On the Thoughtlessness of Not Reading: National Allegory and Sexual Violence in A.B. Yehoshua's The Lover

Chapter 5 | 15 pages

Abstract

Despite the prominence of A.B. Yehoshua’s novel The Lover (1977) in Hebrew literature and Israeli culture, one of the book’s subplots, in which the family patriarch rapes the best friend of his daughter, has been largely ignored. This study rectifies this oversight by underscoring the pivotal role of Tali, the character assaulted, in the narrative and by closely reading the rape scene in conjunction with the theoretical concepts of “thoughtlessness” and “ignorance,” as defined by Jacqueline Rose and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Based on this reading, the paper interprets the rape narrative as part of the novel’s national allegory, showing how it warns readers against cyclical post-1948 Zionism, defined as the desire to sanctify pre-1948 Zionist past and establishing exclusive control over the Land of Israel/Palestine and the global identity of the Jewish people. As the research shows, Yehoshua’s narrative symbolically contends that blind adherence to this ideology cannot but end in violence against Jewish-Israeli youths, who are robbed of their future and subjectivity to become the object of the older generation’s desires. Through this multifaceted analysis, the paper enriches existing interpretations of the novel, highlighting its enduring relevance in contemporary discourse on Israeli identity, the occupation of Palestine, violence against women, and national trauma.