Scan barcode
maxgardner's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
thisisacat's review against another edition
5.0
Narrative:
The plot of this novel carried me along more so than Left Hand of Darkness which had me straining at times. Admittedly, the structure of The Dispossessed led me to believe there would be a climactic finish or an unexpected secret would be revealed. But that's not something Le Guin prioritizes as a writer and you'll need to accept that before reading one of her stories. Artificial drama would not add to the theme, only distract from it.
This is my favorite worldbuilding of anything I've ever read. Typically, you'd expect exceptional world building to be something wholly unique, expansive, or totally alien. But Le Guin takes a simple concept, a true anarchist society, and makes it believable, warts and all. The beauty and wonder of the first half kept me awestruck, three quarters of the way through I felt some sagging, but the ending underpinned the themes beautifully. 4.25/5
Themes:
I cannot recall consuming a piece of media that explored such big ideas in a way that was so digestible through its protagonist. When tackling themes as big as "What does freedom and ownership actually cost?" can cause the characters to reduce to set dressing but Le Guin stays true to herself and to Shevek, creating one of the most compelling characters that I've ever read (*that* scene excluded).
Its also worth highlighting that Shevek is also a wonderful vehicle for a human emotion on display often forgotten in sci-fi: tenderness. His care for his fellow man and family is truly heartwarming and culminates in passages that make me optimistic about human solidarity and decency: something pretty difficult to do in 2024!
Discourse sometimes limits this book's ambitions to "Essential Reading for the Anarcho-Leftist" (which it certainly still is) but no matter your political leaning, this thing has thought experiments in spades without ever feeling overstuffed. Discussions about the characters and plot often deflect immediately into philosophy and larger discussions on human nature and how we choose to self organize; truly the mark of a great piece of fiction. 5/5
Conclusion:
It wasn't not a page turner but probably one of the most important books I've ever read and certainly the best book I've read this year. Much has been written about The Dispossessed but it works on an initial read and appears to have the layers and depth to reward repeat readings which I very much look forward to in the future; such an incredibly thought provoking novel! 4.75/5
The plot of this novel carried me along more so than Left Hand of Darkness which had me straining at times. Admittedly, the structure of The Dispossessed led me to believe there would be a climactic finish or an unexpected secret would be revealed. But that's not something Le Guin prioritizes as a writer and you'll need to accept that before reading one of her stories. Artificial drama would not add to the theme, only distract from it.
This is my favorite worldbuilding of anything I've ever read. Typically, you'd expect exceptional world building to be something wholly unique, expansive, or totally alien. But Le Guin takes a simple concept, a true anarchist society, and makes it believable, warts and all. The beauty and wonder of the first half kept me awestruck, three quarters of the way through I felt some sagging, but the ending underpinned the themes beautifully. 4.25/5
Themes:
I cannot recall consuming a piece of media that explored such big ideas in a way that was so digestible through its protagonist. When tackling themes as big as "What does freedom and ownership actually cost?" can cause the characters to reduce to set dressing but Le Guin stays true to herself and to Shevek, creating one of the most compelling characters that I've ever read (*that* scene excluded).
Its also worth highlighting that Shevek is also a wonderful vehicle for a human emotion on display often forgotten in sci-fi: tenderness. His care for his fellow man and family is truly heartwarming and culminates in passages that make me optimistic about human solidarity and decency: something pretty difficult to do in 2024!
Discourse sometimes limits this book's ambitions to "Essential Reading for the Anarcho-Leftist" (which it certainly still is) but no matter your political leaning, this thing has thought experiments in spades without ever feeling overstuffed. Discussions about the characters and plot often deflect immediately into philosophy and larger discussions on human nature and how we choose to self organize; truly the mark of a great piece of fiction. 5/5
Conclusion:
It wasn't not a page turner but probably one of the most important books I've ever read and certainly the best book I've read this year. Much has been written about The Dispossessed but it works on an initial read and appears to have the layers and depth to reward repeat readings which I very much look forward to in the future; such an incredibly thought provoking novel! 4.75/5
jcoryv's review against another edition
4.0
Listened to this on Audible. Narration was simple, but spot on.
Not much of a plot, but lots to think about.
Not much of a plot, but lots to think about.
melankuli's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
tonsillitis's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This book was crazyyyyyyyyyyyy
cvbattum's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
This is a well-written book but it was so boring to me. I almost DNF'ed at about three quarters, just because I felt like nothing was really happening. I felt the main story could've been told in a third of the length of this book.
