Xiang, 1

Karen Xiang

Professor Nili Gold

NELC 159

20 April 2017

My Michael (1972): Hannahs World of Fantasies

In his book, My Michael, originally published in Hebrew in 1968, Amos Oz writes as the

narrator, Hannah, the poetic, self indulgent, bored and increasingly unstable wife of Michael. A

thirty year old woman living in Jerusalem in the 1950s, Hannah tells us of how she met her

husband, Michael, a calm, pragmatic, hardworking but boring geology student. Upon marrying

Michael, Hannah gives up her literature studies and eventually has a child, who to her disdain,

resembles Michael in every way. Lonely and uninterested, she yearns for excitement by drawing

on her rich store of childhood memories and escaping into a fantasy world. As the marriage and

Hannahs sanity deteriorate, she dreams more and more about the same pair of twins from her

youth. Her thoughts are repeated throughout the book, along with the jokes that Michael made in

their earlier encounters together. It almost seems as if the verbatim jokes taken from the past are

the sole way for Hannah to express her frustration with reality. Moreover, there is a

preoccupation with remembering the past, but for Hannah, it is not one of nostalgia but one of

disappointment. In this paper, I will focus on the effects of Hannahs fantasies on her everyday

life, her relationship with Michael, and ultimately her happiness. I will also address the point of

view that Oz uses for the novel and the implications it holds.

Throughout the book, I found it difficult to feel empathy towards Hannah. She is

incredibly selfish, so much that even she seems to realize it to some degree: I cannot even kill

an ant on the kitchen floor without thinking of myself. (Oz, 103). Her impulsive shopping
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expenditures for new clothes, electrical gadgets, and expensive modern furniture further

exacerbate her obsession with control. Because she lacks this perfect control in her marriage,

Hannah resorts to fantasies. In her dreams, she has control over the Arab twins. Later, in reality,

she tries to exert her control by torturing the neighbor boy, Yoramembarrassing him and

making him so uncomfortable to the point where he is often fleeing from her. Hannah recounts,

He was mine. All mine. He was at my mercy. I could paint any expression I liked on his face.

Like on a sheet of paper. It was years since I had last enjoyed this grim game. (Oz, 232). I found

Hannahs pleasure in bringing about such torture on the poor boy even more disturbing than her

dreams, thus contributing further to my disdain for our narrator.

All the while, her fantasies are composed of characters that reappear and events with

glaring similarities. Take the scenario with the bleak Russian steppe and the driver with icicles

hanging from his mustache or the Arab twins she bossed around as a child for examples. Her

dreams sometimes showed her fatalist fantasies (earthquakes in Jerusalem) or simply reflected

her everyday musings. After one crazy dream she had after giving birth to her son, we see the

first glimpses of Hannahs struggle to find the line between sanity and madness: I begged the

nurse to explain to me how it was that the baby was still alive, how my baby had survived the

disaster. (Oz, 83). Later on when Hannah becomes physically ill, she clings to these sick

moments longingly because she wants to stay in her fantasies. She says, The power to make my

dreams carry me over the line that divides sleeping from waking (Oz, 84). To me, it seemed

that the status of her physical condition was very closely tied with her mental insanity. My

assumptions were confirmed when Hannahs doctor realized the same: The body is trying to get

well, the mind perhaps is causing us delay. (Oz, 202).

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Part of Hannahs madness stems from the fact that she holds some kind of expectation of

what her life should be like. When her reality does not clash with her expectations, she then

resorts to dreams and fantasies to escape the mundane actions of everyday life. Throughout the

book, we keep seeing these expectationswhether it is who she thinks she should marry, And

you know, Michael, still, to this day, I sometimes think that I shall marry a young scholar who is

destined to become world famous (Oz, 14), or when she feels that life as a wife and mother is

disappointing, I cried like a schoolgirl. I had not lived up to my professors expectations. I had

never fulfilled the hopes he had expressed for me shortly after my wedding. (Oz, 114).

