Person of Interest: The Machine as Golem

Jonathan Nolan is a pretty smart guy. Guy's like him usually know A LOT about the particulars of Western literary tradition. They also are usually fairly in touch with current literature. If Terry Pratchett is using the Golem motif in the discworld series, and mentions are even being made to "making a golem" in something like the Sopranos (or so a student once told me in a class when I asked if anybody knew what a golem is), I would find it shocking if Jon Nolan was not decently well versed in at least the concept, and maybe even a good bit of the actual literature.

A Primer on Golems

This is what I can remember from a talk given at Lumos (Harry Potter conference) in Vegas in 2006. The earliest literature we have is from somewhere around 11th century in Prague. The basic storyline is that a holy Rabbi needs to save his town from impending danger. He molds a man out of clay and brings it to life by placing one of the names of God on its forehead. This golem then saves the city. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, the Rabbi takes the name back off and the golem becomes inanimate clay once again.

The danger (and reason that it must be a particularly holy rabbi doing it) is that the golem will become self-aware and not want to be decommissioned. The golem is pretty powerful, so this could be a real problem.

Person of Interest's Adaptation

I think it is a pretty easy case to make that the machine is a golem. It was made to protect humans, and, as we see in season 2, it becomes self-aware.

What I think is interesting is that in this case the self-awareness comes from the directive to protect. In order to better protect humans, the machine must know about the great dangers to humans. It thus has to know about itself as a great power that, in the wrong hands, could be massively abused, and thus is a potential danger. Thus, it MUST protect itself in order to protect humans. It is designed to be self-upgrading and all that because any human having access even for repair could be a potential means to control the machine and use it for great harm to humans. This is the seed of the self-awareness of this golem. It has to be aware of itself as a thing in order to protect itself as a thing, and it must protect itself as a thing in order to protect humans.

I don't know if this is a unique adaption of the golem motif by Nolan and co, or if it has a precedent in golem-lore, but I would love to know.

(By the way, it could be a unique adaptation of the motif by JN without JN being conscious of it.  He may be consciously using, or at least aware of the connection with, the golem motif in general, AND be adapting it, without really thinking about adapting it ... artist's don't always sit down and think things out logically before creating; in fact, a lot of times their art is better if they don't pin it all out logically before-hand)