Unleashed Earth and Constrained Fire in The Golem and the Jinni

The Golem and the Jinni, a novel by Helene Wecker, is a tale that’s finely woven using an array of opposing thematic threads: earth and fire, self and selflessness, free will and enslavement, art and altruism.

Two Folklore Traditions

Wecker ingeniously weaves together two separate folklore traditions from two cultures that have similar roots but that are, in the modern world, often seen as in conflict with one another. A golem is, of course, a creature of Jewish folklore, a being that’s magically created out of clay or mud. It’s generally seen as a perfectly obedient vehicle used for vengeance or war.

A jinni is, on the other hand, a supernatural being originating in early pre-Islamic Arabian and later Islamic mythology and/or theology. In the Islamic tradition, the jinn (plural of jinni) are made up of “smokeless fire,” and that’s the tradition from which Wecker draws.

This sets up the tension and interplay between earth and fire, which are two of the four (along with air and water) elements of classical Greek thought. (Other cultures had similar ideas about the elements.) In the novel, these elements are also linked to the gender roles historically associated with them: female for earth and male for fire. These are personified in the form of the two main characters: Chava and Ahmad.

I enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it, but I’m not going to review it per se. Instead, I’ll discuss how these two traditions continue to inform our modern lives.

Earth and Fire

Gender is among the most controversial topics in today’s culture wars. Many women continue to struggle against what they view as male dominance and oppression. These are manifested many ways, some of which are:

* lower wages
* less political power
* legal infringements on what they do with their bodies
* less corporate power
* violence and harassment
* workplace discrimination

The golem in Wecker’s novel, Chava, is literally designed to be the ultimate obedient, unquestioning, and subservient woman. The fact that she winds up as an independent woman who must make her own decisions is a twist of fate brought about by the sudden death of her master/husband.

Her subsequent “independence” is not hard won, as it has been among many women in the 20th and 21st centuries, but she must nonetheless learn how to survive on her own.

The jinni, Ahmad, is in many ways her polar opposite. He is a protean creature who wants nothing more than to be free to soar through the desert winds, going wherever his whim may take him and adopting whatever form suits him.

Yet, it is he who finds himself wearing a shackle that keeps him from taking the form of anything other than a human being. He wishes to be a utterly free and powerful being but is shackled by fate. (Actually, there’s someone who enslaves him, but we’ll leave the villain aside here.)

Women and Men

Both characters are strangers in a strange land, and so find themselves drawn together. Yet, they are also alien to one another and often at odds. She ultimately adjusts, even if imperfectly, to her independence whereas he must resign himself to a new world where his powers and prerogatives are constrained.

The novel is nothing like a straight allegory, but it’s hard to miss the metaphorical undertones. In the process of freeing themselves from confines of the traditional “man’s world,” women often find themselves needing to reinvent who they are, and this can sometimes be an uncomfortable and maddening challenge.

Meanwhile, many men feel as if they’ve lost something precious. Their utter mastery of the world is challenged and their sometimes dangerous self-indulgences (which Ahmad displays throughout the novel) are called into question.

My View of the Mythological Lessons Learned

What is the book’s mythological resolution to all this? I’d say that Ahmad learns humility and compassion, two qualities in short supply through much of his narrative.

Meanwhile, what does Chava learn? Courage, for one thing, but also a willingness to endure complexity. It’s sorely tempting to give oneself over to some authority who will make decisions for you. That’s part of why, I believe, we live in an age of growing authoritarianism. It isn’t just that nations are using technology to spy and control as never before. It’s that people are increasingly willing, even eager, to give up their autonomy in return for feeling protected from the complexities of modern existence.

These are, of course, old lessons. Myths have been teaching humanity the dangers of hubris since the beginning. At the same time, they’ve been teaching about steadfastness of principles in the face of authorities. Consider, for example, the myth of Prometheus.

The narrative threads may be old, but the lessons are never easy. There are fine lines between steadfastness and hubris, and between self-sacrifice and the cowardly surrender of personal responsibility. Myth, including the subtle use of older myths to teller newer stories, are increasingly used to help us locate those lines, which can be as fine and elusive as ancient engravings carved into desert stone.

Image: Attributable to 'Abd al-'Aziz[1] - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

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