The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

There was a wall. It didn't seem important. It was built of uncut stones, roughly mortared; an adult could reach over and look, and even a child could climb on it. There was no gate where it crossed the road; there it was reduced to the geometry of the land: a line, a thought of a boundary. But the thought was real. It was important. For seven generations, nothing more important than that wall had existed in the world. Like all walls, it had two meanings, two faces. What was inside and what was outside depended on which side of the wall you were looking from.

Without exception, each of us lives behind walls. And boundaries. Rules and lawlessness often lie outside our choices. Both Anarres and Urras have their walls. All kinds... You can breathe in both places. Each is the "other" of the other.

Neither is perfect, both have their shortcomings. Like everything that has a human inside.

Ursula LeGuin is a pen that I have slowly gotten used to her language, and I admire her wisdom as I wander among the universes she creates. Every detail she presents in The Dispossessed is astonishing. I must say that I had difficulty in the first 50-60 pages. But then I got drawn into a genre I wasn't used to. I thought about being - Shevek's sentences - about women and beyond because of it. Then I saw that both universes were one universe. It was like different lights shining on one whole for Anarres and Urras.

This is not a dystopia for me, nor a utopia.

A book about having or not having - living with questions and being able to find answers - about freedom (but truly, freedom in the full sense). A book that questions, imagines, and researches.

Levent Mollamustafaoğlu's excellent translation and Bülent Somay's - which I believe enlightened me a great deal - boundless...

This discourse on dystopias achieved remarkable feats by winning numerous prestigious awards such as the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and National Book awards.

Almost every single one of my Goodreads friends who has read it has given it a 4 or 5-star rating.

However, I must admit that I really hated this book.

It's not because the book is dated or has aged poorly.

In fact, considering the current state of Russian-U.S. relations, the Cold War era slant of this book plays perfectly to a modern audience.

I'm giving it two stars mainly because I do appreciate the big ideas that Le Guin brings up.

The vision behind the "profiteering" cultures of Urras, with its subdivisions for the capitalists of A-Io (U.S.) and the authoritarian state of the Thu (Russia), and the anarchist outcast settlement of Anarres, was a solid and interesting foundation for the book.

But unfortunately, the weak characterizations, uninspiring writing, unnecessarily non-linear storytelling, lack of action, and disappointing ending all combined to create a very difficult and unrewarding reading experience for me.

To be more specific, there is only one character, Shevek, who is more than one-dimensional.

The rest of the characters are rather flat, simply filling out the story as needed.

As for Shevek, despite his brilliance, he is incredibly naive.

It takes him an incredibly long time to see the corruption in his own anarchist world, which is quite unbelievable considering his involvement in theoretical physics.

The writing throughout the entire novel was clunky and lacked rhythm.

There were tedious lists, long sections of discourse about the various imperfections in the different societies, and unnecessary word invention.

The alternating chapters between flashbacks to Anarres and current day chapters on Urras also didn't work for me.

There was very little interesting or noteworthy happening on Anarres, and what little did happen could have been easily incorporated into the current day chapters as flashbacks, which would have shortened the novel and likely increased my enjoyment.

The lack of action in the novel was also a major drawback.

There was only one real action scene, and even when including the aftermath, it only amounted to about ten pages.

The book ends right before another potentially exciting action scene or a scene with great conflict potential, which I see as a cop-out on the part of the author.

The overall message I got from the book was rather bleak, suggesting that both capitalism and anarchism have their flaws, and the only hope lies in benevolent aliens.

This could have been improved with a more conclusive ending.

In conclusion, while I can see the merit in some of the ideas presented in the book, the execution left a lot to be desired.

I'm truly curious to know what my Goodreads friends are seeing that I'm missing, as I feel like I'm the only one who's not impressed.

As the quote from the book goes: "He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream."

Kudos to Ursula K. LeGuin.

She has truly crafted a remarkable world that is run by what she terms an "anarchistic government".

This is quite an oxymoron, as the very idea of anarchy and government seem to be at odds with each other.

