the digital age

Brittany Plony: Final Paper

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Brittany Plony

C00447051

ENG 529

Final Paper

He, She, and It: A race towards the future

He, She, and It by Marge Piercy, is an intense novel that explores the futuristic cyberpunk world. From the beginning of the novel, Piercy weaves her cyberpunk web and allows us to become completely immersed in a world in which we can actually image ourselves in. We come to know the characters on a personal level and travel with them on their journey through this amazing cyberpunk world. We come to know three extremely interesting, similar, and yet drastically different characters, all racing to reach the futuristic finish line of humanity, love, and freedom.

He, She, and It, set in the year 2059, is focused around two of the main characters, Malkah and Shira, and their intertwining stories and perspectives. We are first introduced to Shria, raised by her grandmother Malkah in her mother Riva's absence (her job as an criminalist information pirate does not provide the proper lifestyle for a young child), who at the age of 28 travels back home to Tikva to find solace and refuge as her marriage crumbles and her only son is taken away from her. Upon her arrival to her home town, we are introduced to Malkah, whom is both highly intellectual and creative, and not to mention one of the best programmers of her time. We then come to know Avram, another highly qualified programmer, but Avram is unique in that he specializes in creating the human-like resembling and functioning machine known as a Cyborg (and just to add to the mix-this creation is highly illegal). Avram, in addition to requesting Malkah’s services, also requests the services of Shira. Shira’s job: to help the cyborg become more socially adept, therefore acceptable and able to function in world in which they live. But one thing happens that Shira does not expect. Regarding herself as unable to love as she is haunted by a broken heart of her teenage love, she does not expect to love like she once had.

It is also in Haraway’s article, Cyborg Manifesto, that we are introduced to cyborgs in which she looks deeply into the their meaning. Haraway quotes,

“The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. Contemporary science fiction is full of cyborgs - creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted”.

Yod is the cyborg created at the hands of Avram, with the assistance of Malkah. Shira spend a lot of time with Yod teaching him of human characteristics and social graces. The furthest thing from Shira’s mind is finding a lover in Yod. She does not believe this to be possible. How could it be that she could fall in love with a machine? She constantly asks herself questions regarding the cyborg day in and day out and each moment that she spends with him, she regards him more as a human. Shira tries to understand Yod:“Shira could feel him wrestling with language, trying to explain himself. She had an almost tactile sense of his grabbing at words and phrases, cobbling them together as if in a high wind. “One aspect of working with you, even of being with you, that I really appreciate is how hard you try to communicate. Human males don’t often have that habit” (pg. 125) She constantly compares him to the human male, because to the naked eye, he appears as just that, a human. One would not recognize that Yod was composed of various mechanisms, as he spends more time with Shira, he begins to think, act, and feel more like a human being. Haraway expresses a similar point in her article as she states, “Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” Although Yod appears much like a human male, there are also many differences. For one, he has been

created at the hands of a scientist, pieced together bit by bit to carry out one action: the protection of Tikva. Avram, Yod’s creator, refuses to treat Yod like anything else but an intelligent robot that has been created to serve and carry out it’s purpose. When Yod is asked the question of whether or not he thinks of Avram as a father, his response is:

“of course not. My relationship with him is one of unequal power, which is like a father-son relationship in minority, as I understand it, but not nearly as complicated or compelling. He manufactured me. He chose to make me exist-but not me as an individual, not who I am, only some of what I can do. I can never dare reveal myself to him. He’s more my judge than my father” (pg. 125-124).

Denial of his ‘fathers’ acceptance is extremely hurtful for Yod, as he tries so hard in the

beginning to gain Avram’s respect. He wants Avram to view him as a human, but Avram

refuses to do so. Haraway states similarly in her article, “Their fathers, after all, are inessential.”

