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The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin Book Club
126 Plays1 year ago
What happens in utopia 200 years later? Caroline and Carly discuss how utopian ideals survive entropy and scarcity and what it takes for a person to be able to objectively evaluate another society.
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Transcript
Introduction and Spoiler Alert
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello listeners, this is your spoiler warning. We will be spoiling the dispossessed and any other books from this season. Also, there may be brief discussion of a sexual assault that occurs in the book, so take care.
00:00:18
Speaker
No, it is not wonderful. It is an ugly one. Not like this one. Anaras is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren't beautiful. They have big hands and feet. They get very dirty and they take baths together. No one here does that. The towns are very small and dull. They are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull and hard work. You can't always have what you want or even what you need because there isn't enough.
00:00:45
Speaker
You Urosti have enough, enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own, we are poor, we lack. You have, we do not. Everything is beautiful here, only not the faces. On Inara's nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces.
00:01:06
Speaker
The other faces, the men and women, we have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see jewels, there you see the eyes, and in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free, possessing nothing, they are free. And you, the possessors, are possessed. You are in jail.
Initial Reactions: Is The Dispossessed a Utopia?
00:01:27
Speaker
Welcome to the Book Club podcast. Today we are discussing The Dispossessed, an Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm Caroline, and the dispossessed, which is ambiguously utopic that's in the subtitle, caused me to realize that I am perhaps too easily enthralled by any vision of a completely revolutionized society.
00:01:50
Speaker
I'm Carly and I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, still trying to figure them out. I was expecting a utopia and it, you know, I, I did not find a utopia in this book. And so I'm a bit frustrated by that.
Anaris: A Utopian Society?
00:02:05
Speaker
We'll discuss that.
00:02:06
Speaker
The story begins on the planet Inaris, which has a twin planet named Urus. The settlers of Inaris were part of a rebellion on Urus, seeking a society based on no government and no laws, but rather based on brotherhood and mutual aid.
00:02:21
Speaker
And here on Inaris, 170 years later, there are no governments, no laws, no police, no charity, no economic exploitation, no possessions. These settlers left Urus more than a hundred years before Shevik, the main character, was born. And they follow the teaching of a woman named Odo. They study her philosophical works religiously and hold each other to an ideal standard of Odeonism.
00:02:46
Speaker
They prohibit Urosti from coming onto Inaris, although they do trade with Urostis for Metal's mind on Inaris.
00:02:54
Speaker
So Shevik, the main character, is a brilliant physicist who grows up on Inares. And when he and his friends are around 12 years old, they learn in school that there's such a thing called prison on Earth. There's no prison on Inares. They make up a prison in a basement room, and one of the boys volunteers to be the prisoner. They leave him in the dark, sealed room for over a day, even though they can hear him yelling for help at one point.
00:03:18
Speaker
And their friend comes out of their play prison okay, but they never talk about it again. And this is Shevik's one experience with violence.
Shevik's Journey and Academic Struggles
00:03:27
Speaker
Shevik studies physics. He soon discovers that academic syndicate is subject to power plays from his less capable teacher Sabu. And although he is able to communicate with physicists on Eurus occasionally, and through them he receives physics texts from the other known planets, which are Terra and Hain.
00:03:46
Speaker
Shevak meets Takfer and they become a monogamous couple. She works as a fish geneticist and they have a daughter as a drought causes food and water shortages across Inaras. Shevak increasingly frustrated that he can't publish his paper on simultaneity, takes a work assignment outside of the city to help with food production. He comes back after 60 days to find his partner and daughter gone to a remote area
00:04:11
Speaker
where Takfer's specialty with fish will help with famine mitigation. Shevik and Takfer find themselves separated for the four years of the drought. When they come back together, they form a new printing syndicate with some friends to print Shevik's physics paper and a play written by his childhood friend Tiran.
00:04:29
Speaker
Their new syndicate becomes the center of a rebellion on Inaris, in part because they propose allowing visitors from Urus. As part of this movement, Shevik decides to go to Urus for the opportunity to work with physicists there to develop his theory of simultaneity.
Cultural Clash and Intellectual Pursuits
00:04:45
Speaker
When Shevik arrives on Earth, he's welcomed as a celebrity because he has won awards for previous physics papers. He takes a post at a university and is taken on tours of the country. He is deeply offended by the culture of ownership.
00:05:01
Speaker
The word propertarian is an insult on Inaris. He is disgusted by opulent clothing and jewelry. He doesn't understand hierarchy, so titles like doctor and sir make no sense to him. Women on Urus are not allowed to have profession. It's not clear if these customs are practices all over Urus or only in the city where Shevik is staying. He hears about Odonians on Urus, but he's not permitted to socialize with people outside of the small circle of physicists at the university.
00:05:28
Speaker
He becomes friends with one colleague and visits the colleague's home, where he gets to spend time with the colleague's family, a wife, and two sons. He also meets the colleague's sister, Villa, finds himself disgusted with the university and develops his theory of simultaneity, but doesn't want to share it with the government on Urus because they will use his theory to build weapons. He tries to run away from the university, and when he gets lost, he calls Villa, his colleague's sister. They spend the day together shopping and eating expensive meals before attending Villa's party.
00:05:58
Speaker
Shevik gets drunk and acts shamefully. He experiences his first hangover the next day. He eventually finds the underground rebellion with the help of his servant. They ask him to write about Inars and speak at a protest.
Rebellion and Sharing of Knowledge
00:06:10
Speaker
The police violently attack the protesters. Shevik ends up hiding in a warehouse with a man who eventually dies of blood loss. He is able to find friends that get him to the Terran embassy.
00:06:20
Speaker
And he asked the Terran ambassador to share his theory of simultaneity with all the countries on Earth and the other planets so that no one group can exploit it to gain power over the others.
Impact of Shevik's Return to Anaris
00:06:31
Speaker
In exchange, the ambassador arranges for him to get back to Nars. The book ends with Shevik on the spaceship returning home with news that the rebellion has grown.
