My thoughts after having read The Dispossessed
Heya!
So, the Gazette chose "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin for this months book club (well, last months technically, but the deadline is the 8th of this month). Anyways, as is tradition, I'm gonna review it here.
So, first and foremost, did I like The Dispossessed? Is it a good book? Well, yes! I'd say it's pretty good. I did enjoy it, more or less. Depending on the situation, i might even recommend it!
Is it a good story? Well... That's a more complicated question to answer. Personally, I would say maybe? On a technical level i suppose it is, but... To me, while The Dispossessed was an interesting combination of ideas, it was not an interesting story. It wasn't exactly fun to read so much as it was fun to have read.
The book is written in a sort of biographical style. What I mean by that is that it's written from a somewhat detached, big picture point of view, and that things just sort of happen to our protagonist. For most of the book, Shevek doesn't have much in the way of agency. He has the vague goal of connecting the people of Annarress and Urras, but for the majority of the book, that goal seems lofty and rather far off. He's a very reactive protagonist, especially for the parts of the book that are set on Anarress. He gets reassigned to this post and that post, and generally just sort of does what he is told.
And, I mean, that is the point. It's his character arc. He starts out just sort of letting life pass him by, to accept things as they are and to follow the orders and wishes of the PDC, who are the syndicate in control of organizing most of the things going on on Anarres. Then, later on, he realizes that the PDC has become a sort of de-facto government. That, by social convention and social pressure, people feel obligated to follow the things they say, because "that's just how things are done here". That they've become inflexible and started to recreate archist power structures.
And while I can recognize that that was probably the intention, it doesn't really make the book any less boring to read. At times, I was genuinely struggling to get through the chapters, checking every couple minutes to see how far along I was. I just didn't really feel like I could connect with any of the characters. The only character that we really get to see a significant amount of is our protagonist, Shevek. Besides that, we don't really spend much time with any of the other characters. Shevek does, sure, but the book itself never really lingers on any specific interaction. I think it's rather telling that the only character whose name I can even remember is Shevek, the main character. Everyone else got so little screentime that I never managed to memorize their names.
As I've previously said, it never really feels like Shevek has any clear short-term goals either. For the most part, they're all fairly lofty ambitions that seem to be in the far-off future. And while, again, it makes sense and I recognize why the book is written the way that it is, it doesn't make it a very fun read. I quite like the worldbuilding, it's really interesting. The languages, the little stories behind all the small details of the settings, the thing we learn about Anarres culture just by seeing for which concepts their language, pravic, lacks words... It's all very well done, and genuinely very cool. There's a lot here to analyze and to unpack. But while the worldbuilding is quite good, and the prose is often filled with interesting metaphors and cool stylistic choices, for me at least that doesn't make up for how much of a slog the actual story can be at times.
And, I don't even think this is necessarily a fault of the book. I think what The Dispossessed is trying to do, it does quite well. It's a very interesting exploration of what an Anarchist society could look like. I quite like how Anarres is not just a perfect Utopia. They live in a utopian society, but they absolutely still have problems.
Anarres isn't perfect. It's quite imperfect, in fact. At the beginning of the book, much of Anarres inhabitants had lost sight of their ideals, slowly turning away from that Odonian concept of a permanent revolution. People are stuck in their ways now, slowly remaking old power structures. Ursula Le Guin doesn't shy away from showing the downsides of a society based entirely on mutual aid either. We hear stories about one of Sheveks old friends being basically exiled, shunned due to questioning the existing social order and the status quo, and by will of the majority, "nudged" by social pressure into applying for a position in Anarres asylum.
This becomes very clear in about the last 3 to 4 chapters of the book, and is where, to me, it started actually becoming enjoyable to read again. You have this clear, actionable goal of first finding the resistance, then later going to that protest, and then finding a way back home to Anarres. Shevek does things. He influences the world around him, and that influence can be felt. He has stuff he wants to do right now, not just goals he may or may not accomplish in some far off future. The last couple chapters felt like a real story, an entertaining one. So, I do sort of wish there was more of that throughout the whole work. That we didn't have this incredibly dry story for the vast majority of the book, only to then have this huge burst of excitement at the end.
I don't quite know how they could've done that, but I do still wish the book was more structured in that way. It would have made it significantly easier to read. Still, what if the world was made of pudding, right? I don't really know what a Dispossessed written like that would look like. I'm not sure if it would necessarily make for a better book. It'd make for a more exciting story, it'd make it easier to read, I can definitely say that much... But that's also not the only thing the Dispossessed is trying to do.
One thing that really stood out to me, still in the latter half of the book, but a bit before those last couple chapters, was a certain scene where Shevek finally got home, after about, two years i think? Of being assigned somewhere else by the PDC... Only to find that his romantic partner has been reassigned indefinitely, to a place he won't be able to be assigned to, due to there not being any meaningful work to be done by him there. All this happens in the middle of a famine. People are starving, and his partner, Takver, is a very good marine biologist and geneticist who might be able to help solve the problem. She's needed somewhere else, to do her part to save people from famine. Just as he's needed in a different place, to do his part.
Noone is really at fault here. It makes sense. On a purely logical level, this seems like the thing to do. But that just makes things worse, in a way. You can't blame anyone. Things are working as intended, and they are working well. But at the end of the day, even in a utopian society, things still go wrong. We're still human, there's still going to be problems. And now there is noone to blame. Both Shevek and Takver later say they regret making the decision. That they should have stayed behind. I don't think that changes that sort of, unique sense of despair that moment has. It's a kind of despair you only really get in these more grounded utopian stories. We've done everything we can, and we still have to suffer. It kind of reminds me of 17776 in that way.
Scenes like this are really interesting to me. Seeing the sort of gaps in the utopia of The Dipossessed, knowing that it doesn't shy away from showing the parts where things break down, makes it feel a lot more grounded. It helps add to building the already fantastic world that Ursula Le Guin has created, and it helps make a far more convincing case for Anarchism than if the book only put a spotlight on the good parts of Anarres society.
All in all, there's definitely a lot of interesting stuff in the dispossessed. If nothing else, its ideas are definitely worth knowing about. On a technical level, the writing is even pretty damn good. I just don't think it's quite the book for me - though I definitely do not regret reading it.