Review by Ariel Vered   —   July 6, 2001

The Dispossessed is a novel written during the Cold War about the Cold War. It tells the story of Shevek, a physicist from Anarres, who journeys to Urras to complete his scientific work. Along the way he is confronted with ideological challenges to both his own world and to that of his hosts. Unwittingly, he becomes the protagonist of deep discussion on both.

Anarres is a barely inhabitable moon of Urras. 170 years before the events told in The Dispossessed begin, most of the Odonians, a group of communist-anarchists, chose self-exile on Anarres rather than endure the endless class struggle of Urras. On Anarres they established a new society with a new language in which there are no nations, no governments, no titles and no private property. Since that time, the Odonians forbade contact with the outside worlds. Shevek is the first person to assert that on a world with no laws, there can be no restrictions. He is free to do as he pleases, and if his scientific research demands that he go to Urras, he will do so.

Urras is portrayed as a land that is a near-paradise on the surface, but with on-going class struggle that is tearing it up from within. It is green, full of trees and rolling hills. The affluence of Urras is apparent, but so are the many poor and disenfranchised of its male-dominated society.

Le Guin intentionally exaggerates the societies known to her at the time that she wrote this book. Anarres is the Soviet Union taken to an extreme; it is what a society would be like if communism were allowed to run its own course and to achieve its own best possible result, by its own standards and ideology. The same is true of Urras; it is the United States or Switzerland of the 1970's taken to an extreme. In the story, none of the societies are successful, nor do they have any chance of succeeding. Instead of achieving an ideal society, they created cultures where the ideology is esoteric and petty people continue to dominate daily life.

The actual plot of The Dispossessed is inconsequential. Le Guin starts the book in the middle, and then continues the story from the beginning, returning to middle in alternating chapters. Like the societies that Le Guin depicts, her story itself is taken to an extreme. Half of the novel is already known at the outset, and nothing interesting happens along the way. No characters are fully developed in the novel. Who needs men of character if the world is doomed to everlasting mediocrity? In the universe of The Dispossessed, there will be no feats either great or infamous, only eternal suffering.

The Dispossessed is not a novel of Speculative Fiction, but a Greek tragedy set in some ambiguous future. It depicts a world in which there is no hope, only despair. A world where it is irrelevant which of Man's varied ideologies attains the cultural hegemony; Mankind is doomed to perpetual warfare, struggle and dissatisfaction. In the most inhuman tradition of Greek tragedy, there is no savior and no salvation in The Dispossessed, only a strange fate dictated by petty, jealous gods, and in which Man is merely playing out the script. Man is trivial, and Mankind is doomed.

Speculative Fiction appeals to me, personally, for one main reason: its inherent optimism, its vision for a better way of life, or at least a world in which life can get better; novels in which men succeed not because of their noble birth, but because of their noble humanity. Even post-apocalyptic novels share this theme and are at their core optimistic, showing Man's resolve to overcome all tragedies, however great or small, and to improve Mankind despite global setbacks. Even when men nearly destroy the world through nuclear war, ecological disaster or stupidity, the human spirit will ultimately prevail.

The Dispossessed lacks this inherent optimism or any vision for the future except despair. The author is deeply pessimistic and disbelieves in humanity. The society on Urras has existed for at least 10,000 years. Nearly two millennia before the events described in the narrative, ships have already landed on Anarres. Yet in the intervening years, there were no noteworthy technological advances facilitating Mankind's continued progress. It is also told in the book how Terra's population has dwindled to a mere half billion souls following its own ecological irresponsibility. Terra is saved from ultimate desolation only by the chance charity of the Hain, a much older race of humans from a distant planet, also struggling after millennia of self-inflicted misfortune. Strangely, none of these human cultures are able to progress beyond 1960's Earth technology.

I do not hold the opinion that technology will necessarily better Mankind. I hold the opinion that Mankind will take advantage of technology to better itself. Throughout history, though there have been many individuals who have chosen evil over good, Mankind has consistently chosen good, constantly improving the human condition. Man has born his burden well, recognizing the inherent advantages of peace over war, of health over disease, of education over ignorance. Today a typical man feels more empathy for his fellow man than jealousy towards him. I believe that a civilization incapable of advance is one in which man no longer challenges evil with good, Man devoid of Humanity. This complacency on the inter-planetary species level that is portrayed in The Dispossessed seems incompatible with the human spirit.

In the real world, with only 6000 years of human civilization on Earth, Man has progressed from disparate bands of hunter-gatherers to the dawn of the space age. Mankind has displaced natural selection with cognitive choice, conquering disease and famine, changing the world and Man himself. The future remains uncertain, but full of hope. Long eras without improving the human condition such as those described in The Dispossessed seem not only inconceivable, but reprehensible. Men in general, and Speculative Fiction writers in specific, should look upon Man's brief history with great satisfaction. The future should be anticipated with great hope, not dreaded in despair.

One of the greatest strengths of Speculative Fiction is its ability to examine our own society by taking a critical look at a plausible alternative world. I don't begrudge Le Guin for failing to understand the future, the same way that I don't begrudge Bradbury for writing about racial segregation in The Martian Chronicles. If the Cold War and feminism were pressing issues in the early 1970's, it is quite understandable that they would play a major role in a book trying to explore the writer's world. I take issue with Le Guin not because she did not accurately predict the future, but because the future that she chose to predict is bereft of the human spirit. She offers no resolution, only problems. On the dust jacket of the book it is written, "One man's search for utopia." It would be more accurate to have written, "All roads lead to dystopia."

I do not assert that there is no room for dystopic Speculative Fiction novels. By their nature, forward looking thinkers cannot limit themselves only to proclaiming Man's wonderful destiny, but must also warn of the flaws of sthe future that we must guard against. Using a futuristic setting to forecast the outcome of continuing a current trend is also a very powerful convention in literature. However, what separates The Dispossessed from Speculative Fiction is its total lack of hope. If continuing the trends of the early 1970's is so abhorrent, why doesn't Le Guin give us even a glimpse at an alternative?

I am reminded of Lewis Carroll's Alice tetralogy. In a land still shaky with free speech, Carroll chose to write his poignant criticism of the hypocrisies of Victorian England in a fictitious Wonderland. That criticism is no longer relevant to us today, and the books have been relegated to cartoons and children's adaptations, lauded today for their colorful imagination instead of their social and political commentary. Like the Alice books, The Dispossessed was a poignant social and political critique, very relevant at time that it was written, but with little to offer today's audience. Its messages are lost to modern minds because it warns of problems that we have already overcome, or at least are well on the way to overcoming.

Perhaps The Dispossessed is a book that should be carefully stored away, and unwrapped in another 40 or 50 years, so that a generation, fortunate enough to never have heard of Krushev, will be able to understand the Cold War through the eyes of contemporary authors. However, lacking the charm of the Alice books, or the wonderful horror of 1984, there is no compelling reason to read The Dispossessed today.

The Dispossessed is not a Lost Book. The novel is easily attainable at bookstores throughout the world and on the net. The book receives the highest rating on the "D. D. Shade top 102", and it is certainly well known. I hope that this will change. It is time to lose The Dispossessed.