Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

[PatH]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome to join in.

Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness A classic, groundbreaking science fiction novel, which explores issues of gender role, honor, trust and suspicion, against a background of survival in a cruelly harsh wintry climate. Discussion schedule: Oct 1-7       Ch 1-6 Oct 8-14     Ch 7-12 Oct 15-21   Ch 13-17 Oct 22-28   Ch 18-20; afterword and appendices for those who have them. Link to afterword. Oct 29-31   Thoughts about anything in the book or Le Guin's other works Questions for week 4 (October 22-28) 1. Traveling on the ice and coping with the weather is described in great detail here. How did this affect you? 2. In this section, Ai feels that he finally truly sees Estraven. What does he see? 3. Why does Ai want to teach Estraven mindspeak? When Estraven learns to mindspeak, why does he hear Ai speak with the voice of his dead brother? 4. Why do you think that the Ekumen sends an envoy alone to an alien planet? 5. Why does Estraven ski into range of the border guards? 6. What is Ai's reaction on seeing his fellow envoys again? 7. What did Ai want to accomplish by going to Estre? 8. Was the ending satisfactory? 9. What are your thoughts about the controversy regarding the use of masculine pronouns for the Gethens and the discussion/examples in the afterword and appendices? Previous Discussion Questions Ursula Le Guin website    Discussion Leaders:  PatH and Marcie

[JoanP]

Ai tries to bond with Estraven through mindspeak

  I loved that episode in which Estraven tried and tried without success to learn mindspeak.  He was surprised that it didn't come easier to him.  Ai admits that he felt the same way about Foretelling - which surprised Estraven.  Wasn't it funny, when he finally did learn, he called Ai "Genry"? - even in mindspeak, Gethenians are unable to pronounce that "l"...

An interesting question  - I thought when Ai's voice reached Estraven in mindspeak sounding like his brother, it was because Estraven was hearing the love, the brotherly love, coming from Ai's heart.

[marcie]

PatH, you're right. The differences are important too. Le Guin doesn't give us easy answers.

[PatH]

An interesting question  - I thought when Ai's voice reached Estraven in mindspeak sounding like his brother, it was because Estraven was hearing the love, the brotherly love, coming from Ai's heart.

I agree.  Perhaps also because Estraven felt love for Ai.

Indeed, Marcie, Le Guin doesn't make anything easy.  I'm reminded of what Faxe says at the end of chapter 5: "The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty...."

[PatH]

Everybody's being mighty quiet.  I don't know whether you're still finishing up, or everyone is finished and waiting for the others.

Where are you in the book?

There's still some stuff to talk about in the last 2-3 chapters.  Maybe we should charge ahead tomorrow.

[marcie]

Good idea, Pat.

[Steph]

I am now finished with the book. Agree with the ending, but overall did not really enjoy the book.. I loved it years ago. Ah well..

[JoanP]

Le Guin makes you contemplate big sweeping  issues ~ life death, love, passion -  all while focussing on these two  vulnerable beings out in the middle of nowhere, battling really overwhelming conditions.  I guess I expected that part, but is such passion typical in science fiction?  I hadn't thought so before reading this book. Admittedly, I haven't read much science fiction.

I've been thinking about your  comments on differences - that's what love is really about when you come down to it, isn't it?  Accepting differences?  First there is  physical attraction,  then you start to notice  differences.  It's only when you learn to accept these differences that enduring love is possible.


I found the constant struggle through the wind, ice and blizzards exhausting - mind-numbing, and felt their depression, (but never doubted Ai and Estraven would make it.)  I was really moved when the two were betrayed by Thessicher - the "person"  who was said to be Estraven's friend.   Do we understand why he did that?  Was there anyone to be trusted in Karhide?  I was appalled - and then the two had to set out again - with no tent, no food, nothing at all but the two of them huddled together in the snow in the yin yang position for warmth.  To me that was the most moving scene in the book.

Steph, do you think the reason you liked the book better the first time was because the element of suspense was missing this time?  When you don't know how the whole thing is going to be resolved the experience is different, don't you think?

[PatH]

JoanP, science fiction runs the full spectrum in terms of passion and exploring what people are like.  Le Guin is definitely one of the most intense and complex.  S-F can be a useful tool for looking at things from different angles.  We saw that in Frankenstein, too, where the creature and peoples reactions to him said things about humanity and goodness and people's assumptions.

[JoanK]

JoanP "is such passion typical in science fiction?" Even though PatH has been trying to get me to read this book for years, I admit I didn't expect this either. The Left Hand is considered one of the true classics of Science Fiction, and I can see why.

