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I just started reading this before work today and it seems pretty interesting. I'm still working my way through chapter 1 (hey, watching a puppy, cooking breakfast, and making coffee eat up a large chunk of my morning, ok!?), but the differences in the ways of thinking were pretty cool, higher = better vs central = better, that kind of stuff.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:10
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Did anyone else feel that the anarchist planet had a more opressive system in many aspects than the capitalist imperialist one? I'm still reading, and in fact have only just finished the second chapter, but find myself thinking that Anarres (the anarchist planet) is pretty oppressive with its information censoring and assignment of work. I haven't gotten to read much about Urras except for what the Annarens (?) are taught, to fear and hate them and that they were supposedly burning bodies of unpropertied children that had died of famine while the [i]propertied[i] classes dined in luxury. I'm sure that there will be tons of bad things about Urras in the coming chapters. Really, the thing that I felt most reading Shevek's history was that Anarres was kind of like a non-militaristic North Korea and Urras was South Korea. This could be because I have lived in SK for 8+ years, though.
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Mar 13, 2017 01:45
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So I got a little sidetracked reading Zorba the Greek but now that I'm done with it I've returned to The Dispossessed. Just finished chapter 3, which is set on Urras. So far, at least to my eye, Anarres seems like a pretty oppressive place (due in large part to my reading of chapter 2, Shevek's childhood) and Urras, aside from the hugely sexist system in place, seems pretty decent? I am trying to keep in mind that Shevek is something of a VIP and would naturally be taken around to only the good parts of town, and since we only see what he is seeing, we are only seeing the good bits as well. I'm guessing that we'll slowly get exposed to more and more inequity as the book goes on. I will say that the conversations between Shevek and Pae and co. are pretty fun to read. LeGuin does a pretty good job of getting the feeling of two parties trying to converse across a relatively large cultural gulf into her writing. Also, watching Shevek slowly come to grips with the the concept of property, like when he first explores his room, is definitely fun. So far, liking this book quite a lot. *edit* Finished chapter 4. Man, the family structure on Anarres is all kinds of messed up. Poor Shevek must have some weird mommy issues to work out. USMC_Karl fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 04:35
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Kestral posted:It's unusual to our eyes, but not without precedent in human history, the Israeli kibbutz being the most recent and arguably most extreme; there's a great Guardian article about it here, and it's interesting to compare the description of the kibbutz's communal lifestyle to that of the Anarrans. Le Guin is the daughter of notable anthropologist, and you can see that discipline's influences in most of her work. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that most of the strangeness in both societies of The Dispossessed had direct real-world analogues somewhere. Well thank you for that, I'll go read that article. Very interesting to see real-world parallels to the book. I'm up to chapter 7 and, as the story goes on, I find myself wanting to read it more and more. This has definitely been a slow burn book for me, starting out I wasn't super interested and just kind of getting my feet. By chapter 4 I was starting to actually care for Shavek. Now, at chapter 7, I have to force myself to put it down after every chapter so I can have some time to do other stuff/think about what I read. I'm glad I voted for this one.
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Mar 20, 2017 01:29
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Kestral posted:Anyone who feels the way USMC_Karl does should run, not walk, to the nearest place they can find Le Guin's other great sci-fi sociology / anthropology novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, which was rightly the BOTM for January 2014. It is just as good as The Dispossessed, possibly better, and is incredibly relevant today - possibly more so than when it was written. Like Dispossessed, it's a slow burn until around the halfway mark, but absolutely worth it. You're killing me. I'll add that to my list. Thanks for the recommendation.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:44
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Well, I just finished it and couldn't really take part, but it looks like you haven't done Zorba the Greek yet. I thought it was a ton of fun as a book, and it wasn't particularly hard to read. It seemed to me that you could discuss a little of it as well.
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Mar 21, 2017 03:27
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If it manages to make it as a BoTM, I'd recommend Peter Bien's translation. I got it on amazon for $12 and the quality was top notch. Totally colloquial, lots of feeling, and smooth to read. *edit* to move back to The Dispossessed, finishing up chapter 7 as we speak and I get the feeling that we are going to start delving into the not-so-nice things on Urras. Shevek has started to try to seek out some of the unpropertied classes and seems to be trying to buck the university a bit. USMC_Karl fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 03:45
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Just finished chapter 8 and, man, what a pendulum of emotions regarding Shevek. First, we deal with the attempted(?) rape in chapter 7, which makes me kind of dislike him, and then we move on to him getting split up from his partner and his newborn baby in chapter 8, which makes me feel really sorry for him.
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Mar 22, 2017 01:56
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:37 |
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rngd in the womb posted:Just finished this book yesterday, and I have to say that I really love the tension Le Guin puts in this story. Anaerres is naturally oppressive as a planet, more so than Urras, and the only way for a society to flourish on it is for the society to organize it in a way that promotes harmony. Anarchism! But unfortunately, like every other social order, it is vulnerable to human nature. Le Guin undercuts her posture of the Anaerresian society with Sabul, the Divlab computers, and the council. Same, just finished the book and I love the constant tension building. The first half of the book kind of set up the story and brought us to a point where we could sort of understand Shevek and his crusade on Urras, and then from that point on it's constant stress. The party scene on Urras, the forced separation of Shevek and Takver, and the protests and reprisals all start to rub our faces in the fact that neither planet is ideal. In fact, the only "characters" in the story that came out seeming to be decent was the Terran and the Hainish. The Terrans because they already royally screwed their planet up and came across as kind of having no real standing and mostly just tolerated, and the Hainish because they seemed to be purely altruistic in nature. Of course, I could be totally mistaken and operating off of my assumptions and incomplete knowledge. Since The Dispossessed is part of the Hainish Cycle series, maybe the Hainish and the Terrans are huge jerks in other books. The ending of the book was really good, I particularly liked how the Hainish dude decided to accompany Shevek down to the planet, even though there was essentially a riot going on due to his arrival. Kind of leaves the reader with the idea that, maybe, Anaerres will return to the "constant revolution" that Shevek talks about.. All in all, I have to thank Hieronymous Alloy and the people who voted for this as a BoTM. This was my first time participating in a BoTM and I had no idea what to expect, but it was a lot of fun -AND- pushed me to read something I normally wouldn't. I just might stick around for next month's BoTM and bother you all with more of my inane posts.
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Mar 27, 2017 01:30
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