How do stories reflect and inform human experience of the world? This doctoral thesis investigates the relationship between Hebrew biblical narrative and the theological problem of theodicy. In the narrative-critical reading offered here, the Esther narrative and its post holocaust and rabbinic re-tellings can be seen as examples of survival literature, around which identity is forged as a matter of ethno-cultural life and death. Treloar argues that Esther is a maverick voice – a private transcript – hidden within the public transcripts of the Canon of scripture, biblical theology, and rabbinic exegesis. Narrative criticism is presented a s a means by which such voices might be better heard, and the violent reductionism of the final solution averted.