“Here I am”: ethical speech acts in David Grossman's <i>More Than I Love My Life</i>

Abstract The purpose of this discussion is to show how ethical speech acts function in David Grossman's 2019 novel More than I Love My Life (2021). Its main thesis is that these speech acts establish and activate ethical choices on behalf of the characters, contrary to what might be implied by the novel's Hebrew title, which can be literally translated as “With me, life plays a lot of games.” The term “ethical speech acts” is an interdisciplinary concept combining the notion of speech acts, as established by Austin and Searle, with elements of Levinas's ethics, particularly those expressed in his final book, Otherwise than Being (1974). At the center of this book are two ethical concepts, which, in fact, constitute two types of ethical speech acts: the Saying (le dire) and the Said (le dit). The novel More than I Love My Life shows how ethical speech acts reflect a shift in consciousness and, subsequently, a practical change in the characters. The novel is based on a true story and thus illustrates how ethical speech acts can enable and generate significant ethical changes on two levels, reality and fiction.