Response to Amoz Oz' "My Michael"

Amoz Oz' novel My Michael is the story of rather distant and dysfunctional marriage between Hannah, a demanding, intense, and complex woman, and Michael, her dependable yet often uninteresting husband.  The novel, set in mid-twentieth-century Jerusalem, begins with Michael and Hannah's courtship and progresses through their strange and often difficult marriage.  Hannah is both the leas trustworthy character and the narrator of the novel, a dynamic that proves interesting for the reader.  Oz' decision to tell the story of Hannah  and Michael's relationship through Hannah does not seem an unreasonable one, but it does emphasize Hannah's discontentment and emotional confusion, making the reader unsure how much to trust her narration.

The central problem in Hannah and Michael's marriage seems a combination of poor communication and false expectations, primarily on Hannah's part.  The marriage begins quickly, with an engagement period of only a few months, and while Michael is exactly the sort of quiet, intelligent, trustworthy professor Hannah dreams of marrying, she comments often that he is dull, uninteresting, and seemingly quite unattractive to her.  Hannah is a restless character, and it is evident very early in the novel and in her life with Michael that she is not nearly content with him or with her life in general.  Oz portrays Michael a faithful and consistent husband, but faithfulness and consistency seems unrelated to happiness for Hannah, and she long for Michael to do something, anything, surprising our out of the ordinary.  She longs for him to be thrilled, or angry, or somehow emotionally charged, but despite her longings, he is always there, always steady, always boring, always Michael. 

A central problem in My Michael is, I think, the problem of silence.  Silence..often the silence of Michael and Hannah in each other's presence, is mentioned over and over again.  Hannah bottles up her desires, her hopes, and her wishes, and Michael goes about a daily routine so predictable that very little conversation is necessary.  He is not necessarily a cold man, but he can seem so, especially to Hannah.  "[We were] so silent and good-natured," says Hannah, "that a stranger might have mistakenly supposed that we were at peace."  (144)  Oz tells the story of a marriage that decays not as the result of harsh words, but few words, and somehow, the destructive force of silence is more terrifying.