Judith Piccione

Book Review #3

Marge Piercy’s He, She and It

Set in North America, in the year 2059, Marge Piercy’s He, She, and It is the post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk tale of what our world might look like after populations are destroyed by radiation and plague as a result of the less-than-conscious of today.  In the novel, Piercy explores topics such as gender, creation, being, artificial intelligence, romance, and self-discovery.  Employing more than one storyline, Piercy uses the voices of two characters, Shira and her grandmother Malkah to recount two strikingly similar sagas.  As each storyline progresses, chapters shift between Shira’s account and the legend of the Golem.  Piercy uses an ancient story of kabbalist protection to further the reader’s understanding of the more technologically-enhanced, main story at hand and to demonstrate that we are eternally tied to our pasts.

At the time the novel’s main story is occurring, power is in the hands of a few multis -- powerful corporations with their own social hierarchy have produced affluent societies of data-junkies.  Shira’s story unfolds as her life is unraveling at the seams.  The story begins in Y-S with her divorce and the subsequent loss of her son, Ari, to her impudent husband, Josh.  Because Josh is a man and holds a higher rank, it is felt by the powers-that-be that Ari will be better off in his care.  Feeling defeated and obviously depressed that her life is no longer anything like the life she thought she had always wanted, she returns to Tikva, her hometown – a Jewish freetown, to reconnect with her maternal grandmother and plot to regain custody of her son – her first and most-prized creation.

Upon her arrival in Tikva, Shira is confronted head-on with her past and is forced to rediscover the Shira that once was.  Frightened by threats of an eventual takeover by other, more powerful, multis, Avram, a scientist and inventor, builds an illegal cyborg (Yod) in attempt to give Tikva an advantage.  Shira is hired by Avram to socialize, or in effect “humanize”, Yod before he is to be sent out into the community to protect them.  It is with Yod that Shira begins to feel what it is like to be a woman powerful enough to shape a life.  It is also with Yod that Shira develops close, romantic ties – amidst discoveries that Y-S has particular interest in this unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions – and the ability to kill.

            While Yod is romancing and being taught the “human way” by Shira, Malkah is, as we later learn, telling Yod the legend of a Jewish ghetto in 1600.  In this secondary story, a rabbi experimenting with kabbalah creates a golem out of earth to protect their way of life.  While telling the tale, Malkah begins to question her own motives and moralities by saying

Is it fair to tell this story? It is a tale of kabbalah, of religious magic. Most scholars think it has no basis in the life of this exemplary religious thinker and educational reformer, this historian and polemicist.  What has he to do with the creation of monsters? But as a woman who spends her working days creating fictions and monsters, how can I feel I am committing calumny against Judah? I believe in the truth of what is perhaps figurative […] I cannot always distinguish between myth and reality, because myth forms reality and we act out of what we think we are; we know on many levels truths that are irrational as well as reasoned or experimental. Our minds help create the world we think we inhabit. (25)

As their “project” furthers, Malkah begins questioning what is real and what is not real; what is ok and what is over the line; what does it mean to be alive; who decides what is human?  Piercy masterfully explores these questions by introducing Yod as a charismatic, endearing character to whom the reader becomes passionately attached.

As the story progresses, the strong similarities between Yod and the golem become clearer and clearer to the reader.  However, in this enlightenment comes what seems like a desolate example of finessed foreshadowing on Piercy’s part.  The golem does what he was intended to do, serve and protect, and then is returned to the dust from which he was made.  The reader, naturally begins to question, will Yod be able to uphold his duty?  What will become of Yod when and if his work is completed?  Piercy’s keen combination of a mythological past in connection with a dramatic version of a possible future in store for us creates a tale that keeps the reading wanting more.

The story regarding a bitter war of survival of the fittest, in terms of technology data, and overall control, really takes a backseat to the story of Shira and Yod.  Though Yod is clearly non-human, he is truly capable of deep levels of protection, compassion, and, most of all, love.  He has a yearning desire to aid Shira in her ploy to find and regain guardianship of Ari, but Yod also longs to build a family with these two humans.  Is this possible?  Can a woman form a union with a machine and raise a human child with “it”?  “Making love with Yod made her feel strong” (322).  In this relationship, possibly the most significant of her life (next to her relationship with her son), Shira feels in control and complete.  With Yod, she is consumed and feels whole.  She no longer thinks “in bed about what was inside the skin of a human male then she really cared what was inside Yod” (188).  To her, “he was a person, though not a human one” (436).  In Piercy’s odd shift of gender roles, Shira is dominant, in  a position of power in the relationship and being pleased in bed; a role common to men – whereas, Yod desires to be held, to please, to have “everything at once”; a role common to women (365).  How can a machine love?  This is a question only reading the story can attempt to answer.

This novel really questions our understanding of what it means to be human.  Can cognition or understanding equate to a level of humanity?  Yod, a central character is, an AI, a machine that is highly intelligent in weaponry, protection, and maintenance of a “human” facade, yet yearns to share emotions with those close to him, be a part of a family, raise a child, and be in love (human longings, indeed).  In stark contrast, Riva, Shira’s estranged mother, longs to travel and be away from her family.  She is cold and withdrawn from everything that one would call a “family” (almost like our view of a machine).  Readers will be put in a, sometimes difficult, position in which they will reevaluate their notions about familial ties and humanity.

Piercy’s almost poetic use of metaphor and other literary devices creates a stunning outlook on a different kind of life that grabs at the heartstrings of readers and really makes one ponder technology, life, love, and sexuality.  Can one really fall in love with a machine?  What would this type of relationship feel like, look like?  What does one give up when in a relationship?  What does one gain?  Piercy explores various relationships (mother and child, woman and man, woman and woman, woman and machine, father and son) allowing the reader to question what holds us together?  What really is the meaning or purpose of a relationship or being in love?  What holds together great societies of the past, present, and future?  

            In the end, each reader is left to individually contemplate life’s greatest mysteries. Mainly, what does it mean to exist or co-exist?  This novel, though cyberpunk in nature and ultramodern, is strikingly appropriate for today’s readers.  The story is so much more than a gloomy prediction of where humanity is heading -- it is a close look at the decisions that we may be confronted with as our society becomes ever more technologically advanced, and how what we once viewed as “normal” may be vastly different in the very near future.  

Sources

Piercy, Marge (1991). He, She, and It.  New York: Fawcett Crest.  ISBN 0-449-22060-5.