The Moral Ambiguity of Familial Sacrifice in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Famous Novel Everything is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer was 25 when his novel Everything is Illuminated was published, giving him a unique mindset fresh from adolescence and not quite furnished with all of its adult perceptions. It is this view that aids Foer in writing so passionately from the perspectives of both the young and very aged in the novel. Foer details their innermost thoughts and emotions and the results of these perceptions with vivid, omniscient clarity.

In so doing, he presents the reader with a three-dimensional picture of all his characters’ motives and actions as well as their effects. This informed depiction raises significant questions: do the motives behind these actions excuse their negative consequences?, and do the positive effects of these actions outweigh their negative effects? Everything is Illuminated suggests that, given the motives behind the sacrifices of fathers and their children for one another within its pages, it is impossible to discern whether these sacrifices are morally justified.

Alex’s grandfather, referred to simply as Grandfather, makes two interconnected sacrifices during the course of the novel. The first occurs during his youth in the shtetl, when Nazis invade and force everyone in the village to point to a Jewish person. Those who comply are unharmed, but are forced to watch their neighbors locked into a synagogue, which is then set ablaze. Those who do not point out a Jew are immediately shot in the head.

Herschel is Grandfather’s best friend, “but [he was he] and [his] wife [is his] wife and [his] baby [is his] baby” (250-51), and in Grandfather’s mind, the lives of his family take precedence over that of his friend. Grandfather knows “that [his wife is] holding [Alex’s] father and that he [is] holding [Alex] and that [Alex is] holding [his] children” (250); in essence, the entire family line. Grandfather points to Herschel, effectively sacrificing him, in order to avoid being murdered himself so that he can continue to care for his family.

The novel argues that Grandfather’s choice of his own life above Herschel’s, despite the circumstances, is unable to be conclusively morally supported or condemned. Grandfather rationalizes that “it was for [Father] that [he] pointed and for him (. . .) that [he] murdered Herschel” (251), implying that his love for his son meant more to Grandfather than his love for his best friend. The sentiment that “hewouldhavebeenafooltodoanythingelse” is irreconcilable with the notion that “he is stillguilty” (252).

As to the question of whether or not he is guilty, Grandfather constantly turns over the phrase, “I am I am I am IamI?” (252), both asking and potentially answering at once, but never fully deciding. When used to weigh the actions of “a good person who has lived in a bad time” (227), the novel suggests that the scales of morality work in an arena without gravity, in which no action weighs more than any other. Grandfather’s sacrifice cannot be considered ultimately moral or immoral, but is torturously both simultaneously.

Grandfather’s second sacrifice affects his family in the latter part of his life, when he lives with his children and grandchildren. Grandfather is obsessed with the issue of whether his sacrifice of Herschel is morally justifiable. This preoccupation becomes his second sacrifice when he allows it to consume his present life. His melancholy deeply disturbs those around him, especially Alex’s father. Grandfather cries in front of the television out of longing for his untarnished past or regret for the manner in which he sullied it. He becomes determined to find Augustine, unaware of the fact that “she is not Herschel, as [he] want[s[ her to be, and she is not [his wife], as he want[s] her to be, and she is not [his son], as he want[s] her to be” (241), and she is not his innocent past before the Nazis invade his shtetl, as he wants her to be, either.

Grandfather’s desire to continually reexamine and desire the past at the expense of being emotionally involved with his present is accepted by Alex, but condemned by himself. While Alex believes that “[e]ven if [Grandfather] were a bad person, [he [Alex]] would still know that [Grandfather is] a good person” (227), Grandfather holds himself directly responsible for his son’s [Father’s] abusive behavior. The novel does not crown either Alex or Grandfather’s ethical position supreme, instead leaving the reader to form his own conclusions.

Foer fashions Grandfather’s emotional avoidance of the present into a contributing factor in the two sacrifices Alex’s father, referred to as Father, also makes throughout Everything is Illuminated. Father gives up all of his familial relationships to escape the pain of seeing his father’s sadness. To prevent himself from being depressed by Grandfather’s perpetual melancholy, Father drinks. As a result of Father’s alcoholism, he often beats Alex and his brother, makes obscene comments to Alex, and “is never home because then he would witness Grandfather crying” (145), which would in turn cause Father pain. However, by altering his mental state to one of unvarying lewdness and violence, he forfeits loving relationships with his sons, wife, and father [Grandfather].

The chain effect of Grandfather’s choices plays a large part in Father’s sacrifice. Although Father consciously chooses to be an alcoholic, the novel implies that “because a father is always responsible for his son” (251), Father’s sacrifice cannot be considered wholly morally perverse. By refusing to let go of the past, Grandfather sabotages his and his son’s own chances for happiness and normal relationships in their current life. The novel takes into account that Father’s decisions are heavily spurred, if not forced into being, by Grandfather’s choices, and therefore are not decisively immoral, given their origins.