[PatH]

It's interesting to read a book that appealed to you a long time ago.  Sometimes it no longer seems good.  Perhaps it spoke to the particular stage of life you were in, or the issues are outdated or no longer important to you.  Sometimes it seems even better; perhaps you understand it better.

I found the book as enjoyable as I did 30 years (or whatever it was) ago.  The element of surprise is gone, but I didn't have as much problem with all the people and places you have to keep straight.  And I see a lot more detail.  For instance, Le Guin gives us all sorts of clues, some of them pretty subtle, as to Estraven's fate.  JoanP picked up on this, but as far as I can remember, I didn't the first time.  And the Taoist type religion of Karhide and its centrist Orgoreyn spin-off permeate everything, thought and imagery, much more than I remembered.

[marcie]

I couldn't remember the ending so I wasn't expecting it again (lol) even though I had read the book many years ago. I think that I read the book shortly after it came out and remember feeling the sort of shock at the way that Le Guin handled gender in her creation of the population on Winter. It was very different from anything I had read. The way that she creates altered worlds reminds me of episodes of Star Trek and Star Trek the Next Generation which provided social commentary by showing us different perspectives on aspects of our own world and society.

I'm now reading some of the essays in a library copy of "Ursula Le Guin," edited by Harold Bloom. There are quite a few on various aspects of The Left Hand of Darkness. Some are fairly academic and I don't understand all of them but they are interesting and thought-provoking.

Here is an excerpt from Jeanne Murray Walker's essay, "Myth, Exchange and History in The Left Hand of Darkness."              

"The novel's imagery of the weaver and the weaving shows that any ideal which attempts to fix the movement of time or to make human relationships rigid must be suspect. Productive human exchanges which weave people together into healthy communities are contrasted in the novel with quick, superficial unity... [example] Estraven is replaced in Karhide by Tibe whose dramatic appeals for unity depend upon his cooked-up threat of war... But perhaps the most powerful representation of unproductive human relationships is the cold trip Genly Ai takes with twenty-six silent Orgotians in the back of a truck which he describes as a 'steel box.' In it he is taken to Pulefen Farm where he and the other prisoners are kept in dull conformity by anti-kemmer drugs. Such imagery represents social ideals which do not take account of real exchange. Without such exchange the social structure calcifies and becomes rigid. According to Estraven, who brings about personal and political unity, that unity must be brought out of change: 'The unexpected is what makes life possible,' he tells Genly Ai. And he confesses in his notebook that his one gift is the ability to take advantage of flux and change: 'I never had a gift but one, to know when the great wheel gives to a touch, to know and to act.' Illegitimate unity suffocates, the novel shows: legitmate unity arises out of spontaneous exchange.

 Most crucially, then, the myths of LHD assert the impossibility of retreating from history and from human society. They insist that the goal of 'keeping to oneself' in a fixed, temporal place is an impossible fantasy, a fantasy that must be sacrificed to the demands of communal exchange in history. This is implied by the pattern of exchange, the mediating of opposites, which underlies all myths. Truth arises out of conflict; the only legitimate unity is fragile and momentary...

In her myths... the oppositions define human problems, particularly problems with exchange; their mediation creates or maintains community. That these myths are fundamental to the book is evident in the fact that the patterns they define account for most of the plot in the historical sections of the novel. The novel thus locates significance not in some static, timeless place, but in history; and its myths reflect social ideals which continually--and with difficulty--emerge from that history."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

[Steph]

No, the ending was telegraphed to me both times I have read it. It was the down down depression I felt in the last half of the book.. I think my problem is that I like more upbeat books and particularly treasure my fantasy books for that ability.

[JoanP]

Oh, I'm glad you reminded me that I still have the Library book  of Essays - Harold Bloom and others... Maybe they will make more sense now that I have actually finished the book.

My Library book has a different cover than the one in the heading here - I find myself staring at this cover -

 That's Faxe, the Weaver, right?  At least it sounds like him/her in Le Guin's description.  (Loved those last pages where she considered how to use the gender pronouns.  Laughed out loud at the attempt to write everyone in the feminine.  I had no idea she had spent so much time trying to decide how to handle the gender pronouns.  Funny when she said she couldn't use "it" to describe a Gethen - can only use "it" to describe a pet - or a baby - by people who don't like babies...)

A two-headed face - male and female at once.  Are those tears or melting ice?  I think of them as tears.  It is a sad book, isn't it, Steph.  Are we to think of it as the sacrifices that must be made for the better of Mankind?  I'll tell you what I thought was sad...and a little disappointed that Le Guin did not take advantage of the whole "mindspeech"  process.  Wouldn't it have been great if Estravan had used the mindspeech from the "other side" to communicate with Ai?  That's what I had been hoping for .  This being Science Fiction, I thought it might have been possible.  I'm going to let myself think that that is what happened...

