...and then the rains began to fall.

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 passes. If he is caught outside, as happens on page 188, his strength is slowly sapped until cannot go on any longer. The weather acts as a restriction, imposing a limitation to mobility and freedom, his most valued qualities.

The weather in this is also heavily used to show the passage of time. At the beginning of the story, Ahmed has only just begun his new life in human form, and our other main character Chava was just born. The year or so that the story covers is a time of new learning and development for both of them. They are both in a strange new place living new lives that are drastically different from what they knew. By using the changing seasons on their evening strolls to show this change, it helps the reader understand how their new lives are progressing and developing as time passes.

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