The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Novel Background

• Published 1969, as a paperback by Ace
• Arguably the first widely acknowledged work of genius in science fiction
  • Le Guin foregrounds philosophical questions, denies easy answers, and presents a complex novel in an incongruous world
• Won both Nebula and Hugo in 1969
  • Le Guin would do this again in 1975 w/ The Dispossessed
  • First person to ever win both twice
  • Le Guin is a huge deal
• 1975 Poll in [Locus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_(magazine): 3rd best novel
  • After Childhood’s End and *Dune
• 1987 Poll in Locus: 2nd best novel
  • After Dune
• Novel is an example of the maturation of planetary romance
  • Same sub-genre as A Princess of Mars
  • “Any sf tale whose primary venue (excluding contemporary or Near-Future versions of Earth) is a planet, and whose plot turns to a significant degree upon the nature of that venue” – Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
  • Gary Wolfe: “Broadly, an adventure tale set on another, usually primitive, planet”
  • Le Guin’s interest in anthropology (see below) advances this sub-genre to new heights
    • Gethen is contradictory, incomplete, and dynamic, just like a real planet

Gender in SF

• One of the first novels to explicitly explore the idea of gender as alien
• As feminist science fiction developed, novel is extremely controversial
  • Usage of male pronouns for non-binary characters
  • Continued invocation of gender duality
  • Lack of portrayal of domestic life

Le Guin’s Career

• Most Famous for Three Sets of Stories / Novels:
  • Orsinia – alternate history of Western Europe (written 1950s and 1960s)
    • Could not publish these, so turned to SF
  • Hainish – SF series started in 1964, last novel in 2000
  • Earthsea – Fantasy series started in 1968, last novel in 2018
• Left Hand of Darkness is in the Hainish series
  • 9 Novels, 13 Short Stories
  • A future history, detailing expansion of humanity throughout the galaxy, first originating on the planet Hain
  • Distant past: Hain seeded colonies throughout galaxy, experimenting with genetic manipulation, such as on Gethen in Left Hand
  • Hainish Empire collapses, shared ancestry of humanity is forgotten
  • Colonies, including Earth, forget Hain
  • Hainish cycle tells stories of how human worlds get this community back
• The universe in Hainish novels is organized in Ekumen
  • derived from oikoumene (“known world” in Greek) and oikos (meaning “home”)
    • Oikos means both “house” and “economy” in Greek
    • Which is how Le Guin uses it: imagines star empire that is loose cultural and economic union of independent entities
  • key technology is “ansible,” an entanglement-based device that allows instant voice communication.
    • Other authors later use Le Guin’s ansible in their own work
• Le Guin’s father was an anthropologist and she uses anthropology as a method (see below)
  • Her novels imagine worlds as “thought experiments” (her words)
  • Left Hand of Darkness: “eliminated gender, to find out what was left”

Anthropology

• In 1911, a native American man arrived in Berkeley, CA
  • The last of his tribe, the Yahi, who had been thought extinct following a massacre in 1908
  • B/c of a cultural taboo, he could not speak his name unless introduced by another Yahi
  • Went by Ishi, which meant “man” in his language
  • Became known as “the last wild native in North America”
  • Spent final 5 years of his life explaining his culture to Alfred L. Kroeber, the director of UC Berkeley’s anthropology museum (Ishi also worked as a janitor and slept in the attic)
• Alfred L. Kroeber was Ursula K. Le Guin’s father
  • In 1961, mother Theodora Kroeber also wrote a popular book about Ishi
• Le Guin was raised around this work and was exposed early and often to the ways in which cultures develop through tradition and how these traditions come to construct a rich and compelling world view
• Another consequence of Ishi’s involvement: Edward Sapir, a graduate student who translated for Ishi, would go on to develop, with Benjamin Lee Whorf, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
  • Sapir-Whorf introduced the idea of linguistic relativity
  • Thesis suggests that structures and categories identified by our language determine the way we understand the world and how it works
  • Whorf: “We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds.”
• This idea is all over Left Hand (see “Themes” below)
• We can argue that Le Guin’s early exposure to linguistic relativism and anthropology in general strongly influences the nuanced culture we see on Gethen
  • As you read Left Hand, think about how the book differs from A Princess of Mars

Orality and Literacy

• Along similar lines, Left Hand is also interested in the differences between oral cultures and literate cultures
• Oral cultures are not without reading
  • Have their own systems of retaining information
  • But differ radically from ours
• Oral Cultures vs Literate Cultures
  1. Formulaic Style – Information must be memorable to survive
     • Milman Perry & The Odyssey
     • Perry notes that oral poetry is not structured but formulaic
     • Events happen in any order and it matters more to follow meter of song
  2. Additive Rather Than Subordinate — Information accumulates, rather than relates
     • Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said …” (Douay-Rheims translation)
     • Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said …” (New American Bible)
  3. Aggregative Rather Than Analytic
     • Information is pithy and repeatable
     • “sturdy oak tree”, “beautiful princess”, “clever Odysseus”
     • “Farmers Fight”
     • Character is determined by behavior, not abstractions (“fought many monsters” rather than “brave”)
  4. Redundant or Copious
     • Reiterate a key point or insight multiple times
  5. Conservative
     • Considerable Energy in Information Management Discourages New Ideas
     • Not willing to risk experimentation because it may not work
  6. Agonistic
     • Focused on Combat (physical and verbal)
     • Also Good vs Evil, Vice vs Virtue
     • Praise OR Blame (not both)
  7. Homeostatic
     • Information retained / structured according to present needs / relevance
     • Myths will be re-written if circumstances needing explanation have changed
  8. Situational Rather Than Abstract
     • Knowledge references world (“moon” not “circle”)
       • As in circular things are “moon-like” instead of “circular” in an oral culture
     • “hammer, saw, hatchet, log” – remove one
       • We would say “log” because it is not a tool
       • Oral culture would say “hammer” because it is not used in wood cutting
     • syllogism: “In the far north, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the far north and there is always snow there. What colour are the bears?”
       • When asked, members of an oral culture in Soviet Union inevitably responded: “I don’t know, I’ve never been there.”
     • In each case, we see that reasoning about categories is something that reading has taught us how to do

