Fictionalization of History in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated

Abstract

Using the theory of new historicism as conceptualized by Michael Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, this research explores new history i.e. discursive and constructed phenomenon in the novel Everything is Illuminated. This research probe intothe unreliable character Alex, one eyed i.e. living with his grandfather in Ukraine. He narrates the incidents in broken English with several discontinuities. Alex presents a dreary, hellish picture of Ukraine of the late 1960's. However, he withdraws hisown narration in the curse of novel. He even claims that he is not sure about the incidents of World War II and holocaust. Throughout the unreliable narrative of Alex Foer deconstructs the traditional notion of history as the matter of facts and he claimsthat history is the matter of fabricated power politics Keywords:History, Linearity, Fragmentation, Holocaust, Jews, Memory, Deception