Everything is Illuminated Under the Light of Past: Jewish Cultural Memory on Jonathan Safran Foer’s Novel

Abstract

The decade of 1990's gave us a multi-angular vision of the Second World War. The motion pictures have shown us strong scenes and denunciated to the audience the greatest ever sample of barbarism committed by men's rage. The massacre suffered by the Jews has become a fact known almost universally, although many people do not understand rightly the motivations for such crime, and not even know who really the Jews are. The present work aims to enlighten the peculiarities of the Jewish people, considering the influence of the post-Second World War period on the construction of the Jewish cultural identity today. After understanding the elements, which are fundamental for the Jewish identity, an analysis will be developed focusing on the relevance of the Jewish cultural memory for the construction of the main character in the novel Everything is illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. As theoretical basis, this work is reasoned upon studies of Jonathan Sacks (2002) about Jewish culture, and also upon considerations by Stuart Hall (2006).