00:06:40
Speaker
One of the crew members asked if he can join Chevik Ananaris and Chevik agrees. This will be the first new person Ananaris in 170 years.
Is Anaris Truly Utopian?
00:06:48
Speaker
The book ends with Chevik preparing to disembark, his hands empty as they always had been. So I think the necessary question for this book is
00:06:58
Speaker
How is Inaris a utopia and how is it not? If you find it to be a utopia at all. From our conversations and preparation for this, I'm not sure you find anything about it to be utopic.
00:07:11
Speaker
Well, and we have some excellent examples of utopias in the previous books we've read, right? So they've already expanded my idea of what a utopia could be. And so unfortunately, comparing them to the city of San Francisco and the fifth sacred thing and ecotopia, like Inaris does not sound that great.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I think a part of that, which I think is really fascinating is that Anaris is 170 years old, right? Like it's older than those communities. And so it has had time to suffer from entropy. And they also started from a point of scarcity. Like there's just, there's not enough plant life and animal life
00:07:52
Speaker
to create an abundant lifestyle, which I think is because one of the things I had in the back of my mind during those other books is like, oh, it's funny how these utopias happen in the Pacific Northwest where there's lots of tall trees and verdant life and it's just like a beautiful paradise, right? Right. So it's interesting to see a utopia in a place that doesn't have those natural features. I think in the other utopias, part of what made them utopic was that everyone's needs were met.
00:08:18
Speaker
you know, for housing, for food, for self-development, for artistic variety, all of that. Whereas here in Anaris, baseline needs are mostly met, but what they really offer is that if your needs aren't being met, like for food or housing, there is no one else who is. So if there is suffering or famine, we're all sharing it. And they say repeatedly, no one on Anaris goes hungry when others go without. They don't say that no one goes hungry, right? It's just a shared state.
00:08:47
Speaker
I think he has a realization when he's a kid or a teenager, he says that brotherhood is formed in suffering and then he repeats that when he's on earth giving a speech to the protesters. I just don't like that at all. I don't like the idea that brotherhood has to come from suffering. What else would it come from?
Character Analysis: Shevik's Perspective
00:09:13
Speaker
from just the existence of people as social creatures. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with that, with you, not with Shevik. It seems like you can have brotherhood both as a conscious choice or just because people are social beings or because people are wonderful and interesting, right? I don't think it has to be suffering, but that is definitely the Inaris model of brotherhood.
00:09:41
Speaker
Right, and I think it comes from the fact that they had to band together to survive just those first few decades on the planet. They had to come together and share. But I wonder if this tells us more about Shevik in particular, rather than all of Anaris, that the idea that suffering has to happen to feel brotherhood.
00:10:02
Speaker
His personality, he's always feels isolated. You know, he's never feels truly connected to other people. I think that's just his personality. And so when he does feel connection, it's through suffering. I don't know if that's true for everyone else on Inara's, even his closest friends. He is kind of an odd narrator in a number of ways. And you pointed this out. My reading was kind of casual in that he was, I thought he was kind of a neutral narrator.
00:10:30
Speaker
He's not particularly emotional, I think in general, and maybe even not particularly compassionate, which you pointed out. And so, yeah, maybe he is not a good understanding of how people connect anywhere, but particularly on Inaris. Which is bizarre because I think Le Guin is a very skilled writer. So why would she give us this character to tell us this story? I'm still puzzling over that. Say more about why you didn't like Shevik.
00:10:59
Speaker
Well, when he's on Earth, he's just so incredibly judgmental. He makes no effort to understand why people on Earth are different from people on a nurse. He has his judgments, which come from a teaching that was rebelling against society on Earth. So of course, there's a lot of criticism. He is a devout Odonian.
00:11:24
Speaker
So he has read Odo's papers and criticisms about her society, and she was the inspiration for people leaving Urus to form a new society based on her principles. And so of course, like when you're starting from that perspective, it's all about criticism of the origin. But like, I mean, he's a physicist, he's not a social scientist, he's not an artist. So it makes some sense that he wouldn't
00:11:49
Speaker
have the skills to kind of interpret. It feels like he thinks that people on Earth are incapable of caring for each other. In the first chapter, he has a doctor who's kind of his guide on the spaceship traveling from Inaris to Urus. And the doctor is like, oh, you have no religion on Inaris. And he's like, of course we have religion. It's just not the Institute of Church, the way that people on Earth see it.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so he's quick to call out the criticism about them not seeing things from the Inaris perspective, but then he doesn't understand that brotherhood can still exist on Earth because it's a quality of humanity, not purely a quality of societal structure, and that societal structure has to match Inaris in some way. So it's a closed-mindedness, and I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what that is.
00:12:41
Speaker
No, I think you're right. I mean, he sort of has an attitude that everything is miserable on Urus and the people aren't rebelling. They aren't being good revolutionaries. And so he has no respect for them. As opposed to understanding, people are trying to do the best they can with individual lives and what they understand is their possibilities and obligations, right? As is true of people anywhere. And sure, it may be short-sighted,
00:13:10
Speaker
in some political way, but it's not bad. It's just kind of human to be focused on what's around you and trying to do the best within that small world.
00:13:20
Speaker
I want to read this quote
Social Challenges in Anaris
00:13:22
Speaker
from when they were kids and they're looking up at Urus. And so I'm going to say some names of Shevik's friends who I think are fascinating characters, Tyrion and Badap. So, I never thought before, said Tyrion, of the fact that there are people sitting on a hill up there on Urus looking at Anaris, at us, and saying, look, there's the moon.
00:13:45
Speaker
Our earth is their moon. Our moon is their earth. Where then is truth, declaimed Badaap and yawned. In the hill, what happens to be sitting on, said Tiran. It's like these are the friends that Shevak has into adulthood. And I just love this. Like, first of all, they're brilliant teenagers because to have this philosophical conversation, where is the truth? It's on the hill. What happens to be sitting on? Shevak has access to this kind of wisdom as a child and he doesn't use it when he travels to Urus.
