Cbr18bingo Left
The Left Hand of Darkness is a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel first published in 1969. It is the story of an alien envoy named Genly Ai who has come to a remote planet called Gethen or Winter in order to speak to its leaders about joining the Ekumen, a kind of alliance of other worlds devoted to the service and betterment of humanity. Genly has arrived at a time when the nations of this planet are on the verge of war, and he would have had a hard enough time winning over the leaders to his peaceful message for that reason alone, but on top of that, his “otherness” is another formidable obstacle. Only one person on this planet seems open to Genly’s message — Estraven, the main councillor to the King of Karhide. This novel is the story of their relationship, its evolution during a time of intense political tumult, and its impact on the Gethen as a whole.
The two nations that dominate Gethen are Karhide, ruled by King Argaven, and Orgoreyn, which seems to be a sort of federation of communal organizations. Genly has spent the last few years in Karhide and has been somewhat frustrated. The king has not met with him, the weather is brutally cold, and the manners and customs of the people can be puzzling. These customs are based on a principle called “shifgrethor” which Genly understands as some sort of “prestige, place, face, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority.” His fundamental inability to really understand the nuances of relationships in Karhide have led him to dislike and distrust Estraven, the one person with whom he has spent the most time, and who, when the story begins, is about to lose his position in a most dramatic way.
In addition to this lack of cultural understanding between Genly and the people of Karhide, Genly’s “otherness” makes people both fascinated and repulsed by him, and Genly seems to feel the same way about them. The people of this planet are not born either male or female. Instead they have sexual fluidity; for a few days every month, they experience “kemmer,” which is something like estrus, at which point their bodies will take on the sexual traits of either a male or a female. A person might have female traits for a few days one month but male traits for a few days the next. Anyone could become pregnant; anyone could be a mother to some children and father to others. Genly, as a typical human, has only one sex; he is male, always, and the people of Gethen consider that a perversion.
As the narration goes back and forth between Genly and Estraven, we can see each mystified, annoyed, and frustrated by the other, but we also see that they want the same things. Political machinations in Karhide will lead to both Genly and Estraven leaving for Orgoreyn, although not together and not for the same reasons. Orgoreyn seems a friendlier and more receptive place to Genly’s message, but the political maneuvering there is more insidious than in Karhide. Genly and Estraven eventually have to learn to work together and trust each other if they are going to survive.
Le Guin’s imagination is extraordinary. Gethen feels like a very real place, and the political chaos is also quite familiar. The gender fluidity of characters is an aspect of the novel that has probably generated the most attention, and Le Guin’s writing about this unusual biological phenomenon is thoughtful and sensitive. But it is the evolving relationship between Genly and Estraven that is what stays with me. It is not a romantic relationship. It is about a growing understanding, respect, and friendship between two different people. Difference is normal, it’s necessary, it helps us make sense of the world. That’s a message I can get behind.
