Ora’s Tale: The Narrative Ambitions of David Grossman’s To the End of the Land

This essay analyzes the narrative act at the center of Grossman’s novel, especially the performance of Ora as a virtuoso monologist. Eight dimensions of the narrative act in the novel are discussed: the order of the events and their telling; the aspiration to totality of description; the primacy of the spoken voice in relation to the history of the monologue; the capacity of narrating to bring healing to the speaking subject and its recipient; the investment of narrative with magical, protective powers; narrating as moral resistance to the “situation” in Israel; differential gender roles in the act of narration; and narration as the retrieval of lost family.