Themes

• Storytelling
  • 1 (“I’ll make my report … it is all one story”)
  • Le Guin’s novel takes the form of a technical report that is instead a story
  • Why a story? How does this relate to the novel’s interest in anthropology?
• Aliens
  • 8 (“I got off the platform … everybody else”)
  • 18 (“How could I expect … at him bewildered”)
  • Shifgrethor and alien social custom
    • 13 (“After a while … not understand it”)
    • 14 (“Estraven leaned … Mr. Ai”)
    • 84-5 (“The Envoy? … Why?”)
    • Le Guin here uses shifgrethor, which SPOILER she never explains, to show how culture is alienating to outsiders
    • What’s weird about shifgrethor is it is both alien and familiar. We’ve all missed social cues before (or maybe it’s just me) but we also never know what’s entirely going on in these scenes
  • 296 (“But they all … touched me, held me”)
    • The first quote shows Genly seeing Gethen as alien but through his experience he comes to see his colleagues as the aliens. Le Guin uses the idea of the alien to chart the way in which “alien” is not a fixed concept, something fairly novel in SF at the time.
• Gender
  • 11-12 (“Estraven had conversed … in my own attitudes toward him?”)
    • Beyond the planet without gender conceit is the deeper question in this novel: what happens when someone who does not realize how incredibly structured their thinking is by gender arrives on a planet without gender. It’s important to remember that Genly is extremely biased throughout much of the start of the book.
  • “The Question of Sex”
    • 95 (“A man … Appalling experience”)
    • 95 (“The sommer-kemmer cycle strikes … capable of culture”)
    • 96 (“I am a woman … face of the Ice”)
    • This chapter offers us the most detailed explanation of how reproduction works on Gethen but it is also fascinating in that the author turns out to be a woman, as Le Guin shows us that Genly’s sexist attitudes don’t result from his gender but from the system of gender as a whole.
• Ekumen
  • 35 (“The Ekumen is not … of the same Hearth…”)
  • 37 (“It doesn’t involve radio waves … Stabiles on Hain, sir?”)
  • Why does Le Guin portray the Ekumen in this way? Moreover, given that it is different from many of the depictions of star empires in SF history, why are empires more the norm?
• War
  • 83 (“Aye, aye, aye … own way, many times”)
  • Why is the idea that Gethen has not (yet) had a war important to this story?
  • What do you think Le Guin is trying to get at by including this plot detail?
  • As you read the rest of the novel, think about this in the context of home land and the lack of abstraction in oral cultures, especially when Estraven speaks of his love of his country and what that means.
  • The easy read on this is that war is a function of gender difference, and I don’t think Le Guin isn’t making this point, but I think there’s also something going on here about the nature of nationhood and its relationship to written culture.
• Planetary Romance & The Primitive
  • 195 (“On the contrary … We are not a sophisticated people.”)
  • Karhide is initially portrayed as technological backward and underdeveloped, but as the novel progresses we get increasing hints that there is more to this then we think and that Genly increasingly questions his own assumptions about civilization.
  • Why does Le Guin do this?
• Sapir-Whorf
  • 168-9
  • 301
• Oral Culture
  • First reference: 29 (“Karhiders do not read much … was being reread”)
  • Formulaic Style: 180 (“I would ask him … ask me for a story.”)
  • Additive Rather Than Subordinate: 275-6 (“He told it as only … friend’s dark face”)
  • Aggregative Rather Than Analytic: 300 (“I should like to hear … the other lives?”)
  • Conservative: 98 (“Winter is inimical … where they are going”)
  • Agonistic: 33 (“Though Agraven … incommunicable fact”)
  • Homeostatic: 301 (the dating system)
    • The dating system references the present rather than viewing time as a stable progression of years
  • Situational Rather Than Abstract:
    • 212 (“You hate Orgoreyn … to hold fast to the thing”)
    • 293 (“As I spoke … the whole truth”)
• Seeing
  • 107 (“The Karhidish bridge-keeper … I had just come”)
  • 112 (“It was all very mild … believed in Order”)
    • Note here and on 107 how Genly sees Orgoreyn as a modern country because they are doing things like seizing his passport. He is having a negative experience but it is familiar.
  • 141 (“It went on … power in their government”)
    • Genly can’t see how he’s being manipulated and how this set of conversations is just as loaded as shifgrethor, but he understands it
  • 167-8 (“There was little talking … nothing had seemed real”)
    • Genly realizes here what he has missed in Orgoreyn
  • 248-9 (“And I saw then again … a woman who was a man”)
    • Genly starts to see Estraven for who he is

One of the main themes of this novel is the limit of vision. Genly can’t see Gethen for what it is. He misses Estraven’s friendship until it’s too late. He misundersands Karhide and Orgoreyn. Consistently, until the end (when he sees his Hainish colleagues as aliens), he fails to see the planet because he cannot think outside his language and his culture. Ultimately, Le Guin’s novel questions and challenges the assumptions of alienness and understanding that structure much in earlier planetary romances.