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Foer raises the question, “Whose story is this?” Jonathan sets out to find
his history and in doing so finds a wasteland. Alex, however, ends up accidentally
stumbling across a revelation about his own family history that,
had he not joined Jonathan on his journey, likely would have remained
secret. His Grandfather, he discovers, once lived in a neighboring shtetl
named Kolki. The town faced a similar fate to Trachimbrod: the Nazis
came, lined the villagers up, and demanded that everyone, including
Jews, identify at least one Jew to be shot. Alex’s Grandfather reveals that
when his turn came, he pointed to his best friend, a Jew named Herschel,
and as a result he was murdered. Considering that it is Alex who makes
a discovery about his past, and it is Alex’s voice that controls two out of
the three of the novel’s narratives, it might seem that the story is actually
Alex’s rather than Jonathan’s. Alex, however, knows that it is important
that both of their voices work to tell their stories. In Alex’s second-to-last
letter to Jonathan, he writes, “We are talking now, Jonathan, together;
and not apart. We are with each other, working on the same story, and
I am certain you can also feel it. Do you know that I am the Gypsy girl
and you are Safran, and that I am Kolker and you are Brod, and that I
am your grandmother and you are your Grandfather, and that I am Alex
and you are you, and that I am you and you are me?” (Foer 214). Alex
references every important relationship in Jonathan’s fictitious Trachimbrod
narrative, placing himself and Jonathan in those roles. In doing so,
he is attempting to tell Jonathan that the voices in Jonathan’s stories have
become entwined with their own voices. His proclamation, “We are talking
now, Jonathan, together; and not apart … working on the same story
… I am Alex and you are you, and I am you and you are me,” means that
Jonathan’s voice and his own are now inextricable. Without their voices
working together in unison and without the other voices present in each
of their narratives, the story could not be completely told.
A similar sentiment is echoed in the chapter in which Alex’s Grand-
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father reveals his secret. Alex does not write his Grandfather’ dialogue in
quotation marks, and thus his own narrative voice mingles in the midst
of the revelation, a six page block of text that is set apart by parentheses
in a way that Propst says “makes it seem as though Alex is cradling the
words in his hands” (Propst 44). She argues, “Through these visual cues,
Alex implies that their shared story is also the story of Grandfather and
Herschel and the ghosts that he, Grandfather, and Jonathan carry with
them” (44). This concept appears at the end of his Grandfather’s confession
when Alex’s voice seeps in and again puts him and Jonathan in the
places of other characters:
Jonathan where do we go now what do we do with what we
know Grandfather said that I am I but this could not be true the
truth is that I also pointedatHerschel and I also said heisaJew
and I will tell you that you also pointedatHerchel and you also
said heisaJew and more than that Grandfather also pointedatme
and said heisaJew and you also pointedathim and said heisa-
Jew and your grandmother and Little Igor and we all pointedateachother
(Foer 252).
By placing himself, Jonathan, Little Igor, and Jonathan’s grandmother
into the positions of Grandfather and Herschel, Alex is acknowledging
that what his Grandfather did is something that affects both of their
families. Just as his Grandfather pointed at his friend in Kolki, someone
else probably pointed at members of Jonathan’s family in nearby
Trachimbrod. Having both been born from generations affected by the
Holocaust, Alex must ask what he or anyone else would have done in his
Grandfather’s place, and his conclusion is that they all would have done
the same. In this way, his Grandfather’s story is just as much his story and
Jonathan’s story.
The complex tri-narrative structure in Everything Is Illuminated allows
Foer to complicate voice in a way that lends greater meaning to
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