The World That We Knew

If Lea symbolizes the redemptive power of the open and vulnerable heart and the transformative dynamics of love, Ettie, the beautiful daughter of the mysterious rabbi, symbolizes the power and possibility of sheer courage. She represents the assertion of will and the strength of single-minded commitment and focus. She wants to strike back at nothing less than Nazi Germany itself and is not content to bewail the thick and forbidding reality of evil. The novel describes Ettie as “prettier than she’d first appeared, or perhaps it was the strength of her inner spirit that was reflected outward” (30). Still a child, Ettie perceives the profound threat of the Third Reich, and her response is to fight back. The tipping point for her character comes when she witnesses the shooting of her sister as the two try to flee to safety from the train bound for Paris. She mourns her sister, certainly, but the murder sets her ambition like steel. She pursues leads within the shadowy network of the Resistance, certain that such dangerous work is the best—really the only—chance to fight back.

Early in the story, Ettie offers to help Hanni fashion the golem—a sacred and mystical process—and thereby defies the elaborate cultural and religious parameters of being as a girl. Growing up, her only regret was that she hadn’t been born a boy so that she could study to be a rabbi. She resists the petty distractions of infatuations and romance. She’s fascinated by power and by its exercise. In agreeing to help Dr. Girard minister to the wounded and, later, in joining Victor in his risky missions for the Resistance underground, Ettie manifests not only courage but strength of character. She masters guns and explosives, and she learns how to sew up a wound and even amputate damaged limbs. She is no idealist; rather, she’s pragmatic, evaluating situations and devising plans to resolve the problems. For example, when Ettie offers the doctor her virginity before setting out to be the bait in the trap for the cruel Nazi captain, she’s decidedly practical. She wants her virginity taken by a gentle and sweet man she respects, even loves. She dies really the only way she could—shot dead after completing a mission for the Resistance. She dies a selfless and courageous hero. 

Ava is a monster, a creature conjured through dark magic. More a thing than a person, she lacks a soul. As the golem that Ettie creates, Ava exudes something vaguely Frankenstein-ish. The novel uses the golem to explore exactly what makes a human, what gives a human humanity, particularly in the brutal and violent world of Nazi Germany, where monsters without souls appear to compel history itself. What better way to test that perception than by introducing a monster without a soul? Ava, as Ettie carefully explains to Hanni, is not a person: “A golem can be like a dog, following at your heels, or it can be more, perceptive, intelligent, really. […] It may look human, but it has no soul. It is pure and elemental and has a single goal, to protect” (29).

Ava’s redemption is in many ways the novel’s core parable. In a story that depicts with visceral immediacy and graphic detail the horrors of the Nazis and their brutal tactics of oppression and intolerance, Ava develops a love for the world and its simple miracles—trees, flowers, the sun, birds, fresh baked bread, a cozy bed. Ava thereby acts as a counternarrative to the painful realities of a world that evil shapes and defines. She moves through the novel like a wonderfully powerful but thoroughly innocent child. Her sheer bulk is imposing, her stature unnerving, her strength unchallengeable, her ability to foretell the future and communicate with animals uncanny. Ava’s dedication to Lea is singular. She hovers about Lea and even kills to protect her charge. Much more than a bodyguard, she ensures that Lea makes it to the safety of Switzerland even though she understands that once Lea is safe, Lea must destroy her.

Across two difficult years, Ava grows. She comes to make decisions. She develops taste, liking one fruit over another. Although emotion should not complicate a golem, she misses Lea. Her dance with the heron every morning reveals joy.

When a swarm of bees attacks Lea, Ava literally gives of herself, using chunks of her clay body to help heal the stings. She embodies a nobility of spirit, a lion-like fearlessness, and a simplicity of affection that seems remarkable only because it’s set against such a dark and evil world. “This world that could be so heartless had stung her through and through” (360). The secret to Ava’s humanization is simple. She understands, even as she prepares to be destroyed by, Lea: “Perhaps love had done this to her; she ached with love and was torn apart by it. She did not know what was logical, only what love made her do” (363). In the end, as Ava adjusts to the miracle of her humanization and understands the magical powers she no longer has, she taps a brighter, better magic. She becomes the embodiment of humanity itself. She rises from the ground to greet the dawn. The human Ava is ready for the joys and terrors, the agony and irony of a world she has longed to be part of. She is now alive.