July 2019: The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)

Post date: Aug 10, 2019 12:56:17 AM

Our July meeting was on July 9th at Charmaine Detweiler’s house in

Lafayette. There were ten of us in attendance, which seemed a pretty good

showing for a summer meeting. Our book for the month was Ursula K. Le

Guin’s 1969 science-fiction/fantasy classic The Left-Hand of Darkness. The

novel’s central character is a man named Genly Ai, a representative of a

confederation of planets who is sent to a distant and largely ice-bound

planet called Gethen. Ai’s mission is to inform the inhabitants of Gethen

of the existence of life beyond their world and to ask them to join his

confederation.

The planet is populated by humanoids who are not that different from Ai,

except that the Gethenians are naturally androgynous. They develop male or

female sexual organs for only a few days a month, and they can never be sure

which organs will develop. So, the same individual can both father and

mother children. The novel is, in part, an exploration of the differences

that this sort of gender fluidity creates in the societies of Gethen, and

how those differences puzzle and challenge Genly Ai. However, such matters

are only part of the story, and Ai soon gets caught up in, and almost

destroyed by, the complicated political tensions between the two largest

nations on the planet. To save his life and mission, Ai has to take a

perilous, 80 day journey across a large and uninhabitable ice field with the

help and guidance of a single Gethenian ally, a political exile named

Estraven. Slowly, the challenges of surviving in this harsh environment

breaks down the differences between them. What was in opposition becomes

complementary, what was incomprehensible becomes deeply familiar.

In one way, the novel is a love story. Life on Gethen is almost constantly

a struggle for survival, and this sometimes drives the people on its surface

apart. However, as Genly Ai and Estraven’s journey proves, sometimes the

struggle against death and despair is what brings finite beings most closely

together. It reveals the value and strength of life, while highlighting its

ultimate fragility and vulnerability. It can give rise to deadly conflict,

but it can also inspire trust, fellowship and remarkable acts of

self-sacrifice.

Our reactions to the book were pretty mixed. I think it is fair to say

that some were turned off by the genre of the story. Not only was it

science-fiction, but it was a strange sort of science fiction. It was set

in the future of interstellar travel, and the people of Gethen were a

relatively advanced civilization technologically, but still the book read as

if this was a medieval world, with some quite primitive habits and social

structures. (Genly Ai must appeal to king’s and negotiate court politics,

for example.) The book was heavy with description, but still some of us

found it hard to imagine themselves into this world. This wasn’t true for

all of us, however. I grew up reading both fantasy and science fiction and

I found Le Guin’s descriptions so compelling, that the novel played like a

movie in my head as I read the pages.

We all shared some reservations, however, about the degree to which this

can be classified as a feminist novel. Le Guin is definitely a hero to

many feminists for her success in the extremely male dominated field of

science-fiction and for her role in improving the literary merits of her

field. It is also clear that her portrayal of an ambisexual alien species

with fluid gender identities and, thus, without traditional gender roles,

was absolutely ground-breaking at the time. It is no wonder that this book

continues to gain new fans today. Nonetheless, to many of us the book

seemed very male focused. Genly Ai is a man, and he uses male pronouns to

refer to the Gethenians that he meets, unless they are pregnant or clearly

show feminine traits. The book also reads like a boy’s adventure tale,

echoing at first tales of kingdoms and knights and, then, tales of artic and

mountain explorers. It is sometimes not clear if gender roles have

disappeared from Gethen, or just one gender.

In the PBS documentary on LeGuin, she recognized the fairness of this

concern. She said that the feminist critiques of The Left-Hand of Darkness

made her realize that she had crafted a space for herself in science fiction

by proving that she was a woman who was really good at writing men. In

subsequent books, she strived to find a more meaningful way of writing women

into the genre.

That being said, there is much still to admire in The Left-Hand of

Darkness. If you have any interest in science fiction or fantasy, I think

it is definitely worth reading. Ursula Le Guin had an amazing talent for

turning thought experiments into rich, evocative and dramatically compelling

fictions. (Read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” to see her do this

masterfully in a few short pages.). It was fascinating to contemplate how

the world would be if gender identities were only ever temporary. The

world Le Guin described was harsh, unappealing and cruel in many respects,

but it was also rich, captivating and, ultimately, deeply human.