Narrator's father

Narrator's father is presented through Devorah’s recollections of an estranged and difficult family relationship. The available scenes offer little background about his life, but they show the distance between the role Devorah is expected to perform as his daughter and her feeling that he never fulfilled a father’s role toward her.

Identity and Family Role

At a festive Purim meal, Narrator's father arrives visibly intoxicated and makes his way toward Devorah. She anticipates a loud greeting, but instead he leans heavily into an embrace and tightens his hold. Devorah experiences the contact as threatening and the encounter as deeply unsettling. Her account centers less on his intentions than on the effect of his behavior and the discomfort it leaves with her.

The Encounter and Eli’s Response

Eli watches the encounter without intervening. Devorah wishes he would step in, or at least distract her father, rather than leave her to manage the situation alone. Afterward, Eli looks at her in surprise, while she keeps her expression blank. The moment exposes a gap between the support she hopes for from her husband and the silence she receives in this instance.

Devorah’s View of Their Relationship

Devorah says she is relieved at the prospect of being free of her duties to her father. She cannot understand why she has had to perform the part of a daughter for a man she feels never tried to be her father. The scene therefore presents family obligation as something imposed rather than as evidence of mutual closeness.

Elsewhere in her reflection, Devorah wonders how her relatives will explain her absence, imagining that they may regard her as damaged or not quite right. This is her fear about the family’s judgment, not a statement of what her father has actually said. Together, these reflections show how the Purim encounter sits within a wider sense of alienation: she is surrounded by family, yet does not experience the expected bonds as secure or sustaining.