I do not think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem. Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade.
The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Yor great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. You become enlightened of the feeling of hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent.
Nothing so strange for me. For those of you who were there, you will remember how we sat without speaking, easting only as much as we had to. You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked it's wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was the first to notice the negative bird it left in the window?
Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to race it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was? Who was with me when I mourned the death of my son, when I excused myself to bury that bird with my own hands? He just did not come. She could have been so old as the hero and me…Her hair was brown, and rested only on her shoulders. Her eyes appeared sad, and full of intelligence. Because Jonathan is American, Alex reads Augustine as being American as well, though he recognizes that she is Ukrainian, like himself.
She is sad, intelligent, a teenager or a young adult. But Augustine exists only in that one photograph. She is no longer fifteen. She might not even be alive. And Augustine might not even be her name. Rather than actual knowledge, what the photograph offers Alex and Jonathan instead is a glimpse into their own desires. Safran Foer said he preferred to leave ambiguities unresolved, but the reader politely pushed harder. She pointed out that, in the grandfather's recollections of the events of the s, he is called "Eli" by the friend whom he betrays.
What was the significance of this name, only now retrieved from the past, if not to suggest his own Jewishness? Why else would he have changed his name? There was a pause. That's the truth. John Mullan on readers' responses to the novel. Study Guide.
By Jonathan Safran Foer. Previous Next. What's Up With the Ending? This journey does not end up where we expect it to. That … doesn't happen. Tired of ads?
0コメント