On "Facing the Forest"

When Words are Meaningless: The Relationship of Words and Violence in Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests

     Humans are incurably social creatures. Hence, when a human loses the ability to impart and interpret meaning through words, she does not block or abandon communication, but, instead, resorts to expressing herself and understanding others through action. Often, her physical endeavor is destructive against the environment or fellow human with which verbal communication is impossible. In Facing the Forests, Yehoshua explores and laments the consequences of this human tendency to resort to violence when words become meaningless.
     The author illustrates this human behavioral pattern through paralleling the protagonist’s transformation from a student to a fire-watcher to a savage man with the simultaneous degeneration of the protagonist’s relationship with words. Also, through portraying the insignificance of words and significance of action—namely fire—to the people and circumstances surrounding the protagonist, Yehoshua demonstrates the reality that violence surfaces when words lose their utility.
     Because the protagonist is estranged from words and unable to find meaning in them, he quickly abandons his studies in favor of perusing the woods for fire. His new role as fire-watcher gives him the chance to abandon the words and scholarly knowledge that he cannot fathom for the trees and violent fire that are directly under his control. In the beginning of the story, the protagonist realizes that his unsuccessful career as a scholar is due to his incapability of evincing the essences of words. Because “words wary him, let alone the words of others” (3074), he decides that only in solitude will he be able to “renew his acquaintance with words” and “scrape together his crumbled existence” (3075). Although estranged from words, the student initially regards them as sources from which he can potentially draw important knowledge. After he realizes the exigency of “the heavy responsibility [of fire-watcher] that has suddenly fallen upon his shoulders” (3080), however, “trees [take] the place of words for [him], forests the place of books” (3092). Following this transformative epiphany, the fire-watcher’s yearning to spot a fire in the forest grows as his desire to unearth the nuances of words subsides. His study-pace becomes excruciatingly slow because “after every sentence he raises his head to look at the forest…awaiting a fire” (3082) that will allow him to fulfill his new identity. Since his relationship with words fails him, the protagonist turns to the action of physical destruction as a mode of imbuing his life with importance.
     Words prove to be as insignificant to the environment and people portrayed in Facing the Forests as they are to the protagonist and to his search for meaning. “Nameless immigrant settlements” (3078) dot the countryside in which only an oppressive “silence, a silence of trees” can be heard. In the isolated, hushed realm to which the student exiles himself, people communicate in a language of gestures because words have lost their significance. Upon arriving at his remote forest post, the student’s “driver nods [a wordless] goodbye” (3078), leaving him with an Arab houseman who “turns out to be old and mute” (3079) and unable to decipher the student’s Hebrew words. The select few combinations of syllables that are meaningful in this forest and to its caretakers retain their relevance not because they are words, but because they are either incite or forewarn acts of destruction. The mispronounced whispers of the Arab’s demolished village’s name preserve the memory that rouses him to burn down the forest. The commemorative plaques “gained luster after their baptism by fire” (3097) because the names on them will fund Israel’s vengeance against the fire-starter’s people. And out of all the “strange phrases from alien worlds,” only “Crusades” (3081) evokes any response from the fire-watcher arguably because it foreshadows the imminent cultural war that will scorch his forest. It is glaringly ironic that the student ventures to this quiet place with the intention to give meaning to his life through rediscovering the power of words, but ultimately deduces that words are worthless to him and to the people around him.
     Through the destruction and plight caused by the insignificance of words to the characters in Facing the Forests, Yehoshua allegorically portrays the terrible dilemma facing post-independence Israel. The forest, symbolic of Israel’s charged political climate, brims with a tense silence that begs to be broken. On the Jewish side, relatively powerless men “edging [their] way to old age” (3077) like the manager and the student’s “blind, fumbling” (3082) father are all that is left of the impassioned first generation that went to war in the name of sacred words. Their children, represented by the fire-watcher, make up a generation indifferent to the pith of their parents’ weighty words. Opposing the second-generation Israelis are angry Palestinians like the Arab who, uprooted by the War of Independence and silenced by defeat, can speak only through physical acts of vengeance. Through Yehoshua’s allegorical short story, he blames both sides for the birth of this conflict, pointing specifically to their problematic relationships with words as the origins of the hostility that is ravaging the author’s country. Just like the Arab, the fire-watcher’s inability to either derive meaning from words or express himself through them leads him to desire the forest’s destruction. The author’s allegory, therefore, implies that both the Palestinian and Jewish sides are culpable for driving their homeland to its current detestable state of terror. Yehoshua invokes horrific images of the savage condition to which the fire, an act of terrorism, degrades the country’s environment and people. The vehemence of the fire reduces the formerly majestic forest to a “huge carcass…rotting away” (3098). Not even the old manager—a “worthy character” (3075)—can resist sinking to violence; he “attacks [the fire-watcher] with shriveled fists,” resorting to brutal action “as though he, too, had lost the words, as though he understood nothing.” The fire-watcher, however, descends lowest of all; after allowing the forest to burn, he “gorges himself to bursting point” and “paces the streets, bearded, dirty, sunburned—a savage.” Through Yehoshua’s depiction of this post-fire world, he implies that when words become ineffective, violence reigns and the world degenerates to an abhorrent state in which “everything is flat. Stupid” (3099).
     Facing the Forests is disturbing in its portrayal of the dire consequences that result from humanity’s propensity to destroy when certain circumstances render words ineffective. Yehoshua’s final line, “What now?” acts out the purpose of his story: to impel the violent parties laying claim to Israel to start talking again and to begin reacquainting themselves with words.

