47 pages • 1 hour read
Marge PiercyHe, She and It
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-4 Summary
In 2059, Shira sits opposite her ex-husband, Josh, and anxiously waits to hear the verdict over the custody of their son, Ari. She regrets marrying Josh but appreciates that the marriage produced her son. Both are marranos, secret Jews who pretend to be revivalist Shinto followers in order to fit into the necessary corporate culture of Y-S. The lonely life of the corporation is very different to the free town of Tikva where Shira was raised. The world has been split into 23 “multis,” each run by a corporation, since the Two Week War in 2017. At that time, Jerusalem was attacked by “a conflagration of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons” (13) that destroyed the entire Middle East and ended the world’s dependence on oil. Many blamed the Jews for this war.
Shira and Josh are summoned, and the verdict is delivered: Josh wins custody, and Shira has visiting rights. Shira is distraught and wants to appeal; first, she must collect Ari from daycare. She rushes across the city, breaking the strict social conventions without caring if she is reported. When she arrives, however, she discovers that a security assignee named Shipman has already collected Ari. Despondent, Shira travels to her assigned apartment. She has a missed call on her computer from her grandmother Malkah and, after calling her lawyer, she speaks to her. They discuss Ari and, afterward, Shira eats a pitiable meal and connects herself to the worldwide Net, accessing the Y-S Base to research custody law. She tries to collect Ari the next day, but Josh lodges a formal complaint. Shira locks herself away and cries.
Two months later, Shira is still bitter about the verdict. She receives a call from Gadi, a famous designer and an old friend. They talk about Josh; Shira broke with tradition, raising Ari herself rather than allowing her mother to raise him, as Shira’s grandmother had raised Shira. She ends the call and returns to her lover, Malcolm. While talking to Gadi is effortless, talking to Malcolm is a chore. After Malcolm leaves, she prepares to spend her allotted day with Ari. She travels through the city—located under a gigantic dome—and thinks about her mother, Riva, whom she “seldom met” (24). Arriving at Josh’s house, she finds nobody home and a message waiting for her: Josh’s message reveals that he and Ari have left earth with full permission from Y-S; she will not see Ari for two years, unless she can “get clearance to Pacifica” (25), a space platform. Broke and distraught, separated from her son, Shira accepts a job from Gadi’s father, Avram, and relocates back to Tikva.
Malkah records a bedtime story for Yod. It is the story of the Golem, told when Malkah feels “the danger gathering around us in this modern ghetto” (28). The story takes place in the old city of Prague, where Malkah studies philosophy. She often passes the Jewish neighborhoods and cemeteries; the city’s old Jewish Ghetto is ancient and the site of many persecutions. Among the neighborhood’s Jews are a family called the Loews, among whom is the rabbi Judah Loew, “a hotheaded kabbalist, steeped in ancient tradition so the Torah haunts and informs and sculpts the world for him” (31). In the late 1500s, Judah was ever permitted a one-on-one meeting with the emperor, wherein they discussed astrology.
Later, when he is finally made chief rabbi, Judah thinks about how he can protect his people. A Spanish priest and a member of the inquisition has arrived in the city and has challenged Judah to a debate, one he is meant to lose. Judah must aim for a tie in front of an angry, hostile audience. He manages this but worries that he has only enraged the priest even more. An idea comes to him in a dream: construct a Golem, a creature made of clay that can protect Prague’s Jewish population. Judah frets over their responsibility, and Malkah empathizes with his fears. Malkah has been lured into a secret project by her daughter, Riva, who moved from pure data piracy to something more dangerous and political: liberating information and data from the multis.
Shira rides a crowded tube car out of the city and across the country. After passing through Chicago and Boston, she arrives at the Glop and dresses herself in protective, anonymous clothing. The Glop is a dangerous place, home to the continent’s working classes. Dotted among the Glop are free towns—such as Tikva—where people who share a minority religion, sexual preference, or some other belief gather together. She stops to buy a knife that will not show up on detection devices and then walks on through the scorching, disease-ridden Glop. She is wary of paying for anything with a scan of her hand, lest someone cut through her wrist and steal what little money she has left.
