indicating that she is. On page 183 she mentions that David‘s girlfriend belongs to Congregation Beth David (CBD), a Jewish Congregation founded in 1962, and adds that CBD ―[…] is Reform, but that‘s none of my business.‖ (Foer. R: 183) She also believes that Spielberg could make a good movie about her life, and she immigrated to America in 1950. Rhoda never reveals what happened to her during World War II, whether she was even sent to a concentration camp or if she went into hiding. A passage on page 185 however indicates that she has some intense emotions hidden.

[…] I used to sing you to sleep with the American alphabet. By the time you were two you could speak better than me. That was my Nobel Prize! You were my diamonds and pearls! My revenge! (Foer. R: 185)

‗Revenge‘ is definitely the strongest word in the whole narrative. The fact that she calls her grandson her revenge indicates that she experienced something horrible in her past, probably deportation to a concentration camp, something that threatened her very existence. The fact that she has a grandson means that she survived and managed to start a new life. She never gave up and by starting a family, a new generation, she triumphed over her past. Although the cited passage carries the strongest emotions in the narrative, it is rather short. The feelings that surface in the passage disappear as quickly as they appeared. Only in the use of the word ‗beg‘ they show through again.

5.1.1 Conclusion

Rhoda is an extremely well composed compelling short story with an equally compelling main character. Rhoda appears incredibly vivid, which is a result of the used language as well as the structure (monologue without blank lines interrupting the flow of words).

Viewed in the context of Foer‘s work Rhoda strongly resembles the character of the grandmother in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. She, too, cherishes her grandson above everything else. ―I miss you already, Oskar. I missed you even when I was with you.‖ (Foer. ELIC : 174) strongly reminds of Rhoda telling her grandson that he is so gorgeous. Both characters love their grandsons beyond all measure and praise their youth and health. When Rhoda indicates that her eyes are not the best anymore it reminds of the grandmother from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close saying that her eyes are crummy. Both women share the same background, although much more is known about Oskar Schell‘s grandmother.

The narrative situations of Rhoda and the grandmother - chapters in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are also very much alike. The only difference is that Rhoda is a monologue, directed to her present grandson, whereas the grandmother writes a letter to Oskar. Although the grandmother‘s narration is characterized by gaps, there are also no normal paragraphs.

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the grandmother writes that she once asked her grandmother to write her a letter. This letter turned out to be 70 pages long, the story of a life. This is faintly reminiscent of Rhoda too. Rhoda is going to be interviewed by her grandson, but she begins to tell the story of her life right away, weaving bits of her past into an everyday

conversation. The grandmother‘s grandmother on the other hand was asked to write a letter about anything, however, she chose to write down her life story.

To what extend is Rhoda autobiographical?

The fact that Rhoda constantly offers food to her grandson indicates that she herself did not always have the luxury of regular meals. As I have already pointed out it is very likely that Rhoda is a survivor of World War II. It is all too possible that she did not have enough to eat during and after the war (possibly because she was a Jewish fugitive), which now results in her almost annoying habit of looking after her grandson. Foer once described the evenings he spent at his grandmother‘s like this:

When I was young, I would often spend Friday nights at my grandmother's house. On the way in, she would lift me from the ground with one of her wonderful and terrifying hugs. And on the way out the next afternoon, I was again lifted into the air with her love. It wasn't until years later that I realized she was also weighing me. Being a survivor of World War II, being someone who spent years - approximately the years I am now experiencing - scrounging for food while traversing Europe barefoot, she is acutely, desperately aware of weights […].47

Reading this passage clearly illustrates that Rhoda might be autobiographically influenced. With regard to the cited passage the story seems to paint a picture of Foer‘s own grandmother rather than some invented person. Taking into account that all of Foer‘s work is to some extend at least autobiographically influenced and the fact that there are more striking similarities between the story and the actual world (e.g. Foer and the grandson having both graduated from university), it seems not so farfetched to believe that Rhoda actually is about Foer‘s own grandmother. However, the author‘s life and his stories are not to be mistaken for each other. Although Foer himself believes that there is no writing that is not to a certain extend autobiographical, he also distances

47 ―Jonathan Safran Foer on Everything is Illuminated”. HarperCollinsPublishers. Authors Section. [Online]. http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=25419&isbn13=9780060529703&displayType =bookinterview. [2011, Dec. 22]

himself from his stories. Yet Rhoda has a clearly autobiographical notion that cannot be denied.

5.2 A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease

A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease was published in 2002. The short story is Foer‘s attempt to define silences in conversation, a proposal of a new way of punctuating dialogues. In Foer‘s work, communication in families is always characterized by a failure to communicate. A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease describes the history of heart diseases in a family – probably Foer‘s own – and tries to define the many different types of silences that occur in conversations, especially within a family.

