To Own or Not To Own

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

        Every so often I read a novel that affects me so deeply, both emotionally and intellectually, that I think about it for months or even years after finishing it. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is the most recent novel that has burned itself indelibly into my mind. This could very well be the best novel I have ever read, and I implore you all to go out and buy it immediately.  It really is that good.

            

           The Dispossessed is something of a bildungsroman about a physicist named Shevek who lives on a world of self-exiled anarchists called Anarres. In years past, followers of the anarchist prophet  Odo managed to escape the beautiful yet materialistic world of Urras, founding a new and revolutionary society on Urras' moon. Shevek, a man who is equal parts idealistic, brilliant, and naive,  has developed a new theory of space-time that will allow humans to build faster-than-light starships, but his world has neither the resources nor the desire to do anything about it. Driven by his conviction that such a discovery should be shared, Shevek decides to travel to Urras, a world that has become a byword for greed and oppression on Anarres, but a world that offers his only hope of sharing his theory with people who can use it.

            

           A novel as complex as The Dispossessed explores dozens of themes, ideas, and emotions. Rather than treat them all superficially, I want to focus on two of the book's prominent topics: the idea of possessions, and the concept of walls and isolation.  Le Guin skillfully weaves these two themes into all aspects of her story, though it is with Shevek himself that their portrayal is most poignantly felt.

            

          Every person on Anarres is, technically, an exile.  While their own histories recount their glorious revolution and flight from the hedonistic world of Urras, it becomes clear later in the book that the Odonians were essentially given ships and passage to Anarres by the Urrasti ruling class in order to put an end to their constant rabble-rousing and disruption.  Though most take pleasure in their new, incredibly free, world, the Anarresti have been forced to build a society completely lacking in the kind of historical and cultural roots that people can hold on to as part of their collective identities.  The mutual anarchism they profess only works when all society's members interact and cooperate as a group, but the total freedom from laws and prescriptive (or proscriptive) rules means that each and every man and woman on Anarres is subject, ultimately, to their own conscience.  The loneliness and personal responsibility characteristic of exiled individuals is here expressed by an entire civilization that must work together to survive, but on an entire voluntary basis.  Despite its collective nature, Anarresti society is one built on subtle walls that separate individuals, ideas, and places from one another.

           

          Nowhere are these walls more apparent than around the single spaceport that links Urras and Anarres.  Le Guin begins the book by describing this wall in what could be my favourite opening to any sci-fi novel.  I'm going to quote it at length since I cannot possibly paraphrase it in a way that does and justice to Le Guin's prose:

"There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended on which side you were on.

Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres...Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine."

             

          Shevek constantly encounters these subtle, yet very real, walls as he pursues his studies in theoretical physics.  Unfortunately, he finds the most impenetrable wall at the one place that he desperately needs total freedom: the university in Abennay, Anarres' biggest city.  Rather than nurture his obvious brilliance, the university bureaucracy, led by the inferior physicist Sabul, slowly and subtly ostracizes Shevek, eventually leading to his alienation from the world he loves, and to his flight to Urras.  Le Guin skilfully reveals the barriers that we build between one another while keeping her characters blind to them.  All Shevek understands is that he has become an exile within his exiled society, alienated from the castaways.  So, he decides to cross the low stone wall at the spaceport and leave the home where he no longer belongs.

            

           The incident at the university also brings into focus the theme of possessions, and our servitude to them, that forms one of the major bases of Urrasti/Anarresti difference.  Not only do the Anarresti not own things, but a disdain for ownership is one of their most important core beliefs.  Their economy is completely moneyless, people are assigned homes and jobs for short periods of time, names are recycled after a person's death, and even the language they speak has no word denoting ownership (rather than say "my hand" or "my mother" an Anarresti would say "the hand" or "the mother").  The notion that owning goods eventually leads to the goods owning you is considered proverbial and uncontroversial to the Anarresti.  While this may appear to be an overdone cliché to modern readers, its basic truth cannot be justifiably denied.  The pursuit and protection of our possessions severely limits our freedom of action in a multitude of ways, some mundane, some significant.  This limiting of personal freedom is abhorrent to the Anarresti, and they go out of their way to avoid it at all costs.

             

          The societal urge to do away with material possessions, however, leaves the Anarresti completely blind to a whole other class of goods that I'd like to call "metaphorical possessions."  Metaphorical possessions are not moveable goods or real estate, but our "ownership" of them places substantial limits to our freedom in the same sort of ways as physical goods.  The kind of things I classify under this category are abilities or circumstances that others could covet or feel jealous of, and which we would feel proud or protective of.  Examples include inherent abilities, social status, job positions, friends, families, and spouses, or anything else we consider to be "ours." While the Anarresti have successfully done away with materialism, their society suffers from this cultural blind spot.  They cannot, and do not, perceive the inherent coercive nature of their metaphorical possessions.  This is why Shevek suffers so much at the hands of Sabul at the university.  He fails to grasp the fact that Sabul is jealous of his intellect and protective of his own job.  This is not surprising given Shevek's very Odonian notion of ownership; he believes quite strongly that "you have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give," and it is his devotion to this revolutionary ideal that prevents him from seeing through the wall of ideology and into his neighbours' hearts.

             

          Interestingly enough, Shevek's major conflict is centred around a possession that, depending on the society in which it exists, can be considered both material or metaphorical: his new theory of Simultaneity and Sequency that will make possible faster-than-light travel.  On Anarres Shevek makes major life choices based on the desire to share this theory with humanity as a whole.  Owning it all to himself  makes Shevek noticeably uncomfortable, but he constantly encounters walls that prevent him from sharing this gift with his people.  When he goes to Urras he comes to realize that even his intellectual production will be treated as a proprietary good by whomever he reveals it to, and will benefit only one nation or political group, forcing him to again reappraise his goals and motives.  At every step of the way his actions are both limited and determined by his possession of this theory, a situation that poignantly reveals the barriers and obstacles presented by any incomplete and ideologically-based conception of ownership.  In the end, Shevek does manage to free himself from his own self-made chains by giving his theory to humanity in general, allowing him to return home as a perfectly free Anarresti.  As the Anarresti are fond of saying, "a true journey is return."

            
          I don't think this little bit of discussion can do justice to Le Guin's supremely nuanced and compelling depiction of an "ambiguous utopia."  In fact, I've completely left out all the aspects that make it so emotionally satisfying as well.  It's so good that it has finally surpassed Dune as my favourite sci-fi novel.  For any of you who have heard me talk about sci-fi, you'll know that's a big deal.  Anyways, I hope I have inspired at least some of you to go read it.  It will be well worth your time, I promise.  And anyone who has read it, please let me know your thoughts.  Don't let some symbolic wall stand in your way.