Father’s second sacrifice is leaving his own house at Alex’s behest. Although Father is often cruel to his sons, he exhibits great tenderness toward them at other points in the novel. When Alex’s brother breaks his arm, even though “Father does not possess enough currency for presents such as bicycles” (53), Father purchases him one for his birthday, as a sympathetic gesture of affection. In addition, Father at first responds violently when Alex states that “[he] is not [Alex’s] father” (274) and orders the former to leave, but then becomes more quietly emotional.

The last thing Father says before he leaves, “Say it into my eyes and I promise you I will” (274), is spoken as if it pains him to be accused of being unfit to be a father, and to be commanded to exile himself for this reason. This is a microcosm of Father’s treatment of Alex and his brother throughout the novel – outwardly, alcoholically violent, but inwardly containing hidden seeds of vulnerability and possibly love.

Despite the fact that his departure may physically and mentally benefit Alex and his brother, Father still cares about them. Everything is Illuminated never accuses Father of wrongfully abandoning his family, but it implies that by very dint of his being part of this family with the ability to care about it, despite his superficial attitude toward its members, Father’s leaving may have been inappropriate. Although both possibilities are hinted at in the novel, Father’s departure is never assigned an absolute moral or immoral quality.

Father’s two sacrifices (ruining his familial relationships and abandoning his family) intermingle inextricably with Alex’s simultaneous dual sacrifices – exposing the construct of false acquiescence he has built to please Father, and concretely letting go of his dream of traveling to America. Alex tells his father that “if his father [has] to leave and never return, (. . .) it [will] not even make him less of a father” (274), perhaps in order to deliver the initial blow with some semblance of familiar submission to his father’s will. Moments later, Alex fully sheds his complaisant attitude toward his father by declaring that ” [Father] is not [his] father” (274), severing the false impression he has given Father of his personality once and for all.

The novel suggests, through the reaction of Alex, that his actions are ignoble, but also, via Grandfather’s feelings about them, that they are worthy. Alex believes that because “Father is [Grandfather’s] son (. . .) [a]nd he is [Alex’s] father” (275), a member of the family, consequently with the inherent potential to love, that he has perhaps acted basely by banishing Father. On the other hand, Grandfather congratulates Alex for being “a good man” and doing “the good thing” (275) in expelling a bad influence from the home. The novel portrays Alex’s and his Grandfather’s opposing moral views, but never validates either above the other.

Alex second sacrifice occurs when he “takes from the cookie jar two handfuls of money” that he is saving for his and his brother’s trip to America, and gives it to Father as “payment for everything that [he] will leave behind” (274), ie: his entire family. Without these funds, Alex and his brother have no means of getting to America. The money’s dispersal becomes a physical gesture of Alex’s belief that he must “give up the dream of America” (241) to remain in the Ukraine to care for his family.

The novel presents Alex’s conviction that sacrificing his trip to America to care for his family is the correct course of action, as well as Grandfather’s belief that Alex should do whatever he wishes without worrying about his family. Alex is convinced that “toil[ing] at Heritage touring” is the best way to provide for his family, but Grandfather feels that Alex “can best care for [his family]” by “[making his] own life” (275), presumably by doing whatever he chooses. This dichotomy moral opinion is never resolved by the novel.

Alex renounces the attitude of submissive harmony he fakes to impress his father by banishing him from the family home, an action of which Grandfather approves but of which Alex himself is unsure. Alex lets go of his dream of America in order to care for his family. Conversely, this is an action of which he approves, and of which Grandfather does not. In both cases, neither position is given the ethical high ground.

The choices that three generations of fathers and sons make during the novel are, in the end, never morally validated or condemned. Grandfather relinquishes the present in order to relive the past by obsessing over whether he is guilty for sacrificing Herschel instead of himself, but fails to draw any conclusions. Father gives up all of his familial relationships by drinking himself into a violent state to avoid seeing Grandfather’s pain. Father’s alcoholism causes Alex to paradoxically hate him but forgive him for his motive simultaneously.

Alex chooses to banish Father from the family home, which destroys the pleasing veneer Alex has been trying to cultivate in his Father’s eyes, and depletes the fund for flying to America. Ultimately, Everything is Illuminated does not attempt to provide definite answers to the paradoxical moral inquiries and opinions of its characters. It never renders decisive moral justification for or against any of its characters’ sacrifices.

The novel presents these sacrifices, details the complexity of the motives behind them and their effects, and leaves the reader to either decide for himself or side with the novel in being unable to provide a confident, indisputable moral answer.