In Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer uses the relationship between Alex and Grandfather to explore and illustrate the effects of generational trauma: The effects of traumatic events that are passed from the person who experienced them to their children, grandchildren, and descendants. Generational trauma shapes a family dynamic and has damaging effects on even those who did not experience the event or, as in Alex’s case, do not even know that it happened.

Trauma is often surrounded by silence—deeply traumatic things are often not spoken of, even if they are known. But that silence does not mitigate the effects on family members and their relationships. It does, however, create distance, because there are questions that are off limits or topics that are too painful to be approached. For example, Alex and his father are aware that something is wrong with Grandfather, but they do not talk about it: “It is rigid not to talk about Grandfather’s melancholy with Father, because we have both encountered him crying” (32). Both Grandfather and Jonathan’s grandmother are faced with the perceived choice of either being unknown by their grandsons or sharing their history and passing their trauma to the next generation.