The most interesting part about it were the different worlds. They are truly unique and imaginative and a great way to look at utopias and dystopias. The characters were also interesting and well-written. I liked how the struggles in the societies were reflected in the characters.
Worst part? The almost pretentious use of pseudo-scientific but entirely meaningless and far overcomplicated words to describe Sheveks time theory. I still struggle to really understand what that whole thing was about.
I found The Left Hand of Darkness a much more interesting and captivating book. Makes me think i might've gotten the timing wrong.
The most interesting part about it were the different worlds. They are truly unique and imaginative and a great way to look at utopias and dystopias. The characters were also interesting and well-written. I liked how the struggles in the societies were reflected in the characters.
Worst part? The almost pretentious use of pseudo-scientific but entirely meaningless and far overcomplicated words to describe Sheveks time theory. I still struggle to really understand what that whole thing was about.
I found The Left Hand of Darkness a much more interesting and captivating book. Makes me think i might've gotten the timing wrong.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.’
Reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin was likely the biggest literary event of the year for me. This endlessly quotable book gripped me on every level and the way Le Guin can examine and explain ideas is so fluid, especially how she crafts such functioning worlds for her characters and ideas to move around in. Told in a rotating timeline with the past events catching up to those in the present (a narrative structure that functions as an expression of several of the book’s themes), we follow Shevek’s life as a physicist growing up in a anarchist-style society and then his time on a highly capitalist society on the planet Urras as he struggles to develop a working theory of time that incorporates both cyclical and linear time. Shevek’s experience juxtaposes the two societies as he realizes his ideas can be very dangerous in a society that only values profit and power. So many intelligent discussions of this book already exist that I likely have nothing to add, but I love this book so much and wanted to get my thoughts down. Through exploring the multiple meanings of the word “revolution,” Le Guin explores society and sociolinguistics in this incredible book about freedom and sharing the struggles of others to help build a better world.
‘At present we seem only to write dystopias,’ Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, ‘perhaps in order to be able to write a utopia we need to think yinly.’ She was speaking, of course, about the concept of yin and yang, something that seems present in much of her work and especially highlighted by the two societies in The Dispossessed. Le Guin contrasts two societies, the planet Urras full of war and stark inequality and the anarchist society that settled on the moon Anarres, and uses the juxtaposition to examine how to theorize on reconfiguring social systems to be ethical and free. Though as states the subtitle in original publications, this is An Ambiguous Utopia and Le Guin is not here to give answers but to tell a story within the landscape of these ethical musings, one that should give birth to further thought, further theory and further striving to better the world.
In an interview with Anarcho Geek Review, Le Guin said ‘When I got the idea for The Dispossessed, the story I sketched out was all wrong, and I had to figure out what it really was about and what it needed. What it needed was first about a year of reading all the Utopias, and then another year or two of reading all the Anarchist writers.’ She admits the book is heavily based in the writings of [a:Lao Tzu|2622245|Lao Tzu|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435903703p2/2622245.jpg] (his book Tao Te Ching has been translated by Le Guin), [a:Paul Goodman|2937|Paul Goodman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331471456p2/2937.jpg], and [a:Pyotr Kropotkin|34296|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402256567p2/34296.jpg], though other anarchist thinkers such as [a:Emma Goldman|15591|Emma Goldman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1303757350p2/15591.jpg] and [a:Mikhail Bakunin|5258928|Mikhail Bakunin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1339504480p2/5258928.jpg] seem to also inform many of the ideas present as well. Le Guin was heavily influenced in all her works by taoism, and [a:Paul Goodman|2937|Paul Goodman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331471456p2/2937.jpg]’s work often showed taoism as a contributor towards a coherent theory of anarchism. The Dispossessed details a style of taoist anarchism that is similar to those expressed in another Le Guin novel, [b:The Lathe of Heaven|2930299|The Lathe of Heaven|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632957574l/2930299._SY75_.jpg|425872], one being that a revolution cannot rely on political or authorities but on a deep engagement between the individual and the world around us where we become the change we wish to see in the world.
‘The freedom to think involves the courage to stumble upon our demons.’