In her fictional creation, she explores the possibilities and implications of such a system.

It makes us question our traditional notions of governance and authority.

LeGuin's work challenges us to think outside the box and consider alternative ways of organizing society.

Her world-building is so detailed and vivid that it draws us in and makes us reflect on the nature of power and freedom.

We can only admire her for her creativity and courage in presenting such a unique and thought-provoking concept.

Her work serves as a reminder that there are always different perspectives and possibilities to explore when it comes to the way we live and govern ourselves.

The Dispossessed
(Hainish Cycle)
by Ursula K. Le Guin

I have a great fondness for the Earth Sea series. However, when it comes to The Dispossessed, I just couldn't seem to get fully immersed in it.

The world-building and character structure in this book are indeed quite deep. There is a lot of thought and detail that has gone into creating this unique fictional world and the complex characters that inhabit it.

Nevertheless, I found myself getting bored on numerous occasions. I'm not entirely sure why this was the case. Perhaps it was the pacing of the story or the way the plot unfolded.

It's possible that if I had read this book at a different stage of my life, my perspective and enjoyment of it might have been different. Maybe I wasn't in the right mindset or didn't have the life experiences to fully appreciate the themes and ideas presented in the story.

Despite my initial difficulties with The Dispossessed, I still recognize the quality and craftsmanship that went into its creation. Ursula K. Le Guin is a highly respected and talented author, and I'm sure that this book has its own merits and fans.

Maybe one day, I'll give it another try and see if I can discover the aspects that I missed the first time around.

The Dispossessed is a profound and thought-provoking novel that delves into the complex themes of politics, society, and individual freedom. In this expanded review, we will explore the various aspects of the book in greater detail.

The story is set in a future where two planets, Anarres and Urras, exist in parallel. Anarres is a resource-strapped planet inhabited by the Odonians, who claim to be building a perfect society based on cooperation and mutual aid. However, Le Guin is critical of their mistakes, revealing the hidden flaws within their social order. On the other hand, Urras is a planet ruled by "propertarians" and is characterized by a capitalist and materialistic society.

The novel's protagonist, Shevek, is a theoretical physicist from Anarres. He is an outcast on his own planet due to his ideas on personal liberty and submission to social imperatives. Shevek's quest to reconcile the two societies and find a better future leads him to cross the symbolic "wall" that separates Anarres and Urras. His journey is filled with disillusionment as he discovers the true nature of both societies.

One of the most powerful aspects of the novel is its exploration of the relationship between the individual and the social organism. Le Guin questions whether a society can truly be free and equal when it demands complete submission from its members. Shevek's struggle to balance his own freedom with the needs of society is a central theme that resonates with readers.

The novel also contains many beautiful and profound quotes that capture the essence of its message. For example, "The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on." This quote emphasizes the importance of ideas and their ability to grow and evolve in a free and open society.

In conclusion, The Dispossessed is a must-read novel for anyone interested in exploring the themes of politics, society, and individual freedom. It is a powerful and thought-provoking work that challenges us to question our own beliefs and values. Le Guin's writing is both beautiful and incisive, making this novel a true classic of speculative fiction.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.

The quote above is from an impassioned speech given by the author in 2014, forty years after The Dispossessed was first published, yet to me it is pertinent to the book and demonstrates how she stays on message over the decades and how the issues raised in 1974 have lost nothing of their poignancy in the world we are living today. This science-fiction fable has taught me more about practical politics than many academic studies that have passed through my hands. It poses uncomfortable question about the relationship between the individual and the social organism, it criticizes both the capitalist and the socialist governments and most of all, it tries to point the way to a better future. With so many of the recent science-fiction novels positing dystopias - disfunctional societies ruled by fear - I find it refreshing to study Le Guin's Utopia - her attempt to imagine how an ideal future society might look like.

What is idealistic about social cooperation, mutual aid, when it is the only means of staying alive?

