The Dispossessed

 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 5^th 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.