A Perfect Peace by Amos Oz

First published:Menuhah nekhonah, 1982 (English translation, 1985)

Type of work: Historical realism

Time of work: From the end of 1965 to the beginning of 1967

Locale: Israel, especially Kibbutz Granot

Principal Characters:

• Yonatan Lifshitz, the protagonist, a young man who is bored with life in Kibbutz Granot
• Rimona, his wife
• Yolek Lifshitz, Yonatan’s father, the secretary of Kibbutz Granot and once a national political force
• Hava, his wife and Yonatan’s mother
• Azariah Gitlin, a strange young man who is received into Kibbutz Granot and then into Yonatan’s home
• Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Israel
• Srulik, the music conductor of Kibbutz Granot and later its secretary

The Novel

Divided into two parts, “Winter” and “Spring,” A Perfect Peace begins in the winter of 1965 and ends at the beginning of 1967. Although Yonatan Lifshitz is the central character, almost all the other main characters help to carry the story forward by their thoughts or their writings or a combination of these. The principal action occurs in and around Kibbutz Granot, a collective settlement in Israel. Yonatan has lived in the kibbutz all of his life and now, at the age of twenty-six, he plans to leave his wife and home. Having long felt hemmed in by the kibbutz and by his years in the army, he longs to be free to do what he wants, though he cannot say for certain what that is. He has already hinted to his father how discontented he is, and before very long he tells his wife, the quiet and passive Rimona, that he will be leaving. Rimona has taken to dreaming yearningly of faraway places and great natural beauties; this longing is probably a consequence of her having recently suffered the birth of a stillborn child, her second failed pregnancy.

Into the life of Kibbutz Granot, and especially the lives of Yonatan and Rimona, comes Azariah Gitlin. Azariah is a young man who sometimes seems little more than a boy, although he is old enough to have survived the Holocaust, wandered across Western Europe, read widely (but not necessarily deeply), and served a number of years in the Israeli army. Seeking a home, companionship, and a family, he asks to be admitted into the kibbutz. In a short time he makes a place for himself there, although at first he is considered a nuisance and a bore. Almost without knowing what is taking place as it happens, Yonatan and Azariah become friends, housemates, and then, with Yonatan’s approval, lovers of the same woman, Rimona. Seeing this turn of events as a circumstance that will allow him, finally, to get away, Yonatan gathers a few items for the road and, very early one morning, leaves, hitchhiking to the border with Jordan.

Although it should be clear to his parents, Yolek and Hava, that he has left of his own accord, they blame each other for his disappearance. Yolek is angrily self-persuaded that Benya Trotsky, who has for decades been the center of dispute between Yolek and his wife, has arranged for Yonatan to join him in Miami, where he has acquired millions of dollars from various business ventures. Years before, Benya had been in love with Hava but had to leave Kibbutz Granot after a violent, but failed, attempt on the lives of Yolek, Hava, the kibbutz bull, and himself. From afar Benya has, at various times, “volunteered” to be Yonatan’s father; so intense is his argument, however unlikely, that he is his father that both Benya and Yolek are ready to believe that it is so. In a letter and through an agent, Benya lends his support to the search for Yonatan, which by now has also been taken up by members of the army unit in which Yonatan served. Even Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Israel, is enlisted in the effort to locate Yonatan.

The story moves back and forth between life in the kibbutz and life, for Yonatan, on the road. Srulik replaces Yolek as kibbutz secretary; Azariah cares for Rimona during her third pregnancy; Hava becomes a stabilizing force throughout the kibbutz when her husband’s health fails; Stutchnik the milkman dies; Azariah prophesies war; and, at about the time of the birth of Rimona’s child (whose paternity is uncertain), Yonatan comes home and takes up his former life again.

The war that Azariah had foreseen comes and—being the Six Day War—goes. Both Yonatan and Azariah return from it as heroes and life goes on. Srulik implies in a journal entry which ends the novel that the only course one can take is to do what one can do and then, for the rest, wait and see.

The Characters

Amos Oz proves convincingly that, as Ernest Hemingway taught, an author writes best when he thoroughly knows the world about which he writes. Having lived continuously on a kibbutz from the age of fourteen, Oz knows of the experiences and the individuals peculiar to such an existence. His characters owe their lifelikeness in part to the fact that he is writing from semiautobiographical materials. Like Yonatan, he was a soldier who served on active duty in the Israeli army; like Azariah, he is outspoken and creative; like Srulik, he is steady and dependable, reflective, and profoundly intelligent. A master observer and a student of human behavior, Oz so selects and orders the parts of the narrative as to make them stand out dramatically. The reader of A Perfect Peace comes to know Kibbutz Granot as a real place inhabited by real people. With the modern history of Israel as their backdrop, the characters—the fictional ones and the one from real life, Levi Eshkol—seem to be realistically drawn.

What helps give the major characters wholeness and individuality is that they are tellers of their own stories; they advance the narrative by thinking or, as with Srulik, by writing down what has happened around them. The lesser characters, too, have their voice, a collective one, speaking at times (especially early in the novel) in the way the chorus speaks in an ancient Greek play; this point of view is a device used to perfection by Oz to take the place of omniscience. Oz appears to be hardly present, in fact, except as a kind of stage manager who cues the players in the drama in their entrances and exits.

Critical Context

Oz began A Perfect Peace in 1970, laid it aside until 1976, and completed it in 1981. Doubtless, then, the narrative and thematic directions of his novel had to be changed from his original intentions. It is certain that as time passed his view of modern Israel past and present and future changed also; from the perspective of the past Oz writes with prophetic, even godlike, knowledge of the way to achieve universal peace. A member of the Peace Now organization and a spokesman for Palestinian rights, he has been writing since the mid-1960’s from the context of Jewishness: its culture, its politics, its history. Dispossession, isolation, alienation, and hostility, however, are found not only in Israel but also in all the nations of the world; in an effort to promote understanding among people separated from one another by their boundaries and beliefs and fears, then, Oz maintains an international vision that is reflected by life in Israel. In an unending stream of essays, articles, short stories, novels, and speeches, Oz demonstrates over and over that community is an answer to the worst ills in the world. Kibbutz Granot may be a small settlement in Israel, but it is made up of both native Israelis and European immigrants representing a large segment of civilization. Peace in a microcosm is translatable to peace everywhere.

The growing importance of Israel as a world nation lends force to the voice of Amos Oz, but he is a writer whose passion, vision, and art would make him a singular influence anywhere.

Bibliography

Alter, Robert. “The World of Oz,” in The New Republic. CXCIII (July 29, 1985), pp. 38-39.

Lyons, Gene. “Every Man Is an Island,” in Newsweek. CVI (July 29, 1985), p. 58.

Shechner, Mark. “The Uncircumcised Heart,” in The Nation. CCXL (June 8, 1985), pp. 709-711.