-[a:Simone Weil|18395|Simone Weil|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1318043623p2/18395.jpg], [b:On the Abolition of All Political Parties|22747485|On the Abolition of All Political Parties|Simone Weil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405864185l/22747485._SY75_.jpg|42292362]
The change Shevek wishes to see originates in his work with time theories but he quickly realizes how immersed in political struggle his life is. Le Guin fans are treated to the creation of the ansible, a communication device that is present in the Hannish books, particularly The Left Hand of Darkness, a device many players on the planet Urras are trying to help him create it but also to control it. His studies on time require him to combine two different concepts of time: Sequency and Simultaneity, with the former endorsing a linear concept of time and the latter for non-linear time, such as recursive theories. Shevek must transcend constructs that have been considered rational thought to a more radical theory of time, as a sort of postmodernist anarchist that must hold both modes of time in his mind at once in order to achieve his goal. [a:F. Scott Fitzgerald|3190|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517864008p2/3190.jpg] once wrote that ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,’ so I suppose we can rightfully claim Shevek as a genius here. His biggest hurdle, it would seem, is less the creation of his working theory but the hurdles of power. On Anarres he is stifled by others who can block his publication or wish to take the credit, while on Urras it will be used for profit, power, and likely warmaking.
‘Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.’
Shevek’s Odian society on Anarres is set-up to have ‘ no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals,’ ([b:Mutual Aid|51306|Mutual Aid a factor of evolution|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348218981l/51306._SY75_.jpg|1635591] by [a:Pyotr Kropotkin|34296|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402256567p2/34296.jpg] being an largely influential work in anarchist theory and this novel). It is a harsh planet where horizontal organization has kept the society going, with people assigned to rotating jobs to best befit the current needs to keep the society going. They have no sense of private property and everything is a community (even families where there are no individual family units). This contrasts with Urras, which is a capitalist society where profit and private property is the primary function (hence why the Odians refer to them as ‘propetarians’). While the harsh climate and scarcity of resources on Anarres may have been fertile soil for their style of society to work, they have developed a concept of communal society that see’s it’s function as one to remove unnecessary suffering.
‘We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering - unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.’
This contrasts with Urras where all the bad-faith bootstraps mythologies created a hierarchical society where chasing profits removes suffering from the elites but displaces it onto the lower classes, the very sort of thing the Odians fled to establish their society in the mining colonies on the moon Anarres.
‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’
-Odian teaching
‘The essential function of the state is to maintain the existing inequality’ wrote activist [a:Nicolas Walter|182932|Nicolas Walter|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409519816p2/182932.jpg] in [b:About Anarchism|2871554|About Anarchism|Nicholas Walter|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348265800l/2871554._SX50_.jpg|2897709], which is why Odians do not believe in any forms of State-ruled government. There are several different government styles on Urras, though Shevek sees them all as inevitable towards oppression. ‘The individual cannot bargain with the State,’ Shevek says, ‘the State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.’ Even the thinly-disguised Soviet Russia country in the book (which is currently engaged in a proxy war with the strong capitalist country) repulses Shevek for still maintaining a government over the people telling their envoy ‘the revolution for justice which you began and then stopped halfway.’ Freedom, he argues, only comes from a collective society. To the idea of individualism, Shevek notes that what is society but a collective of individuals working towards a common goal.
'You put another lock on the door and call it democracy.'
While the glamour of Urras is charming to him at first, he begins to see how rotten it is at the core and how profit figures into everything, especially when his ideas are dismissed and questioned why he should be allowed to pursue them without a clear profit motive.
While Shevek sees that because his people own nothing, they are free, those of Urras only have the illusion of freedom, he discovers, and in their quest to own things are thereby owned by them. ‘They think if people can possess enough things they will be content to live in prison’ Shevek thinks. Interestingly enough, early in his youth he and his friends learned the concept of prison and decided to play-act it but the reader quickly realizes ‘it was playing them.’ They are so enticed into their roles they are okay with harming each other (‘they decided that Kadagv had asked for it’) which makes for excellent commentary on how hierarchy breeds violence and oppression.
‘All the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary,’ Le Guin writes of our hero. To create this effect, Le Guin has done something extraordinary here by making sociolinguistics highly important to the novel as indicators of the different societies. Drawing on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the structure of a language influences the native speaker’s perceptions and categorization of experiences. The linguistic relativity is seen in the Anarras language of Pravic, where there is an aversion to singular possessive pronouns since they imply property. Sadik (Shevek’s daughter) for instance, calls him The Father not, my father, or says ‘share the handkerchief I use’ instead of my handkerchief. The language removes a lot of ideas of shame and patriarchy as well. ‘Pravic was not a good swearing language. It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blashpemy does not exist.’
