Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and the Symbol of the Crutch in Shmuʾel Yosef Agnon’s “ʿOvadyah baʿal mum”

Abstract: This article begins with a discussion of the influence of Victor Hugo’s monumental novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, on Shmu ʾ el Yosef Agnon’s story “ ʿ Ovadyah ba ʿ al mum.” It then proceeds to deal with a motif that runs like a scarlet thread throughout the story, that of Ovadiah’s crutch, which Red Reuven, a modern incarnation of the biblical Esau, fails to break and thus throws into the furnace to burn. The eternal, archetypal struggle between Jacob and Esau is embodied in the form of the burned crutch, as well as through Ovadiah’s name, which points us to the Torah portion of Vayishlaḥ and the Haftarah for this portion: the single chapter that comprises the biblical book of Obadiah, which speaks of the fire from the house of Jacob that will consume the house of Esau. The article suggests an optimistic ending to the story, which seems on the surface open-ended and ironic, with no potential remedy. The optimistic reading draws support, among other things, from the Torah portion of Nitsavim and an episode from 1 Kings. Additional support comes once again from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.