The fate of Hannah and Michaels marriage was foreshadowed early on in the

relationship, on one of their dates to a movie: The heroine of the film dies of unrequited love

after sacrificing her body and her soul for a worthless man Her suffering and his worthlessness

seemed like two terms in a simple mathematical equation, which I was not tempted to try to

solve. I felt full to overflowing. (Oz, 25). To Hannah, the solution was so obvious in the

moment, but she never anticipates that the same might happen to her. I think that one of the most

important aspects of Hannahs madness to analyze is how it perpetuates her unreasonable

critique of Michael and ultimately how her insanity ruins their marriage. My Michael is

essentially a book of Hannahs critiques of Michael: but he could not think of a reply; he is not

a witty man (Oz, 6) to his joke was not funny (Oz, 8) to I was ashamed of my husband

because he was not amusing (Oz, 97) to I was sorry that Michael was a geologist and not an

architect. (Oz, 113). Hannah is so busy being unhappy with her life and who Michael is as a

person that she fails to truly appreciate his goodness and sacrifices. When Michael gets an upper

second on his first examination for his first degree, Hannah remains unmoved by his success.

(Oz, 66). Michael even declines on her account to go on important geological expeditions, while
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all his fellow students participate with their families. And when he tells her of his dream to

expand his essay and publish his own research, she once again can not give a single word of

encouragement. Michael works a part time job at the library to bring in a little bit more money,

but Hannah squanders this hard earned money on extravagances. He takes care of her and the

baby when she is ill and depressed, standing for hours in the line for free food for nursing

mothers and never utters a word of complaint. It is only when she realizes the reality of what

their relationship has become, My husband and I are like two strangers who happen to meet

coming out of a clinic where they have received treatment involving some physical

unpleasantness. Both embarrassed, reading each others minds, conscious of an uneasy,

embarrassing intimacy, wearily groping for the right tone in which to address each other now

(Oz, 252), that I too, as a reader, finally come to accept the truth as well.

Hannahs strange fascination and musings about time and death comprise a large majority

of the dense symbols and imagery in the novel. Time would be ever-present; a tall, freezing,

transparent presence hostile to Yoram and hostile to me, boding no good. (Oz, 236). Hannah

often recalls the same past remarks that Michael once made, cats are never wrong about people

(Oz, 5) and how he always like the word ankle. She is increasingly aware of her depressing

aptitude for remembering everything (Oz, 147) by clinging to her memories and to words as

one clings to a railing in a high place. (Oz, 84). As readers, we are unsure whether she is

trapped in her memories or merely just contemplating them. The contemplation leads Hannah to

more morbid thoughts as many of her friends and acquaintances pass awayrealizing that she is

afraid of dying young and afraid of dying old. (Oz, 258). Her fear and fascination with death

shapes how she views the world further creating this cycle of unhappiness. To escape the

suffering, Hannah claims to Michael that she buys the new clothes to be happy and the electric
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razor to make him happy. Who says Im not happy? Michael asked quietly. And what about

you, Hannah, arent you happy? (Oz, 188). Hannahs dilemma presents a universal problem that

the novel constantly brings up. Sometimes our expectations of what reality should be disfigures

our version of what happiness should be. But in Hannahs case, I want to ask: If you dont know

what happiness is, how do you expect to find it?

In conclusion, I want to discuss Amos Ozs choice in using Hannahs point of view to

write the novel. As a reader, I did not sympathize with Hannah in the same way as one normally

would with the narrator of the story. Perhaps, although not intentionally, Ozs writing from

Hannahs point of view forces us as readers to not feel apathetic towards her inner thoughts and

feelings. In fact, this particular point of view may have mirrored Ozs personal feelings towards

his own mothers depression. Was Oz trying to make us feel the same way he did about his

mother who suffered from mental illness? Was he still mad at her after all those years? Once

again, Oz leaves that to the readers imagination and interpretation. Even though, I, as the reader

could not always empathize with Hannah, the issues that the characters in My Michael deal with

are genuinely relatable and the emotions they elicit from readers are just as true and affecting.
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Works Cited

Oz, Amos. My Michael. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Print.