I recently made the goal (vague aim) of practicing writing a bit more deliberately. These reviews are where I do most of it, so I have been hung up on starting my review for The Dispossessed. I wanted it to be clever and insightful and chord-striking and instead it almost ended up being nothing at all. Is this egoizing?
Anywho
I loved this book, just not at first. Or, I loved it at first and third, but not at second. Or, I was sufficiently hooked by the writing and setting in the first two chapters, but then I had a bit of a slog through exposition about how pretty trees and buildings are. Where was the action? The renegade spaceship captains?
I should have known what I was getting into, having read a few of Ursula K. Le Guin’s books before, but I think reading The Word for World is Forest (which wasn’t very good, but did have action) threw me off, and I forgot that the sciences in her science fictions are anthropology and sociology. She is the master of exploring alternative ways of human organization. Her “what ifs” are less “what if humans invented faster-than-light travel?” and more “what if there was such a thing as a functioning anarchist society (and they lived on the moon)?” And that’s the story of this book! Shevek, a brilliant and underappreciated physicist from the anarchist society on the moon, travels to Urras (the earth) in pursuit of acceptance for his ideas on faster-than-light communication. But the story isn’t about Shevek and his impact, as much as it is a thoughtful juxtaposition of two very different ways of social organization.
On the one hand you have Urras. A beautiful, abundant planet, where everyone exists in a hierarchy of wealth and status managed by totalitarian, big-brother governments. Sure, there is still conflict between the two major nations of Urras—one socialist, one capitalist—but you get the sense that this is sort of a distracting game they play, rather than a serious geopolitical conflict, and that everyone exists in a sort of post-capitalist state. The rich are happy, the poor less so, nothing ever changes.
This is contrasted with Anarres, a (somewhat) thriving society of anarchists that fled Urras 200-odd years ago to build their future on the moon (which was habitable, but not as habitable as Urras). Everyone here lives equally. There are no governments, no possessions, no laws, just brother- and sisterhood. The main motivating force being, ostensibly, the desire to be a productive member of society, but which is unpacked into a mixture of:
There is so much to unpack in this book. Communism vs. Capitalism. Communication. Feminism. Utopias. Art. Pick your perseveration. You can seriously stew on so many sections. Here are the two things I keep coming back to:
The first is the organization of the anarchist society. I had previously pictured anarchism as a bunch of people with long hair living in the woods in Appalachia, carefully creeping to the market every Sunday, avoiding roving tribes of bandits in biker vests, to trade their bags of chestnuts for plastic water bottles of gasoline. This book introduced me to a whole different kind of anarchism, one that (I have since come to learn) is more similar to the academic perception of anarchism, and less similar to Kentucky Mad Max. Her vision is of a society that is anti-government but also anti-possession. Anti-hierarchy but not anti-organization. Ursula K. Le Guin thoughtfully and critically explores what would drive people in such a society: how would they organize around tasks that require more than one person? Who does the shitty jobs? You start off believing that Anarres is a utopia, where humans are liberated and capable of working only for the common good, where art and individuality are celebrated, etc., but she slowly makes you aware that it is still troubled by greed and possessiveness and bureaucracy, and leaves you questioning which of our follies are inescapable parts of human nature.
The second thing I keep coming back to is the structure of the book. It was so masterfully done. Shevek speaks of journeys being both circular and linear. “You can go home… as long as you understand that home is a place you’ve never been” (a la “you can’t step in the same river twice” - Heraclitus - Disney’s Pocahontas). This book is about Shevek’s journey. It starts with Shevek leaving home, and ends with him arriving home. But the chapters alternate between different points in his life, so as he is slowly learning that all that glitters on Urras is not gold, and making his way home from Urras to Anarres, he is also leaving Anarres for Urras and learning that all that glitters on Anarres is not gold. The alternate chapters start with him being home, and end with him leaving home. The end and the beginning of the book are the same point, but Shevek is different. Or maybe he is the same, and you are the one in a different river.
A fantastic book. You should be forced to write essays on it in high school.