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Safran
Brod is Safran’s great-great-great-grandmother and Jonathan’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. She is also Yankel’s adopted daughter and Trachim B’s biological daughter. She later marries the Kolker, and the two have three sons together. Yankel names her after the Brod River, from which she emerged after Trachim B’s wagon careened into it, killing him. In that way, Brod as a character represents the novel’s views about the cycle of life and how renewal often follows loss. Brod is portrayed as highly intelligent but also profoundly sad, reflecting the way that grief and loss impact people’s lives in often harmful and debilitating ways. Brod experiences true love for the first and only time when the Kolker tells her that Yankel was not, in fact, her biological father. While that news could have potentially been devastating, the novel suggests that Brod reacts positively because, for her, love and truth are closely aligned.
Baby Girl/Brod Quotes in Everything Is Illuminated
The Everything Is Illuminated quotes below are all either spoken by Baby Girl/Brod or refer to Baby Girl/Brod. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 6 Quotes
He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone […] I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others—the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad […] he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else somewhere else.
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Chapter 9 Quotes
She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
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She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.
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The dream of living forever with Brod. I have this dream every night. Even when I can’t remember it the next morning, I know it was there, like the depression a lover’s head leaves on the pillow next to you after she’s left. I dream not of growing old with her, but of never growing old, either of us. She never leaves me, and I never leave her. It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
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Chapter 25 Quotes
And this is what living next to a waterfall is like, Safran. 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 a 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. Your great-great-great-grandchildren’s will be. But we learn to live in that love.
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But it’s not the entire story, the Dial continued. I realized this when I first tried to whisper a secret and couldn’t, or whistle a tune without instilling fear in the hearts of those within a hundred yards, when my coworkers at the flour mill pleaded with me to lower my voice, because, Who can think with you shouting like that? To which I asked, AM I REALLY SHOUTING?
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Chapter 26 Quotes
This is what we’ve done we’ve killed our own babies to save them.
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Baby Girl/Brod Character Timeline in Everything Is Illuminated
The timeline below shows where the character Baby Girl/Brod appears in Everything Is Illuminated. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...wife. Then, the Well-Regarded Rabbi’s daughter, Hannah, points to something that has risen in the Brod River. Everyone looks to see what she’s pointing at. It’s a baby girl. Everyone in...
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Chapter 3
...that Trachim B faked his own death. No one knows what to make of the baby girl , who is Jonathan’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. People speculate that in the last moment of Trachim B...
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After recovering the baby girl , the Well-Regarded Rabbi decides to take her in until he can determine who should...
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The Well-Regarded Rabbi then announces that the baby girl will go to the most suitable person who offers to raise her. The next morning,...
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Chapter 5
...then arrive at the service. They announce that Yankel has been chosen to be the baby girl ’s father. Everyone congratulates Yankel, but, due to the responsibility of raising a child, a...
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Chapter 6
In 1791, Yankel brings the baby girl home. Yankel is known as the “disgraced usurer” in town because he was found guilty...
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The baby girl grows up not knowing any of this history about Yankel. Instead, Yankel tells the girl...
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Chapter 9
In Trachimbrod, Yankel names the baby girl Brod. As she grows older, from 1791 to 1803, she becomes the smartest person in town....
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Chapter 10
Secrets abound in Trachimbrod in the early 1800s. For example, Yankel secretly reads Brod’s diary when she is not around. In the diary, Brod confesses that she loves writing...
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Chapter 11
In 1804, by the time Brod is 12 years old, every man in Trachimbrod has proposed to her. She turns them...
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When Brod returns home, she shouts as she looks for Yankel. He doesn’t respond, and eventually Brod...
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Chapter 13
The novel then flashes back to 1804. Soon after Brod first meets the Kolker, the two marry. Three years pass, and Brod feels like she...
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Brod tries to adapt to the Kolker’s new reality, though that reality undoubtedly changes their marriage....
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Brod leaves the house and continues crying. When she returns, she finds the house in disarray,...
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One day, the Kolker tells Brod that Yankel was not her biological father. Brod tells the Kolker that she loves him,...
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...has invented for the story so far of Jonathan coming to Ukraine. He then discusses Brod and the Kolker as well as the Dial statue. Alex then confesses that he has...
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Chapter 19
...He Had One in Him.” One of the entries is titled “The First Rape of Brod D.” In that entry, Brod walks home from the Trachimday Festival on March 18, 1804....
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Brod tells Sofiowka that she wants to go home, but Sofiowka doesn’t listen. He then takes...
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Chapter 25
...Kolker (in the form of the Dial statue) then tells Safran about his relationship with Brod and says that he (the Kolker) and Brod were deeply in love. He then says...
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Chapter 26
...entry is called “The Dream of the End of the World” and is narrated from Brod’s perspective. In that entry, on Trachimday in 1942, as German bombs fall, Safran and Zosha...
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