Themes in The Dispossessed

Finishing up on Time (get it?)

Art's Prezi on "Paradox and Time"

Art covered the novel's discussion on time, so we won't go back over that. However, think about our understanding of time and LeGuin's point about trying to grasp the entirety of time. Even her book (p. 221) is arranged to get readers to break common linear thinking.

Consider this: You have a past before you read the novel and a future after reading the novel. The Anarresti phrase "the means are the ends" comes up a lot in the novel. What could she be trying to tell us about the events we witness, take part in, or ignore?

Also, why does the idea that suffering is a bond come up over and over in the novel? It appears essential to Shevek's personal philosophy and Odonianism.

Education

• pp. 127-8: Shevek is appalled byt the "Banking Concept" approach to education.

• p. 128: "[Shevek] liked his polite, intelligent students, but he felt no great warmth towards any of them. They were planning careers as academic or industrial scientists, and what they learned from him was to them a means to that end, success in their careers. They either had, or denied the importance of, anything else he might have offered them."

• p. 108: "Gvarab saw a much larger universe than most people were capable of seeing, and it made them blink....What she offered, what she had offered for a whole lifetime, what no one had ever shared with her, [Shevek] took, he shared He was her brother across the gulf of fifty years, and her redemption."

The State

Two worlds that seem drastically different, yet we learn that there are hierarchal power structures on Urras and Anarres.

• p. 247: "It is useless work that darkens the heart."

• p. 272: Serving the State of Urras as a Physicist
  p. 272: "The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

• Where does a State's power come from?

Family

Interesting...this is a novel that presents a radical vision of how children are raised, yet it concludes with a heteronormative view of family:

• Throughtout the novel, readers note that children aren't raised by their parents, the community "raises" them.

• Shevek's father, Palat, maintianed contact with Shevek until he died; however, Shevek's mother, Rulag, left to pursue her career early in Shevek's life.

• He sees her years later when he's sick but has no warm feelings towards her (pp. 120-125).
  "there is no comfort in the bad hour, in the dark at the foot of the wall" (p. 125)

• p. 358: "He means violence," Rulag said. "And if there is violence, you will have deserved it."
  • Knowing Rulag is Shevek's mother, why is this a surprising stance of hers?
  • p. 365: Bedap notices a peculiar resemblance between Rulag and Shevek when he looks at his face:
    "It was an intensely individual face, and yet the features were not unlike Rulag's but like many others among the Anarresti, a people selected by a vision of freedom, and adapted to a barren world, a world of distances, silences, desolations."

• p. 370: Bedap regrets not being a parent and feels, at close to 40, he might miss his chance.

Wait a minute! This novel full of radical ideas is privileging a familial relationship pattern that's not very radical. Why? Maybe we should look to Ursula LeGuin's life for an answer. Her husband was a history professor. MAybe some of Shevek's life at the Institute is bassed on her husband's life in academia.

Next Week

Keep up with your reading. You have Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah..." (1967) [Anthology pp. 405-414] and Joanna Russ's "When It Changed" (1972) [Anthology pp. 507-515] for Tuesday, 10/22.