In Foer's "Everything Is Illuminated", who is Augustine, and how exactly are Jonathan and Alex connected?

Question

I'm really confused about the ending of the novel, which, being an English teacher and avid reader, is driving me insane. Why does Grandfather kill himself? How is Alex's father not really his father? How is it all connected? I know it doesn't all need to make sense, but I feel like I missed something. Help!

Answer 1

Grandfather may have killed himself because of 1) his betrayal of Herschel, which he is painfully reminded of by Lista, and 2) because Alex does not lend Grandfather the money to find "Augustina" -- which may be a made-up name Jonathan's grandfather used for Lista so that Jonathan's grandmother wouldn't find out. There seems to have been much unfinished business between Augustine/Lista and Grandfather.

It's clear that when Lista says "I must go in and care for my baby," she is referring to the baby she lost when she describes what the Germans did to her pregnant sister, who was clearly Lista herself (pp 186 to 189 in the Harper paperback). I'm not sure who the father was. Possibilities are Grandfather, Safran, or even Herschel. If it was Grandfather, that would explain her anger with him (at leaving her), but I'm still not sure why they both seem irritated with each other almost from the beginning of the visit at her house. They clearly have a complicated and involved history together. Grandfather was from Kolki and she was from Trachimbrod, so I'm not clear how they met. Grandfather keeps repeating that he's not Jewish, and he never admits it, but the lines between the Jewish and Gentile parts of town make it unlikely that Grandfather would have been so involved with Safran, Lista, and Herschel if he hadn't been Jewish.

I thought that Alex might have disowned his father because of his father's drunkenness and worthlessness as a father, but in this book it's possible that there's more to it.

I don't think that Alex and Jonathan are cousins, because at the end of the book they have decided not to write to each other anymore (p. 275). If they shared the same grandfather, I'd think they'd want even more to stay in touch. (I don't understand why they decided not to write to each other just before Grandfather's suicide.) Grandfather couldn't have been the father of Alex and Jonathan both because the book tells us that Jonathan looks like Safran as a young man, and Alex looks just like his Grandfather did as a youth. If Safran was the grandfather of both young men, then that doesn't explain Alex's resemblance to his grandfather, which Jonathan exclaims over when he sees a photo of Grandfather in the 1940s.

I'm still puzzling over all of this too, obviously.

Answer 2

The grandfather was a Jew. He survived the massacre in that tiny town, and walked away, pretending for the rest of his life that he had never been a Jew. It was almost like he had been a walking dead man the whole time....it was also like he was running away from something that he never got closure for. When he returned to that spot, he found closure, faced his past, and I think his suicide has to do with that.

I think Jonathan and Alex are cousins.

At the risk of being preposterous, I will recommend the movie to you. It might help you make sense of of the plot. And it has some pretty funny parts.

Answer 3

Everything Is Illuminated Grandfather

Answer 4

Augustine is a reflective character
who kills himself when pondering on the past.

I think Jonathan and Alex are uncles bt not brothers
x x x