00:14:15
Speaker
True, but I think part of that is that his own society runs so strongly on social opprobrium, right? Because there's no laws, there's no police, there's no force. And so everything people do comes down to norms, social norms, right? And so wouldn't that create someone who's pretty judgmental and mentally inflexible, right?
00:14:42
Speaker
Sure, I can see that. I could also see a person wanting to understand the social norms of where they're at so that they could fit in. But nobody thinks of their own social norms as social norms. They think of them as the morally right way to do things. Social norms using that word already implies some relativism.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't like that attitude. Also, okay, so he has this attitude of he's coming from the superior civilization, but throughout his youth and young adulthood, he's unhappy, you know, like he's not seeing brotherhood. His desire to study theoretical physics is thwarted, and he was struggling with trying to identify why
00:15:28
Speaker
His society seemed to not be working or that was my impression of his time on on ours. That's interesting. I didn't think he was unhappy Okay, because he's described throughout his adolescence as having a number of friends and the activities they do together he is sort of described as often his own head thinking his physics thoughts like he sort of self alienates is way too strong a phrase like he goes off by himself and has
00:15:59
Speaker
the thoughts that a genius would have, right? And his friends don't always understand him, but he does seem to have a lot of friends. He seems kind of like an odd duck is how I thought of it, at least certainly in his adolescence and early adulthood. There were things that happened later, like when he meets his partner and they end up being separated for four years. That's very clearly a loss.
00:16:20
Speaker
But before that, I don't know that I would say he was unhappy in any way, like in general, and especially not in any way that was caused by his society. Okay. Yeah, I think I'm fixating on, you know, very soon he arrives to study under Sabul and writes a paper that's brilliant, and Sabul has it published with his own name on it. And so, right, Shevik's desire to be able to work in these advanced physics,
00:16:46
Speaker
But there's like a political machination happening. And then when he learns that Sabul's brilliance is because Sabul was copying physicists from other worlds, but the people at an artist didn't know that. So he kind of loses respect for that. And then so he's not able to excel in physics, which seems to be mostly what he cares about until he meets Tackbert.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, but it's kind of a slow burn, right? Because pretty much the entire time he continues to be able to study physics, like his ability to do it on a daily basis hasn't been impeded. What has been impeded is his ability to publish and get credit for his work.
00:17:25
Speaker
and teach classes at the university, because those are all things that require other people's agreement. But he's still in a society where all his needs are taken care of and he can choose to just devote every day to physics and he will still have a place to sleep and things to eat. Right. Sure. I thought that was interesting too, that he wants the credit so badly. Like that felt propertarian. Like why is it the idea? That's true. Yeah. But there are
00:17:52
Speaker
awards, like quote unquote, on NRS, you can be a well known singer or artist or physicist, right? That's okay. It's not okay to be well known for being the best dress or having the best house, but you can get status for those other things, right? And that's okay. Or maybe not, actually, it's kind of unclear.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah, the majority has to support you. You can't be beloved by a minority, it seems. I'm thinking of what happens to his friend Turin, who writes a play, and it's kind of a subversive play, which I'm bouncing all over the place.
00:18:29
Speaker
But I wanted to talk about Tyrin. When they're playing the prison game, they're like, what is this thing called prison? And Tyrin is like, oh, it's this thing. So they find this room that they can lock up as a prison. And people volunteer to be the prisoner. And Tyrin's like, you're crazy. Why would you want to do that? And it describes him. He never realized that imagination does not suffice some people. They must get into this cell. They must try to open the unopenable door.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I wonder if that's why his play doesn't work because he's creating an imagined situation in his play, but there are too many people on Inaris who don't understand that it's just an idea and he has no intent to make it reality in some way. I don't know. Did that stand out to you at all? That passage didn't, but it's an interesting idea. I mean, are they less capable of imagination than other societies? I think it is actually possible because it's
00:19:27
Speaker
a very uniform society, not just in the social norms, but in, I mean, there's just one culture here at Inaris. There's not subcultures. There's not, you know, different ethnicities or groups of people with different history or anything like that. It didn't even seem like there was such a thing as neighborhoods that you would take pride in being a part of because everyone was pretty mobile and they'd stay here and work here for a while and then move to the next town.
00:19:53
Speaker
and stuff like that. And I'm just thinking maybe that in general contributes to a lack of mental flexibility and a lack of imagination such that when they confront art, they can't do it in a disinterested, open-minded way. Does that make sense? Is that a stretch?
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. So what happens is he tries to apply for postings to continue and improve his writing and his artistry, but he doesn't get approved by the central planning computer.
Freedom vs. Conformity in Anaris
00:20:23
Speaker
And he gets sent to these postings that kind of wear him down and eventually gets sent to an insane asylum, which technically looks like he requested to be sent there.
00:20:34
Speaker
Right. There's some debate about that because allegedly you can't be forced to go there. You have to request it because you feel you need therapy or healing. Right. Yeah. But there are ways to force people to go there.
00:20:47
Speaker
Right. And so that becomes a major point that eventually Shavok and Badab form this new syndicate to kind of try and change the way that works and make it more acceptable to refuse a posting if you don't want a posting because it's never
00:21:05
Speaker
It's never really explicitly rejected, like people will disappear from postings, but they never explicitly reject a posting, even though technically in the law, they are free to do so. Right. And yeah, and so just to be clear for the listeners, there is, I think in each town and then also
00:21:23
Speaker
quote unquote nationally, a group of people who will offer postings. They'll go to someone like Shevik's wife and say, you have this expertise. It's needed here. And it's totally voluntary, right? She can say no. But at this point, 170 years after the revolution, nobody says no. So it does have binding force. And that's part of what Shevik and his friend are trying to undermine. They're trying to go back to the original ideals of freedom, where people
00:21:52
Speaker
actually feel empowered to say no to this allegedly voluntary thing. Yeah. Do you want to talk some more about details about Inara's? Yeah, actually there's one that just came to mind because it's relevant to this conversation. So Tyrin gets sent to an insane asylum and there's a brief discussion there of something that is not prison, but it is where people go when they have committed some crime.
