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...I wish I were Gethenian, says she, eating chocolate eggs and clutching her abdomen.
That said, I think this is a book everyone should read. Everyone. It's about gender, politics, love, marriage, truth, and snow, and--
Light is the left hand of darkness,
as darkness is the right hand of light.
Interestingly, it's similar to Heart of Darkness, which we're reading in class (I'm collecting for a full body of darkness). It, too, is about the Other, extremes of the environment, and people who are different, and yet...Left Hand is, to me, more complete, more peaceful, closer perhaps to an answer to the nebulous question. It may be because LeGuin, unlike Conrad, was not writing "from life"--she had never been to Gethen, certainly, never found the Other there herself. Too, she had to go farther afield for her uncertain place: Africa was no longer far enough to go to find the Other, so she took it into space. And she is a woman, so gender is more to the fore, as race would be if I had a Heart of Darkness written by a black person, as money would be if I had one written by a very poor man. But they are strangely similar stories, all the same.
I like Left Hand better, because it comes gently to a conclusion close to myself: that the "civilized" and the "primitive" are parts of one whole, which must and can be integrated into a complete self. The Heart of Darkness terrifies only so long as you continue to shrink from it; look into the shadow, and you find yourself there all along. Maybe that was what the Victorian gentleman saw there that terrified him so, but it was horrible only because he had tried so hard to make it otherwise.
I hope, by the way, that Conrad intended the ironic difference between his showing and his telling. If he did, it is ironic social commentary, and the novella is fairly good. If he did not, it is hypocrisy unaware of itself, and the novella is very bad, being split in two.
That said, I think this is a book everyone should read. Everyone. It's about gender, politics, love, marriage, truth, and snow, and--
Light is the left hand of darkness,
as darkness is the right hand of light.
Interestingly, it's similar to Heart of Darkness, which we're reading in class (I'm collecting for a full body of darkness). It, too, is about the Other, extremes of the environment, and people who are different, and yet...Left Hand is, to me, more complete, more peaceful, closer perhaps to an answer to the nebulous question. It may be because LeGuin, unlike Conrad, was not writing "from life"--she had never been to Gethen, certainly, never found the Other there herself. Too, she had to go farther afield for her uncertain place: Africa was no longer far enough to go to find the Other, so she took it into space. And she is a woman, so gender is more to the fore, as race would be if I had a Heart of Darkness written by a black person, as money would be if I had one written by a very poor man. But they are strangely similar stories, all the same.
I like Left Hand better, because it comes gently to a conclusion close to myself: that the "civilized" and the "primitive" are parts of one whole, which must and can be integrated into a complete self. The Heart of Darkness terrifies only so long as you continue to shrink from it; look into the shadow, and you find yourself there all along. Maybe that was what the Victorian gentleman saw there that terrified him so, but it was horrible only because he had tried so hard to make it otherwise.
I hope, by the way, that Conrad intended the ironic difference between his showing and his telling. If he did, it is ironic social commentary, and the novella is fairly good. If he did not, it is hypocrisy unaware of itself, and the novella is very bad, being split in two.