Even the language of Urras is alarming to Shevek. His language removes any class-based hierarchy, so prefixes such as being called Dr. are offensive to him. He notices that class dialects occur on Urras as well, with his servant, Efor, code-switching between them. THe upper classes on Urras tend to have a drawl to their words. Late in the novel when the Terran ambassador arrives (it’s a Hannish book, of course the Terrans show up), it is said of Pravic that it was ‘the only rationally invented language that has become the tongue of a great people.‘
Written in the 60s, the language aspects feel relevant to today’s world when there is much political discourse on the way language morphs with a changing society. Language and the way we apply it is culturally influenced, and linguistic signifiers can be reflective of culture, and there is often much argument online if adapting language to fit modern needs is social conditioning or simply just using the malleability of language to be more productive or empathetic in the rhetoric we choose to apply in various situations (Le Guin, for the record, frequently defended the singular ‘they’ in language [see the final question in the previously mentioned interview]). [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615507112p2/4339.jpg] wrote at length in his essay Authority & American Usage on social and political influences on debates over descriptive vs prescriptive grammar changes, and to see Le Guin incorporate sociolinguistics as signifiers for her two societies is quite wonderful.
‘I want the walls down. I want solidarity, human solidarity.’
The language barrier is a great example of how The Dispossessed toys with concepts of walls. The novel opens with a description of a wall and the question of how inside/outside being on of perception. Shevek frequently comments on how he wishes to tear down walls, and his message of revolution is not one of taking the power back but of abolition of power. No walls, no barriers, only unity. For that reason he cannot allow his device to be used for war, or nationalistic purposes as he realized those on Urras will want (he sees how racism occurs due to concepts of walls while there).
Revolution has many meanings in this novel. The overthrow of the system or a cycle such as his concept of time. But it is also shown that revolution isn’t a single act but a continuous cycle as well. The Terrans say they have seen it all, tried everything, but ‘if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born.’ There must be a constant striving towards betterment, reshaping, undoing, rebuilding. Anarres is not perfect either, hence the ambiguous utopia, and there must be the drive to keep going. Hence the open ended conclusion to the novel.
'Society was not against them. It was for them; with them; it was them.'
The Dispossessed is such a magnificent work. The ideas are great, the writing is sharp and engaging, and there is an epic feel to the story as it draws on structures such as the hero’s quest. I love how Le Guin tends towards a style of storytelling via anthropology, and the political discourse in this only heightens my enjoyment of it. She was a brilliant writer and this book is such a powder keg of extraordinary thoughts wrapped in a a science fiction narrative. It is so endlessly quotable you could practically build a religion out of it. All the stars in the Goodreads cosmos aren’t enough to award this novel for how much I love it.
5/5
‘I come with empty hands and the desire to unbuild walls.’
Reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin was likely the biggest literary event of the year for me. This endlessly quotable book gripped me on every level and the way Le Guin can examine and explain ideas is so fluid, especially how she crafts such functioning worlds for her characters and ideas to move around in. Told in a rotating timeline with the past events catching up to those in the present (a narrative structure that functions as an expression of several of the book’s themes), we follow Shevek’s life as a physicist growing up in a anarchist-style society and then his time on a highly capitalist society on the planet Urras as he struggles to develop a working theory of time that incorporates both cyclical and linear time. Shevek’s experience juxtaposes the two societies as he realizes his ideas can be very dangerous in a society that only values profit and power. So many intelligent discussions of this book already exist that I likely have nothing to add, but I love this book so much and wanted to get my thoughts down. Through exploring the multiple meanings of the word “revolution,” Le Guin explores society and sociolinguistics in this incredible book about freedom and sharing the struggles of others to help build a better world.
‘At present we seem only to write dystopias,’ Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, ‘perhaps in order to be able to write a utopia we need to think yinly.’ She was speaking, of course, about the concept of yin and yang, something that seems present in much of her work and especially highlighted by the two societies in The Dispossessed. Le Guin contrasts two societies, the planet Urras full of war and stark inequality and the anarchist society that settled on the moon Anarres, and uses the juxtaposition to examine how to theorize on reconfiguring social systems to be ethical and free. Though as states the subtitle in original publications, this is An Ambiguous Utopia and Le Guin is not here to give answers but to tell a story within the landscape of these ethical musings, one that should give birth to further thought, further theory and further striving to better the world.
