Looking back at "The Livable World"

For my final Blog post I wanted to consider the livable world, and what that has meant to each of the characters from our semester. The Left Hand of Darkness gives us an opportunity for considering this topic in the character of Genly. Genly's livable world seems to have shifted the more time he spends on Winter and with asexual "people". In the beginning, he struggled to fit his existing notions of sexuality and gender roles onto the people of Winter. Yet at the end of the novel, when looking on the faces of the companions he left behind, he thinks they look alien. The women are too feminine and the men more masculine than he is prepared for. This change in perception has also caused a change in what he can live with, and I think it would be very hard for us to imagine that Genly will ever leave Winter again. The "normal" conventions of man and woman are strange for him now, and understanding humans as people is the only lens he can use to view the world.
But by looking at just the change in his livable world and not the circumstances that created it, we can see connections between him and many of the other characters that we have explored. In this regard, I see an amazing similarity between the characters of Genly, Edna, and Yank. In the beginning of each respective story all three exist within a space that protects their livable world. For Yank this is the boiler room of the ship, for Edna the pleasant lifestyle of the New Orleans elite, and Genly living in a traditional gender setting. This life is disrupted by something or someone changing how they view the world; Mildred for Yank, Robert for Edna, and Winter for Genly. After this change happens, they each can no longer see their old life as fulfilling, and try desperately to adapt to the change each has experienced. Only Genly is successful in this endeavor as Edna drowns herself being unable to find happiness, and Yank is killed by a gorilla because he does not really understand anything except that boiler room. All three make attempts at changing after the disruption, but actually being able to do so seems nearly impossible.
There is also a connection between characters who simply do not fit in with the world around them, and  attempt to create their own pocket of a "livable world". The characters of Daisy and Miss Brill are great examples of this notion. Miss Brill lives within her own fantasy where she considers the park as a stage of actors, all equally important to the overall production. This pocket of imagination that she creates for herself gives her a sense of belonging and importance, that the real world does not acknowledge. Daisy does not rely on imagination, but instead ignores the social conventions of the world around her and lives a promiscuous lifestyle looked down on by the rest of the elite. She does not care what is proper and correct, and exists within her own bubble of ignoring rumors, gossip, and proper interactions. Both of these characters have their world's shattered, and it seems do not even attempt to change along with it. Miss Brill hears a young couple discussing her unimportance, and Daisy is killed of fever. Here we see that escaping the real world into a livable space of your own does not always have positive results.
There are no real discussion questions, but what do you guys think of my connections between the characters? Did I group them according to how you would? Did I forget a character that belongs, or group someone who doesn't? Whatdayathink?

Taoism, Harmony and The Left Hand of Darkness

As we've discussed in class, Le Guin incorporates a large number of binary oppositions and Genly is forced to come to terms with each internal and external challenge he encounters. These binaries, such as light and dark and male and female, are addressed in Taoist philosophy, ideas from which Le Guin frequently utilizes throughout the course of her text.

Taoist principles are based in balance and harmony, living as one with Tao, or “the way.” Many people associate Taoism with the yin yang symbol, or the Taijitu, a swirl of black and white with a white or black dot inside, showing light and dark as one. In the yin yang and in Taoism, yin is considered passive and feminine and yang is considered active or aggressive and masculine. Although in many societies, especially contemporary American society, male and female are seen as separate and oftentimes unequal. It is considered out of the normative if a woman acts in a traditionally "masculine" way, like using power tools or grilling out, or if a man carefully chooses what he looks like each day or keeps a clean house and is considered “wimpy” or “feminine.”

Taoist principles toss these notions aside. When looking at the Taijitu symbol, it becomes clear that the large white section, representing yang, has dark, yin, within. It is the same with the large black section, containing a small white circle, representing yang. In Taoist philosophy, one is neither masculine nor feminine, but a mix of both, and it is beautiful.

Le Guin throws these principles at Genli Ai during his time on Winter. On the planet, the people are both male and female, and Genly does not trust his traveling partner, Estroven, because of his dual genders. In Genly’s society, males and females are separate genders and are seen as different types of people. He struggles for the majority of the book as he attempts to classify Estroven as either male or female, and he states, “I had been afraid to give (acceptance). I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, to a woman who was a man” (267). Genly cannot get past his structured binary categorization in order to see that Estroven was willing to sacrifice everything he had— his political power, his family, and even his life— so Genly could complete his mission.

Soon, that same night, Genly realizes that he does not need to have everything in common with Estroven in order for the two to be friends. In fact, it was their differences rather than their similarities that drew them together, another example of yin and yang, two opposites coming together to form a whole friendship.

Even on a broader spectrum, the joining of light and dark weaves its way through the text. When Genly and Estroven move across the ice, Genly is bewildered by the absence of darkness and shadow, as well as the absence of light within the dark snowstorms. Estroven recites a poem about light and dark, explaining that the two “(lie) together like lovers in kemmer… /like the end and the way” (252). Later, Estroven states that “we need the shadows in order to walk” (286). Without the two, it is not possible to know one, much like the Taijitu suggests; light is part of dark and in darkness there is light.