The author has chosen different letters and punctuation marks to symbolize different kinds of silence. The story explores one silence at a time, defines it, explores where it might occur and gives an example for each silence. The first silence Foer takes a shot at is ‗c‘. He defines ‗c‘ as the ‗silence mark‘, which is used to signify an absence of language. The narrator states that there is at least one ‗c‘ ―[…] on every page of the story of my family life.‖48 According to the narrator, ‗c‘ is most often used by him when he speaks to his grandmother about her life in Europe during World War II and in conversations with his father about heart disease within the family. The narrator calls the silence mark ―a staple of familial punctuation.‖49

"Listen," he said, and then surrendered to a long pause, as if the pause were what I was supposed to listen to. "I'm sure everything's gonna be fine, but I just wanted to let you know—" "I already know," I said. "c" "c" "c" "c" "O.K.," he said. "I'll talk to you tonight," I said, and I could hear, in the receiver, my own heartbeat. He said, "Yup."50

‗c‘ defines the absence of language, but an absence of language does not mean an absence of meaning. ‗c‘ carries as much meaning as does everything else in this passage, yet it does not need words to express it. The meaning of ‗c‘ is known to both speakers, as it has replaced

48 „A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease – Jonathan Safran Foer―. (2010). jeffreylancaster. [Online]. http://www.jeffreylancaster.com/foer1.html?bk=undefined. [2011, Dec. 22]. 49 ibid. 50 ibid. 72

sentences that have probably been uttered very often before. The ‗c‘s‘ form a silent conversation similar to looks that are exchanged within a face to face conversation. Although the silence is intended, it is not to be confused with ‗g‘, the ‗willed silence mark‘.

‗g‘, ‗the willed silence mark‘ marks an intentional silence. Willed silence marks are used in conversations when one of the speakers refuses to comment on the previous utterance. The narrator states that he often used ‗g‘ in conversations with his mother when she asked him whether he had a girlfriend or not. For him, ‗g‘ is the ―conversational equivalent of building a wall over which you can‘t climb, through which you can‘t see […]‖51 Although the narrator is not sure what the motivation or reason for using ‗g‘ is, he suspects that it might be depression. He feels depressed that he has never had real relationships with girls so far, which brings him to use ‗g‘ whenever the conversation turns to this topic. ‗g‘ is the sort of silence that is used when someone is uncomfortable with a conversation topic, it simply means ‗I don‘t want to talk about that‘ or ‗Can we leave that alone, please?‘ This is also what distinguishes ‗g‘ from ‗c‘. The use of ‗g‘ brings the conversation to a halt, whereas ‗c‘ just mutes the conversation. It is still continuing although nothing is said aloud anymore.

‗??‘ is what the narrator defines as the ‗insistent question mark‘. It is used when someone refuses to accept the meaning of a willed silence.

"I don't get it. Are you ashamed of the girl? Are you ashamed of me?" "g" "??"52

In spoken language ‗??‘ might translate to ‗Are you?‘ or ‗I won‘t let go of this, so say something!‘ The silence represented by ‗??‘ is a rather impolite one, indicating one speaker‘s refusal of the other‘s boundaries.

'¡‘ symbolizes the ‗unxclamation point‘ As the name suggests, it is the opposite of an exclamation point. According to A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease it hints at a whisper. "I hope that you never love anyone as much as I love you¡"53 The quoted sentence is taken from a conversation between the narrator and his grandmother. Immediately after, the narrator wonders why his grandmother would whisper when they were the only ones present. ‗¡‘ indicates a fearful silence, a silence that is used when someone utters a thought he considers

51 ibid. 52 ibid. 53 ibid. 73

too frightening, too precious maybe. This silence might also be connected to a feeling of regret after having said something rash. It may be that the speaker is overwhelmed by emotions and utters a thought that he fears is too direct, too truthful, yet he cannot undo the act of speaking, and thus he tries to mitigate the utterance by turning it into a whisper at the last minute. ‗¡‘ is, especially after sentences like the one quoted above, always accompanied y a notion of sadness and a heavy heart.

As ‗¡‘ indicates a whisper, it seems obvious that ‗¡¡‘ indicates a completely voiceless utterance. The narrator describes ‗¡¡‘ as a theoretical figure he has not yet found proof of. Despite the lack of evidence that would at least allow the assumption that there is such a thing as ‗¡¡‘, the narrator strongly believes that ―at least some of the silences in my life were really extraunxclamations.‖54 As it is a completely voiceless utterance, ‗¡¡‘ risks being mistaken for either ‗c‘, ‗g‘ or probably ‗??‘. What distinguishes it from its fellow silences is the context in which it is used. It is accompanied by a profound feeling of sadness or happiness or both, and like the utterance it follows it is fathered by overwhelming emotions.

As difficult it is to define ‗¡¡‘, as easy is it to fully understand ‗!!‘. ‗!!‘ is what it is, a double- exclamation point, used in (heated) arguments. The narrator states that he has never had an argument with any member of his family, thus he has never used the double exclamation point himself. It can be argued that because the narrator has never used ‗!!‘ it‘s existence can‘t be proven, as it is with ‗¡¡‘. However, ‗!!‘ is easy to recognize and the short story gives the following example.