[PatH]

For anyone who doesn't have the afterword about gender pronouns in their book, there's a link to it in the heading, in the line of the Discussion Schedule for this week.  It's worth reading, and kind of amusing.  Indeed, when I first read the book I found myself thinking of the Gethenians more as men than women, and so did my daughter.  But if you substitute "she" for "he", it doesn't work either.

JoanP, I find your cover as ambiguous as a lot of the book.  It definitely could be Faxe, but it could be anyone, and those could be tears or ice.  I hope you will feed in more of Bloom's comments--I'd like to hear what he says.

[Frybabe]

Yesterday, we got into a minor discussion about ansibles in my online Tech Writing class. The teacher asked if it originated with Ender's Game. Actually, said I, LeGuin originated the word in her Rocannon's World. I mentioned a few other SciFi books in which ansibles were featured. He got all excited. He is hoping at some point in the future to be able to offer a Scifi course at HACC and welcomed a few more authors to include. I kind of like this guy. He likes Scifi and he has a cat.

Oh, and I ran across a webpage today about some National Institute of Health research being done with a direct hookup of brain to computer. It appears that making the computer do what you want with thought takes less brain cells than they thought. Just think about the next step. WiFi chip in head with which you can dial a phone (and talk to someone with your thoughts?) or work on a compute.

[marcie]

JoanP, like Pat, I think the cover is ambiguous and could be the "two halves" of the Gethens (male and female) with icicles representing their cold environment. It's a provocative cover for a provocative book.

I think that the last page is somewhat optimistic with Estraven's son asking  Ai the same kind of questions...looking to the future, just like Estraven did.

Frybabe, how great that you were able to provide that information to your teacher and fellow students. Go sci fi fans!

The research about directing a computer with your thoughts is fascinating. I found a couple of related articles at http://www.nih.gov/news/health/oct2010/ninds-27.htm and http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/worlds-first-commercial-brain-computer-interface

[Frybabe]

Thanks for finding those links Marcie. The first one is the one I read.

[ursamajor]

My paperback book had the same cover as above.  I agree with the comments about it.  I didn't identify the person as any specific character, rather a symbol like "Mother Earth".

[marcie]

SPOILER ALERT ABOUT THE END OF THE BOOK - Read only if you've finished the book.

I'm still wondering about what Estraven did skiing toward Tibe's guards on the border between Karhide and Oregoryn. Did he know he would be killed (suicide is forbidden)? Is this another ambiguity that Le Guin doesn't resolve for us?

[marcie]

JoanP, you said:

"Loved those last pages where she considered how to use the gender pronouns.  Laughed out loud at the attempt to write everyone in the feminine.  I had no idea she had spent so much time trying to decide how to handle the gender pronouns.  Funny when she said she couldn't use "it" to describe a Gethen - can only use "it" to describe a pet - or a baby - by people who don't like babies..."

Apparently, after the book was published, there was a big uproar from feminists and others about Le Guin's use of masculine pronouns and references for the people of Gethen, when she had purposely created an alien civilization that was non-genderized. She writes in the afterword that even she wasn't aware at the time of how the masculine gender dominated society at the time she wrote the book. She says "There are moments when I would love to rewrite the book. Not in a big way. I don't like any invented pronouns in the long run, and nothing else works at all, so I would stick to the masculine pronoun for people in sourer. But I could take out dozens of utterly unnecessary masculinizations, such as the word "man" when I meant "person" or "people" as I automatically have done in all my writing for years now. And I could use accurate words such as sib, wombchild, rather than the masculinized brother, son."

I think we have come some way in that regard; many people do seem sensitive to not using "masculinized" words when there is an easy alternative.

[ursamajor]

The Episcopal Church made a big deal a few years ago about making hymns "more Inclusive".  Ex.: "Time in its ever moving stream/Bears all her sons away" has become "Bears all our lives away".  Makes it awkward as older people know the hymns by heart and sing the old version.

[marcie]

Ursamajor, that is a good example. It's hard to break habits, especially if one doesn't see a need to do so. Probably many of us who grew up with masculine nouns and pronouns serving for everyone, aren't compelled to try to use other wording.

I think that some of the media, such as news broadcasters, are sensitive to the issue. I wonder if younger people notice?

[marcie]

These next few days, let's talk about anything regarding the book or any other works by or about Ursula Le Guin.