When Gadi, Shira’s teenage lover and Avram’s biological son, finds out of Yod’s existence, he immediately feels jealous-as if he is being replaced in regards to both Avram and Shira; Avram as a his son, and Shira as his lover. In a heated argument between Godi and Yod, Godi refers to Yod as “Frankenstein”, which Yod takes extremely offensively. Shira attempts to pull Yod out of the funk that he falls into after this offensive comment is made in saying:

“Yod, we’re all unnatural now. I have retinal implants. I have a plug set into my skull to interface with a computer. I read time by a corneal implant. Malkah has a subcutaneous unit that monitors and corrects blood pressure, and half her teeth are regrown. Her eyes have been rebuilt twice. Avram has an artificial heart and Gadi a kidney.” “I couldn’t begin to survive without my personal base: I wouldn’t know who I was. We can’t go unaided into what we haven’t yet destroyed of ‘nature’. Without a wrap, without sec skins and filters, we’d parish. We’re all cyborgs, Yod. You’re just a purer form of what we’re all tending toward”(pg. 156).

Haraway, too, makes a similar comment within her article as she states: “Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived

as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality.” Similar to this, Shira desperately wants to explain to Yod that yes he is different, but in her eyes, he is just

as human as anyone else walking this earth. Although they constantly need to defend Yod and his

existence, Shira’s feelings towards Yod never waver. She is again forced to defend her relationship with

Yod when her mother says “How can you have an affair with a machine? That’s like speaking of a

relationship with a dildo” (pg. 204). But to Shira, this comment is completely irrelevant. Never once has

Shira thought of Yod as a mere sex toy. Yod is a thinking, breathing, living, feeling, creature, one that she

has over time come to love and truly care for in more ways than one. Yod is the only person or thing that

has actually been able to rid Shira of her horror of believing that she will never be able to love another

again. She was for so long burdened with the thought of never being able to feel what she once felt for

her teenage love Gadi. She felt an intense guilt for not feeling what she should have for her husband

Josh. But it was Yod, the cyborg, that brought her the feeling of intense pleasure and love after she

thought all hope was lost. When Shira engages in sexual acts with Yod she feels such pleasure at the

heights that all women wish to experience. Yod is so much more than a sex toy, he has the ability to

please the women that he engages in sexual acts with, but has formed a bond with Shira, one of love and

friendship, and pleasing her is only one of the ways he wishes to express his love for her. Yod longs to

give Shira everything that she wants and desires. Malkah expresses this in saying: “Yod is working

heroically to be human; I see it every day. He wants desperately to satisfy Shira, to be her man, her

husband, to father her son. I wonder if the programming I gave him to balance his violent propensities

wasn’t a tragic error, if I did not do him an injustice in giving him needs he may not be able to fulfill. I fear

Yod experiences something like guilt at his inadequacy, at not being human enough for her. He strains,

unsure how far he is from succeeding, because he cannot know what the real thing would feel like. Men

so often try to be inhaumanly powerful, efficient, unfeeling, to perform like a machine, it is ironic to watch

a machine striving to be male” (pg. 353) Yod wants so much to be human not only for himself but mostly

for Shira. He wishes to perform all of the functions that Shira needs in a counterpart. He observes other

humans to watch how they perform or act in social situations so that he does not appear weird or stick

out like a sore thumb within society. Unfortunately, because Avram’s creating Yod is extremely illegal, he

is needed to be kept a secret. But when war between the Y-S and Tikva breaks out, Yod’s services are

needed (essentially what he was brought into the world to do-to protect). It is then that Avram makes

the decision that Yod needs to go before the council and attempt to achieve citizenship. Yod fights for

his human rights in his statement: “I’m a cyborg, as Avram has told you, but I am also a person. I think

and feel and have existence just as you do”( pg 389). With this statement the council pokes and prods at

Yod, they look at him and see that he appears to look just like a human, but when they touch his skin

they can feel a bit of a difference. They ask him questions as they wonder how he can function the way

that he does. It is mind boggling to them to be looking at a robot that resembles and acts so close to a

human, but inside can be so different. Yod constantly wishes he could have the rights of a human and

with this he says, “I want to end the threat to this town. I want to be free then, free to live as I want and

choose” (pg.349). As much as Yod wishes he were free, he knows that he cannot be as he explains,

“Avram controls a self-destruct mechanism in me, wherever I am. He can bounce the signal off a satellite. I can’t run away, though I want to” (pg.338). Yod is forever tied to his creator Avram, no matter what he attempts to free himself, he will always be Avram’s creation.

