Sam Ehmann AP Lit Summer Blog

The Golem And The Jinni  by Helene Wecker is an incredibly inventive, imaginative and compelling book. This was a story that once it had engaged me, I could not stop thinking about it. The book follows the two different beings, a golem and a jinni who find themselves in New York City. Chava, the golem, was only awakened on the crossing over to the city, and is only a day old when she arrives, her master having died on the boat. The jinni on the other hand has been trapped in an oil flask for thousands of years, and is stuck in his human form. The two unwittingly cross paths and are drawn to each other. They are both outcasts from the human race, the only two people who can relate. But the story is also about those they meet. The people who have taken them in, have helped them despite their secrets. The small communities they become a part of within the city, teaching and learning the ways of the human race. The writing in the story is subprime. It is constantly transitioning...

Chapter 11 of How To Read Literature Like a Professor  by Thomas C. Foster discusses how violence in writing often has more meaning than just a way to hurt someone. In the story of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest however, it is not the act of violence that is concerning, but the threat of it. The Big Nurse runs a very tight ship in the ward, with everyone playing their predefined roles perfectly. Once McMurphy shows up though, it starts to make pieces of the puzzle fall apart. His boisterous, loud behavior empowers the other inmates, causing them to follow his lead. However it is not only his rhetoric that makes him revered, but also his physical size and obvious strength. This is not lost on the staff of the ward, and his history of violence is discussed in the group meeting on page 45, and again in the staff meeting on page 154, going as far as  to describe a scenario where a poor resident is trapped alone with him and is attacked. McMuphy has created a deep fear in the ...

"...writing a meal scene is so difficult, and so inherently uninteresting, that there really needs to be some compelling reason to include one in the story" (Foster 8). Eating in and of itself is really boring. There is a reason nobody goes out to lunch alone, yea the food may be good but you get bored with just eating. In order for the act of consuming sustenance to be mildly interesting, something big has to be going on. In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest , they go into quite a bit of detail about the daily lives and schedule of the people living there, but they never brought up meals until page 102. This is McMurphy's first breakfast in the ward. It begins with his raving about the quality of the food, how it is a massive improvement over the food he was given while working in the fields, increasing the probability of him being there on purpose. Next it talks about how the clock has slowed. This shows how the narrative of a set schedule within the ward could be f...

As the summer is only getting hotter and more humid somehow, it seems like one of the only good times to think about snow approaching. However as we know from chapter 9 of How To Read Literature Like A Professor , any discussion of weather serves a larger purpose than to just describe the setting. Weather can entrap, it can soil, it can deter, and it can inspire. In the case of the novel The Golem and The Jinni  however, weather is pretty much only a bad thing. The character of Ahmed the jinni is a being who is made of fire. He as been trapped into his human form, and is unable to shape-shift, possess people, or any of the other fun things that come along with being a jinni. Needless to say he is feeling pretty trapped. However nothing exemplifies this feeling more than the weather. Unfortunately for him, all forms of precipitation are water, the one thing he cannot come into contact with for long. Whenever it rains, snows, sleets, or hails, he is forced indoors until the storm p...

Well The Golem And The Jinni  by Helene Wecker does not literally have vampires in it, however that would be a wonderfully interesting cast of characters-- it does have the kind of vampires described in How To Read Literature Like A Professor  by Thomas C. Foster. To quote page 18 of this book, "But you don't need fangs and a cape to be a vampire. The essentials of the vampire story, as we discussed earlier: an older figure representing corrupt outworn values; a young, preferably virginal female... a continuance of the life force of the old male; the death or destruction of the young woman" (Foster 18). Now our story has two vampires in fact, Yehudah Schaalman who takes on the role of the old man who is attempting to pass on his life force and will henceforth be referred to as Schaalman, and Ahmed, the jinni who takes on the role of stealing the virginity of young women leaving them destroyed. Schaalman is an extremely old Jewish mystic who is obsessed with the dark par...

The world of the supernatural has fascinated almost every culture and religion for generations, inspiring stories and legends that still permeate our modern writings. The book The Golem and The Jinni  by Helene Wecker takes the mythology of jinn from Arabian culture, and mixes it with golems from Jewish mysticism. These two characters who are unwittingly brought together in early industrialized New York, learn to adapt and work within human culture. Jinn in Arabian mythology are spirits who inhabit many forms, being able to shape shift into animals and humans alike. They often quarrel with humans, possessing or attacking them for pleasure or vengeance. There are some powerful humans who have the ability to capture or use jinn to their advantage however (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). The Golem and The Jinni  focuses on a jinni who is trapped in his human form by a powerful wizard, and is placed inside an oil flask for thousands of years before unwittingly being re...