The essay as a whole has a strong thesis. Parts of it's demonstration is less that fully developed, or fully clear, but the last third of the paper is so strongly stated and so clearly attached to the thesis, that it makes up for a lot. This is a paper that clearly would enhance the understanding of the short story for another reader. Becuse of some unclarity at times, a few points taken off, but I would call this and A, at around the 93-94 range.

When Words are Meaningless: The Relationship of Words and Violence in Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests The title begins to tell the reader what the essay is about. Good. Note--"Facing the Forests" not Facing the Forests

     Humans are incurably social creatures. Hence, when a human loses the ability to impart and interpret meaning through words, she does not block or abandon communication, but, instead, resorts to expressing herself and understanding others through action. Often, her physical endeavor is destructive against the environment or fellow human with which verbal communication is impossible. These last two sentences make a broad claim for human behavior. An example of how this happens would support the claims, otherwise, they are kind of empty. (Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart shows this resort to action in the failure of words. In Facing the Forests, Yehoshua explores and laments the consequences of this human tendency to resort to violence when words become meaningless.
     The author illustrates this human behavioral pattern through paralleling the protagonist’s transformation from a student to a fire-watcher to a savage man with the simultaneous degeneration of the protagonist’s relationship with words. Also, through portraying the insignificance of words and significance of action—namely fire—to the people and circumstances surrounding the protagonist, Yehoshua demonstrates the reality that violence surfaces when words lose their utility. the ransformation of the student is premised on the claim that sords at one time had a great significance in his life, which may have been the case well before teh actin of the story, but now . . . ?
     Because the protagonist is estranged from words and unable to find meaning in them, he quickly abandons his studies in favor of perusing the woods for fire. His new role as fire-watcher gives him the chance to abandon the words and scholarly knowledge that he cannot fathom [for] because of his obsession with the trees and the potential for violent fire that are directly under his control. In the beginning of the story, the protagonist realizes that his unsuccessful career as a scholar is due to his [incapability of evincing] not clear what you mean here the essences of words. Because “words wary him; his own, let alone the words of others” take extra care to quote accurately (3074), he decides that only in solitude will he be able to “renew his acquaintance with words” and “scrape together his crumbled existence” (3075). Although estranged from words, the student initially regards them as sources from which he can potentially draw important knowledge. After he realizes the exigency of “the heavy responsibility [of fire-watcher] that has suddenly fallen upon his shoulders” (3080), however, “trees [take] the place of words for [him], forests the place of books” a nice use of Yehoshua's text to advance exposition(3092). Following this transformative epiphany, although it's not apparent as an epiphany the fire-watcher’s yearning to spot a fire in the forest grows as his desire to unearth the nuances of words subsides. His study-pace becomes excruciatingly slow because “after every sentence he raises his head to look at the forest…awaiting a fire” (3082) that will allow him to fulfill his new identity. Since his relationship with words fails him, the protagonist turns to the action of physical destruction as a mode of imbuing his life with importance. Could make a stronger connection here of the subsiding oflanguage to the yearning for fire. I think you should repeat the idea that action would be the replacement for language, and make a case why this is so.
