Casting off the Shackles: Re-narrativizing Discrepant Terrains of Memories with Lived Experiences in A. B. Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests

Abstract

The ever-increasing human migration with fast-eroding bonds often leads to development of social clusters which tend to produce stereotypes about other groups of people. One among the many factors responsible for such ghettoization is not ignorance but a version of knowledge that does not take us beyond ourselves. Speaking about the role of writer as “the conscience of the nation,” S. Yizhar, an Israeli writer and politician, says that a writer is a mutation. Literature is one such powerful tool to transcend cultural boundaries which takes us beyond ourselves and reaches to the other side. Holding the case of Israeli–Palestinian contestation as one such manifestation of cultural ghettoization, the article argues for the need to render open the mental borders to move beyond prejudices. Taking A. B. Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests as a point of departure, it highlights the potential of dialog as a powerful antidote to social violence between the two communities of Arabs and Israelis and lays bare its importance in the direction of peaceful coexistence. The article is divided into three sections; the first section introduces the cultural location of Yehoshua and his narrative set in the Israeli landscape of the 1960s. The second section explores the use of symbolism in the narrative to cull out the dormant meanings and analyzes the multiple layers of the text. The third and last section projects the idea of re-narrativization as an important tool of re-inscribing history with alternative versions. It draws strength from those Arab–Jewish encounters that are not necessarily troubling. The conclusion sums up the essential findings of the study, elucidating the role of literature and intellectuals in difficult times.