SOURCE: Balaban, Avraham. “Language and Reality in the Prose of Amos Oz.” Modern Language Studies 20, no. 2 (spring 1990): 79-97.

In the following essay, Balaban discusses the tactics Oz uses to “bridge the gap between language and reality” in his short story “Before His Time.”

1. Introduction

In an interview given in the late 1970s, Amos Oz talked about the effect of the books he has loved: “If the books I have loved did something to me … they broke all the distinctions for me, floor and window, window and door, positive and negative, good and evil. They opened up the world in front of me with all its unending complexity, with all the abundance it has to offer” (1978). Speaking about the “great books,” and about the sought-after effect of his own books, Oz did not mention any thematic issues, but rather delineated a general attitude towards the world, its complexity and...