00:22:19
Speaker
And it is a place where they live apart somewhat in isolation with other people who have committed crime. And remember, it's not really crime because there's no laws, but they've maybe committed some act of violence that makes them unfit for society. But it is framed in people go there because that's where they'll be safe from all the people who are angry with them for the crime they have committed. Do you remember that?
00:22:44
Speaker
Yes, yes. And there was some comment, I don't know if it was in the same spot, but some comments about how neighbors may take it on their own to justify. If your neighbor created a crime against you or someone you love, some people take personal vengeance.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, there's this suggestion that limited interpersonal violence still happens and is essentially okay. There's a point where Shevit gets in a fistfight with someone when he's 18-ish, and it's not really based on anything. They just kind of fight it out. They don't really hurt each other because they're evenly matched.
00:23:22
Speaker
People walk by, see it happening and see it's a fair fight and not an interesting one. They just keep walking. Right. Yep. So there's this. Yeah. So there's some interpersonal violence. It can't be outlawed. There's no laws. And they apparently find that it actually has some useful, quote unquote, useful effects in that you don't want to commit a crime because then people might want to beat you up, which is OK as long as it's fair.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah. And that was just a mention, right? Just a couple words here and there about that. It's interesting to have the word for work and play is the same in their language, but then there's another word for drudgery. And so there are plenty of work postings that are drudgery, like going out and working in the dusty fields where it's just very dry. People have, uh, get a cough from breathing in the dust and having their lungs inflamed.
00:24:17
Speaker
And so we've talked about evaluating societies and like, what do people who are sort of disenfranchised, how are they treated? How are the sick? How are the elderly? How are the criminals treated? And are they treated humanely? And we don't get a picture of like, are these criminals given drudgery until they die? Like, because people can also volunteer for those posts, it's not seen as
00:24:42
Speaker
inhumane or coercive, but it's not clear to me whether that's true. Because there is some coercive element to these postings. That's true. And that's one of the things Shevik and his friends start to notice and rebel against. It seems like there are some non-coincidental postings to raise questions. And then all of a sudden, they get a posting at the edge of the known world that's a really dire posting that goes on for six months, right?
00:25:08
Speaker
Can we talk about how they thought about waste in this society? Sure.
00:25:16
Speaker
I mean, they were just so aware of it. Yeah, I have a lot of feelings. Go on, go on, tell me. No, no. Well, no, please, please set the seat of like, yeah, the way that Inara's views waste. I mean, because they don't have a lot. Yeah, they don't have a lot. The resources are stretched very thin as it is. So if someone is wasting resources, which could be anything from food, like eating too much food or paper, you know, using paper on something, you know, you
00:25:45
Speaker
didn't need to write or didn't really think through even transportation or housing. They're very aware of it. They have a phrase that's something along the lines of waste is poison and poison that stays in the body kills you. And it's like a metaphor for the body politic, I think. I kind of mangled the exact quote, but it's a common one. And they have an internalized sense of shame about spending more than they should, you know, whatever that means for whatever that resource is.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, and that expands to sickness. I guess he gets something like the flu or pneumonia or something, and he refuses some medication. The idea of waste or indulgence has sort of expanded to being sick and taking medication. Right, and taking time off work from his postings.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yes, that reminds me, it made me so angry. Takfer, she has her nursing child. She's working on these fish farms to cultivate food because there's a drought and a famine. And she nurses her daughter and tell her daughter's three because she's like, well, we don't have a lot of other food. Like there wasn't much to wean her onto. Like if I weaned her off the breast milk, I didn't have good food to offer her. So yeah, she breastfed her.
00:27:02
Speaker
longer and she gets shamed for that by her colleagues. Her colleagues want her to put her daughter in the nursery so that she can work more. And that is infuriating. So thinking that that is a waste when my first thought is, oh, you have a child who needs to eat and breastfeeding seems more efficient. Right.
00:27:21
Speaker
But her colleague's point of view was, hey, the work you're doing could help everyone because we're suffering from this famine. And so this is kind of self-indulgent of you to put your child's health before everyone else. And it's hard to even think that. It seems obvious that, of course, she would do that.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah. We've talked about the social shaming and the social norms, but there are plenty of characters who violate these things in small ways, not necessarily large ways because it still is a human society with some diversity. For example, one of the resources is housing. Housing is freely available. There are dormitories and then there are standalone houses and what sounded like apartments. They're all small because again, there's not much extra wood and resources to waste in the building of these
00:28:10
Speaker
buildings, but generally single people stay in the dormitories because it would be wasteful for a single person to have a house to themself. But one of Chevick's neighbors is a single woman in a house, one of his neighbors once he's paired up. And there's a mention of like, she's just been getting away with this for years. Her neighbors are kind of annoyed by it, but there's no one to enforce it. And whenever she's asked about it, she'll say something vague about, you know, her boyfriend, he's taken a posting away, but he'll be back in a couple months.
00:28:38
Speaker
to justify that she has this house, and he never comes back, so he probably doesn't exist. I don't know, I like the details of, yeah, people break the rules all the time, just not often enough and in large enough numbers to undermine this system.
00:28:53
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, that's fair. And I do like the idea of Sheva can work for so many days on physics, and then he can go do a work assignment someplace else. And I like that idea of that freedom to switch back and forth and go where you're most needed. Oh, you're not getting anywhere with your physics work. Go do physical labor for a while. I like that flexibility. So that seems like a good
00:29:22
Speaker
aspect of the society. Right. That part was kind of ideal. And he also says, and you can choose not to do anything. And there's mentioned throughout of people, I think they have a word for them, people who do. They just kind of float along on the system and don't really contribute proportionate to what they take out. And those people aren't respected and they end up having to move around a lot because nobody really bonds with them because they're not contributing. They're kind of parasites.
