Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Son Dial
The Dial is a large statue in Trachimbrod, but it's not just a statue: it's the bronzed body of the Kolker. Seriously. After he dies, they bronze his body (at least it's not carbonite, y'all), and then people flock from all over to rub various parts of his body. The gross thing is, as they wear it away down to the flesh (ew) they have to rebronze it. This bronzing treatment changes the way he looks, which Jonathan describes in this way, using up his allotted quota of "greats" in the process:
So when my grandfather thought he saw that he was growing to look like his great-great-great-grandfather, what he really saw was that his great-great-great-grandfather was growing to look like him. (16.275)
Jonathan calls this "reverse heredity" (16.275)—don't tell Darwin—and it's a literal representation of how, the more we learn about our ancestors, the more we can identify with them them. But it's more complicated than just sitting around and listening to your PopPop's story about how he used to have to walk uphill both ways barefoot in the snow to get to school. Foer suggests that we shape them to relate to us, that in some way we change the stories we tell to explain how we came to be—the way Jonathan is shaping a story about himself by inventing a story about his grandfather.