The Bereaved Father and His Dead Son in the Works of A. B. Yehoshua

In recent years, A. B. Yehoshua has been taken to task for tempering his criticism of Israeli politics and shifting closer to the political center. In this article, I shift the discussion to a historical and poetic perspective through an interpretive evaluation of the bereaved father figure in Yehoshua's oeuvre. His approach to the bereaved father has undergone a radical transformation. This is clearly seen in his latest works in which he has made the transition from a critical stance toward the bereaved father—one of the most potent images of Zionist ideology—to a more moderate position reflecting internalization and acceptance of bereavement. To investigate this development, I explore the use of the bereavement myth in several of Yehoshua's works and offer a detailed comparison of his early novella Bi-techilat kayits 1970 (Early in the Summer of 1970; 1972) and his more recent work Esh yedidutit (Friendly Fire: A Duet; 2007).