UNMASKING MEANING: The Failure of Existential Quests in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes.

Abstract

The present article deals with the existential issues in Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2010 novel Tree of Codesas masks that pervade the understanding of human existence and are bound to fail. It analyzes how Foer’s work undermines these existential concernsthrough its narrative and through its particular format (a die-cut surface full of negative spaces) following Heidegger’s phenomenological idea of Dasein and Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. Within the apocalyptic context of the novel, thought and reflection become forms of disengagement and turn into physical masks that disintegrate along with the characters when they are confronted with death. Moreover, language proves to be an insufficient means of comprehension as it disintegrates through the pages and gives place to silence as an answer. Thus, Tree of Codes’s narrative progression and its particular physical configuration prove that reflection and language are masks that are bound to fail in the task of understanding existence.