―Give it up,fucker!!‖ he [the other driver] hollered at my father, in front of my mother, my brothers, and me.

―Well, I‘m sorry,‖ my father said, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose, ―but I think it‘s rather obvious that we arrived at this space first. You see, we were approaching from –―

―Give … it … up … fucker!!

―Well, it‘s just that I think I‘m in the right on this particu—―

―GIVE IT UP, FUCKER!!‖

―Give it up, Dad¡‖ I said, suffereing a minor coronary event as my fingers clenched his seat‘s headrest.

54 ibid. 74

―Je-sus!‖ the man yelled, pounding his fist against the outside of his car door. ―Giveitupfucker!!‖55

The double exclamation mark is easy to interpret. It indicates something that might be described as a loud, threatening silence. The utterance that precedes ‗!!‘ is an aggressive one which is emphasized by the double exclamation mark. The cited passage also features a ‗¡‘, which in this case indicates a frightened whisper. The fact that the father (figure) is under attack and is not able to defend the parking space, puts the narrator into a very uncomfortable position – the son describes the feeling as ―suffering a minor coronary event‖56, a state that might be a result of being actually scared by the other man, but can also be interpreted as having a heavy heart due to seeing the father fail.

The next silence that is introduced is represented by ‗~‘, the so called ‗pedal point‘. According to the story it marks ―a thought that dissolves into a suggestive silence.‖57 It is important that ‗~‘ is not mistaken for a dash or an ellipsis. It is important to realize that the thought marked by ‗~‘ is not incomplete, as is a thought that is represented by ‗—‗ . In the above cited passage ‗—‗ also marks an interrupted utterance, but this is also not the point of ‗~‘. The pedal point merely represents a thought that can be considered an ―outstretched hand‖58, an offer to the other speaker. The narrator mentions that most pedal points are used by his brother. He believes this is due to the two of them being incredibly close. He describes his brother as ―the one most capable of telling me what he needs to tell me without having to say it. Or, rather, he‘s the one whose words I‘m most convinced I don‘t need to hear.‖59 The pedal point appears mostly in intimate conversations. It is probably mostly used within familial conversation, as these conversations are the most intimate ones.

I called my brother that night and told him that he shouldn't worry. He said, "I know. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about~" "I know~" I said. "I know~" he said. 60

‗Ø‘ is called the ‗low point‘. It either substitutes phrases like ‗this is terrible‘, or is used for accentuation at the end of them. In the story the narrator observes that ‗low points‘ only

55 ibid. 56 ibid. 57 ibid. 58 ibid. 59 ibid. 60 ibid. 75

appear in pairs in his family. In this he sees the ―acknowledgment of whatever is terrible and irremediable becomes itself something terrible and irremediable – and often worse than the original referent.‖61 ‗Low points‘ naturally cause other low points to appear in a conversation. The narrator explains how his sadness would make his mother sad and her sadness in return makes him even sadder – which is represented by a sequence of ‗Ø‘s‘. The low point might be a characteristic feature of parent-child conversations, as parents are usually very empathic towards their children and vice versa. This empathy enables them to bond with each other but also results in ‗re-feeling‘ what the other feels, thus being sad although there is no personal reason for being sad.

‗d‘ is what the narrator calls the ‗snowflake‘. In the narrators family ‗d‘s‘ are used at the end of sentences that have never before been said.

―I didn‘t die in the Holocaust, but all of my siblings did, so where does that leave me?d‖62

―My heart is not good, and I‘m afraid of dying, and I‘m also afraid of saying I love you.d‖63

Utterances of this kind carry some sort of brutal honesty that is probably very unusual for the speaker. They are rather unexpected and unlikely, thus the impact on the listener is relatively big. It is, however, not the content of the message that is unexpected, but the saying it out aloud. Utterances of this sort leave a big emptiness behind. The utterance is too enormous to be fully grasped at once. They leave both listener and speaker speechless, while the utterance echoes in the space created by ‗d‘. Sentences ending in ‗d‘ also do not require any kind of response.

‗J‘ is defined by the narrator as a ‗corroboration mark‘. Despite the definition as a corroborative device it is not the same as an agreement. ‗J‘ is presented in the context of the narrator‘s father, who has suffered over 20 heart attacks so far. He explains that over the years he has become a yes-man, as have been all the men in his family. The narrator first believes that being a yes-man means to surrender, saying yes to things one does not believe in, but he

61 ibid. 62 ibid. 63 ibid.

then realizes that ‗J‘ has nothing to do with the things he agrees to or people he agrees with but with the fear of dying, that is all to present in a family with a history of heart attacks.

