Contrary to its title, Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Everything is Illuminated is written in a way that sometimes leaves readers feeling in the dark.  As though keeping track of the multiple plot lines, narrators and time schemes was not enough work, readers should recognize by the very first page that there are few places or characters in Everything is Illuminated that have only one name. In fact, names are mispronounced, transformed by nicknames, and are constantly and deliberately being changed throughout the course of the novel.  Yet it still appears that the names in Foer’s novel carry weight in terms of identity; after all, certain ones hold deep historical or personal significance, and what one character calls another depends upon his/her opinion of the other.  Yet the huge number of names in circulation makes the characters seem larger than life and makes the events that take place less specific to where and to whom they happen.  This essay will explore the function of names in Everything is Illuminated through characters, specifically Alex, Lista, and Alex’s grandfather .The multiplicity of names for people and places in the novel both extinguishes the specificity of experience and underscores the infinite interpretations and perspectives that any individual may hold regarding another individual or place. 

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The multiplicity of names as a theme appears in the very first line of the book and lasts for the duration of the whole first page.  The opening to the novel reads: “My legal name is Alexander Perchov.  But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name.  Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her…Father used to dub me Shapka, for the fur hat I would don even in the summer month…I have many many girls, believe me, and they all have a different name for me…I have a miniature brother who dubs me Alli” (Foer 1).  The many names thrown at the reader from the first page is an immediate indication that what people call themselves, what other people call them, and what they prefer to be called will be important to the outcome of the novel.  What is interesting in this passage is that each of the names given to readers introduces another of Alex’s relationships: he is Alex, Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, Shapka, Baby, All Night, Currency, and Alli (1); he is a friend, son, brother, and a lady’s man (so he thinks).  What’s more, the tone of this passage is lighthearted and boastful, told from Alex’s first person point of view.  He introduces each name he’s collected with pride – proud of “spleening” his mother because he has so much money to spend and so many friends to hang out with, proud of the number of girls he’s earned nicknames from by sleeping with them, and proud to be a generous older brother by allowing Little Igor to call him Alli.  Whether or not these things Alex boasts of are true (in fact readers learn at the end of the novel that most of them are not), he still uses these names as evidence of his importance and social function.

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Foer’s use of these many names is a successful character development strategy; giving one character multiple names reveals the many angles from which other characters view them.  It creates complexity in the character by revealing their relationships, building in a backstory and making them come to life. And, in Alex’s case, the fact that he does not actually have as many nicknames as he would like is a good indication of his personality as someone who values relationships and wants to sound more popular than he is; furthermore, the fact that he eventually reveals his white lies at the end of the novel is an indication of his maturation and progression as a dynamic character.

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Instances in which people are misnamed or renamed are particularly effective in giving characters and places an essence of generality.  While each individual’s stories – including Lista’s past, Brod’s lifetime, and fictional Jonathan’s journey to find Augustine – appear to be valued, the narrators (fictional Jonathan and Alex) repeatedly admit to embellishments.  In reading Everything is Illuminated, it seems that the essence of the characters’ experiences is more important than details like facts and names.  For example, in their desperate search for Augustine, a woman who supposedly rescued fictional Jonathan’s grandfather from the Nazis, the group meets a woman who they will come to find is named Lista; however, it is not until their meeting adjourns that Alex learns Lista is not Augustine after all.  Yet he says: “And then I remembered that I did not know this woman’s name.  I persevered to think of her as Augustine, because like Grandfather, I could not stop desiring that she was Augustine” (154). Alex’s words reveal a deliberate misnaming of Lista rather than a mistaken one.  He seems to embrace the mindset that if he changes the story, if he wills the story to change into something happier – perhaps one in which they find the real Augustine – life will change with it. 

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Alex’s insistence upon calling Lista Augustine reflects his discomfort with how out of control life seems to be.  He creates a stand-in for Augustine when, despite his best efforts, he cannot find the real one.  Just as Yankel changes his name from Safran in an effort to imagine himself as the bureaucrat with whom his wife ran away (47) and just as Alex makes his father stop calling him Shapka because he wants to sound more grown up (1), Alex’s referring to Lista as Augustine is another example of how reality is insufficient for the characters in the novel – because the truth is too painful.  The misnaming of Augustine makes it seem as though Augustine could be anyone; it eliminates the individuality of the name and generalizes it.  In other words, characters can change their own names and can change other characters’ names, but the story stays the same always. 

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This is a horrifying realization – for characters and for readers.  This misnaming, renaming – it all creates an effect that makes the novel’s story feel as though it could happen anywhere and to anyone.  As Alex says about Lista’s story: “I will tell you that what made this story most scary was how rapid it was moving.  I do not mean what happened in the story, but how the story was told.  I felt that it could not be stopped” (186).  Foer’s story, too, is told in a way that makes things feel unstoppable; again, despite the characters’ best efforts in pretending otherwise, the stories do exist.  Anybody could have been Alex’s stand-in Augustine – it just happened to be Lista.  And anybody could have been in Grandfather’s shoes when he was forced to choose between betrayal and death.

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Indeed, despite Grandfather’s deepest secret being revealed, Alex still loves him, which is a scary thing for him to encounter.  When others like to imagine people like Grandfather as monsters, the novel makes readers confront the fact that Grandfather is just a man who made a mistake that ended up killing him.  The Nazis, too, were just men with a political name attached.  It is significant that Alex shares his name with his grandfather and father because it seems to implicate him in the outcomes of their actions.  Therefore, the names in this novel carry historical weight.  For example, Alex is forced to confront his similarities to Grandfather: “‘But,’ Grandfather said, ‘you would not help somebody if it signified that you would be murdered and your family would be murdered.’ (I thought about this for many moments, and I understood that he was correct.  I only had to think about Little Igor to be certain that I would also have turned away and hid my face)” (187-188).   In this moment, readers witness Alex – loveable Alex, with his broken English and big heart, whom Foer has presented as a sympathetic character – admit to the fact that he might have chosen the same path as Grandfather if he’d had the need.  It is a moment when generations come together, when Alex meets his Grandfather halfway and decides to make an attempt at understanding him.  In doing so, Alex comes to understand his namesake as a third generation “Alex,” who is where he is because of the decisions the previous generations of Alex had made.  After discovering Grandfather’s secret, Alex writes to Jonathan, “Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.  Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed” (145).  Among other functions, therefore, names in the novel indicate a passing down of culture, history, and consequences.  In other words, the story of one Alex – Grandfather – is not confined to one time, place, or person; the story of Grandfather transcends that character’s individuality and continues to exist outside of him.  With each name – Alex, Safran, Augustine – comes attached a story.  Names, when misappropriated, seem to misappropriate the story as well.  This is perhaps why, by the end of the novel, Alex feels a sense of despair that he will have to live with Grandfather’s past. 

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By taking a closer look at the characters’ names in Everything is Illuminated, some of the novel’s more important themes start to become visible.  The multiplicity of names makes both characters and events seem larger than fiction.  In terms of characterization, names reveal an individual’s relationships to others and to his/her family history.  In regards to events, the various names in circulation – the people for whom a given event has consequence or for whom an event is appropriated consequence due to a misuse of one’s name – generalize the goings-on of the novel, making it seem as though everyone is implicated in what happens next.  The transferability of names represents the transferability of events, so that one person’s problem becomes everybody’s problem, and one person’s pain becomes everybody’s pain. 

 

 

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Works Cited

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Print.