In an interview with Anarcho Geek Review, Le Guin said ‘When I got the idea for The Dispossessed, the story I sketched out was all wrong, and I had to figure out what it really was about and what it needed. What it needed was first about a year of reading all the Utopias, and then another year or two of reading all the Anarchist writers.’ She admits the book is heavily based in the writings of [a:Lao Tzu|2622245|Lao Tzu|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435903703p2/2622245.jpg] (his book Tao Te Ching has been translated by Le Guin), [a:Paul Goodman|2937|Paul Goodman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331471456p2/2937.jpg], and [a:Pyotr Kropotkin|34296|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402256567p2/34296.jpg], though other anarchist thinkers such as [a:Emma Goldman|15591|Emma Goldman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1303757350p2/15591.jpg] and [a:Mikhail Bakunin|5258928|Mikhail Bakunin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1339504480p2/5258928.jpg] seem to also inform many of the ideas present as well. Le Guin was heavily influenced in all her works by taoism, and [a:Paul Goodman|2937|Paul Goodman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331471456p2/2937.jpg]’s work often showed taoism as a contributor towards a coherent theory of anarchism. The Dispossessed details a style of taoist anarchism that is similar to those expressed in another Le Guin novel, [b:The Lathe of Heaven|2930299|The Lathe of Heaven|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632957574l/2930299._SY75_.jpg|425872], one being that a revolution cannot rely on political or authorities but on a deep engagement between the individual and the world around us where we become the change we wish to see in the world.
‘The freedom to think involves the courage to stumble upon our demons.’
-[a:Simone Weil|18395|Simone Weil|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1318043623p2/18395.jpg], [b:On the Abolition of All Political Parties|22747485|On the Abolition of All Political Parties|Simone Weil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405864185l/22747485._SY75_.jpg|42292362]
The change Shevek wishes to see originates in his work with time theories but he quickly realizes how immersed in political struggle his life is. Le Guin fans are treated to the creation of the ansible, a communication device that is present in the Hannish books, particularly The Left Hand of Darkness, a device many players on the planet Urras are trying to help him create it but also to control it. His studies on time require him to combine two different concepts of time: Sequency and Simultaneity, with the former endorsing a linear concept of time and the latter for non-linear time, such as recursive theories. Shevek must transcend constructs that have been considered rational thought to a more radical theory of time, as a sort of postmodernist anarchist that must hold both modes of time in his mind at once in order to achieve his goal. [a:F. Scott Fitzgerald|3190|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517864008p2/3190.jpg] once wrote that ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,’ so I suppose we can rightfully claim Shevek as a genius here. His biggest hurdle, it would seem, is less the creation of his working theory but the hurdles of power. On Anarres he is stifled by others who can block his publication or wish to take the credit, while on Urras it will be used for profit, power, and likely warmaking.
‘Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.’
Shevek’s Odian society on Anarres is set-up to have ‘ no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals,’ ([b:Mutual Aid|51306|Mutual Aid a factor of evolution|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348218981l/51306._SY75_.jpg|1635591] by [a:Pyotr Kropotkin|34296|Pyotr Kropotkin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402256567p2/34296.jpg] being an largely influential work in anarchist theory and this novel). It is a harsh planet where horizontal organization has kept the society going, with people assigned to rotating jobs to best befit the current needs to keep the society going. They have no sense of private property and everything is a community (even families where there are no individual family units). This contrasts with Urras, which is a capitalist society where profit and private property is the primary function (hence why the Odians refer to them as ‘propetarians’). While the harsh climate and scarcity of resources on Anarres may have been fertile soil for their style of society to work, they have developed a concept of communal society that see’s it’s function as one to remove unnecessary suffering.
This contrasts with Urras where all the bad-faith bootstraps mythologies created a hierarchical society where chasing profits removes suffering from the elites but displaces it onto the lower classes, the very sort of thing the Odians fled to establish their society in the mining colonies on the moon Anarres.
‘To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.’
-Odian teaching
‘The essential function of the state is to maintain the existing inequality’ wrote activist [a:Nicolas Walter|182932|Nicolas Walter|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409519816p2/182932.jpg] in [b:About Anarchism|2871554|About Anarchism|Nicholas Walter|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348265800l/2871554._SX50_.jpg|2897709], which is why Odians do not believe in any forms of State-ruled government. There are several different government styles on Urras, though Shevek sees them all as inevitable towards oppression. ‘The individual cannot bargain with the State,’ Shevek says, ‘the State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.’ Even the thinly-disguised Soviet Russia country in the book (which is currently engaged in a proxy war with the strong capitalist country) repulses Shevek for still maintaining a government over the people telling their envoy ‘the revolution for justice which you began and then stopped halfway.’ Freedom, he argues, only comes from a collective society. To the idea of individualism, Shevek notes that what is society but a collective of individuals working towards a common goal.
