Helping convey the idea of connections among persons and groups are frequent shifts in point of view in the story. These range from the third-person reports of the conversation between Geulah and the goatherd, to the second-person attribution of experience with the nomads (“sometimes you manage to catch them unawares”), to first-person plural that seems initially to be the kibbutz generally but then narrows down to the secretariat and then to the narrator, to direct first-person singular of the narrator, to the fragmented first-person interior of Geulah (“must go now”).

Likewise, numerous ironic reversals of plot and character suggest a link underlying polarities, how something may contain or be transformed into its opposite. Metaphors of the nomads “trickling” and “streaming” northward ironically contrast the drought that drives them, as well as the damage they do to the kibbutz agriculture. The timeless nomads, whose ancientness is symbolized by the “wisdom of age” in their camels, sometimes dress in combinations of primeval robes and patched modern European jackets. They cannot afford cigarettes but have gold cigarette lighters. The poetry of their darkly draped tents and nocturnal music making contrasts with the prosaic damage they bring to the kibbutz.

At the story’s end, an anonymous Bedouin shepherd, who is mentioned in passing early in the story as having been beaten and who is blind in one eye, seems to be the very one fleeing from Geulah, who will fantasize romance with and assault by him. Geulah herself is dedicated to social activities but cannot form the elemental social bond of marriage. She is attracted to the Bedouin youth, although her own brother was killed in a desert reprisal raid against Arabs. Glass slivers from the bottle she works so hard to smash cut her. The orchard she loves so much may be the scene of a fatal viper bite.

Biblical allusion is pervasive in the story and underlies many ironic contrasts. In a reference to the kibbutz’s trouble with the Bedouins, Etkin alludes to the conflict between Cain and Abel in the Old Testament. The venomous snake that approaches Geulah in or near the orchard—the latter a recurrent symbol—recalls the Adam and Eve story of Genesis, in reference to Geulah generally and to her encounter with the Bedouin shepherd in particular. Ironically, however, the nomads in Oz’s story would be equated with the innocent Abel, a keeper of flocks, while the kibbutzniks would be equated with Cain, a worker of the soil, and the murderer of Abel. In an ironic reversal, the initial tempter in the orchard is the Bedouin shepherd, who offers Geulah a cigarette. This incident itself is a reversal of an example at the story’s beginning, when a kibbutznik offers an Arab a cigarette.

Further biblical symbolism is conveyed in the obscure motif of Geulah’s need to smash the discarded bottle, which has overtones of Psalm 2 and its prayer to God of dashing Israel’s enemies to pieces like a shattered potter’s vessel. However, just as Geulah is cut by the bottle, this allusion suggests that the violence against a supposed foe may have rebound with disastrous consequences.