Focus+Assignment

1 Plot Summary

The novel "The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud is a fantasy novel based in folklore. Set in the year 950BC, the story is told by an enslaved, 2000 year old djinni (genie) by the name of Bartimeaus. First summoned in Babylon in 3500 BC, Bartimeaus has a long history as well as a wizened sense of humor. Before the story begins however, there is some necessary background knowledge about the nature and origin of djinnis that must be outlined for the story to make any sense. Firstly, and most importantly, almost all djinnis hate their masters, and wish to kill them. If a djinn kills his master, he gets a free ticket home. Therefore, when a magician summons a djinni, he puts the most harsh and stringent bindings upon the djinni to ensure that the djinni does not try to kill him/her. Since it is so dangerous to summon a djinni, some would question why it is worth it. The reason, as humorously stated by Bartimeaus, is that magicians are "too weak to do anything themselves, and therefore resort to enslaving us poor helpless djinn". The humor in the situation is that the "poor helpless djinn" had just finished happily devouring his recent master, using a magical water implement. Getting back on track, however, one might ask where this place is from which djinni come from, and are so eager to go back to. The answer is an alternate universe of chaos and movement known as the Other Place. The Other Place is described as a swirling mass of grayish, yet colorful matter in which there are no regular points, or objects; an endless sea of constant swirling matter. Of this gray substance all djinni are formed. With this in mind, the following might make a little more sense.

In the year 950BC, in the time of Solomon the Wise of Jerusalem, Bartimeaus was in the service of Rizim, one of the chief magicians of King Solomon himself. Rizim was one of 17 high magicians that served Solomon at the highest level. All of these men and women existed solely for their own interests. Rizim ordered Bartimeaus to find an object of great power and prestige that he could present to the king, and so win his favor. Bartimeaus, on these orders visits an ancient temple with hopes of looting it. Quickly breaking in, Bartimeaus finds an ancient golden snake sculpture of great value. Upon picking it up, he encounters guards that attempt to stop him from taking away the snake. Thwarting them, he makes his way back to the palace. What Bartimeaus does not know, is that the snake //itself// was used by the ancients as a means of doing away with intruders. When Bartimeaus gives the snake back to Rizim, the snake backfires and shoots Rizim out of his protective circle, allowing the lucky djinni to gobble him up, and go back home.

Solomon, sitting relaxed in his throne-room is the master of a terrible ring, which gives him control over the "Great Spirit of the Ring". If one went by Bartimeaus's earthy analogy, the Great Spirit could "flick marids out from under it's fingernails". All feared the Great Ring, and the mighty entity that it entombed.

Solomon, subsequently assigns him to work with a man named Khaba the Cruel. Upon summoning Bartimeaus, Khaba gives him various menial and demeaning tasks, such as gathering half a ton of artichokes. After being humiliated in front his fellow slaves, Bartimeaus is sent off along with fellow wrong-doing Djinn to complete Solomon's personal temple by hand, without magic. Bartimeaus soon gets bored with the task, and decides to speed up the process slightly by using magic. One day, unannounced, Solomon decides to come visit his temple and check on the work progress. Catching Bartimeaus off guard, Solomon spots him in the guise of a hippopotamus in a skirt, loudly singing lewd songs about Solomon and his several wives. Solomon, who recognizes the subtle magic with a trained eye ships off Bartimeaus and his fellow offending Djinni to the middle of a desert to look for bandits.

In the country of Sheba, Solomon has requested to marry the queen and been rebuffed three times. This time, it appears that he sends a marid for a final request of marriage. When the queen refuses again, the marid burns a major tower to the ground. He tells the queen that she must give 40 sacks of frankinsense to Solomon, or face having Israel as an enemy. The queen, infuriated by this demand, tells her Chief Guard Asmira to kill Solomon, and steal his ring. En route to Israel, Asmira is captured by bandits.

Bartimeaus comes across the same bandits that capture Asmira. Killing all of the bandits, Bartimeaus and his rival Faquarl debate whether or not to kill Asmira and eat her or to let her live as witness of their courageous actions. Upon deciding to let her live, Farquarl returns to their master, to tell him that the bandits were taken care of. Bartimeaus, however is left to guard Asmira. Asmira, when she hears that Bartimeaus is close to Solomon, believes that she can use him to come near enough to kill the king.

