2026/025: The Dispossessed — Ursula Le Guin

[tamaranth]

2026/025: The Dispossessed — Ursula Le Guin

... all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal. [p. 130]

Technically a reread, but when I read this at the age of 14 or 15,  I didn't really understand it: I recalled very little of characters, themes or incidents.

The brilliant physicist Shevek comes to realise that the collectivist society of Annares, a moon colonised by an anarchist movement, is not conducive to his work. He travels to the 'home world', Urras, which is ebulliently capitalist. Eventually he realises that Urras, too, stifles his scientific creativity.

That's a brief and reductive summary of a complex novel, in which two separate timelines -- the years before Shevek's departure for Urras, and his time on Urras itself -- are twisted together, in alternating chapters, to show how neither cold, bleak Annares or lush, corrupt Urras nurture those who dwell there.

To me, the setting had a Cold War flavour: there's even a Wall between Annares and (access to) Urras. It borders the spaceport: does it keep the Annaresti in, or the Urrasti out? Annares' collectivism, and the relative lack of sexism, reminded me of Soviet Russia, as seen through the lens of Spufford's Red Plenty and Pulley's The Half Life of Valery K. Anarchists and revolutionaries on Urras dream of being reincarnated on Annares: 'a society without government, without police, without economic exploitation': there's little sense of the reverse being true, despite the kinder physical environment of Urras. And Annares society doesn't always adhere to its lofty ideals: academic infighting is part of the reason why Shevek has to leave.

This was written in 1974, and in some ways shows its age. The term 'Terran' feels dated, a golden-age word for Earthlings. And there's one scene, in which Shevek sexually assaults a manipulative socialite, that really jars my modern sensibilities. Nothing happens as a consequence: we never see the woman again: Shevek apparently forgets the incident. I wonder if Le Guin would have written that scene differently now?

Still not sure I fully appreciate the political elements, but I'm fascinated by the ways in which Odo's Revolution colours Annaresti life: in language, in custom, in the ways it's acceptable to speak. (No 'egoising', even for children. No private ownership: 'the handkerchief that I use' rather than 'my handkerchief'.) And how it has shaped Shevek, a man who will not compete for dominance and is thus indomitable [p. 116].

On Anarres he had chosen, in defiance of the expectations of his society, to do the work he was individually called to do. To do it was to rebel: to risk the self for the sake of society. Here on Urras, that act of rebellion was a luxury, a self-indulgence. [p. 271]