"Could you add orange juice to the grocery list, but remember to get the kind with reduced acid. Also some cottage cheese. And that bacon-substitute stuff. And a few Yahrzeit candles." "J" "The car needs gas. I need tampons." "J" "Is Jonathan dating anyone? I'm not prying, but I'm very interested." "J" 64

The passage illustrates that the silence represented by ‗J‘ is about self-preservation. It is accompanied with a notion of unwillingness, and serves as a mean to avoid discussions. It is not just a ‗Yes‘. It stands for ‗I don‘t want to, but for my heart‘s sake I‘ll just agree with you.‘ The narrator first mistakes this agreeing with surrendering. His father and brother suddenly seem weak to him, which makes him feel ―[…] like having an elephant sit on my chest […]‖.65 Only after some time the narrator fully understands what it means to be a yes-man, to use ‗J‘. The corroboration mark is a precautionary measure, and not a symbol of weakness.

So far most of the silences were relatively easy to define and to explain. The next silence that is introduced in the story is ‗ ―‖ ‘, which the narrator calls the ‗severed web‘. He defines it as a ‗Barely Tolerable Substitute‘ that means ‗I love you‘, more or less, and adds that ‗ ―‖ ‗ can be used instead of the phrase ‗I love you‘. ‗Æ|¨‘, ‗Oc‘, ‗oe‘ and ‗r(,‘ are defined as other Barely Tolerable Substitutes meaning ‗I love you‘. There is no definite number of Barely Tolerable Substitutes, yet the narrator sometimes feels that he is surrounded by them. But what exactly are Barely Tolerable Substitutes? The story does not actually explain if there is a difference between an ‗I love you‘ represented by ‗Æ|¨‘ and an ‗I love you‘ represented by ‗ ―‖ ‗. Does the one have a notion of sadness? Or happiness? Are the different Barely Tolerable Substitutes used by different users? Does a mother use ‗Æ|¨‘ instead of ‗ ―‖ ‗ or has the personality of the speaker nothing to do with what substitute is used?

The ‗reversible colon‘ – ‗::‘ - is the next punctuation mark that Foer introduces. A simple colon is normally used to divide two (partial) sentences, of which the latter is an elaboration, summation, implication, etc. of the first but not vice versa. In conversations the reversible colon is used to indicate that both sides of it elaborate, summate, implicate, etc. each other.

64 ibid. 65 ibid. 77

―My eyes water when I speak about my family::I don‘t like to speak about my family.‖66

―I‘ve never felt loved by anyone outside my family::my persistent depression.67

Another difference between a usual colon and the reversible colon is that reversible colons can not only link two (partial) sentences but a whole sequence.

―My grandmother‘s sadness::my mother‘s sadness::my sadness::the sadness that will come after me.‖68

‗¨‘ is what Foer names a ‗backup‘. According to him communication between family members is always prone to failure. He distinguishes between different misunderstandings in a conversation: 1) participant A will not hear participant B‘s utterance 2) participant A does not understand participant B‘s utterance 3) participant A understands the words of participant B‘s utterance but not the meaning. Foer explains that 3) is not unusual and can even concern very simple sentences. If one participant in a conversation realizes that his opposite did understand but not ‗understand‘ an utterance, he will at least try to find the problem. He will rethink the conversation to gain further information on what was not understood and why, and will then rephrase the utterance. The rephrased utterance is often more direct then the original to make sure its meaning is properly conveyed.

―It pains me to think of you alone.‖ ―¨‖ ―It pains me to think of me without any grandchildren to love.‖69

A backup is rewinding the conversation to a point of mutual understanding with a subsequent rephrasing of the passage that caused a misunderstanding. A backup is probably most likely used by speakers who normally understand each other quite well, or by family members and friends, because it requires some empathy to even realize that there has been a misunderstanding and one has to be willing to put some effort into rephrasing an utterance for

66 ibid. 67 ibid. 68 ibid. 69 ibid.

the other person. Of course the use of a backup can be enforced on a speaker by professional circumstances, too.

‗{}‘ is another punctuation device introduced in this short story. Foer defines them as ‗should- have brackets‘. As the name suggests, should-have brackets are used when something that should have been said has not been said. Foer believes that everyone‘s should have brackets are different. Should have brackets are used when at some point in a conversation something remains unspoken. There are various reasons for the use of ‗should have brackets‘: shame, fear, sadness, meanness. I suppose that the reasons vary from person to person which is undermined by Foer‘s statement that everybody thinks different about should have things. At the end of A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease is the following dialogue:

"Are you hearing static?" "{I'm crying into the phone.}" "Jonathan?" "c" "Jonathan~" "g" "??" "I::not myself~" "{A child's sadness is a parent's sadness.}" "{A parent's sadness is a child's sadness.}" "¨" "I'm probably just tired¡" "{I never told you this, because I thought it might hurt you, but in my dreams it was you. Not me. You were pulling the weeds from my chest.}" "{I want to love and be loved.}" "J" "J" "Ø" "Ø" "oe" "J" "c´c´c" "Ø" "Ø" ":°9" " g + g Æ g " "J" "Oc" "÷''" "·pv£u¢°ot§l" "g"

