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Ora’s Tale: The Narrative Ambitions of David Grossman’s To the End of the Land
- Hebrew Studies
- National Association of Professors of Hebrew
- Volume 54, 2013
- pp. 335-344
- 10.1353/hbr.2013.0033
- Article
- Additional Information
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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.