Summary of Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narratives in Jonathan
Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated by Francisco Collado-Rodriguez.
By Jisca van de Kerkhof
Modernist master narrative is a dramatic ideological shift. It is caused by a
combination of anthropology and psychoanalysis. Modernists believe in the power of
universal psychic patterns, which influenced the literary realism. Jonathan Safran
Foer uses the aesthetic tradition of modernist, realist and magical. Motifs and themes
in Everything is Illuminated which are associated with archetypal symbolism, help
Foer’s readers to identify. Foer uses myth-oriented and magical-realist strategies on
the one hand and pre-modernist realism on the other. The book contains strong
ethical claims as a result of the crossing of the aesthetic traditions used, which
provokes the reader’s empathy. Foer writes about the Holocaust in the Ukraine. He
ruptures a linear presentation of events and, according to trauma theorists, this is a
good method to incite the reader’s emotions. Moreover, it stimulates an ethical
reading of the book. A critical debate on ethical matters can be produced by Foer’s
strategy of refraction. He presents events in a way that life should be understood as
cyclical; there will be decay as time sets forwards until the cycle ends.
Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated by Francisco Collado-Rodriguez.
By Jisca van de Kerkhof
Modernist master narrative is a dramatic ideological shift. It is caused by a
combination of anthropology and psychoanalysis. Modernists believe in the power of
universal psychic patterns, which influenced the literary realism. Jonathan Safran
Foer uses the aesthetic tradition of modernist, realist and magical. Motifs and themes
in Everything is Illuminated which are associated with archetypal symbolism, help
Foer’s readers to identify. Foer uses myth-oriented and magical-realist strategies on
the one hand and pre-modernist realism on the other. The book contains strong
ethical claims as a result of the crossing of the aesthetic traditions used, which
provokes the reader’s empathy. Foer writes about the Holocaust in the Ukraine. He
ruptures a linear presentation of events and, according to trauma theorists, this is a
good method to incite the reader’s emotions. Moreover, it stimulates an ethical
reading of the book. A critical debate on ethical matters can be produced by Foer’s
strategy of refraction. He presents events in a way that life should be understood as
cyclical; there will be decay as time sets forwards until the cycle ends.