The spaces between the multis’ domes are ruled by the remnants of the UN, who took over after the Great Famine in which 2 billion people died. She hires a float car to take her north across the irradiated wasteland, where only bugs, vultures, and other vermin have evolved to survive. Arriving near Tikva, she exits the car and approaches the sealed town gate. A computer lets her in, past two human guards, and she walks through the streets of mismatched houses. She arrives at her old home and finds Malkah waiting in the courtyard.
Chapters 5-8 Summary
At age 13, Shira is in love. Though Malkah has told her that love is frivolous, Shira knows her love for Gadi is real. They travel together using stimmies (virtual reality devices), and the world of imagination in which they play is intense, more real than reality. Wearing protective clothes, they would explore the sunken cities along the coast. Gadi worries about not measuring up to his father’s expectations. Like Malkah, Avram is one of Tikva’s Base Overseers (respected scientists also known as “designers”), and their work allows the town to continue to exist. Gadi’s mother, Sara, is slowly dying, plagued by an unknown disease. On the day of a storm, aged 14, Shira and Gadi skip school to go to their hiding place: a secret room in the abandoned hotel that houses Avram’s lab. They sit on a bed cross-legged, facing one another. They talk and kiss, undressing each other. They have sex for the first time, but they are interrupted by a scream from downstairs.
Gadi runs toward the sound of illegal laser shots. Shira follows and finds Avram in his lab, standing over his injured assistant, David. She sees a body on the floor; a strangely humanoid robot, shot in the head. Avram tries to downplay the incident, claiming that it is “an unsuccessful experiment” (56). Avram swears Shira to secrecy and then sends Gadi to get help for David. Shira returns home and thinks about how much she loves Gadi. She asks the computer about robots and learns that laws prevent artificially intelligent robots following an outbreak of violence. Professional assassins work for the multis to find and destroy any illegal robots.
Just before she turns 17, Shira receives a private message containing her university offers. She runs to find Gadi, visiting the lab where Avram is working on a new cyborg experiment named Gimel. Following Sara’s death, the household has fallen apart, and Shira worries whether Gadi adequately prepared for his exams, though she loves his beautiful design work. When she enters their secret room, however, she finds Gadi naked with another person. Shira runs and Avram catches her in the hall, promising to get rid of the other girl, telling her to “go to a good university and forget my useless son” (62).
Sobbing hard, Shira runs into the street and into the raw wasteland beyond the town walls. After a short time, she returns home and wants to be left alone. She does not hear Malkah enter. When Malkah arrives, she tries to comfort her granddaughter. Eventually, they talk about Gadi and the universities and then sit together in awkward silence. Later, they plug into the Net together but are interrupted when Gadi arrives at the house. Shira cannot prevent herself arguing with him, accusing him of punishing her because she achieved better results in their exams. He claims that they are dying together, that their relationship is a prison. Shira decides to travel to Europa to study, far away from Gadi and her hometown.
Judah thinks about the task ahead of him. He thinks about consulting his wife, Perl, who he knows would tell him to abandon such nonsense. He could ask his widowed granddaughter Chava, but suspects that she will consider the creation of a golem to be usurping the power of the Eternal and of women. He could ask a neighbor—David Gans, an astronomer and historian—but David is timid in spiritual matters. He could consult his son-in-law, Itzak Cohen, but worries that Itzak is too obsequious and will not give an honest answer. Yakov Sassoon ha-Levi is too careless and daring. When Chaim the Silversmith is arrested on charges of consulting with the Turks, however, Judah’s mind is made up for him. He sets the building of the golem in motion, enlisting Itzak and Yakov.
At midnight, they go to the synagogue, taking a Torah, and then the cemetery, where limited space means bodies must be buried on top of one another. They sneak through a secret hole in the ghetto wall and walk quietly through the “forbidden Christian streets” (74) out into the countryside. They stop beside a river where they dig clay from the bank and mold it into the shape of a tall and broad man. The rabbi molds the intricate details of the body and then begins to pray. Blue fire crackles around the clay body and it comes to life, the clay turned to flesh. It begins to rain. The soaked men encircle the figure and chant; the golem stirs.