00:29:49
Speaker
Uh, but they're there. I mean, this society hasn't conquered human nature. Right. Was there anything else about the world building specifically that stood out to you? It becomes important later in the story. I don't know if we gave a lot of time to that in the summary, but they are aware of planets,
Exploring the Broader Universe
00:30:04
Speaker
Terra and Hain. Terra is Earth. Yes. So it's kind of interesting. Like I don't know how, like when is, is imagining this is like, is this a million years into the future or is this like spontaneous human evolution happened on other planets?
00:30:18
Speaker
You know, she, and it wasn't clear to me until the end of the book that she describes what she described. Shevak is very hairy, but I wasn't quite clear that like, Oh, they, she says furry for their baby. I can't remember her name, their daughter. I can't remember either. The names are stick in my head at all. Yeah. So you think they were kind of ape-like or something?
00:30:42
Speaker
No, I think they just had like fur all over. Oh, I totally missed that. When he reconnects with Takavir and their daughter and he sees her, she's like five years old. He's like, she was a little furry. And then it wasn't until at the end when he meets the Terran ambassador and describes how she's different from both Anorresti and Urosti. And I was like, oh, because I know that she's actually from Earth. She's from Delhi.
00:31:05
Speaker
And he describes her and is like, oh, I think this whole time I was supposed to be imagining that the anoresti as like literally like fur and the the Urosti shave. And he talks about the women like with their shaved heads. But like they're like maybe it's because they like they shave everything. Oh, I miss that. That's interesting. OK.
00:31:25
Speaker
There are other aliens, and the Hainish have developed a type of interstellar travel, and they kind of have an advanced, they have the oldest and most advanced society, and they consider the physics of the Urostes mysticism. They call it mysticism or something like that. Right, because they're so advanced.
00:31:44
Speaker
And that's in chevick wants to study their physics like that's one of the main reasons he's like wanting to communicate more with well it's anaris has set the requirement that they don't talk to outsiders they have built the wall right that shut everybody out and at first i was wondering is this a penal colony but no it's what they they said i chose it yeah yeah it's a prison in a certain way
00:32:05
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And so that idea of prison, because when they're kids, they play this prison game and that was really striking to me. And I thought that was really, really fascinating that the kids are like, just completely surprised by this idea of prison. And then it's a word that comes up over and over again, throughout the story of like, Shavok hates the idea of prison. When he's on Earth, there's a, there's a rebellion in another country and prisoners there are released.
00:32:34
Speaker
And, like, that makes me a little uncomfortable. Like, I don't assume that all prisoners are completely innocent, you know? Or, like, there's a saying that he shares that if you create laws, that's how you create crime. And it's like, you know, even on Anaris, like, if you commit violence against someone,
00:32:53
Speaker
Okay, so no one owns property, so there's no such thing as stealing, which is interesting. I don't know if I can suspend my disbelief that there are people who just like to take because they like the power of taking from others. I don't know if you get rid of that. I don't know either. It is notable for how fully described Inaris is that there's no description of
00:33:14
Speaker
a sexual assault or a murder or any of these things that are definitely crimes, regardless of whether or not there is a law that calls them a crime.
Gender Dynamics and Societal Norms
00:33:25
Speaker
right so yeah so he's he's it seems like a very simplistic view that chevick is like oh they've broken through the prisons and that's a good thing like i i don't know if that's a good thing i'd have to know why people were in prison before i know if that's a good thing so he spends the day with via and you know just extravagant like she's just the ideal urosti woman she's
00:33:46
Speaker
opulent and wealthy and she decorates herself. They go to an art museum and they go out to lunch and she never pays because she's a woman and doesn't own money. She only has access to her husband's money.
00:34:03
Speaker
And and then she throws a party. But of course, the party is organized by her caterer and her housekeeper. She doesn't actually work to throw the party. But she has a party and Sheva gets really drunk. He gives a speech, which is part of our opening quote. You know, so he's talking openly and he's very he's trying to escape. Like he's already said he's trying to escape the city where he's in and try to find some rebels. And so he's kind of like loose with his words and he keeps drinking.
00:34:32
Speaker
And then he sexually assaults Veya and then the next day he is hungover and he feels like his face gets red and he thinks about that as a shameful act and then he's done with it and he says no more guilt, he doesn't feel guilty. He's put himself in prison, he's in a prison of his own making by coming to Urus and he needs to now figure out how to act like a free man in prison.
00:34:57
Speaker
And it's just using the word prison again in that instance that draws my attention, that it leads him to refuse all guilt for his bad behavior, his reprehensible behavior, and then try to not be a prisoner anymore. I'm not sure what to make of that. Do you have any? I wasn't sure either.
00:35:17
Speaker
And it's not like this decision to set aside his guilt comes with any sort of resolution to cure the harm he caused or resolve to do better or anything like that that I would consider part of the package of deciding not to feel guilty for something you did in the past. Maybe there's a suggestion, because his interactions with her are, I think, supposed to be symbolic of male-female interactions on this planet, or at least he
00:35:46
Speaker
It is continually mentioned that she's the ideal woman, like you said. And so I wonder if there's an element of this, the way they interact is already so messed up from just the rules of life in the society. He can't understand it. Like that's a Gordian knot he would have to cut to understand exactly where his guilt started and how much of it was the setting. And so maybe he just says, I'm not going to do that. Like that mental effort is just a distraction.
00:36:14
Speaker
That makes me like him even less than I did. He's not likable.
00:36:22
Speaker
I didn't dislike him as much as you did, but he's not likable. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that a morality that can be so confused by, by your situation is not a real morality. Like he's kind of scornful of the idea that on Uris women aren't allowed to have professions or be in the university. And they're there. He's told explicitly that women aren't able to think.
