21st Century Literature discussion

This thread is for discussion of Chapters 5-11.

In these Chapters we see the Golem and the Jinni adjusting to life in America. Both in a sense find jobs, and have to be careful not to be too good at them. We also get more of the sense of how these immigrant neighbors look out for each other. Maryam, particularly, is someone who helps bring her community together.

In Chapter 7, Arbeeley takes the Jinni to a wedding and reception. The Jinni acts like a whiny little boy being dragged to a social event he doesn't want to go to. During the reception, he goes out into the alley and plays with the gold in his pocket. He makes a gold bird in a cage. Why this choice of something to make?

The obvious answer to why the bird in a cage, at least to me, is that is exactly how the jinni felt. He was captured in a human body and he was constrained to follow human conventions so as to not stand out - he was the gold bird in the cage.

The Jinni gives the bird in the golden cage to Sophia Winston, an heiress he follows home from Central Park. Despite being young, rich and beautiful, she also feels a bit like a bird in a cage.

Sophia was eighteen years old, and she was lonely. As the daughter of one of the richest and most prominent families in New York— indeed, in the country— it had been made clear to her, in ways both subtle and overt , that she was expected to do little more than simply exist, biding her time and minding her manners until she made a suitable match and continued the family line. Her future unrolled before her like a dreadful tapestry, its pattern set and immutable. There would be a wedding, and then a house somewhere nearby on the avenue, with a nursery for the children that were, of course, mandatory. She’d spend interminable summers in the country, traveling from estate to estate, playing endless games of tennis, chafing under the strain of being constantly a guest in someone else’s home. Then would come middle age, and the expected taking-up of a cause, Temperance or Poverty or Education— it did not matter so long as it was virtuous and uncontroversial, and furnished opportunities for luncheons with dowdy speakers in severe dress. Then old age and decrepitude, the slow transformation into a heap of black taffeta in a bath chair, to be displayed briefly at parties and then put out of sight; to spend her last days sitting bewildered by the fire, wondering where her life had gone.

Wecker, Helene (2013-04-23). The Golem and the Jinni (P.S.) (p. 185). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

How common is this feeling of being trapped in one's life?

I suspect that at some point in most lives, there is a feeling of being trapped -- by children, by a marriage or a spouse, by a job, by a parent, by an illness or a disability, by a lack of money, by responsibility, or by expectations. The bigger question is what to do about it.

I loved the metaphor of a bird in a cage - imprisonment is pretty much the subject of this book.

In almost every case escape means being prepared to be vulnerable - to take the risk of entering into a relationship with another person.