I. A choice to be disabled?

One of the main characters in Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 novel Everything Is Illuminated is a blind chauffeur otherwise known as Grandfather. Grandfather claims to be blind and has a “Seeing Eye bitch,” as Alex, the tour guide with a talent for choosing the wrong word, refers to their dog. Yet Grandfather is also the driver for Heritage Touring, the family outfit that has promised to help the protagonist, named Jonathan Safran Foer, find the shtetl his grandfather fled during the Holocaust. Grandfather spends most of the book driving Alex, who is also his grandson, and Jonathan around Ukraine in this pursuit.