The Odonians on their resource strapped planet Anarres claim they are building a perfect society, but Le Guin is as fiercely critical of their mistakes as of those of the neighboring planet Urras, ruled by \"propertarians\". At a simplistic level, it can be argued that Anarres and Urras stand in for the two superpowers of the 1970's: Russia and the US, but a more careful analysis reveals the Odonians as anarchists or libertarians rather than communists. In the afterword, there is a pertinent observation about Anarres: while socialists praise the good of a strong central government, the anarchists argue in favor of decentralization. \"If people want freedom, they must claim it directly. They propose voluntary cooperation, local control, and mutual tolerance. Sharing is promoted as a social ideal, but only on a voluntary basis. In many ways, Annares is an idealized hippie commune.\"

My favorite metaphor of the novel and the core of its argument is to be found in the very first pages, and is about walls:

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

... and again: To lock out, to lock in, the same act.

The Odonians on planet Anarres and the 'propertarians' on Urras are both locked on their side of this symbolical Iron Curtain, casting mistrustful glances across the wall at their neigbors and busily blackening their names with propaganda that claims 'our' social order is better than 'theirs'. The ensuing status-quo that endured for generations, until one man decides that he can cross the barrier. His name is Shevek and he is the one character who tranforms the novel from a political treatise into a human interest story, first looking at the drama of one individual life, then expanding it to consider his social environment, then the universe as a whole. Shevek is The Breaker of Walls, physical and mental barriers that restrict the development of the individuals and of their social organism. On arrival in the country of his ideological enemies, he has this to say:

You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not to ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.

Shevek is also an outcast from his own planet, where his ideas on personal liberty and submission to social imperatives have revealed the hidden cancer that destroys Odonian society from inside. He has been sidelined from his studies on theoretical physics, sent to forced labour camps, ridiculed by his so called equals:

But he felt more strongly the need that had brought him across the dry abyss from the other world, the need for communication, the wish to unbuild walls.

The science part of the novel relates to Shevek's preferred research subject. As I said, he is a theoretical physicist who studies the building blocks of the Universe, trying to make the transition from sequential time to synchronicity of events. It sounds complicated, but the author is more interested in the implications of said theory. As a practical effect of the theory, Shevek's equations could enable faster than light communication and travel, they could provide economic and military dominance to the country that controls them. On a metaphysical level, the same equations could redefine our place in the universe, coming close enough to religious revelation as to make no difference in the end. Again, in one of his early conversations with a 'consumerist', Shevek exclaims:

You could not seriously believe that we had no religious capacity? That we could do physics while we were cut off from the profoundest relationship man has with the cosmos?

This partner in conversation, a doctor named Kimoe, is also a fine example of the walls Shevek wishes to demolish - misconceptions and resentments and discriminations, with particular emphasis on the role of women in the Urras social order, a recurrent theme in all of Le Guin's novels:

Kimoe's ideas never seemed to be able to go in a straight line; they had to walk around this and avoid that, and then they ended up smack against a wall. There were walls around all his thoughts, and he seemed utterly unaware of them, though he was perpetually hiding behind them.

Coming back to the structure of the novel: after introducing the two societies on other side of the Wall and the hero on a quest to reconcile them (Shevek), I can only rematk on a steady progresion of disillusionment revealed through a series of flashbacks about Shevek's career on Anarres, mirrored by his equally demoralizing experiences on Urras, as his idealism comes face to face with the tenets of 'real politics'.

On Anarres, Shev as a kid proved rebelious to authority and demonstrated early both intelligence and creativity. Later as a young man, he was idealistic and enthusiastic, before a series of hard knocks opened his eyes to deep structural problems in his society. Here are a few quotes illustrating his growing awareness:

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

---

They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned.

---

The social conscience completely dominates the individual conscience, instead of striking a balance with it. We don't cooperate, we obey. We fear being outcast, being called lazy, dysfunctional, egoizing. We fear our neighbor's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice.