[JoanP]

I'm still drained from the ending of Left Hand - and still wondering what Tibe gave to Thessicher (is that his name?) to get him to turn in Estraven.  (30 pieces of silver?)  What was the significance of the betrayal?  Is it a comment on the human condition - man's weakness?  His unworthiness?  Was Thessicher Judas? How different would the ending have been without this betrayal?

I am interested in hearing from those  who have read other books by Ursula Le Guin. Is there a title you would recommend we read next?  I did a quick search to see if any of the titles would sound familiar.  (They didn't.)
While searching for other Le Guin titles, I came across this recent note from Ursula written just last month -

Notice to Fans and Correspondents
I have a busy autumn coming up, part of which I’m going to spend entirely off the Internet, and not receiving either email or realmail. So this is a request:

For the rest of 2010, if you write me or send me stuff, please don’t expect an answer!

I will get back to you eventually if I can. But I am old, have no secretarial help, and am already a month behind with the mail. I’m swamped.

Getting input and feedback is a huge pleasure to me, and I enjoy reading and answering readers’ letters — but I feel bad about them when I can’t even say “thanks!” (And please don’t send CDs, I just don’t have the time to listen to them, so they make me feel purely guilty.)

Good cheer to all,

— Ursula
Sept 17, 2010

~

[Frybabe]

Yes, I read that JoanP. I am somewhat surprised that she doesn't have a secretary or some kind of help. I would think there are lots of students out there who would volunteer a little time.

I liked Lathe of Heaven and The Dispossessed. Both would be worthy of a discussion.


Has anyone read Le Guin's Lavinia? Ginny? It is set in a time after Troy fell, but when Rome is still a tiny village.

[marcie]

I'm still drained from the ending of Left Hand - and still wondering what Tibe gave to Thessicher (is that his name?) to get him to turn in Estraven.  (30 pieces of silver?)  What was the significance of the betrayal?  Is it a comment on the human condition - man's weakness?  His unworthiness?  Was Thessicher Judas? How different would the ending have been without this betrayal?

Joan, yes it was upsetting that Thessicher gave up Estraven to Tibe. Estraven conjectures to Ai that "Tibe must have a price on my head." Ai replies, "The damned ungrateful traitor!...whose betrayal was of a friend."

"He is that," said Estraven, "but I asked too much of him, strained a small spirit too far."

Earlier we are told that Thessicher risked the confiscation of his property by sheltering them. Since he owed that property to Estraven who had bought the farm for him, and might be destitute if Estraven had not done that, it seemed not unjust to ask Thessicher to run some risk in return. But Estraven asked for help, not "in repayment but as a matter of friendship, counting not on Thessicher's obligation but on his affection."

Estraven didn't want to put a formal obligation on Thessicher but wanted to ask him for this risky favor out of  his own good will, courage and affection. Apparently Thessicher was a "small spirit" and didn't have enough of those characteristics. He was either (or both) greedy for financial gain or to be in favor with Tibe, rather than risk being found out as a traitor consorting with a traitor.

It seems to me that Le Guin is saying that we're all traitors to someone at some times in our life. We are all flawed but what motivates us is what makes the difference.

Here are some traitor relationships I see:
--Estraven became a traitor in the view of Karhide by working with people like Thessicher, in order to prevent a war
--Thessicher became a traitor to Estraven for personal gain
--Ai became a traitor to Estraven by not asking the king to clear Estraven's name before Ai called for his ship to land, as a condition of its landing. He was concerned the king would be persuaded not to go through with the meeting with the Ekumen if he made that demand.

It also was heartbreaking that Ai only recognized in the instant that Estraven skiied toward the guards all that Estraven had risked to help Ai fulfill the quest of the Ekumen--something that Estraven (and only Estraven of all the planet) fully believed in from the start.  

[marcie]

Frybabe, Le Guin writes somewhere that very few writers are rich enough to have a secretary respond to their correspondence. I too thought that there are likely students who would do it for free. Maybe she thinks that would be taking advantage of them. I don't know.

I too would recommend Lathe of Heaven, especially because there are two film versions of the work also.

[PatH]

Ai feels he has betrayed Estraven by not insisting that Argaven revoke the banishment.  But Estraven had no such expectation; it was Ai who made the promise (middle of chapter 19) and Estraven tried to discourage him.

Estraven must have seen his fate from the start.  Early in chapter 6 he says "I was born to live in exile, it appeared, and my one was home was by way of dying."  When Ai promises to clear his name, he replies  I thank you Genry....But I haven't expected to see my home again for a long time now."

[PatH]

What book to read next?  JoanP, none of the others that I've read have quite the same intensity of emotion as this one.  I agree with Marcie that "The Lathe of Heaven" is good--it's one of my favorites.  It's about a man who discovers his dreams change reality.  I haven't read "The Dispossessed".

