I’m normally not a sci-fi kind of
girl, having read enough of it to know that I prefer jousting and dragons to
warp speed and aliens. I also had had no experience with Ursula K. LeGuin up
until this point besides slogging through Earthsea in 5th
grade. Needless to say, I didn’t approach this particular novel about an alien
physicist revolutionary with much gusto. However, my boyfriend told me I should
read it, and I knew I’d get through it if only as a favor to him. Imagine my
surprise when instead of forcing my way through the book I found I was actually
enjoying it and looking forward to when I could take a break from finals and
sit down to read.
The
Dispossessed is the story of Shevek, a physicist living on the planet Anarres.
He is a descendent of revolutionary settlers, who fed up with life on the home
planet of Urras, traveled to one of it’s moons to set up a social community
that lived without the propertied constraints of their previous home. Shevek’s
story picks up nearly two hundred years later. Anarres has succeeded in
existing without a central government, keeping the idealistic foundations the
society was built upon alive. Shevek, while believing in this system, has begun
to see its flaws, the ways in which power will always corrupt man, despite
their best intentions and denial that there is any hierarchy or power to be
corrupted by. He travels to Urras with the intention of learning all he can
about the home planet, while also inciting a revolutionary mindset in both
those he leaves behind and those he goes to. He sees the need for change, for
connection between the two worlds, and yet he is a man apart, never quite
fitting in on either Urras of Anarres.
The
novel follows two linear timelines, one of Shevek’s childhood and the events
leading up to his departure from Anarres, and the other following from his
landing on Urras. At first, this later plot line is the more interesting of the
two. He encounters a world unlike his own, but not so different from ours
today, and his blunt observations provide both humor and a deep insight into
how anyone sees a culture that differs from their own. This plot falls into a
swirl of political intrigue and as a reader I found myself becoming more
engaged with the other plot, the story of Shevek’s life and development of his
mind to the revolutionary threshold he’s come to occupy. I do not fault the
novel for my switch of interests; in fact I must compliment LeGuin for the
creation of both a history and an adventure story so easily intertwined. She
has written characters that are compelling, not so alien as to be off putting
to the reader, and yet of a different sort of race, one that asks the big hard
questions daily and actively seeks the answers.
There
is a lot of thinking that happens in this novel, both on the part of the reader
and by the characters themselves. Shevek, being a physicist, often embarks on
long and complicated voyages of thought, and occasionally will arrive at an
answer that can be understood by the layman. LeGuin worked hard to keep the
novel from appealing only to those who understand the intricacies of science,
and as an English major, I greatly appreciated that. It was instead the
beautiful command of language that drew my greatest attention and now my
greatest praise. LeGuin is an artist, writing settings so breathtakingly
beautiful that they must be real. Her characters are witty or thought provoking
or simply determined, and they are fallible, dynamically working throughout the
plot to support a story asking questions bigger than it.
It’s funny, I
sit here praising the language and yet I find it hard to pin point what else
about this novel really struck me. Yes, the plot was interesting, the
characters believable, the writing sound, and everything came together
smoothly. I suppose that I must say I appreciate and liked the book as a whole,
but nothing stuck out, for good or bad. The Dispossessed is certainly
worth the read, and perhaps then you too will join me in this strange
post-reading place, knowing that I’ve experienced something important but not
quite putting my finger on what it was.