---

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

this passage could be one of the keys to explain the title of the novel - the transition from a culture of self-gratification and entitlement to one of voluntary adherence to a higher purpose, to focus on a sustainable future and on social rather than individual success. We come into the world with empty hands, and when we leave it we cannot take anything with us, so for the Odonians the whole concept of material possessions is irrelevant. To underline the Odonian mentality, Shevek will give a fiery speech later in the novel on the same subject, one to rival for me the discourse given by Chaplin at the end of The Dictator:

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

---

It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.

---

The will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is, and has to be trained in each individual, in each new generation. Nobody's born an Odonian any more than he is born civilized! But we've forgotten that. We don't educate for freedom. Education, the most important activity of the social organism, has become rigid, moralistic, authoritarian. Kids learn to parrot Odo's words as if they were laws - the ultimate blasphemy!

---

from his friend Bedap, on the subject of wasted lives: I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life - is anything more basic to Odonian thought than that? But nothing changes any more! Our society is sick. You know it. You're suffering its sickness. Its suicidal sickness.

---

... and finally, on the old adage that life is pain : Suffering is the condition in which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. 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. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we'll die. That's the condition we're born on. I'm afraid of life! There are times I - I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding - this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain ... If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could ... get through it, go beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self - ceases.

Shevek finds release in the beautiful, cold equations of space and time, he finds his way back to love and to devote his life to his fellow humans, to dedicate all his efforts to free them of their visible and invisible chains, to break the walls that keep them imprisoned. And because this novel is also about people, not only about how one political system might be better than another, Shevek finds peace and contenment beside the woman he loves, and their attraction is expressed in the same beautiful analogy of space and the implacable forces of gravity. Her name is Takver and she is a quiet poet of her own, singing of home and longing:

We came from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance of our sex, the difference of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back ...

In order to come back to his loved ones and to the society he wants to save from self-destruction, Shevek goes to the camp of their 'enemies', to the planet Urras where the 'propertarians' have built their own utopian society, one of thriving industry, biological diversity and prosperity. Or so it seems to Shevek in the first days among his new colleagues.

And each individual he met was a puzzle, full of surprises. But they were not the gross, cold egoists he had expected them to be: they were as complex and various as their culture, as their landscape; and they were intelligent; and they were kind.

As his stay among the rich industrialists is prolonged, so the idealized image of this new world is corroded, and its own internal strife becomes evident - in the constant struggle between sexes, in the strained relationships betheen the 'haves' and 'have nots' and ultimately in the geopolitical wars that punish any small country that tries to go its own way towards a more balanced distribution of wealth among its population. The two superpowers on the planet Urras are presented as the logical extension of the 70's trends in the US vs Russian Federation conflict - one devolves into a plutocracy, the other into a totalitarian and repressive centralized government. Here's another selection of quotes about the Urras issues:

You put another lock on the door and call it democracy.

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The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!

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The Odonian society called itself anarchistic, but they were in fact mere primitive populists whose social order functioned without apparent government because there were so few of them and because they had no neighbor states. When their property was threatened by an aggressive rival, they would either wake up to reality or be wiped out. The Benbili rebels were waking up to reality now: they were finding freedom is no good if you have no guns to back it up.

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The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

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In escaping his guides and guards he had not considered what it might be like to be on one's own in a society where men did not trust one another, where the basic moral assumption was not mutual aid, but mutual aggression.

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Is there no alternative to selling? Is there no such a thing as the gift? Do you not understand that I want to give this to you - and to Hain and the other worlds - and to the countries of Urras? But to you all! So that one of you cannot use it, as A-Io wants to do, to get power over the others, to get richer or to win more wars. So that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good.

... and with this last quote I have returned myself to the reason Shevek is more than a simple revolutionary railing againt the wrongs of the social organism. He is a poet of space and time, pointing out

“There's a crucial point, typically around the age of twenty, when one is faced with a significant choice. One must decide whether to conform and be like everybody else for the remainder of one's life, or to embrace and make a virtue of one's own peculiarities.”

Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed presented a challenge when it came to reviewing it. On one hand, I truly appreciate the ideas that Le Guin delves into and the fact that she doesn't take the easy way out. Her portrayals of utopia, for example, are not only interesting but also highly thought-provoking. However, at the same time, it's evident that these utopian depictions have their flaws. This isn't entirely unexpected. Nevertheless, it can be frustrating for the reader that the main character, Shevek, fails to see these flaws. Even though it's perhaps quite natural for individuals within a particular cultural context not to recognize the societal mechanisms that are influencing them to act in certain ways, it makes it difficult to establish a connection with him as a character. Additionally, the juxtaposed earlier story further complicates the process of getting into the flow of The Dispossessed. Our book group estimated that this didn't occur until perhaps page 131.

I'm not entirely sure exactly when it happened, but I ultimately ended up liking this book and even began rereading it. It was great that the story came full circle, but I'm not convinced that the reader can fully experience this without at least commencing a reread. I've been informed that the Hainish Cycle is very different, but I'm intrigued by how the various worlds within it connect. So, overall, I enjoyed this book, but for now, there are still some caveats. I would rate it 3.5 stars.

"If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... You need distance, interval. The way we see how beautiful the Earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."


THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974 @harperperennial


This remarkable book has been萦绕在我的心头 for days after I finished it over the weekend. It was my first encounter with Le Guin's work, and now, I truly understand the hype.

Rather than rehashing the plot, which would take an eternity, let me simply say that it's essentially a 'stranger in a strange land' tale of discovery. It delves into both inner and outer exploration, with a generous dose of anarchic political philosophy, collectivism, feminism, environmental determinism, temporal physics, and Taoism, all spiced up with a healthy helping of Zen. There are numerous -isms in the theme and plenty of 'thought experiments'. Le Guin clearly has an agenda and a plan here. Some might find it didactic and overly verbose, as if she's hitting you over the head with philosophy. However, this reader was thoroughly impressed.

Even the A-B/A-B structure of the story, with its past/present and world A/world B juxtapositions, speaks volumes. It frames the way time passes in a physical sense and the nature of the protagonist's life's work. Interestingly, the main character, Shevek, is modeled after Robert Oppenheimer.

Le Guin speculates with great depth on physics, linguistics, landscapes, and the human psyche. It's similar in theme and scope to Frank Herbert's Dune series (which I absolutely adore and is one of my all-time favorites) and the intellectual acrobatics of Ted Chiang's short stories. This book left me in awe. It's part of the larger 'Hainish Cycle', which can be read in order or independently. I'm excited to read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest in the coming months.

When I was fifteen, an aunt gave me this book, noticing my growing interest in SF. It was a nice gesture on her part, but I really had no idea what she was thinking. At that age, I simply couldn't get into this book. In fact, I gave up after about 50 pages. However, this book just wouldn't disappear. I kept receiving recommendations to read it from various websites, forums, and "all time best sf books" listings. So, eventually, I got around to giving it another try.

Skipping the synopsis entirely as I don't enjoy writing them, I have to say that this is a difficult book for me to read. It is extremely intelligent and demands a great deal of intelligence from the reader, perhaps a bit more than I possess! Some paragraphs where Le Guin is delving into political or philosophical ideas are almost unreadable for me because they go right over my head. Also, although the book isn't overly long, it's not a quick read. I initially tried to read it fast to get it over with, but then had to slow down and rewind, otherwise, there would be no point in reading it at all. The book requires patience and concentration.

In the end, this is a worthwhile read because it gave me a lot to think about, such as anarchism, our society, the way we live, tolerance, complacency, self-righteousness, and so on. However, in my opinion, this is not a book to read for pure enjoyment. Le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness" is much more enjoyable as SF while still being equally serious. If you want to read Le Guin for entertainment, her Earthsea Trilogy would be the best choice. If you're looking for cool tech and aliens, this novel isn't for you either. However, if you want something that makes you feel all contemplative, this book fits the bill very well.