A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Tal frequently uses anaphora, or the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, in her writing. The sentence structure lends rhythm to her writing, a sense of forward movement, and an emotional weight. When writing the letter she will put in the bottle, she begins six successive paragraphs with the words “I imagine,” signifying her hopes of a connection with the letter’s recipient but also the acknowledgment that her imaginings could be wrong. Elsewhere in the novel, she uses anaphora to describe her memories and emotions: writing of the adults around her after Rabin’s assassination, “They cried out. They howled. They burst into tears” (37); and of her own frustrations with the current conflict, “Why? Why does it have to be like this? Why does my country [...] do that, over there, in your country?” (70). She follows her questions with several musings beginning with “[b]ecause.” As with her use of allusions, Tal’s use of anaphora develops the themes of The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Individual Lives and Hope Versus Despair.

The novel begins with an epigraph, or short quotation, which appears in the author’s native French above an English translation: “It is not because some people are right that others are wrong. All of our dreams must remain intact. Our dreams keep us moving forward.” The brief note introduces a key paradox of the novel, which asks if one side being right necessarily mean the other side is wrong, as well as the motif of dreams. Both explore of The Complexities of Identity and Belonging in Divided Society and Hope Versus Despair.

Irony, or the use of a word or event, to represent a contradictory idea, appears in different ways throughout the novel. In his early emails, Naïm uses verbal irony, or sarcasm, as a kind of shield against Tal’s hopefulness and to point out the distance between them. Ironically, he does so by emphasizing a similarity: “(Yes, acrostic poems! Can you believe it, in Gaza they cram children’s heads full of words they’ll only use in literature lessons too! We’re practically the same, the two of us, indeed!)” (22). Elsewhere, both Naïm and Tal make note of situational ironies as a way of orienting themselves within the social and political history of the region. When Tal writes that her teacher “couldn’t stop saying, ‘I hope you realize how lucky you are. You’re walking on land laden with history’” (82), it conveys her sense that she is the opposite of lucky, as the history of that land has created so much personal and political strife, and when Naïm writes of delayed independence to the point of ceasing to believe in it at all, he emphasizes the sense that people are so used to conflict that they don’t know how to function in any other situation. These ironies develop the contradictions the two young people must live with, as well as The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Individual Lives.