Use of Historiographic Metafiction for the Purpose of Reconciliation in Jonathan Safran Foer’sEverything Is Illuminated

Abstract

Jonathan Safran’s Everything Is Illuminated deals with the conflict and separation of generation primarily because of holocaust. Using holocaust experience as a memory Foer writes novel with the combination of multiple structures, language, unstructured setting and fragmentation with surprising comic tone. And these features establish this novel as a metafiction. Infact I argue that Foer uses metafictonin order to effect reconciliation or healing trauma. So, this research demonstrates how Everything Is Illuminatedis historio graphic metafiction and how this use of metafictional element allows Foer to bring fast and frozen reconciliation between generationsof character son the context of holocaust.That meant,how the history of Ukraineis analyzed from the perception of reconciliation.To study in depth this research is accomplished in the light of Linda Hutcheon’s “historio graphic me tafiction” which explores the role of history to reconstruct the fiction. Since this research allows to show elements of historio graphic me tafiction and blends some features of trauma theory to reflect the effect of reconciliation.To reach the final conclusion paper is divided into two parts, the first past of the paper explains how Everything Is Illuminatedis historiographic metafiction and second part demonstrates how this metafiction leads characters towards the reconciliation.