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4.0
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
ByPublisher Description
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia Reviews
4.0
““Freedom is never very safe.”
This may be one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time. Le Guin is the queen of thought experiments - in the Dispossessed, she asks, “Could a successful society be based on the principles of anarchism?” Le Guin isn’t trying to persuade her audience that the anarchist society of Anarres is a paradise of equality and freedom. In fact, Anarres falls pretty short of a utopia - while it lacks the forceful and outright violent suppression of women and the lower class on its sister planet, Urras, control and power-hierarchies still exist on Anarres, only in the form of shame and social ostracism.
Our main character, Shevek, is a physicist on Anarres with the goal of bridging these two societies together, and his story is told in a nonlinear narrative that reinforces the theme of his life’s work: time. Shevek is on the brink of discovering what he calls the Theory of Simultaneity, which will allow communication without any time intervals between two points in space. His biggest obstacle isn’t developing the theory, but overcoming the politics of both societies which wish to impede him. On Anarres, free thought is seen as “egoist” and social conscience dominates individual will. On Urras, capitalist societies wish to own the theory and profit off the technology it will accompany.
Every sentence of this novel drips with purpose - even the thought Le Guin put into the differences in the languages between the two societies. The most enjoyable part was Shevek’s journey of self-actualization, and his realization that true revolution is an ongoing process of change, like time. Shevek owns nothing - not even his own thoughts. He dispossesses himself, even from the society that produced him, that he believes in, so that people across the universe can access his theories and benefit from his work.
“We each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.””
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