“The old man’s eyebrows shot up. He’d expected his client to request motherly kindness, or an eager sexual appetite, or else both; years of manufacturing love spell had taught him what men like Rotfeld thought they wanted in a woman. But curiosity? Intelligence? He wondered if the man knew what he was asking for.”

This quotation from Schaalman’s perspective illustrates the expectations he has for Rotfeld. He assumes that Rotfeld wants a wife solely to be servant and to provide him with pleasure, nothing more. However, Rotfeld surprises him, and this leads Schaalman to take the man’s request far more seriously than he would otherwise have done.

“Without the benefit of the bond between master and golem, their wishes and fears did not have the driving force of commands—but nonetheless she heard them, and felt their varying urgencies, and her limbs twitched with the compulsion to respond. Each one was like a small hand plucking at her sleeve: please, do something.”

This quotation provides a visceral understanding of Chava’s abilities to sense the needs and wants of the people around her, and the almost frenetic descriptions are designed to reflect the breathless sense of emergency that Chava feels when she intuits the needs of those around her. This moment is designed to demonstrate how easily she can be overwhelmed, potentially losing control of her impulses. Thus, while the threat of her innate Golem-born violence is a real one, this passage labors to humanize even Chava’s more monstrous qualities, for it is only her extreme empathy for those around her that causes her to lose control.

“The Jinni watched, and listened, and decided they were a fascinating paradox. What drove these short-lived creatures to be so oddly self-destructive, with their punishing journeys and brutal battles? And how, at barely eighteen or twenty years of age, could they grow to be so intelligent and cunning?”

This quotation illustrates the level of interest that the Jinni has in humanity as a whole. By establishing his fascination and curiosity with mankind, Wecker can begin to weave the Jinni’s prior history of being imprisoned in a flask.