"{I love you.}" "{I love you, too. So much.}"70

If all the theory that is presented in the short story is applied to the dialogue, it translates like this. ―Are you hearing static?‖ ―I‘m crying into the phone.‖ ―Jonathan?‖ ―I know what you want to say.‖ ―Jonathan, talk to me, please.‖ ―I don‘t want to talk about it. Leave it alone.‖ ―Would you please tell me what‘s wrong?‖ ―I am just not myself today, I feel very sad.‖ ―A child‘s sadness is a parent‘s sadness.‖ ―A parent‘s sadness is a child‘s sadness.‖ ―I don‘t really understand.‖ ―I‘m probably just tired.‖ ―I never told you this, because I thought it might hurt you, but in my dreams it was you. Not me. You were pulling the weeds from my chest.‖ ―I want to love and be loved.‖ ―Okay. If you say so.‖ ―If you say so.‖ ―That‘s terrible.‖ ―It couldn‘t be worse.‖ ―I love you‖ ―Ok.‖ ―I know. I know. I know.‖ ―It‘s awful.‖ ―Just horrible‖ ―I love you so much.‖ ―Let it be. I love you to. Now leave it alone.‖ ―If you want it that way.‖

70 ibid.

―I love you.‖ ―I love you. I love you.‖ ―I love you even more.‖ ―Please, stop talking about it.‖ ―I love you.‖ ―I love you too. So much.‖

There is of course a major problem with the translation of silences: actually they cannot be translated. Many silences occur when something is not said. They change the course of a conversation, as the response to a silence is very different to a response to something that has been said. In so far, a translation makes no sense as it presents the conversation in a way it would never occur. In the presented translated conversation, the conversation would have changed immediately after the second line. Silences have an incredibly strong influence on a conversation. They carry more meaning than what is spoken out loud and often make up a great percentage of a conversation. In the cited dialogue between Foer and his father, only 5 lines are actually spoken language, while the other 27 are silences. The dialogue also appears to be very long, which is due to the silence punctuation, where in real-life it would be just a few minutes long because silences do not consume a lot of time.

It is also important to keep in mind that the fourteen punctuation marks introduced in the story are part of the conversations within the Foer family. They are strongly connected to the topic of heart disease, a symbol for the family‘s concern for each other. The silences used in the family conversations may be unique not only in their way of use but also for this family. Another family without a history of heart attacks might use a variety of absolutely different silences. As much as the silences form or guide the conversations, the history of heart disease forms or guides the silences. If there was no heart disease, there would probably not be so many silences in the familial conversations.

Assigning punctuation marks to silences is an attempt to make writing down conversations easier. The idea of simplifying writing by assigning marks to all possible silences and intonations is well-meant, but it has one major flaw. It is incredibly difficult to read a dialogue where nearly 85% of the punctuation marks are unfamiliar. The usual punctuation marks – question marks, full stops, colons or exclamation marks – also carry meaning, but their

meaning is common knowledge. Every reader knows what it means if there is a question mark at the end of a sentence, whereas the meaning of ‗Ø‘, ‗¨‘, and ‗::‘ is completely hidden. In A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease the newly created punctuation marks are presented in strong contrast to conventional prose, and they appear even more unfamiliar. The single passages of the story where the punctuation marks are explained one by one are comparatively easy to read, as only one of them appears at a time. The father-son conversation at the end is, on the other hand, almost impossible to read. There are simply too many unfamiliar symbols, and constant flipping back to earlier points in the story is unavoidable if the reader wants to truly understand the dialogue. At the end, the attempt to simplify writing has failed. The number of unfamiliar punctuation marks is just overwhelming and has made the final dialogue almost too complex to read.

5.2.1 A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease in the Context of Foer’s Work

Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novels and short stories are characterized by various narrative modes and devices. His characters for some reason all fail to communicate properly, which Foer has chosen to make clear by using different techniques such as bad English (Alex in Everything is Illuminated), unusual spacing (the grandmother in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) or no paragraphs (the grandfather in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Rhoda). Foer has always tried to present his narratives as realistic as possible, and the punctuation of silence can be seen as the climax of this process. Also the content of the short story, which is besides the history of heart attacks conversation within a family, is common to all of Foer‘s narratives. In Everything is Illuminated the Perchov family is prone to failures in familial communication and Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is also not able to communicate his fear and sadness to his mother. The grandfather in the novel has lost his voice completely, whereas the grandmother can only tell her story through a letter to her grandson. Even Tree of Codes is related to A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease – the holes can be read as silences, which adds another, third dimension to the two dimensions the book offers the reader (a) concrete poetry b) novel).