Asmira, who promised to help release Bartimeaus and Faquarl from Khaba's command, pleads insistently for their release. Khaba, at first is unwilling to let his slaves go back to the Other Place. But, after insistent pleading, agrees to release Bartimeaus and Faquarl from his command. The magician says that he will release Faquarl first. The magician, who correctly believed that it was Bartimeaus's fault that he was sent to the desert to look for bandits, and removed from the comforts of his tower, decides to punish him. Khaba instructs his own personal marid to bind Bartimeaus into a small crystal bottle, thus imprisoning him, while also releasing him from Khaba's service. The marid, whose power Bartimeaus cannot contest, stuffs him into the bottle and binds him with indefinite confinement. Khaba then takes this bottle to the kings palace as a gift.

Meanwhile, Asmira is in the palace trying to murder the king. She runs into Khaba, who lets slip that the bottle contains the djinni Bartimeaus. Asmira steals the bottle, releases the djinni, and binds him to her service.

Bartimeaus then takes her to the rooms of the king, bypassing several sentry creatures. When the two of the reach the quarters of the king, Asmira throws a deadly silver star at his heart, thinking it will kill him immediately. Instead, the illusion of the king dissolved into thin air, and Asmira is faced with what appears to be the largest entity in existence at the time. The hideous mass of flesh that rises from the ground causes Asmira to be paralyzed with fear, and make herself more easily captured by the guards of Solomon.

Bartimeaus, upon seeing the entity disappears from the scene. While looking for a way out, Bartimeaus comes upon a hopefully useful place to hide from the massive guard entity. The pot that he stumbles across brings new surprises. It holds the remains of a long lost marid. The marid, it turned out had attempted to kill Solomon himself, and had then been compressed into the small jar. The marid, though beyond help, tells Bartimeaus the way in which Solomon's ring may be stolen, and Solomon may be subsequently killed. Apparently, the ring gives Solomon great pain to wear, and must be taken off before he rests each night. Bartimeaus, who also learns that the entity he just escaped from was an illusion made to scare away any intruder, goes back to the quarters of Solomon and, it being night, plans to steal the ring from his bedside.

Solomon, it turns out, was, at the time interrogating Asmira and find out where she came from, and who sent her to kill him. The figure that Asmira attacked turned out to be an illusion that Solomon put there to capture any intruder. Bartimeaus, sneaking into the room as the two are talking, replaces the great ring with one of calamari and sneaks away with it. When Solomon notices the fault, he crumples and lets Asmira and Bartimeaus go. Asmira, feeling pity for the old king, decides not to kill him, but to take the ring back to Sheba as a prize. On the way out, she is captured by Khaba, the evil magician and has the ring stolen from her.

After the Ring is caught up in the possession of Khaba, and Bartimeaus and Asmira are both captured, Asmira manages to escape the clutches of the marid that is holding her, and cut the ring from Khaba's finger. She is too late to prevent Khaba from summoning hundreds of thousands of spirits, to be used to systematically destroy Jerusalem. She then tells Bartimeaus to to take the ring and throw it into the sea. Khaba sends his marid after Bartimeaus with orders to stop him and take the ring. Bartimeaus, flying as fast as he could from the marid, ends up spearing him under a tree, and making his merry way towards the sea. The marid soon catches up again. Bartimeaus seeing that he is trapped, decides as a last ditch attempt for survival to put the ring on, and use its power. In doing so, he summons the great spirit from the ring and imprisons the marid in a wine amphora.

Meanwhile, in the palace, Khaba is attempting to destroy Jerusalem. By using the spirits summoned from the ring, he systematically destroys a great deal of the splendor of Jerusalem. Asmira, realizing that her own power is worthless against Khaba's, goes to Solomon and beseeches him for help in saving his own city. Asmira and Solomon look around for weapons that may be used in a fight. Khaba sends 6 djinn after Asmira to finish her off. Solomon and Asmira use some stockpiled weapons that they improvisationally use to kill off the djinn.

After this victory, Bartimeaus shows up with the ring and gives it to Solomon. Solomon puts on the ring and kills Khaba, effectively stopping the destructively minded spirits from further maiming Jerusalem. Asmira then dismisses Bartimeaus and quits her job as palace guard for Sheba.