Malkah thinks about the pleasure of having Shira back in the house; Shira used to interject at this point of the story, questioning how the golem could be real. Malkah discusses the power inherent in naming an object. She understands how Avram—her former lover—felt when creating a person in his lab. Everyone, she says, must accept the power and the ability to create life. Shira enters Avram’s laboratory, curious as to whether Gadi is still around. A standard service robot named Gimel leads her into the house where she meets an unknown man who she supposes is a security guard. Avram addresses the guard as Yod and tells him to stand down. Avram and Shira talk about her new job; Avram introduces Yod as his current project, a cyborg named after the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The town, Avram tells Shira, is under attack from information pirates and Yod is designed to protect them.
However, Avram needs Shira to help improve the cyborg; he has made Yod as accurate as possible (including genitalia) to help avoid detection. Avram tasks Shira with improving Yod’s conversational communication and social behavior. Avram admits that Gadi has already departed and does not know about Yod, though Malkah does. Yod reacts to a sound from outside, moving faster and smoother than any human, as Avram laments the failed cyborg predecessors. When Yod refers to Avram as his father, Shira experiences a moment of despair for her own missing son. At least, she thinks, the work on Yod will help her to “pass the time” (85) until she can see Ari again.
Chapters 9-12 Summary
Malkah welcomes Shira with a “minimum of reproach” (86); Shira is surprised to find out how many friends her grandmother has, including virtual boyfriends and girlfriends who do not know her age. Shira misses Ari, and Malkah asks whether Shira has ever considered having a child with Gadi; she believes both of them are dead, incapable of loving other people. While Malkah has had too many lovers to count, Shira admits that she has had only five. Malkah discusses her past relationship with Avram; she thinks that sex has withered within Avram since Sara died. They discuss Yod and whether to refer to the cyborg as a “he.” Malkah believes so; she considers Yod a person and enjoys his company.
Shira’s mother, Riva, may be coming back and is now an information pirate, wanted by the authorities. Shira barely knew her mother, but this sounds strange to her. Malkah shows Shira a list of Riva’s crimes, including infiltrating and pillaging multi Bases and collapsing the allevium market, providing the recipe for the essential drug free of charge. Malkah reveals that the tradition of children being raised by their grandmothers was an invention, designed to hide the truth about Shira’s political fugitive of a mother. Shira wonders whether her mother’s crimes led to her devaluation at Y-S and worries how this will affect her custody of Ari. She ponders whether Avram and Malkah are simply trying to engage her curiosity in a bid to make her stay in Tikva.
Malkah discusses Riva’s early childhood with Yod. She was a rebellious child who hated any kind of locked door or any suggestion that a challenge might be beyond her capabilities. By the age of 12, she was hacking into networks and reading people’s personal files; she refused to be ashamed. Mother and daughter struggled to talk, which Malkah likens to her talks with Yod, as well as Judah’s Golem. Judah names the Golem Joseph and guides him back to the ghetto. Joseph struggles to walk on his new legs, and the men must guide him. They encounter two guards, and Judah instructs the Golem to disable them; Joseph kills them, not knowing his own strength. As Joseph dumps the bodies in the river, Judah reflects on what he has done. He must simply be more careful in his orders, he decides. The Golem becomes the protector of the Jews of Prague, and Judah is finally fighting for his people with something more than words, as “this monster does not fight by throwing words” (98).
Shira begins working with Yod, testing the cyborg as she would a child. Yod has an excellent command of science and math but has little understanding of “human relationships and subtler values” (99), struggling to deal with metaphorical thinking. She tries to explain the metaphor of a rose from a Robert Burns poem; realizing that Yod will learn nothing until he leaves the lab, Shira decides to take him outside, even though it will anger Avram. As they walk, Yod is surprised by a street cleaning robot and destroys it. They walk on to Shira’s house, and Yod notes how the sky is not blue, contrary to what he has read. Shira explains that this is due to the greenhouse effect and asks if Yod is disappointed. He accepts that he might be.
Shira shows him a rose; Yod rips it apart, considering its thorns a weapon. He apologizes. Shira and Yod discuss the metaphorical meaning of a rose, and he begins to understand. Conversation moves on to whether Yod considers himself alive and to the fate of his predecessors, all of whom were destroyed (except for Gimel). Shira realizes that she is “thinking the pronoun ‘he’” (107) rather than “it” when thinking about Yod. She gives the cyborg a tour of her house when Malkah arrives home; Avram has decided that she was a bad influence on Yod, so he shut her out of the cyborg’s development. Malkah complains of another death at her workplace; Yod is to protect the Base and its property. When Yod returns to the lab, Avram is furious. He warns Shira never to leave Yod alone with Malkah.
