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.
Themes
Human Identity and Artificial Intelligence
The central theme of the novel is a question: whether a machine could ever be considered human. Yod the cyborg and Joseph the Golem are two artificial beings, brought to life in order to defend their communities, who begin to take on human qualities. This humanity is debated and questioned by the creators, the community, and the beings themselves.
Whereas Yod is a machine who slowly begins to discover his humanity, there are human characters who have slowly been turning their bodies into machines. In addition to the large amounts of cosmetic surgery that is conducted, humans receive implants and upgrades. Shira has a clock in the corner of her eye, for instance, while many characters have artificial organs or body parts that replace diseased or aged counterparts. Nili is the most extreme of these augmented humans, even to those in the world who are used to body augmentation. These augmentations have heightened her abilities and have reached the point where she is more machine than anyone else, but her quintessential humanity is never questioned. While Yod is a machine who seeks to be human, there are humans who have almost become machines. Because the former is an issue and the latter is not, the book questions at which point a person “ends” and a machine “begins” and how to tell the difference.
Throughout the novel, the theme is touched upon when discussing the act of creation. Avram creates Yod, which he believes gives him possession over Yod. To Avram, this is a simple matter, and Yod is never anything more than an object. As the other characters spend time with Yod, they begin to believe that he is as much a human as anyone else. When Yod kills Avram, he also destroys the capacity to create another cyborg. Yod quashes the question of his humanity by removing himself from the equation. For the others, though, Yod has become human.
Mysticism and Technology
It is an accepted wisdom that any sufficiently advanced technology can appear to be magic. Hence, the Jewish mysticism and the sci-fi tech portrayed in the narrative overlap. Both kabbalah and cybernetics achieve the same goals, bringing an inanimate object to life. Even in the future, however, many of the traditions, rituals, and beliefs that imbued the mysticism with power have endured. In the community of Tikva and the ghetto of Prague, the same beliefs perpetuate despite the vastly different levels of technology.
The events set in Prague are told as a bedtime story to a machine, read by Malkah to Yod as though he is a child. The stories are examples of old mysticism; the folklore of the Golem brought to life with kabbalah is inherently mystical. When this story is told to a machine, it is an example of the mystical communicating directly with the modern. The Golem of Prague is one of the best-known stories of Jewish mysticism, and Yod is the most advanced piece of technology on earth (and is even named for the tenth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, a word that can represent God in kabbalah). In Malkah’s opinion, the latter must know about the former if he is to succeed and if he is to truly understand his own nature. Mysticism becomes an important learning tool and a means of acquiring humanity.
There is a repeated use of ritual in the text. The people of Tikva believe in the power of their rituals, whether these are mourning practices or town meetings. In this context, Judaism is not necessarily a spiritual belief. Instead, it has become a cultural togetherness, binding together the people of Tikva after a string of tragedies in the past. In the Y-S enclave, Shira and Josh must hide their religion. In Tikva, however, they can express it freely. This mirrors Shira’s self-expression and tech skills; she feels restricted in the enclave, but in Tikva, she can wholly express herself.
Gender Roles and Societal Expectations
The novel’s title emphasizes the role of gender in an imagined future society: The pronouns speak to the difference between “it” and the other two, but the separation of the two gendered pronouns highlights the difference between the two and suggests that it might be akin to the difference between a human and a machine. The title compels the reader to acknowledge the existence of gender and speaks to the importance of gender as a central theme to the text.
The role of women in the text is emphasized by contrasting societies. In the Y-S enclave, for instance, Shira finds herself in a more traditional culture. She is in a monogamous marriage that has broken apart and hopes to gain custody of her child. When she fails, however, she returns home to the town of Tikva. In Tikva, gender functions in a different manner. Shira is aware of these differences, having had to adjust her expectations while working for a multi. In Tikva, women are imbued with more cultural responsibility. Malkah, for instance, is as responsible for the defense as Avram, as well as the actual head of security. Though she is an elderly woman, she is expected to contribute to the community. Traditional expectations of monogamous heterosexual relationships have largely fallen away (though these relationships do exist); the difference lies in the expectation, rather than the possibility. No one in Tikva judges alternative gender roles in a pejorative manner. Instead, women in the community are empowered and given many responsibilities.
The reason for these changes to gender roles and the accompanying societal expectations are perhaps related to the traumatic events of the past. Following a climate apocalypse and numerous epidemics, many people are sterile. As such, childbirth has taken on a new cultural meaning. Traditional births—one of the defining aspects of womanhood—is now archaic and strange, forcing the society to reconsider what it means to be a woman. The extremity of this is Nili and her community; they have lived in a part of the world though uninhabitable, building a community without men. In this society, women are not only empowered, they are the only gender present. In the most dangerous part of the world, a small community of women have banded together and completely rebuilt society—with its expectations and gender norms—in their own image.
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