[ursamajor]

I liked le Guin's Earthsea series much better.  I had so much trouble following The Left Hand of Darkness that I didn't enjoy it.  Wizard of Earthsea is much lighter and more interesting to me - much lesss brooding symbolism and more fun.

I remember one bit where the hero and heroine had traveled from one place to another in the form of crows,  thinking back "eating....... Oh, God, eating what..." and averting her mind.

[PatH]

Ursamajor, I agree with you the Earthsea series is excellent.  I think they're a great job of combining magic and myth, human relations and adventure.  Have you read Tehanu and The Other Wind, plus the book of short stories, that follow the original trilogy?

I love both left Hand and Earthsea, but not everybody does, because they are so different.  For example, JoanK liked Left Hand but would hate Earthsea, while her daughter loves Earthsea, but hated Left Hand.

[marcie]

I'm with you, PatH. I've enjoyed all of the Le Guin books I've read, including the Earthsea series. I'm now reading a  nonfiction collection by Le Guin called The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination. It's very interesting, funny and profound.

"From Booklist
Le Guin is stimulating company. A profoundly creative and prolific fiction writer who has won a half-dozen major awards and enticed readers to science fiction who otherwise might not have ventured into that fantastic terrain, she is also a forthright, incisive, and funny essayist. In her second nonfiction collection, a piquant, morally lucid, and enlivening volume graced with a well-chosen phrase of Virginia Woolf's, Le Guin considers the pleasures and significance of reading, the true meaning of literacy, the power of the imagination, and the writer's responsibility. On a memoiristic note, she remembers her anthropologist father and Native American family friends. On the literary plane, she praises libraries as sacred places that embody freedom, pays homage to Borges and Twain, dissects the assumptions behind the designation "creative nonfiction," and analyzes the "rhythms of prose." And Le Guin is breathtakingly hilarious on the subjects of age, beauty, and womanhood. Candid, earthy, and deeply involved in the human experience, Le Guin is artist, mentor, and friend. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved"

http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Mind-Essays-Writer-Imagination/dp/1590300068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288477517&sr=1-1

[PatH]

Well, you all are doing your bit to fill up my TBR list.  Frybabe mentioned Lavinia, which is totally unfamiliar to me.  It turns out, Lavinia is a character out of Vergil's Aeneid, who never tells her side of the story, and we have it here.  Ursamajor reminds me that I haven't yet read The Other Wind, and I certainly want to read Marcie's collection of essays.  And maybe I'll try The Dispossessed again (I got stuck in it).

[PatH]

Le Guin's father was a well known anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber, which probably explains the anthropological approach in many of her stories.

Kroeber's best-known piece of work has always fascinated me.  Ishi was the last survivor of a Native American tribe, the Yahi, who had lived in Oregon.  Realizing he couldn't survive, Ishi came down into the valley and tried to enter the white man's world.  Eventually he ended up in California, where Kroeber took charge of him, learned his language, gathered all the information possible about his culture, and made some effort (not too satisfactory) to find some sort of life for him.

Imagine what that must have been like.  Everybody and everything you've known is gone, nobody speaks your language and you don't speak anything else, all your survival skills are useless, and you don't understand how your new world works.  And a whole body of knowledge--survival skills, tool-making, religion--will die with you.

[PatH]

A website about Kroeber:

http://www.nndb.com/people/040/000087776/

[ursamajor]

Sounds like a good working definition of hell.

[JoanP]

Candid, earthy, and deeply involved in the human experience

I liked Donna Seaman's description of Ursula Le Guin's work.  Thank you for bringing this review here, Marcie.  This discussion has been an eye opening experience - I have a totally different view of science fiction now after Left Hand of Darkness and Le Guin's "deep involvement in the human experience."  Not only a different perception of science fiction, but Le Guin's portrayals of both Ai and Estraven led to a deeper understanding of what real love is all about. That eternal mystery!

Thank you, Marcie and PatH - and everyone who shared insights here.  A really thought-provoking experience!

[marcie]

Pat, I've had the Ishi book for a long time but I don't think I ever read the whole thing. I'm motivated by your post to do that soon.

JoanP, I'm so glad that you have a new view of science fiction. There are so many science fiction books that offer a "deep involvement in the human experience."

Many thanks to each of you who participated in this discussion. I always learn a lot from hearing your insights and questions.  

[Frybabe]

What a wonderful discussion we've had. Even so, I think we barely scratched the surface of all the anthropological, philosophical and political (ideological?) ideas presented within.

Thanks one and all for a most interesting discussion.