The Dialogical Study Of Amos Oz’s Novels

Amos Oz was one of the most representative contemporary Israeli author,who had won many international literary awards such as the Goethe-preis der Stadt Frankfurt,Principe de Asturias prize,and Franz Kafka Prize.Oz’s parents were Eastern European Jews who exiled themselves to Palestine.Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939.He witnessed the gathering of Jews from different culture in Palestine,the arduous process of Israel’s founding,the conflicts of ideas and arguments among generations of Israeli Jews,as well as the construction and development of Israeli culture.All these elements of changing times,cultural conflict and identity are gathering in Oz’s writing and show the obvious dialogical feature of openness,multiplicity and variety.Based on Bakhtin’s Dialogic Criticism,this paper attempts to make a comprehensive analysis of the dialogical characteristics of Oz’s novels from the following aspects:the features of characters,the theme of the novels and the internal discourse and external discourse,which explores the humanistic concern embodied in Oz’s novels and explains his unique “two-state” solution on the conflicts between Jews and Arabs.The first chapter attempts to trace the dialogical features of Oz’s writing from the cultural background and the origin of his personal thoughts and writing.The chapter is divided into three main parts: the exile Jews in the early 20 th century,the establishment of the new community and the origin of Oz’s arguments and writing.The second chapter analyses the significant features of the Oz’s characters.From the perspective of Bakhtin’s dialogic poetics,this chapter holds the opinions that Oz’s characters have the unique traits: ideological independence and incompleteness,which is the most important premise of Oz’s novels’ dialogism.The third chapter analyses the three crucial themes of dialogism in Oz’s novels:family,race and the conflicts between Jews and Arabs.Family is the most important theme in Oz’s novels,which embodies the relationship between family members.Within the theme of the Jewish nation,the dialogues among the members reflect Oz’s unique ideas about the Israeli Jews.Within the theme of the relationship between Jews and Arabs,the section explores the relation between Oz’s characteristics of writing and political argument,as well as explains the short-comings of the political argument.The last chapter analyses the dialogical relationship between the inner discourse and external discourse,as well as the relationship between consciousness and sub-consciousness.The dialogism of Oz’s novels shows the humanistic concern of Oz’s writing,the profound thinking of contemporary Jewish identity and the reflection of contemporary Arab-Israeli cultural and violent conflict.