Likewise, Genly is able to accept Estroven’s masculinity and femininity as a part of him, a part that defines the whole. Once Genly believes that Estroven’s femininity does not compromise him as a human being, but instead enhance his humanity, he is able to give him the entirety of his friendship (267). The yin and yang and Taoism is again echoed here, underlining the necessity for both masculine and feminine qualities in humanity. As LeGuin says in the introduction, “the future, in fiction, is a metaphor” (xix). This novel is not a “what would happen if” novel, but a “is” novel. People are both masculine and feminine, and perhaps Le Guin is suggesting that in order to make a world livable for any gender, people must know one to define the other and accept both in order to understand gender as a whole. Taoism supports this theory, especially with the Taijitu symbol, emphasizing two halves, mixed, to create a whole, existing in harmony with each other.

The Return of Estraven

We stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our skis, and took off – down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire and ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy.

Our suspicions about the Orgota are entirely justified when we learn that Genly is locked up in a frigid steel cage and hauled off to a “Farm.” Although he was betrayed by Obsle, Shusgis, and the Sarf, Genly does maintain that there is a certain homely kindness among the people: they are “uncomplaining, unhopeful,” he mentions. Indeed, the silent compassion of his fellow “convicts” is what keeps him sane. He arrives at the farm in an almost dreamlike stupor. He is ostracized by the community, nicknamed “The Pervert,” and continuously injected with kemmer-supressing drugs although he is of a different species. His fortune almost entirely vanishes until Estraven conveniently forges a few papers and rescues Genly, capitalizing upon the Orgota’s inattention to detail and outright laziness.

When Genly finally recovers from his chemical daze and persistent illness, him and Estraven decide that they must brave the northern glaciers in order to avoid being detected. Realizing that he was wrong to mistrust Estraven, Genly finally apologizes to his companion. The two are now wanted by opposing factions. As Genly Ai flees his fate, it seems as though Estraven is slowly making his way towards the inevitable terminus of his.

A few discussion questions:

1) The Pulefen Farm is aituated in a cold, dreary environment. The workers there are not fatally strained, Genly mentions, and the labor is not as taxing as he thought it would be (i.e., the workers don’t drop dead from working, but from disease). In addition, the workers are subjected to drug trials and experimentation. Would it be mistaken to possibly draw a comparison between Pulefen Farm and a Russian gulag? How substantial is the “Cold War” allegory in this science-fiction novel?

2) Has Genly made the right decision in trusting Estraven? Was Estraven right all along, or is there some ulterior motive behind his actions?

3) Can either side – Karhide or Orgoreyn – be trusted? Is Genly essentially preaching to the wrong choir? (The Foretellers would say no, but, as readers, we’re allowed to disagree.)

Gender and Gethenians

All of chapter seven discusses gender and basically nothing else. It's like a plotless Michael Bay movie that doesn't end and has a ton of sexual tension between the male and female leads. Except the characters are both male and female? or neither? or both? Or magically only gendered conveniently around the female menstrual cycle (I see what you did there, Le Guin). 

Since the Gethenians cycle from somer to kemmer, gender gets thrown around. Every couple of weeks the Gethenians enter kemmer and spice up their love lives by becoming either male or female. Some could be both a mother and a father, and sometimes Gethenians can "vow kemmering" and enter in what we think of as marriage. 

This is all relevant because it's so foreign to us outside of Le Guin's world. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's characters can cross genders, allowing women to be politicians, guards, soldiers, or other traditional male roles. This also opens up opportunities for men to be caregivers, bakers, and yes, even landladies. This swapping of "traditional" gender roles gives the reader a look inside a diverse, unisex community and explains a lot of the confusion Ai experiences during his time on Gethen. He attempts to categorize humans into "male" and "female" roles, even though this is impossible. The Gethenians switch genders more frequently than I brush my hair. Ai constantly tries to sort the people as if they were humans, assigning gendered pronouns to the people outside of kemmer. 

The lack of gender also provides a very safe space for the people. It is not only inappropriate for gender discrimination to exist on Gethen, it is impossible. Because there are no such things as "gender roles," there is no way something could be labeled as "manly" or "feminine." There is no gender identity crisis (surprisingly) and there is no concern about having a child with your sibling (weird) or being both a father and/or a mother to various children. 

Le Guin uses Ai as an example, showing how people in contemporary society (or the late 60's) view gender roles and gender construction. Ai is an outsider, someone who will never fit in because of his specific views on sexuality and gender. He constantly puts people into boxes and Le Guin begins to come through and show a society where people share roles and function equally and the only real problem is the dude trying to put walls where there shouldn't be any barriers. Although this chapter was pretty boring, it showed the reader a lot about the society, Ai, and Le Guin's feelings about sexuality and its interaction with gender and gender roles. 