Shira, Avram, and Yod are in the lab. Avram paces angrily; Gadi has “got into trouble again” (110). In the six weeks they have been working, Shira is surprised to find how close she has become to Yod. Gadi has become sexually involved with a 15-year-old in Azerbaijan, Avram reveals, and was publicly flogged. Gadi’s excellent work creating the virtual world for stimmies was all that allowed him to escape without more extreme punishment. Gadi is being shipped to Tikva the next day, and Shira feels suddenly trapped. She cannot work, so she decides to take Yod out into the raw.
They head to the sunken town to swim nearby in Massachusetts Bay; Shira hesitates before undressing in front of Yod but does so. He does the same and follows her into the polluted water. As Yod comes to terms with swimming, they discuss Gadi. Shira still remembers the pain of their breakup. When Yod’s analysis of her experiences seems too close to Malkah, Shira asks him not to discuss her behind her back. As they swim, they are caught in a large net by organ scavengers. Yod rips open the net and drags Shira back to the shore, and the scavengers chase them. Shira dives deep as Yod fights against their attackers. She watches as Yod capsizes the scavengers’ boat and kills the four men inside. Shira and Yod return to the shore, dress, and leave. Yod worries over the pleasure he has taken in killing the men, in fulfilling his mission of protection. He is ashamed that he let the attackers get so close. As they return to town, Shira realizes that she has not thought at all about Gadi.
Chapters 1-12 Analysis
The opening chapters of the novel introduce the cyberpunk future inhabited by Shira. It is a post-apocalyptic world of cybernetic implants, massive corporations that function as makeshift nation states, and extreme wealth disparity. Added to the more futuristic flourishes, there remain a number of essentially human issues. Shira is embroiled in a custody dispute; she has never truly got over her first relationship; and she is feeling the pains of being distant from her child (and not really knowing her own mother). This collection of problems is almost timeless, suggesting that—no matter how much the world changes—a fundamental aspect of human existence will always remain the same. Despite the opportunities that futuristic technology offers, Shira finds herself caught in sympathetic, relatable situations that are immediately understood by the audience, even if the exact details of all the technology are not.
Added to the futuristic elements and the conventional human emotions of the story, the opening chapters also introduce one of the key themes of the text: the intersection of traditional Jewish culture with a sci-fi future. Shira comes from Tikva, a free town that appears to be home to one of the demographics with a diminished population. Wars in Jerusalem and the Middle East have led large parts of the population to blame and ostracize Jewish people, so Shira and her community must exist outside of the corporate biome of the multis, the massive corporations that function essentially as city states. When in Y-S, for instance, Shira at least pretends to believe in Shintoism. This blending of a sci-fi future and a traditional Jewish past will be important. The legend of the Golem, for example, will mirror the creation of Yod. Language, behavior, and culture all take their influence from traditional notions of Judaism. Yiddish words and phrases are used; the cyborg is implanted with an understanding of the Torah; and traditional Jewish holidays are mentioned and observed. The town of Tikva is unique in being one of the world’s foremost outposts of Judaism remaining in a desolate future.
The use of Jewish history and legend becomes most apparent in the telling of the story of the Golem. Judah’s efforts to make a man out of clay to protect his city are an obvious parallel to Avram’s efforts to make a cyborg. However, in the chapters focusing on Judah, the narrative switches from a third- to a first-person perspective. Rather than an omniscient narrator, it is Malkah who is telling the story to Yod. This changes the tone of these chapters, separating them from the main body of the narrative. Rather than the unfolding story of Shira, these chapters are meant to inform and instruct Yod. The cyborg is meant to learn from Malkah as though she is his teacher and—thanks to the changed mode of address—the audience begins to occupy Yod’s position as the pupil. The change in narrative mode instructs the audience about the story of the Golem and emphasizes the importance of drawing parallels to contemporary events.
Related Titles
By Marge Piercy
