30 pages • 1 hour read
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Dispossessed
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Illness
Anarresti think of society as a healthy organism, and guard against illness. This metaphor is so prevalent in their thought that it creates a stigma against actual illness. Shevek’s scenes of sickness thus take on additional significance.
Shevek falls ill at least twice in the text, and once has a hangover. After each of these illnesses, he has a breakthrough, both in terms of his thinkingas well as in his commitment to social life. This suggests that “sickness” may not be as negative as Anarresti think it to be.
Prisons
The text begins with an image of a wall that from one perspective guards Anarresti, and from another perspective imprisons them. From there, prisons and scenes of enclosure play a significant role in the text. Shevek becomes familiar with the concept of imprisonment in his youth dormitory, when he and his friends imprison a classmate and see his reaction. Shevek himself feels imprisoned on Anarres, in his quarters on Mindful, and in the university. He tells Urrasti that they are “imprisoned” on multiple occasions.
Shevek’s search is a search for freedom: for individuals, for the Anarresti, and for all species. The way that he views and defines imprisonment in its many forms and guises thus serves as a foil for his vision of true freedom.
Physics
As a physicist, Shevek is interested in reconciling two schools of thought: sequency theory and simultaneity theory. Neither fully accounts for cause and effect. The first posits that events take place in a sequence, on a timeline, while the second argues that time is circular rather than linear. Shevek believes that, if he can reconcile these, he can make innovations not just in physics, but also in ethics. He queries: if we could see the effects of our actions in linear time, and within a broader, cyclical framework, could we avoid doing harm?
Shevek’s physics are explicitly contrasted with Einstein’s, suggesting that scientific and technological innovation always have the potential to change not just our experience of life, but the way that we choose to live as individuals, societies, and nations.
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By Ursula K. Le Guin
