Paradoxical Identities: An Analysis of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am

Abstract

This dissertation aims at illuminating Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest novel, Here I Am (2016), by engaging its major themes through the concept of paradoxical identities. The first part of the work provides an analysis of the narratological framework of the novel reflecting on the author’s choice of employing an authorial third-person narrator by giving an overview of the theoretical debate on the return of such a narrator in the contemporary literary landscape and exemplifying how the voice works in different passages of the novel: this formal analysis purports to justify Foer’s choice in light of the purposes of the novel. After establishing how the novel functions, the dissertation shifts from a narratological to a thematic perspective, concentrating on the main character, Jacob, and unfolds his controversial figure for each thematic core, namely , American Jewishness and Family. The second chapter focuses on American Jewishness, concentrating on the relationship between Jewish identity and rituality and the opposition American Jew/Israeli Jew. The third chapter analyzes the novel in light of the subgenre of the family novel, focusing on the dissolution of the marriage between Jacob and Julia by analyzing their negotiation with their identities as parents, spouses and individuals. The last part of the chapter focuses on Julia and Jacob’s eldest son, Sam, and his living a sort of double life, real and digital.