Everything is Illuminated suicide

When the grandfather in Everything is Illuminated commits suicide in the bathtub, I was not surprised. When people try to forget painful pasts, and never really deal with bottled up pain and emotions, it ultimately hurts them more. The same is true when people bottle up pain rather than talking about it with a friend or loved one. When people bottle things in or hide things, it is really just creating a highly explosive bomb. Once the person's pain or secret is revealed, the person explodes. In this case, once the Grandfather had gone back and been reminded of his past (and also reintroduced to a person that was a part of his past) the bomb went off. It was as though he had no reason to stay alive anymore--he had been numb for so long that enduring so much pain was too much to take. This was very sad, yet it made sense.