Silence in conversation (willed silence, self-inflicted silence, silence inflicted on others, silence that is inflicted by others) is a major theme in all of Foer‘s work. Whereas there is no

graphical depiction of silence in Everything is Illuminated, his second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close already features some ways to mark silences in conversation. The grandmother‘s letter is characterized by wide spaces between sentences, which can be read as silences. The grandfather‘s narration features blank pages, a way to communicate silence in written language. A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease was published in 2002, one year after Everything is Illuminated, and one year after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The story ranges amongst the early works of the author, yet it clearly shows the direction in which Foer was, and still is, heading. He moves away from usual literary devices, making use of visual writing as well as unfamiliar formatting. Silence, especially in familial communication, is from here on a major theme. The question arises why a young author is so fascinated by, or obsessed with silence, more precisely silence as a manifestation of trauma, and the answer to this may be found in an essay Foer wrote years later. This essay and a connected interview will be discussed in the following chapter 6.

6 Once upon a Life and Something Happened – Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s work

Foer‘s stories and novels almost always feature some sort of trauma or characters struggling with traumatic experiences. Most of them are also unable to overcome their trauma for a long time and can also not talk about it. In an interview (titled Something Happened) with Suzie Mackanzie from The Guardian Foer states that ―all writing is autobiographical‖71, and as Mackenzie says realizes ―why trauma and loss play such a big part in his novels.‖72 Foer himself has experienced a horrific event that left him traumatized for years. When he was eight years old, he was one of the victims of an explosion at a summer camp. Foer suffered burns and could not talk about what had happened for almost 20 years. Only in 2005 he told journalist Suzie Mackanzie about this life changing experience that seems to have inspired his novels as well as his short stories. Foer has recently published a piece of literature about the explosion himself. The short essay is titled Once upon a life and together with Something Happened might harbor some answers to why trauma is such a major theme in Foer‘s work.

The explosion:

At the age of eight, Foer was supposed to attend a two week summer camp at Murch Elementary in Washington. He remembers his mother driving him to the school in the morning, where they were told that the planned astronomy class had been replaced with a chemistry class during which the children would make sparklers from potassium perchlorate, charcoal, iron powder, sulphur and aluminium powder.

Foer had gone to the bath room and when he returned to the classroom was met by an enormous explosion. The explosion had occurred at his table, where he had been working on the sparklers with three other children, Dedrick, Puja and Stewart, his best friend. Puja and Jonathan suffered relatively minor burns, whereas Stewart and Dedrick were hit by the full power of the explosion. They had to undergo reconstructive surgery due to the second and third degree burns on up to 30% of their bodies. In Something Happened Foer admits that the

71 Mackenzie, Suzie (2005, May 21). ―Something happened‖.The Guardian. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/21/fiction.features [2011, Dec. 22]. 72 ibid. 84

sight of his friends immediately after the explosion was ―the worst thing I‘ve ever seen in my life.‖73 He also states that he suspects that the visits to the burns unit at the hospital where he frequently visited his friend Stewart after the explosion had a more lasting effect on him than the explosion himself, describing the burns unit as ―the single scariest place for a kid because everything shows.‖74 After the explosion Jonathan, although not seriously burnt, suffered a nervous breakdown. He missed school, could not bear to be away from his parents and cried alone locked in a closet for almost three consecutive years. According to what Foer states in the interview with Mackenzie, he suddenly overcame this critical state at the age of 12, but the explosion had changed him. Until today he copes with fear and terror in the same way – by disassociating himself from it. However, it took almost twenty years until Foer was actually able to talk about the catastrophe. His friend Steward, although still disfigured, also carried on with his life, but Dedrik, Foer adds in the interview, is still not himself. Reading about Foer‘s childhood experience reminds one a lot of his characters, and he admits that when he read what he had written he figured that he ―‘[…] wasn‘t writing about what I thought I was writing.‘‖75

In Something happened Foer states that falling in love has ―increased [his] ability to feel.‖76 It has made it possible for him to talk about what he experienced as a child and how he felt about it. This is a strong similarity to many of the characters in Foer‘s books. The grandfather in Everything is illuminated is only able to find peace after he revisits Trachimbrod and talks to Lista. It is only after feeling the love that he had felt before the war that he can go on his final journey. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the grandfather has also suffered a trauma – probably but not solely the allied bombing of Dresden – and finds himself unable to speak not only about what has happened but in general. It is only when he meets his grandson Oskar that the walls he has erected start to crumble, making it possible for him to at least start to try to overcome his trauma. In both cases it is love, or something like love, that leads to recovery. And like Foer it takes the characters a lot of time to reach a point where healing is possible.

73 ibid. 74 ibid. 75 ibid. 76 ibid.

