The Dispossessed

Setting

The Dispossessed is set on Anarres and Urras, the twin inhabited worlds of Tau Ceti. Cetians are mentioned in other Ekumen novels and short stories. An Anarresti 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 Dispossessed, Urras is divided into several states and dominated by the two largest ones, which are rivals. In a clear allusion to the United States (represented by A-Io) and the Soviet Union (represented by Thu), one has a capitalist economy and patriarchal system and the other is an authoritarian system that claims to rule in the name of the proletariat. Further developing the analogy, there are oppositional left-wing parties in A-Io, one of which is closely linked to the rival society Thu, as were communist parties in the US and other Western countries at the time the story was written. Other parties represent various dissident visions of socialism. Where the situation differs from that of 20th century Earth is the existence of the anarcho-syndicalist world Anarres, representing a third ideological alternative - however, its influence is weakened by most Odonians having agreed generations ago to go into exile on a different world and cut themselves off. There are still some Odonians in A-Io, who eventually contact the Anarresti protagonist Shevek with a note chiding him for betraying his beliefs by working at the university and accepting the government's hospitality. Beyond that, there is a third major, though underdeveloped, area called Benbili—when a revolution supported by Thu breaks out there, A-Io invades, generating a proxy war. Although there are a wide variety of parties in A-Io, there are no political parties on Anarres. An Odonian orthodoxy prevails without any overt enforcement or oppression, although free thinkers who go too far can end up in psychiatric institutions, as happens with Shevek's childhood friend, Tirin.

The plot

The chapters alternate between the worlds, and time—even-numbered chapters are set on Anarres and earlier in time, odd-numbered chapters are set on Urras and later in time. The only exceptions are the first and the last chapters which include both worlds and are, thematically, chapters of transition. In chapter one, we are basically in the middle of the story, with Shevek leaving Anarres, while the last chapter is set in space as he returns from Urras to Anarres. The penultimate chapter (chapter twelve) is the last one set in Anarres, and ends at a point before the first chapter begins.

Anarres (chapters 1,2,4,6,8,10,12,13)

Shevek, a physicist working on a new theory of time finds his work blocked by a jealous superior and distrusted by society due to fears it conflicts with the prevailing political philosophy. His physics work is further disrupted by the need for him to perform manual labor during a drought in this anarchist society. He arranges to go to Urras to finish and publish his theory.

Urras (chapters 1,3,5,7,9,11,13)

Arriving on Urras, Shevek is feted. Shevek soon finds himself digusted with the social, sexual and political conventions of the hierarchical capitalist society he is in. He joins in a labor protest that is violently suppressed and he escapes to safety. Finally he is sponsored by ambassadors of Earth who provide him safe passage back to Anarres.

Themes

The story takes place on the fictional planet Urras and its habitable twin Anarres. In order to forestall an anarcho-syndicalist rebellion, the major Urrasti states gave the revolutionaries (inspired by a visionary named Odo) the right to live on Anarres, along with a guarantee of non-interference, approximately two hundred years before the events of The Dispossessed. Before this, Anarres had had no permanent settlements apart from some mining facilities. The economic and political situation of Anarres and its relation to Urras is ambiguous. The people of Anarres consider themselves as being free and independent, having broken off from the political and social influence of the old world; but the powers of Urras consider Anarres as being essentially their mining colony, the annual consignment of precious metals mined on Anarres and its division among the major powers of Urras being a major economic event of the old world. The ambiguity of Anarres' situation is symbolically manifested in the low wall surrounding Anarres' single spaceport, the only place on the anarchist planet where "No Trespassing!" signs may be seen - where the book begins and ends. Whether the wall divides a free world from the corrupting influence of an oppressor's ships - as the people of Anarres think, or is in fact a prison wall, keeping the rest of the planet imprisoned and cut off, is a question posed by the writer at the very outset - with Shevek's life essentially an effort to answer it.

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 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 journey is return." The meaning of Shevek's theories—which deal with the nature of time and simultaneity—have been subject to interpretation. For example, there have been interpretations that the non-linear nature of the novel is a reproduction of Shevek's theory.

Many conflicts occur between the freedom of anarchism and the constraints imposed by authority and society, both on Anarres and Urras. These constraints are both physical - Odo was imprisoned in the Fort in Drio for nine years, and the children construct their own prison in chapter two - and social: 'time after time the question of who is being locked out or in, which side of the wall one is on, is the focus of the narrative.' Mark Tunik emphasises that the wall is the dominant metaphor for these social constraints: Shevek hits ‘the wall of “charm, courtesy, indifference.” He later notes that he let a “wall be built around him” that kept him from seeing the poor people on Urras – he had been co-opted, with walls of smiles of the rich, and he didn’t know how to break them down. . . Shevek at one point speculates that the people on Urras are not truly free precisely because they have so many walls built between people and are so possessive. “You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes – the wall, the wall!” ‘ It is not just the state of mind of those inside the prisons that concerns Shevek, he also notes the effect on those outside the walls; here is Steve Grossi: ‘By building a physical wall to keep the bad in, we construct a mental wall keeping ourselves, our thoughts, and our empathy out, to the collective detriment of all. Shevek puts this more elegantly later on in the book when he says, “those who build walls are their own prisoners.” ’ Le Guin makes this explicit in chapter 2 when the schoolchildren construct their own prison, putting one of their number inside; the deleterious effect on the children outside parallels the effect on the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 (three years before The Dispossessed was published).