In her novel, He, She, and It Piercy creates another character, The Golem, known to society as “Joseph”. Joseph’s story is told by Malkah to Yod. The story is extremely similar to Yod’s and is meant to mirror his story to act as a simplistic teaching tool. Joseph is created by the Maharal, and is set in Jeruselem many many years before Yod and Malkah’s time. Joseph is created from clay and dust and comes about by unknowing magic and power. Joseph is very similar to Yod as it appears just like a human but is vastly different. Joseph was not born by a women but was created by a man through magic, similar to Yod in that he was created at the hands of a scientist. Joseph was also created for a purpose, to serve and protect the city that the Maharal and his people live in. Joseph also fights for his rights to be regarded as a human, and he is also needed to be kept a secret from the people of the town because the way that he was created was unjust. Joseph carries out the requests of the Maharal but does so literally and therefore the Marahal tells his followers: “Joseph is obedient but more literal than any child. He does exactly to the letter what he is told, rather than what the Maharal may have meant” (pg.115). Joseph initially thinks and acts very closely to that of a child, but he learns and grows intellectually at a rapid rate, similar once again to Yod. Also like Yod, Joseph falls in love with a girl in the town, that just so happens to be the beloved granddaughter of his creator. Chava teaches Joseph how to read and write, which many men of their time have not yet learned. Joseph wishes to learn these things in order to impress Chava, but also because he wishes to be intellectually savvy and learn as much about the world around him as he can. Joseph is very curious and wishes to learn all that he can, which is solidified in the statement, “Once he has begun to learn to distinguish between the natural world and the artificial world of human artifacts, he loses interest in birds and trees. His questions concern people and their doings” (pg. 115). Things that would concern a child, such as questions of the color of the sky and how birds fly, prove to be too trivial for Joseph. Like Yod, Joseph is at a serious disadvantage, as at any moment the Maharal can return Joseph to his previous existence of clay, which he intends to do once Joseph has carried out his protective duties. The relationship between Joseph and Chava grows as he begins to love her more than as his teacher. He wishes that they could be together but Chava only regards Joseph as a student and dear friend. Joseph wishes to travel to Israel with Chava but knows that he is not able to go, as he is under the strict surveillance of the Maharal. The Maharal is his creator and is the one that holds all of the power over Joseph. It frustrates Joseph that he is not able to achieve freedom and that he will forever be bound to the Maharal. Once Joseph’s duties have been fulfilled the Maharal makes the decision to return Joseph to clay. The Maharal’s followers say to him, “Maharal, we can send him back to clay. As if he had never been”(pg.89) One should not hold this much power over another. No matter what Joseph does, he can never have freedom. He has been created by the Maharal to carry out a purpose, and once that purpose is carried out he will return to clay. As the Maharal makes this decision Joseph protests in saying, “What are you going to do to me? I haven’t done anything bad. I carried out what you wanted. I did it all.” (pg.414). He continues to cry out in protest and his last words before he returns to his original state is, ““No! I want to live! I want to be a man!” (pg. 414). But this will never be possible for Joseph, as clay can be shaped and molded to resemble a human, it will never actually be a human in existence.