00:36:49
Speaker
That's clearly right. But he doesn't examine that any deeper, that like why women, he kind of notices that he misses having conversations with women when he goes and visits his friend and gets to spend time with his friend and his wife and their two kids. And he misses that kind of familial situation, which on a nurse, you're not as segregated. Like you work physics, but then you also do
00:37:15
Speaker
where you're working to help maintain the community, like growing food and connecting with other people. And I think that would be healthier than having everyone super segregated the way they are in Urus. But I don't know, he doesn't do any sort of deeper interrogation to why women should also be included in brotherhood, because that is very much a part of an Arus society, that women are included in brotherhood. Well, I think it's such a given for him, right?
00:37:45
Speaker
point taken, he could explain it a little better and analyze the way it's given. I think one of the things he definitely didn't do was understand how people exist in this very unequal and at times problematic society and what that means about the individual choices people are making within that context. Right? So he's kind of
00:38:08
Speaker
even though he spends all this time with her and seems to enjoy her company. And there's several moments where she manages things at the party, like to prevent a disagreement and make it continue to be charming and pleasant.
00:38:21
Speaker
There are things about her interactions with him where she's, you know, highly flirtatious, but expects him to pay that to me just go to this is a smart woman. She's fitting in the niche that is offered to her. She should be able to do more and have more.
00:38:37
Speaker
That's a great statement, but let's also just appreciate that she's doing well within the confines that she can, and she's exercising creativity and agency within those confines. He doesn't seem to really consider that. He seems to be puzzled that he likes her, even though she's an example of such a degraded, proprietary woman, right? Instead of just saying, hey, there can be things you can respect about people, even if their circumstances are circumstances you think shouldn't exist.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, they have a conversation where they're talking about, Villa is saying that Odonians are still slaves. Like, even though they don't have laws or like institutionalized oppression, they're slaves to the oppressor in their own head. And Shevik is like, it's better to have it in your head rather than outside your head.
00:39:25
Speaker
Um, and then also in that conversation via says she doesn't care about other people. She wants to be free. And so I was kind of, anytime there's a mention of like what free means in this book, I was kind of, kind of sparked my attention. So this idea that having obligations to other people is a type of oppression.
Perceptions of Freedom: Anaris vs. Urus
00:39:43
Speaker
And Shevak says, no, people are social creatures. We can only be free when we're serving each other. I think both of them are extremes and there needs to be some meeting in the middle.
00:39:54
Speaker
but i thought that was interesting from her perspective and the life that she's living and she is a relatively powerful woman she sees a lack of freedom because she has to to think about other people yeah i mean she has achieved a good deal like possibly the most freedom she can for
00:40:12
Speaker
being a woman on earth. She's wealthy. Her husband travels a lot. This is a small time of freedom, but she has the freedom to throw a party and other people put it together. She's free from certain costs. She's free to do things. She spends all day out at museums with Shevik last minute.
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, sleeping till noon, wearing beautiful things. But you were saying there should be a middle ground possible between freedom is freedom from other people and we are social people and we wouldn't be anyone if we were all by ourselves alone.
00:40:51
Speaker
Right. Like I think we saw that really clearly illustrated in the fifth sacred thing when he was imprisoned in the South and he's suffering with his experience of having been in prison and being physically injured and the other partners in his polyamorous relationship. They're like,
00:41:07
Speaker
You need to share this with us. Like you need to release it and let us share. That kind of says to me that like, yes, we need to rely on other people. He was ashamed. He was separating himself because he didn't want to share his pain. But like he needed to share his pain and they wanted to take that on with him because they care about him.
00:41:25
Speaker
And that's related to sex in that book a lot too because when Bird was in the South and having sex, he missed a level of real connection with his sexual partners in the South because they didn't know how to have sex in that way. And so when he returns home and has sex with his polyamorous
00:41:44
Speaker
family. And there is real true connection. It's interesting because I think she really explained that really well in that book of like, it's bittersweet, but it's also healing. But it's not just pleasure. There's also pain in that kind of sharing and connection. Interesting. Is there freedom in it?
00:42:02
Speaker
Well, yeah. And the one thing I really like about this book is she almost never says that one thing is free or one society is free. It's always in context. It's like when Shevak goes to university as a young person on a Nares, he kind of loses himself in his studies. Like he's free to just study all the time. He doesn't even eat. And that's how he ends up getting sick eventually. And it was like a freedom. A freedom to do physics obsessively in a way that ended up
00:42:31
Speaker
hurting him. Right. And limiting his life, right? Right. And so after that, he starts joining more of the work groups and other clubs, and going to more lectures, because he had to learn the hard way that it wasn't healthy to just do physics all the time. So I think that gets to the whole concept of trade offs, which, which we've talked about throughout, like, choose your freedom, would you rather be free, like Veya to like throw parties and we're
00:42:59
Speaker
extravagant clothes and, but you are sort of reliant on a husband, even though the husband is absent a lot of the time, like, or would you rather be free? Like tack for who like works with fish to feed people. Would you like the freedom of being equal to everyone around you? But there's a greater risk of famine.
00:43:18
Speaker
and certainly, you know, fewer material goods. I mean, these are all trade-offs. Our opening quote, which talked about the only thing beautiful on Inaris is the eyes of other people because they're free, right? They're free and they're self-realized and they have sort of a splendor and a dignity of their own. To me, that encapsulates so much about solar punk and potential trade-offs, right?
00:43:45
Speaker
it's particularly stark in this example. I mean, Inaris is ugly. There are no birds. There's no bird song. You can technically read and study everything, but there's just not as many books and pieces of music and things like that because it's just a poor society. They can't provide those resources. What are the trade-offs that feel good? You can be proud that your society treats everyone well, or at least treats everyone equally, even if nobody is
00:44:15
Speaker
really doing well? I don't know. How do you make these choices? I don't know. I think with the drought, I think would it really violate Inaris as a society to open themselves to trade more with Urus and receive water from Urus during a drought? You know, we do learn that the famine got bad enough. You know, Shevik is traveling on a train from whatever distant post he was at and
00:44:42
Speaker
talks with train driver that like about yes some trains carrying food were raided by people like people in the community saw a train filled with food going to another community and they raided it and he talks about one of the other train drivers actually like driving over some of the people and escaping them like this choice of there are people starving in both of these places and
00:45:05
Speaker
And to count and categorize, these people are more deserving of this food when there's not enough to go around. That's a terrible decision to have to make. And my solution is, Anaris, you have some mining metals, trade some metals and bring some water and bring some food from Urus.