Foer admits to Mackenzie that only after finishing Everything is Illuminated he realized that ―I was writing about the way those events [the explosion] affected me,‖77 and he adds that actually ―[…] in that first book I was writing about myself.‖78 Similarities between Foer‘s experience and Oskar‘s experience in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are also obvious although Foer claims that the novel is more universal and not so much autobiographical. Yet the character of nine year old Oskar Schell reminds the reader a lot of Jonathan Safran Foer. Like Foer Oskar is left devastated by a terrifying experience. Of course the scales of the two events cannot be compared, yet the effects the incidents have on Oskar and had on Foer are very much alike.

Both Oskar from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Jonathan from Everything is Illuminated are collectors. Oskar keeps a journal where he puts pictures and notes, he carefully laminates letters and treats these things like little treasures. Jonathan on the other hand collects memories of his family, trying to recreate a story – similar to Oskar who is trying to recreate life with his father. The real Jonathan Safran Foer is a collector too. He hoards boxes with jewels, shells and other stuff he came across on street markets, but the most extraordinary collector‘s passion he indulges in is the collection of blank sheets of paper from famous persons, which he frames and hangs on the walls of his office. The empty pages remind the reader of the empty pages in the grandfathers daybook in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but the similarity might be just a coincidence.

Also very interesting is the title of Foer‘s second novel. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close can refer to both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the explosion in the chemistry lab. Fact is that Oskar has not actually been anywhere really close to the collapsing Twin Towers, but Foer has witnessed the explosion at close range. Therefore it seems very likely that the novel is much more autobiographical than Foer believes. After all he has admitted that he believes that there is no writing that is not autobiographical, and whether consciously or unconsciously – there might be more Foer in the book than it seems at first.

One of the themes featured in Everything is illuminated is chance. It is chance that decides over love and death and it is chance that brings all parts together in the end. When the book was published in 2001 it became a great success and Foer started to work on his second novel,

77 ibid. 78 ibid.

a book about a famous man who vanishes and whose life is made into a museum, when he suddenly reappears. Foer had spent the summer of 2001 in Spain where he was supposed to work on his new book, but he felt restless and returned to America around the 9th of September. He witnessed the attacks on the World Trade center on TV and suddenly his book began to change. If he had not felt restless in Spain, if he had stayed to write, maybe Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would never have been written. It was again chance that intermingled with Foer‘s life (as it did on the day of the explosion in the chemistry lab, which he would not have witnessed if he had gone to the bathroom 10 seconds later, or which would have injured him seriously if he had not gone at all). The novel can be seen as Foer‘s attempt to cope with what he saw on TV on 9/11. As he has stated he copes with fear and terror by distancing himself - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close can be seen as the greatest manifestation of this technique.

Foer went back to school in the fall but faced a lot of difficulties. He describes the time as a ―nervous breakdown drawn out over the next three years.‖79 He spent a lot of time in the principal‘s office but, as he puts it, was ―unable to explain anything.80‖When he visited his friend Stewart for the first time he was above all happy that the boy was able to talk as Foer ―was afraid of the silence between us. I feared silence as much as I feared the machines, and doctors, and children without skin.‖81 Silence, the inability to speak as well as the fear of both is present in both Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Almost 20 years had to go by before Foer was able to break his silence and to talk about the explosion. In the interview with The Guardian it says that there had been reasons for this silence. He believes that his parents didn‘t want him to talk or to think about it and he adds that ―They didn‘t want me to feel survivor‘s guilt.‖82 Guilt and survivor‘s guilt are major themes in Foer‘s work. In Everything is Illuminated the grandfather is overwhelmed by his guilt that results from his betrayal of his best friend. The guilt silences him for years and only after he relives the past events he is able to overcome his guilt. It is survivor‘s guilt that surfaces in the chapters about Trachimbrod, and it is the same form of guilt that weighs heavy

79 Foer, Jonathan Safran (2010, Feb. 28). ―Once upon a life: Jonathan Safran Foer‖. The Observer. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/28/jonathan-safran-foer-the-explosion. [2011, Dec. 22]. 80 ibid. 81 ibid. 82 Mackenzie, Suzie (2005, May 21). ―Something happened‖.The Guardian. Culture Section. [Online]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/21/fiction.features [2011, Dec. 22]. 87

on Lista‘s shoulders. Foer‘s characters in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also have to overcome their guilt to find peace. In the context of the explosion in the chemistry lab the characters in Foer‘s book all seem to present a little part of Foer‘s feelings about the event. It seems as if he has created not only one but numerous characters with the help of which he can distance himself from this traumatic experience. Each of the characters copes (or tries to cope) with their problems in a different way, which could be seen as Foer‘s attempts to overcome his trauma. In the interview with Suzie Mackenzie he says that ―[…] it is very, very hard to talk about grief […]‖83, and adds that he has tried ―‘with this much success.‘ And he holds up his thumb and forefinger to indicate a hair‘s breadth.‖84 By creating characters that have to cope with trauma too, he might finally have found more than one way to overcome his trauma.