Nili is a similar figure in Piercy’s novel He, She, and It, but slightly different. Nili is Riva’s (Shira’s mother) lover and companion. Riva has created Nili also for a certain reason, to help her carry out her duties as a computer assassin and to serve as a form of protection. But Nili is different from Joseph and Yod in that she is “half and half”, part human, and part robot. When Nili and Riva come to Tikva to assist in their protection from the Y-S, Nili’s being is constantly questioned. Nili is superior to human beings and explains herself in saying,

“I can walk in the raw without protection. I can tolerate levels of bombardment that would kill you. We live in the hills-inside them, that is. We are a join community of the descendants of Israeli and Palestinian women who survived. We each keep our religion, observe each other’s holidays and fast days. We have no men. We clone and engineer genes. After birth we undergo additional alteration. We have created ourselves to endure, to survive, to hold our land. Soon we will begin rebuilding Yershalaim” (pg.206).

In many ways Nili is different from Yod and Golem, but in many ways she is similar. Because Nili is a woman, she is able to bare children and therefore have a line of decendents. The fact that she is half human also gives her an advantage over Yod and Joseph because she does not have a creator of sorts but someone that assisted in her creation. Nili has the power to do whatever she pleases, she can come and go like other human beings, but Yod and Golem cannot. They are forever bound to their creators and like Avram threatens Yod on many occasions, they can easily be “dismantelled and turned off”. Unlike Yod and Golem, Riva does not hold this power over Nili’s head. Although she has had part in her creation, she is not Nili’s sole creator. Nili has the rights of a human because she is part human, but she also has the many advantages of technology within her. In Nili’s case, Haraway expresses a similar statement in her article as she says, “From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily

realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not

afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to

see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities

unimaginable from the other vantage point.”

Both Yod and Golem were created for a purpose but evoloved much beyond their initial

capabilities. Malkah again expresses her distaste and guilt in their creation of the cyborg in

stating,

“I also feel guilty about Yod. My programming made him more useful, because it brought him far closer to the human than any of Avram’s unsuccessful cyborgs, but it also made him vulnerable to desires and aspirations that had nothing to do with his central programming or his function. I gave him the flexibility that enabled him to overcome his fundamental commandment to protect and defend Avram, as well as the town. What Avram and I did was deeply wrong. Robots are fine and useful, machine intelligence carrying out specific tasks, but an artificial person created as a tool is a painful contradiction” (pg.433).

As Yod comes to the realization that he will never be able to achieve what he wants, his freedom from Avram, he responds to Malkah: “What you gave me is the good part of my existence. But you must forgive me, too, as I try to find my own way out of the untenable position of being Avram’s wholly owned monster” (pg.407) It is a harsh realization that Yod comes to, and this effects Shira with sadness and depression. As Yod’s existence comes to an end we feel with Shira as she wishes to bring him back. Yod has evolved from his original existence and has become more than thought possible. He was given the ability to self-reconstruct but he would forever be the property of his creator and therefore never fully achieve freedom.

So it is with this that we come to realize who will cross the finish line to the future. We see that it will be Nili, as she is the most able out of the three characters to achieve freedom. Because she is part human she is able to be of her own existence and does not have to answer to anyone but herself. No one holds power over her like Avram did over Yod and like the Maharal did over Golem. Malkah expresses the proper feelings of creation in saying,

“I went to Yod this morning, and I asked him to forgive me for having taken part in his formation; more than ever, I have been thinking what overweening ambition and pride are involved in our creating of conscious life we plan to use and control, when we cannot even fully use our own minds and we blunder and thrash about vainly in our own lives. No life is for us but for itself” (pg.407).

With this, Malkah expresses that no life should be created for any reason other than to be created for living. It is an extremely selfish act to create a being that can live, breath, act, think, and feel similarly to a human, while still being vastly different, as they will never be viewed or regarded completely as a human, simply because they are not.

Yod, Golem, and Nili, should all have the same opportunity to cross the finish line to the future but unfortunately, only one of them will be able to. The characters are all extremely similar in that they act as humans, but are still extremely different from one another. As they each embark on their own journeys and fulfill their purposes on this earth, given to them by their human creators, there services are then no longer needed. Once their final task is complete they will vanish from the earth as if they never existed, all but one. They will race to the finish line of the future and one will experience victory. The winner, perhaps the most human of them all, but really, who is to say?