00:45:26
Speaker
It takes three days to get from Urus to Norris. You can transfer food that way. And I don't know why it would violate their society to open up the trade to Urus if it means that hundreds of people, I don't know how many people, thousands of people, I don't know how many people died in the four year famine. But to me, that's more important than retaining autonomy.
00:45:46
Speaker
Well, I think they were already at the edge of what they could productively trade with Urus. They were already doing a trade for certain minerals that are only grown under Urus that you need to keep the trains running or whatever. I had the impression that any additional trade would not really be a trade. It would be something like asking for charity and that would come with a power differential.
00:46:10
Speaker
that Inaris didn't want. I mean, your point is the same, right? Why should they sacrifice lives for what seems like a finer point of politics?
Potential for Societal Change
00:46:21
Speaker
But on the other hand, I don't think they would have had this society without the high degree of separation from Urus. I feel like that needed to be policed in order to preserve their society. I actually am skeptical that they will continue to be Inaris now that
00:46:40
Speaker
the planet is open to travelers and to more back and forth with everyone else. Well, that gets to the idea of revolution and how revolution needs to continue. It's not a one-time event that happened in the past. I think Badap says that at some point, that we need to keep evolving and revolution needs to continue.
00:47:01
Speaker
Okay. I want to wrap up, but I did want to just bring attention to the quote on Odo's gravestone. To be whole is to be part, true voyage is return. And I wanted to know if you had any thoughts about that. Various characters and or the narrators say at various places that if you go out and you settle something and you never come back, you're just an exile.
00:47:23
Speaker
You're not an adventurer, you're an exile. It seems that one of the message is that Anaris needed almost owed it to Urus to go back and share what it had learned.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, and then I wonder what Shavok can bring back to Inaris. Like it's which voyage is the return or which return is the voyage. I do think, like I just said, Inaris society is about to change. It's going to have to be something new because you can't maintain
00:47:54
Speaker
these really strict cultural norms when you are in contact with other cultures, right? I'm not saying it, it'll fall apart immediately or contact degrades or anything like that, but any experience like that forces people to open their mind and makes them aware that their norms are somewhat relative. And I think that's a good process because the strong norms survive that, but the weak ones don't. And so there's going to be change, right? You know, if we could read a book set in an RS 30 years from now, maybe we wouldn't recognize it.
00:48:23
Speaker
It's possible she wrote that book. I haven't looked into it. Yeah, I don't know actually. So are you ready to talk about genre themes? I am. One of them is what we were just talking about that any utopia requires a change in culture and a change in norms.
00:48:39
Speaker
You know, I think this book is unusual that it talks about how coercive that can be. The other books we've read present the good side of it. For example, in Fifth Sacred Thing, that's a charming society. You know, it's very tolerant, it's diverse, it's magical, you know, literally magical. But here it's pointing out that any norm, even if it seems like a good norm, like, hey, don't waste things, can become oppressive.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a hard one for me to accept. Which part of that is hard to accept?
00:49:11
Speaker
Well, I like the idea of there not being an authority to punish people for stepping out of line. Like, for example, Shevik has been traveling and hasn't eaten. And so he finds himself in the dining hall and takes double portions. It's late. Like, there aren't more, there aren't a lot of people waiting to eat and he takes double portions and someone gives them a side eye. And he's like, he justifies it to himself. Like, I haven't eaten full meals in a couple of days. Like, it's okay for me to eat this.
00:49:38
Speaker
He has to kind of justify that to himself. And so I like the idea that there's not an authority that comes in and it's like you're taking more than your share, but that pressure of having to justify it to yourself. It works if you're in a culture that fully aligns with your own principles, but I don't know you get that guarantee at all. Yeah. Well, on any norm, there are occasions where it needs to be broken like this one, right? He's been traveling for a couple of days.
00:50:07
Speaker
Right. Well, I think the freedom, like Ecotopia too, we started out talking about how the main character was essentially kidnapped. And it's like, because he was, I don't know if we can say cultural norms, but he was kidnapped. But we talked about you have to trust the people in your society to recognize when you need help, even when you don't recognize you need help, you know.
00:50:29
Speaker
Like that takes, it takes a lot of trust. And on an artist, you have nowhere to go. If you find yourself disagreeing with the way things are done, there's nowhere to go. Really. That's hard. Okay. The next genre theme is joy and work. Um, so there's a quote from the book, a child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart.
00:50:59
Speaker
I don't know. I strongly believe this when I was younger. I don't know if I fully believe it now. Oh, what do you believe instead? This is a very popular idea in like the unschooling movement to like let the child lead what you're teaching. And I love the concept of that, but I think that sometimes people need to have external checks.
00:51:18
Speaker
Maybe when you think about doing this work, you don't anticipate finding joy in it. But when you actually do it, then you find joy in it, right? So like, if you're never sort of pushed into doing work, because you don't know what you don't know, you don't know if you might find something enjoyable, you know what I mean? So like, how does it, how do you know you have capacity for joy?
00:51:37
Speaker
Yeah, that and structure is good for people in a way that is, you know, makes them mentally strong, but it's not necessarily joyful, like every day. Right. Yeah. But I do like this theme in Solarpunk because it provides, you know, the point is to provide an alternative to the idea that people have to have these oppressive structures of working for a wage so they don't go homeless or else nothing would happen.
Solarpunk Themes in The Dispossessed
00:52:02
Speaker
Right. Like I don't believe that.
