LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

shai ginsburgthe grenade, and throws it. The exploding grenade kills him. Within the mythof the war hero, Uri’s death appears to be straightforward; nevertheless, it isoverdetermined.While it is true that in his death Uri saves his subordinates, including thenew immigrant who caused the tragedy, the overdetermination of his deathtriply compromises it and thus removes it from the heroic death he imagines forhimself. First, it should be noted that Uri does not die fighting those who opposethe Zionist struggle for Jewish independence, Arab or British. He does not fall inbattle but rather in training, in the unreal semblance of battle, which turns outto be all too real. Second, the accident results from Uri’s own error of discretion.After hazing his soldiers, and despite objections from his non-commissionedofficer, he picks the worst soldier of the platoon for the first throw and thenverbally abuses him. The soldier is so frantic that he drops the grenade two stepsfrom the trench where the other soldiers are lying. Last, textually andtemporally, the accident occurs shortly after Uri dwells at length on the imageof his own death as a solution to his qualms of conscience and his unwillingnessto give up the free life of the Palma’h for the kibbutz and Mika. Hence, his deathmay be seen as a wish fulfilment designed to overcome personal distress ratherthan as an outcome of ideological conviction or altruist act of bravery.He Walked in the Fields exposes, then, a tension between two grids ofsignification. 13 On the one hand, the reader finds Uri to be a mythological godor the ‘new historical factor’ in Palestine. On the other hand, there is Uri as aparticular protagonist, subject to the indeterminacy and ambiguity of everydaylife. While in Uri’s imagination his death would mythically fix him as the fallensoldier, the overdetermination of his death interrupts the apotheosis of hisdeath and undermines its fixation. Nevertheless, Uri’s death does not solve thattension but rather underscores it. The troubling question of the relation betweenthe two aspects of Uri’s character remains.The novel does not end with Uri’s death; rather, it ends with Uri’s father andMika. Uri dies on the same day Mika is to have her abortion. Upon learning ofUri’s death, Uri’s father rushes to the abortion clinic in an attempt to stop Mika:tell her about Uri, beg, tell her that she must bear this to the end, because she’s ours,us all, all the living […] the main thing is that she will be their [Uri’s parents’]daughter, their daughter. […] Your hair wouldn’t turn completely white before acedar son of cedars will stand in our yards, Uri’s son. There would still be theirmatters, they would take him again for their matters? Life would stand forever. Justdon’t murder them with your own hands. Uri is an only child. And he will leavebehind him an only child. (Shamir 1947: 346)Like the double grid structuring Uri’s character, this scene plays two signifyingframeworks against each other. As Uri’s father notes, his son’s deathrepresents a destructive force, opposing the creative power of succeeding— 116 —www.taq.ir