     Words prove to be as insignificant to the environment and people portrayed in Facing the Forests as they are to the protagonist and to his search for meaning. “Nameless immigrant settlements” (3078) dot the countryside in which only an oppressive “silence, a silence of trees” can be heard. In the isolated, hushed realm to which the student exiles himself, people communicate in a language of gestures because words have lost their significance. Upon arriving at his remote forest post, the student’s “driver nods [a wordless] goodbye” (3078), leaving him with an Arab houseman who “turns out to be old and mute” (3079) and unable to decipher the student’s Hebrew words. The select few combinations of syllables that are meaningful in this forest and to its caretakers retain their relevance not because they are words, but because they are either incite or forewarn acts of destruction. The mispronounced whispers of the Arab’s demolished village’s name preserve the memory that rouses him to burn down the forest. The commemorative plaques “gained luster after their baptism by fire” (3097) because the names on them will fund Israel’s vengeance against the fire-starter’s people. And out of all the “strange phrases from alien worlds,” only “Crusades” (3081) evokes any response from the fire-watcher arguably because it foreshadows the imminent cultural war that will scorch his forest. It is glaringly ironic that the student ventures to this quiet place with the intention to give meaning to his life through rediscovering the power of words, but ultimately deduces that words are worthless to him and to the people around him. This is a strong paragraph, which rather deftly lists some of the ways the forest stands for silence, for gesture instead of speech, and for a refusal to be named.
     Through the destruction and plight caused by the insignificance of words to the characters in Facing the Forests, Yehoshua allegorically portrays the terrible dilemma facing post-independence Israel. The forest, symbolic of Israel’s charged political climate, brims with a tense silence that begs to be broken. On the Jewish side, relatively powerless men “edging [their] way to old age” (3077) like the manager and the student’s “blind, fumbling” (3082) father are all that is left of the impassioned first generation that went to war in the name of sacred words. You might list some of the sacred words here. Their children, represented by the fire-watcher, make up a generation indifferent to the pith of their parents’ weighty words. Opposing the second-generation Israelis are angry Palestinians like the Arab who, uprooted by the War of Independence and silenced by defeat, can speak only through physical acts of vengeance. Through Yehoshua’s allegorical short story, he blames both sides for the birth of this conflict, pointing specifically to their problematic relationships with words as the origins of the hostility that is ravaging the author’s country. Just like the Arab, the fire-watcher’s inability to either derive meaning from words or express himself through them leads him to desire the forest’s destruction. The author’s allegory, therefore, implies that both the Palestinian and Jewish sides are culpable for driving their homeland to its current detestable state of terror. Yehoshua invokes horrific images of the savage condition to which the fire, an act of terrorism, degrades the country’s environment and people. The vehemence of the fire reduces the formerly majestic forest to a “huge carcass…rotting away” Nice!(3098). Not even the old manager—a “worthy character” (3075)—can resist sinking to violence; he “attacks [the fire-watcher] with shriveled fists,” resorting to brutal action “as though he, too, had lost the words, as though he understood nothing.” The fire-watcher, however, descends lowest of all; after allowing the forest to burn, he “gorges himself to bursting point” and “paces the streets, bearded, dirty, sunburned—a savage.” Through Yehoshua’s depiction of this post-fire world, he implies that when words become ineffective, violence reigns and the world degenerates to an abhorrent state in which “everything is flat. Stupid” (3099).Now you are on a roll. Another well balanced and forceful paragraph, which makes a strong case for the allegorical commentary on the State.
     Facing the Forests is disturbing in its portrayal of the dire consequences that result from humanity’s propensity to destroy when certain circumstances render words ineffective. Yehoshua’s final line, “What now?” acts out the purpose of his story: to impel the violent parties laying claim to Israel to start talking again and to begin reacquainting themselves with words. Nice. Your ending notes the ending of the story in a way that helps lead back to your original premise.