83 ibid. 84 ibid. 88

7 Conclusion

Throughout the last decade, Jonathan Safran Foer has become one of the few new, young authors who succeed not only in pleasing the masses but also reviewers. However, Foer is also an author that has meat harsh criticism because of his unusual style. So far, Foer has published three novels, which accurately show how his writing has developed over the years.

Foer‘s first novel, Everything is Illuminated, is an example for contemporary Jewish- American metaficational holocaust literature. The book, based on a personal journey Foer took while writing his thesis at university, tells the story of a young American Jew who sets out to find Augustina, the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather during World War II. The novel introduces a number of themes and literary techniques to the reader, many of which are characteristic also for Foer‘s later novels. Everything is Illuminated is told from two different perspectives (Alex – Jonathan), via three narrative strands (Jonathan, Alex narration, Alex letters), a technique Foer also used in his second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (grandfather‘s letters, grandmother‘s letters, Oskar‘s narration). As has been proofed by the analysis of Foer‘s work, the major themes (in most of his works) are love and death (and the cycle of life), the importance of memory, trauma (and how to deal with trauma), (familial) communication and loss. These themes appear in most of Foer‘s works, including the two discussed short stories, Rhoda and A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease. Although Foer is a member of the younger generation of Jewish American writers and might thus be suspected to write about more contemporary events, World War II and the history of Jews (in Europe) seems to be of great importance to him, as each of his novels somehow deals with these issues. Foer has proved great talent. His writing – although sometimes deeply disturbing and shocking – is fascinating, hilarious and magical. He mixes various styles and ‗languages‘, giving each of his characters a very unique voice. Foer‘s Alex from Everything is Illuminated may be the best example for the use of extremely distinct voices.

Besides a German – Jewish past Foer‘s characters almost always have to cope with some sort of trauma. In Everything is Illluminated, the events surrounding the destruction of the stetl of Trachimbrod by the Nazis cause this trauma in the character of the grandfather, the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 are the reason for Oskar Schell‘s trauma in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In this book, Foer picks up on World War II again by making the

grandparents Jewish immigrants who survived the allied bombing of Dresden, which causes their very own traumata. The analysis of Foer‘s essay Once upon a Life and an interview titled Something Happened has shed light on why trauma is the major theme in Foer‘s work. At the age of 9 Foer was the victim of an explosion that occurred in a chemistry class at a summer camp he attended. The explosion, in which two of his friends were seriously injured (Foer and another girl suffered relatively minor injuries), left Foer traumatized for nearly 20 years. This experience and the resulting trauma have been proved to be clearly reflected in the author‘s work. The analysis of Foer‘s essay and the related interview as well as the character analyses have further proved that Foer, who still copes with fear and scary events by disassociating himself, has used his characters as ‗valves‘ for his trauma. Each of the characters deals with his trauma in a different way and most of them are finally able to overcome their fears. Common to all of them is that they somehow fail to communicate with the people surrounding them, which is a further autobiographical factor.

Foer‘s work is not only characterized by strong yet traumatized characters, holocaust narratives or common themes such as love, memory and loss. Above all it is the use of unusual, extraordinary literary devices. Foer makes heavy use of visual writing techniques, incorporating photographs, illustrations and colored corrections into his novels. Not every reviewer was fond of the author‘s experiments with literature and paper. Already his second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was, although widely appreciated by the masses, criticized for the excessive use of photographs and other illustrations. When Foer then took another step towards the ‗final frontier‘ of literature by actually cutting holes into an already existing book (Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodiles), reviewers predicted a sudden end to Foer‘s career. However, they were proved wrong. Tree of Codes, the book that has actual holes in it, has become an insiders‘ tip. The book provides the reader with a cubistical, dada- experience, with concrete poetry and a heart touching narrative at the same time. The fragile piece of literature cannot be attributed to a certain genre or category. With his latest novel Foer has proved that so much more is possible with literature, that indeed ―Definitions have never done anything but constrain.‖85 Foer is not concerned about the (financial) success of his novels and stories. Tree of Codes has not even been properly advertised. Foer wants to explore the field of literature, and he wants to find out where one can go and what is possible.

85 Heller, Steven (2010, Nov. 24).‖Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Book as Art Object‖.The New York Times. Arts Section.[Online]. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/ [2011, Dec. 22]. 90

For him it is an exploratory journey and a way to deal with life in a way nobody else does. I believe that despite the use of unconventional literary techniques Foer has an amazing career ahead of him. As long as there is a readership that is willing to on a journey to the ‗final frontier‘ of literature with Foer, his star will not sink.

8 Bibliography

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Foer, Jonathan Safran (2002/2005). Everything is Illuminated. London: Penguin Books Ltd..

Foer, Jonathan Safran (2005/2006).Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. London: Penguin Books Ltd..

Foer, Jonathan Safran (2010/2011).Tree of Codes. London: Visual Editions.

Foer, Jonathan Safran (2008). ―Rhoda‖. In: Smith, Zadie, ed. The Book of Other People. London: Penguin Books. 183-186.

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