My Michael Reflection Paper

In Amos Oz’s novel My Michael Oz depicts a struggling relationship between a young husband and wife. He explores many tangible and intangible reasons why their relationship struggles. However, the reason that stuck out the most to me is summed up through a statement their child Yair makes to his mother. He says, “For you everything is possible. Daddy takes care what he says and he doesn’t talk from his thoughts. Only from his brains” (p. 181).

Throughout the novel Hannah is continuously daydreaming. At one point she reflects on an attack of diphtheria that she had when she was young saying. “When I recovered…I experienced a feeling of exile. I had lost my power of alchemy, the ability to make my dreams carry me over the dividing line between sleeping and waking” (p.17). She continues to attempt to lose her grip on reality through reading books or spending time staring out the windows daydreaming. We, as readers, see Hannah’s fascination with fiction through her continuous reference to books she has read. She distances herself from reality by comparing and replacing reality with elements of fiction. When she goes to a lecture with Michael she describes the lecturer saying, “by the dim light of the magic lantern I was free too to contemplate the features, the arm, the pointer of the ancient lecturer, who looked like an illustration in on e of the old books I loved. I remembered the dark woodcuts in Moby Dick” (p. 4). Later in the novel, Hannah attempts to explain her side of a disagreement to Michael in terms of the story of Cinderella. She says, “I tell you, Michael, that prince was an utter fool and Cinderella was out of her mind. Maybe that was why they suited each other and lived happily ever after” (p. 165). 

Michael does not understand the Cinderella analogy that Hannah uses. This lack of communication is a constant theme throughout the novel. At one point Hannah tries to compliment Michael’s research piece and he takes her compliment badly saying that, “He was sorry…that he wasn’t a poet, that he couldn’t dedicate a poem to [her] instead of a dry piece of research. Everyone does what he is capable of” (p. 118). Michael is grounded in reality. He has spent is life studying and researching the physical world around him. There is not any room in his mind for imagination. As his son says, “he doesn’t talk from his thoughts. Only from his brains” (p. 181). This stark difference between Michael and Hannah’s takes on reality is one of the largest causes of tension in their marriage. They do not understand each other, because their passions speak different languages. On one of Hannah and Michael’s first dates Michael takes Hannah for a taxi ride. Hannah describes their conversation saying, “He said ‘Pre-Cambrian,’ ‘Cambrian,’ ‘metamorphic rocks,’ ‘igneous rocks,’ ‘tectonics.’ For the first time then I felt that inner tension which I still feel whenever I hear my husband talking his strange language.

I do not think that couples must have exactly the same interests for their relationships to work. Actually quite the contrary, I believe that differences can be healthy in a relationship. What I was really struck with was how Oz portrayed this conflict of passions and lack of understanding. He shows the reader the importance of communication, by emphasizing how little they understood each other’s passions and how much this in turn affected their relationship. I believe that Oz intends for the reader to see the necessity of focusing on learning about others instead of focusing on ourselves. I personally see how many of the conflicts I have had in relationships could have been avoided if both parties had made an effort to understand each other’s passions and speak each other’s figurative languages.