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