The language spoken on the anarchist planet Anarres, Pravic, is a constructed language in the tradition of Newspeak from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the intent being to restrict thought as suggested in the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. Pravic reflects many aspects of the philosophical foundations of utopian anarchism, for instance, the use of the possessive case is strongly discouraged (a feature that also is reflected by the novel's title). Children are trained to speak only about matters that interest others; anything else is "egoizing" (pp. 28–31). There is no property ownership of any kind. Shevek's daughter, upon meeting him for the first time, tells him, "You can share the handkerchief I use" rather than "You may borrow my handkerchief", thus conveying the idea that the handkerchief is not owned by the girl, merely used by her.

Utopianism

In order to ensure survival in a harsh environment, the people of Anarres are taught from childhood to put the needs of their society ahead of their own personal desires. Shevek and Takver, as good Odonians, take work postings away from each other, and Shevek does hard agricultural labor in a dusty desert instead of working on his research, because he is needed there due to a famine. The work is sometimes said to represent one of the few modern revivals of the utopian genre, and there are many characteristics of a utopian novel found in this book. Most obviously, Shevek is an outsider when he arrives on Urras, following the "traveler" convention common in utopian literature. When first published, the book included the tagline: "The magnificent epic of an ambiguous utopia!" which was shortened by fans to "An ambiguous utopia" and adopted as a subtitle in certain editions.

Le Guin's foreword to the novel notes that her anarchism is closely akin to that of Peter Kropotkin's, whose Mutual Aid closely assessed the influence of the natural world on competition and cooperation. Le Guin's use of realism in this aspect of the work further complicates a simple utopian interpretation of the work. Anarres is not a perfect society.

The Title

It has been suggested that Le Guin's title is a reference to Dostoyevsky's novel about anarchists, The Possessed, although Dostoevsky's title literally means Demons (Russian: Бесы, Bésy). Other commenters point to hardship caused by lack of resources as a plausible reference. The people of Anarres are "dispossessed" in the sense that they have no personal material possessions, since all goods are held in common. In contrast, the working class majority of Urras are "dispossessed" in the sense that they do not have access to the wealth which has been created with their labor. Much of the philosophical underpinnings and ecological concepts came from Murray Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), according to a letter Le Guin sent to Bookchin. Anarres citizens are dispossessed not just by political choice, but by the very lack of actual resources to possess. Here, again, Le Guin draws a contrast with the natural wealth of Urras, and the competitive behaviors this fosters.

Proposed time

In the last chapter of The Dispossessed, we learn that the Hainish people arrived at Tau Ceti 60 years previously, which is more than 150 years after the secession of the Odonians from Urras and their exodus to Anarres. Terrans are also there, and the novel occurs some time in the future, according to an elaborate chronology worked out by science fiction author Ian Watson in 1975: "the baseline date of AD 2300 for The Dispossessed is taken from the description of Earth in that book (§11) as having passed through an ecological and social collapse with a population peak of 9 billion to a low-population but highly centralized recovery economy." In the same article, Watson assigns a date of AD 4870 to The Left Hand of Darkness; both dates are problematic - as Watson says himself, they are contradicted by "Genly Ai's statement that Terrans 'were ignorant until about three thousand years ago of the uses of zero' ".

Reception

The novel received generally positive reviews. Baird Searles characterized the novel as an "extraordinary work", saying Le Guin had "created a working society in exquisite detail" and "a fully realized hypothetical culture [as well as] living breathing characters who are inevitable products of that culture". Gerald Jonas, writing in The New York Times, said that "Le Guin's book, written in her solid, no-nonsense prose, is so persuasive that it ought to put a stop to the writing of prescriptive Utopias for at least 10 years". Theodore Sturgeon praised The Dispossessed as "a beautifully written, beautifully composed book", saying "it performs one of [science fiction's] prime functions, which is to create another kind of social system to see how it would work. Or if it would work." Lester del Rey, however, gave the novel a mixed review, citing the quality of Le Guin's writing but claiming that the ending "slips badly", a deus ex machina that "destroy[s] much of the strength of the novel".

Translations

Other versions

In 1987, the CBC Radio anthology program Vanishing Point adapted The Dispossessed into a series of six 30 minute episodes.