00:52:04
Speaker
People want to help other people. They want to have something to do. They want to have skills. They're curious. That's a natural urge that society could take advantage of a lot more than the current setup does. Let's at least put it that way, right?
00:52:17
Speaker
Right. I do really like the idea that you could spend time doing work that no one else understands is valuable and still not starve. I do like that in all of these books. Yeah, so that's definitely been a theme, the joy in work, but also that there is always work to do.
00:52:37
Speaker
I think people in almost all of these books, they work pretty hard, whatever their field is, and also just in helping out to keep everything running. In Seven Days in the Sky, there was this quote that I'd heard before. She didn't come up with it, but it's a monk who says, my life before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. My life after enlightenment.
00:52:59
Speaker
chop wood, carry water, right? There's this idea that yeah, like work goes on. And so you don't get out of that. Like there's no dream of ease and laziness. The dream is just that you would get to choose it. You would share it with other people and you would feel like it was going towards something meaningful.
00:53:16
Speaker
I think another theme in these books is how violence is handled. We mentioned this a little bit. There seems to still be some interpersonal violence and it's just allowed to happen unless the people who are nearby feel that it is unfair and then they'll come in and break up the fight.
00:53:32
Speaker
And that is also a factor that keeps people from enacting violence on others because the whole society might then turn on you and be violent. You might need to go stay on that island that's kind of like a prison, but really you're there because that's the only place you're safe from other people who are mad at you for what you did. That's certainly a different take on violence than we've gotten in, say, ecotopia, where there were just ritual war games and that sort of bled off that desire. And that's how it was handled.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm always very skeptical about how violence is perceived in these books. It's something that I would not trust until I saw in practice if violence is actually decreased. You know what I mean? Like that's something I need to see actually working in the real world.
00:54:18
Speaker
I don't like theory about that. Just another thing that I think is kind of a funny trope that happens is there's always, always in all of these books, a moment where the character like steps out into the sun and breathes the fresh air and feels like rejuvenated by it. And that happens when Shevik steps on Earth and really like on a cellular level feels the difference in living in a full.
00:54:43
Speaker
ecology versus the sort of dead world of Inaris. There is one more theme that came up in this book and has come up in all the others, which is sexual freedom. The free society where everyone is provided for is very sexually free. There's a number of partners. There's no guilt about it. There seems to be real joy and connection in all the sexual acts that we hear about.
00:55:10
Speaker
I think actually in this book we got a really good description of maybe why that is. There's a moment when Shevik is first on the plane to Eris and it's the first time he's ever been on an erasty location of any kind and he is overwhelmed by how comfortable it is. The seats with their molded leather and the bedsheets are so soft and the feather mattress and he actually becomes aroused sexually by it and he's just so puzzled by it because on his planet
00:55:40
Speaker
you get that sense of sensual comfort and sensual delight. It seems like pretty much only in sex, right? Everyone's sleeping in these, you know, hard dormitories and working hard and stuff like that. And so it seems like, but a rusty is more repressed sexually, but they have more of the sensuality and just objects. And I think it's not explicit. To me, there is an implication that proprietary in life also went with finding sensuality in objects.
00:56:09
Speaker
And that's part of why objects are so important and possessions. But at the same time, that's a trade-off there because if you're finding that in objects and possessions, you don't need it in other people and you aren't seeking it in other people. Maybe that's all a stretch, but regardless of whether or not that's a stretch, I think there's definitely a theme of sexual freedom comes with a free society.
00:56:30
Speaker
Yeah, I really like that. Or the concept that your senses can be satisfied by objects you own, and then is there a confusion when you do have your senses satisfied by another person? Does that transfer a feeling of ownership to that person as well? Oh, I like that.
Appeal of Anaris' Ideals
00:56:51
Speaker
Yeah. This is provided
00:56:53
Speaker
This sensual delight is provided for my consumption. That's true with objects like your feather mattress. Do you maybe feel a little bit that way that it, that's provided by certain people too? Like maybe women, you know, in a rusty society, they're here for our sensual delights. Look how beautiful they are. Look how soft their skin is. Kind of like my other mattress.
00:57:14
Speaker
final thoughts? Yes. So I'm kind of in love with Inaris. I know it was an ambiguous utopia, but I just love the idea of the people getting to flourish. And I know who the whole book was about them finding the limitations of their own society, but I guess I'm just so infatuated with some of the baseline ideas of, you know, a society that provides and you can choose your own path and you have
00:57:41
Speaker
community with everyone because you have a shared project just by nature of the society. I guess those are just so appealing to me, even where it is openly ambiguous. I'm still kind of like, yeah, but isn't it great?
00:57:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think we had better examples of that in the other books, but I do think it's really valuable because we did have questions in the other books that we've read about like, well, this is still new, you know, and we still have true believers who
Evolution of Revolutionary Ideals
00:58:10
Speaker
are alive. The people who like founded the revolution still alive running things like what happens when that generation passes on and
00:58:17
Speaker
So I think that's really interesting that generations later you find the limitations and it's maybe it's time for a new revolution. Maybe you have to revisit the ideals that started your society and try to reconnect to them. Shevik believes that's what he's doing. So yeah, and sadly reading this book was not enjoyable for me.
00:58:38
Speaker
I think mostly I just like could not stand Shevik as a character. He just angered me a lot. But, uh, but I've, I definitely enjoyed our conversation about it. It's a necessary piece to our solar punk season. So listeners, what did you think of the dispossessed?
Listener Engagement and Future Discussion
00:58:52
Speaker
Have you read any other books by Ursula K. Le Guin? What do you think about the solar punk genre?
00:58:59
Speaker
Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing openingquestion at gmail.com. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod.com. We will read your responses and play your voice memos on our feedback episode at the end of the season. Our next book discussion will be on Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin, our short story for this season. You can get your copy by using the affiliate link in our show notes.
00:59:25
Speaker
The Book Club podcast is produced by me Caroline Gorman and Carly Jackson. Music and audio editing by Alex Marcus. Thanks for listening.