Map of Gethen

Hey guys,

I was having trouble picturing where Genly Ai was traveling at certain points in The Left Hand of Darkness, so I decided to upload a map. Sure, it's no map of Middle Earth, but I think it should be just as helpful.

Nusuth,
J.C.

The right question?

After the failure of his political mission, Genly Ai makes a pilgrimage to a "Fastness" in order to observe a ceremony of divination. He would not "be pursuing this curiously intangible cult into its secret places at all" did he not desire an answer to a question. This question does not seem to be one of personal import: it is formulated with the detachment of an anthropologist on the search for cultural "fact": "What are the Foretellers, and what do they actually do?"

There's a way of posing a question to a person (or book or culture or object) that situates the questioner himself beyond the access of a question. The way lies in the posing rather than in the question itself. "What are the Foretellers, and what do they actually do?" If this question issues from the "objectivity" of a scientistic anthropology, its answer, while it may very well represent an access of usable knowledge, will not challenge the presuppositions of the questioner: it will not pose a question in return.

What are the Fortellers? This is "the question left unanswered by the Investigators": as if all other questions had been suitably disposed of! And could an answer to the question unsettle or redefine what an "Investigator" is, what an investigator does?

It's important, I think, that Ai is not himself an investigator, though he is reliant on their accumulated knowledge and might replicate the wording of at least one of their questions: and he presents his experience not as "findings" but as a story. Part of the fun of reading a work set in a different time and place -- be it "Left Hand of Darkness" or "Things Fall Apart" -- is finding your bearings in an unfamiliar culture: at its first appearance, an untranslated bit of lingo passes by and leaves a question in the memory: thirty pages later the same term will appear in a context that brings it closer to comprehensibility, and the reader feels a pleasure not unlike that felt by an Investigator, perhaps, at ascribing a "function" to an erstwhile inscrutable practice. Put enough of these insights together and you have a respectiable dossier to send back to the home office.

To what extent, for Ai, is investigation linked to classification? And are our pleasures, as readers, also classificatory?

From what we learn of it, the Ekumen seems an eminently "reasonable" institution: one that, in corroroboration of its name, is fundamentally ecumenical -- difference among the planets, one imagines, is not eradicated: but the derivation of all of their inhabitants from the originary planet of Hain emphasizes that there is something "common" to the humanity of them all. In at least one respect -- their sexuality -- the inhabitants of Winter differ from common humanity: might not the adepts of Handdara also represent a spiritual "deviation"? They prize a "singular 'ignorance'" and suggests the presence, according to Ai, of "an old darkness, passive, anarchic, silent" that lies at the foundation of Karhidian society: and, if Ai is correct in his assessment, is this "darkness" really compatible with the almost technocratic efficiency of the Ekumen, with its network of "information exchange"?

Ai (and the reader) is warned of "the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question": what, then, is the right sort of question? According to the Haddara? According to Genly Ai? According to us, as readers in an unfamiliar land?

The Soldier Returns with Mr. Freud

In the final chapter of West’s Return of the Soldier, we finally get the long awaited scene of analysis by Dr. Anderson, the man who it is believed will be able to finally cure Chris of his “illness”, or at least aid in helping them to understand it more fully. I found it interesting that despite the buildup, West shows very little of Chris being cured other than the discussion of him being outside with the doctor and then the short scene at the end of the novel in which he is coming back to the house and looks “every inch a soldier”, a line clearly indicating that Chris is back to the man he once was, having not only recalled the horrors of war that he experienced, but more importantly the unhappiness he felt while living in the house (56).

And Margaret makes the comment to the doctor that psychoanalysis and the treatment that the doctor provides will not truly cure Chris of what ails him, as although it will cure his amnesia, it will only return him to the state of unhappiness that the amnesia allowed him to escape from, it will make him “ordinary” rather than happy. The pair seem to have an understanding that bringing people back to “normality” is what is expected of society and of psychiatrists rather than being something that is always what it best then for the patient or the person afflicted and it is this that Margaret accepts finally when she does take the items to Chris so that his memory could be brought back despite his resistance.

Also find it interesting that there is a literal form of the repressed existing in the house, waiting to be returned to the memories of all living there will just a single turn of the key, so clearly Chris is not the only one grappling with these ideas.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you agree with the decision made on the part of Margaret to bring Chris’ memories back? Was she truly obligated to do so, sacrificing her and Chris's potential happiness for his "cure", or should she rather have kept him as is as he was happy?

2. Ties into the first question in regards to the treatment, do you think that West should have written more about the actual treatment of Chris, or is this unimportant? Psychoanalysis is something West herself later downplays as a part of the novel, however she does spend quite a bit of time going over the tenets of psychoanalysis through Dr. Anderson.

3. Is returning as “every inch a soldier” truly a cure? Or rather is there a cure at all that can be had, or at least one had so simply? Although Kitty seems to believe so, I find that I am not quite so sure.