Everything Is Illuminated: Novel vs. Book

This year we had the chance to read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and we also watched the film adaptation directed by Liev Schreiber. Being able to see the two settings helps out to compare the two, see the differences between the novel and the movie. It is very important to mention that the movie definitely changed the perspective of the story we initially read due to the adaptations that were done by Schreiber. Even though, we did not read the whole book in class, a few differences can be brought out from what we read and saw regarding to this novel and movie.
Everything is Illuminated is a novel written by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was published in 2002, and due to its success, Liev Schreiber decided to adapt and direct the film with the same name, which was released in 2005. The movie starred Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, and Boris Leskin. The movie and the book varied greatly with the differences, and especially the adaptations changed the end of the movie completely.
The settings of the book and the movie are completely different. The book is a set of letters written by both Alex and Jonathan, while the movie is focused in the dialogue they have in their adventure through Trachimbrod trying to find Augustine. In the movie, they did not explore Trachimbrod as much as they did in the book. The same characters that are in the book appear in the movie but there are a couple of losses when it comes to the characters personalities.
The very first difference that can be seen is that in the book Jonathan is a writer looking for the woman who saved his grandfather, while in the movie he is actually a collector with the same mission. It is understandable that this change was done because the viewers would not have read any of the thoughts of his thoughts, and they rather used some sort of symbolization about how every single thing he collects have a especial meaning to him. Another thing that has been lost in the film adaptation is the