'You put another lock on the door and call it democracy.'
While the glamour of Urras is charming to him at first, he begins to see how rotten it is at the core and how profit figures into everything, especially when his ideas are dismissed and questioned why he should be allowed to pursue them without a clear profit motive.
‘There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is 'superior' to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom.’
While Shevek sees that because his people own nothing, they are free, those of Urras only have the illusion of freedom, he discovers, and in their quest to own things are thereby owned by them. ‘They think if people can possess enough things they will be content to live in prison’ Shevek thinks. Interestingly enough, early in his youth he and his friends learned the concept of prison and decided to play-act it but the reader quickly realizes ‘it was playing them.’ They are so enticed into their roles they are okay with harming each other (‘they decided that Kadagv had asked for it’) which makes for excellent commentary on how hierarchy breeds violence and oppression.
‘All the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary,’ Le Guin writes of our hero. To create this effect, Le Guin has done something extraordinary here by making sociolinguistics highly important to the novel as indicators of the different societies. Drawing on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the structure of a language influences the native speaker’s perceptions and categorization of experiences. The linguistic relativity is seen in the Anarras language of Pravic, where there is an aversion to singular possessive pronouns since they imply property. Sadik (Shevek’s daughter) for instance, calls him The Father not, my father, or says ‘share the handkerchief I use’ instead of my handkerchief. The language removes a lot of ideas of shame and patriarchy as well. ‘Pravic was not a good swearing language. It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blashpemy does not exist.’
Even the language of Urras is alarming to Shevek. His language removes any class-based hierarchy, so prefixes such as being called Dr. are offensive to him. He notices that class dialects occur on Urras as well, with his servant, Efor, code-switching between them. THe upper classes on Urras tend to have a drawl to their words. Late in the novel when the Terran ambassador arrives (it’s a Hannish book, of course the Terrans show up), it is said of Pravic that it was ‘the only rationally invented language that has become the tongue of a great people.‘
Written in the 60s, the language aspects feel relevant to today’s world when there is much political discourse on the way language morphs with a changing society. Language and the way we apply it is culturally influenced, and linguistic signifiers can be reflective of culture, and there is often much argument online if adapting language to fit modern needs is social conditioning or simply just using the malleability of language to be more productive or empathetic in the rhetoric we choose to apply in various situations (Le Guin, for the record, frequently defended the singular ‘they’ in language [see the final question in the previously mentioned interview]). [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615507112p2/4339.jpg] wrote at length in his essay Authority & American Usage on social and political influences on debates over descriptive vs prescriptive grammar changes, and to see Le Guin incorporate sociolinguistics as signifiers for her two societies is quite wonderful.
‘I want the walls down. I want solidarity, human solidarity.’
The language barrier is a great example of how The Dispossessed toys with concepts of walls. The novel opens with a description of a wall and the question of how inside/outside being on of perception. Shevek frequently comments on how he wishes to tear down walls, and his message of revolution is not one of taking the power back but of abolition of power. No walls, no barriers, only unity. For that reason he cannot allow his device to be used for war, or nationalistic purposes as he realized those on Urras will want (he sees how racism occurs due to concepts of walls while there).
’You the possessors are the possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!’
Revolution has many meanings in this novel. The overthrow of the system or a cycle such as his concept of time. But it is also shown that revolution isn’t a single act but a continuous cycle as well. The Terrans say they have seen it all, tried everything, but ‘if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born.’ There must be a constant striving towards betterment, reshaping, undoing, rebuilding. Anarres is not perfect either, hence the ambiguous utopia, and there must be the drive to keep going. Hence the open ended conclusion to the novel.
'Society was not against them. It was for them; with them; it was them.'
The Dispossessed is such a magnificent work. The ideas are great, the writing is sharp and engaging, and there is an epic feel to the story as it draws on structures such as the hero’s quest. I love how Le Guin tends towards a style of storytelling via anthropology, and the political discourse in this only heightens my enjoyment of it. She was a brilliant writer and this book is such a powder keg of extraordinary thoughts wrapped in a a science fiction narrative. It is so endlessly quotable you could practically build a religion out of it. All the stars in the Goodreads cosmos aren’t enough to award this novel for how much I love it.
5/5
‘I come with empty hands and the desire to unbuild walls.’
rebekah27's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jreynolds24's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
dabomba's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5