THE DISPOSSESSED

'''The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia''' is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the same fictional universe as that of ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' (the Hainish Cycle). The book won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award in 1975, and is notable for achieving a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction works.

Contents

Setting

Plot summary

Influences for the novel

Translations

Quotations

See also

References

External links

Setting

The story has many themes, one of which is the invention of the physics used later to create the ansible, an instantaneous communications device. In ''The Word for World is Forest'', the newly created ansible is brought to Athshe, a planet being settled by Earth-humans. In most other books in the Hainish Cycle, the ansible already exists. So though this is the fifth complete novel in the series, in terms of internal chronology it comes first.
The story is set on Anarres and Urras, the twin inhabited worlds of Tau Ceti. Cetians are mentioned in other Ekumen novels and short stories. An Antarian appears in the short story ''The Shobies' Story''. Urras before the settlement of Anarres is the setting for the short story ''The Day Before the Revolution''.
In the last chapter of ''The Dispossessed'', we learn that the Hainish people arrived at Tau Ceti 60 years ago. Terrans are also there, and the novel occurs some time in the future. A date of 2300 has been suggested.

Plot summary

The story takes place on the fictional planet Urras and its moon Anarres (since Anarres is massive enough to hold an atmosphere, this is often described as a double planet system). In order to forestall an anarcho-syndical workers' rebellion, the major Urrasti states gave Anarres and a guarantee of non-interference to the revolutionaries, approximately two hundred years before the events of ''The Dispossessed''.
The protagonist Shevek is a physicist attempting to develop a General Temporal Theory. The physics of the book describes time as having a much deeper, more complex structure than we understand it. It incorporates not only mathematics and physics, but also philosophy and ethics. The meaning of the theories in the book weaves nicely into the plot, not only describing abstract physical concepts, but the ups and downs of the characters' lives, and the transformation of the Anarresti society. An oft-quoted saying in the book is "True voyage is return."
Anarres is in theory a society without government or coercive authoritarian institutions. Yet Shevek begins to come up against very real walls as his ideas begin to deviate from the opinions of his countrymen. Gradually he develops an understanding that the revolution which brought his world into being is becoming stagnant, and power structures begin to exist where there were none before. He therefore embarks on the risky journey to the original planet, Urras, seeking to open dialog between the worlds and to spread his theories freely outside of Anarres. The novel details his struggles on both Urras and his homeworld of Anarres.
The book also explores the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: on the anarchist planet the use of the possessive case is strongly discouraged. An example is given where Shevek's daughter, meeting him for the first time, tells him "You can share the handkerchief I use." (Le Guin 69), rather than "you may borrow my handkerchief". The idea is that the handkerchief is not owned by the girl, merely carried by her. The language spoken in Anarres, Pravic, is a constructed language that reflects many aspects of the philosophical foundations of utopian anarchism.

''The Dispossessed'' is considered by some libertarian socialists to be a good description of the mechanisms that would be developed by an anarchist society, but also of the dangers of centralization and bureaucracy that would easily take over such society without the continuation of revolutionary ideology. Part of its power is that it gives us a spectrum of fairly well-developed characters, who illustrate many types of personalities, all educated in an environment that measures a person not by what he owns, but by what he can do, and how he relates to other human beings. Probably the best example of this is the character of Takver, the hero's partner, who exemplifies many virtues: loyalty, love of life and living things, perseverance, and desire for a true partnership with another person.
The work is sometimes said to represent one of the few modern revivals of the utopian genre, there are certainly many characteristics of a utopian novel found in this book, Shevek is an outsider in Urras, there are no 'Mrs Browns' in that all of the characters are shown to have a certain spirituality or intelligence, there are no nondescript characters. It is also true to say that there are aspects of Anarres that are utopian: it is presented as a pure society that adheres to its own theories and ideals, which is made much more stark by the juxtaposition with Urras. However, Anarres is not presented as a perfect society, and there are aspects of realism that detract from the utopian elements of the novel. There is mention of hardship due to lack of resources, albeit due to the profiteering world of Urras, the importance lies in the fact Anarres is not safe from hardship, therefore it is not a perfect society. Le Guin shows that no such thing is possible. It is notable that one of the major themes of the work is the ambiguity of different notions of utopia.

Influences for the novel

Le Guin's title is in reference to Dostoyevsky's novel ''The Possessed''.
One flashback in the novel was likely inspired by the Stanford prison experiment. Childhood Shevek and some friends – curious about Urras and what prisons must be like – decide to play ''prison'' and enact a game very similar in design and results to the actual experiment, including its being cut short.

Translations

★ French: ''"Les Dépossédés"''.

★ German: ''"Planet der Habenichtse"'', later ''"Die Enteigneten"'', 2006.

★ Russian: ''"Обездоленные"'', 1994, ''"Обделённые"'', 1997, 2002.

★ Serbian: ''"Čovek praznih šaka"''.

★ Turkish: ''"Mülksüzler"''.

Quotations

In the afternoon, when he cautiously looked outside, he saw an armored car stationed across the street and two others slewed across the street at the crossing. That explained the shouts he had been hearing: it would be soldiers giving orders to each other.

Atro had once explained to him how this was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains... and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the commander in chief. Shevek had listened with incredulous disgust. “You call that organization?” he had inquired. “You even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency — a kind of seventh-millennium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing?” This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfare as the breeder of courage and manliness and weeder-out of the unfit, but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectiveness of guerrillas, organized from below, self-disciplined. “But that only works when the people think they're fighting for something of their own — you know, their homes, or some notion or other,” the old man had said. Shevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabeled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the Army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in.

See also

★ Anarchism in the arts

★ Libertarian socialism

References

External links

★

★ Study Guide for Ursula LeGuin: The Dispossessed (1974) ISBN 0-06-105488-7

★ Review of ''The Dispossessed''

★ Golwen wiki - Anarres Specifically, note the link to a readable map of Anarres (Argentina, Spanish language)

★ Golwen wiki - Urras Specifically, note the link to a readable map of Urras (Argentina, Spanish language)