​Ashton Paulus

     My humanities artifact is a review I wrote for the book "The Left Hand of Darkness". I don't know if this was my best work, but I definitely had the most fun writing this piece, the original title of this essay was "The Left Hand of Fartness", but unfortunealty I was censored. 

 

The Left Hand of Darkness Review

     The Left Hand of Darkness is a sci-fi novel set on an alien planet, Gethen, where the Gethenians, an androgynous alien race, live. The main protagonist of the story is Genly Ai, an ambassador sent by the Ekumen, which is more or less the U.N. in space, to try and persuade the king of Karhide, a country on Gethen, to join the Ekumen. Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness has a confusing, but worthwhile story, if you can see past all the unnecessary background details that throw the story off track every other chapter.

     At its base, the book is a hero’s journey. A hero is tasked with an objective, he goes through many trials and ordeals, there is low point that is then immediately followed by a miraculous rescue or turn around of some sort, and it all ends more or less happily ever after. I’m fine with this formula, it makes for some of my favorite books, movies and video games of all time, but Le Guin adds in a lot of lore and background details that I feel are unnecessary and only distract the reader from the main storyline of the book. There was one chapter that talked about a Gethenian god, Meshe. “The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the Seeing of Meshe, and are in his Eye” (175). I have no idea what any of that means and I don’t want to know. There is a whole three pages devoted to this subject and the rest of it is also nonsense. There were also other distractions like this one, none were as bad as this one however. The others were some sort of Gethenian fable or fairy tale, which I thought were quite interesting. Perhaps it would have been better to make these fables into a different book or series of short stories because while each of them are interesting to read, they distract the reader from the main storyline.

     Even the main storyline is somewhat boring. It is filled with political nonsense about Karhide's, and its opposing nation, Orgeryn's government. I don't know anyone who enjoyed The Star Wars trilogies because of the political aspects in the films. I think I can safely say the same for The Left Hand of Darkness as well. When I think of sci-fi I think awesome space battles with lasers and futuristic weapons. The only thing sci-fi like is the fact that aliens exist. Other than that they are just like boring old humans. Eat, go to work, sleep, rinse and repeat. At critical point in the story where all hope seems lost, Estraven, a gethenian prime minister, has to break into a prison and rescue Genly. There is no shootout, or assassinating of any sort. He simply walks into the prison with a disguise, grabs Genly, climbs over a fence and leaves. It isn't the kind of excitement I'm looking for in a sci-fi.

     The Left Hand of Darkness has many metaphors, lessons, and values that I think are worthwhile of noting. Throughout the book Genly expresses his feelings of being on an alien planet, being the only one of his kind. He explains how these aliens are different from him, physically mainly, and we do the same thing here in our world. We judge people based on the color of their skin, if we don't understand something, we are immediately turned off by it. On Gethen there is no he or she, because gethenians can be either and neither at the same time. You only know if they are in kemmering, which is how gethenians reproduce. One of the hardest things for Genly to do is to think of these people neither as a man or woman. Le Guin pokes at this idea and makes you think about how this would affect our society. How it would be different. The changes would be colossal, there are entire languages built on the idea of a masculine and feminine being. I think it's an interesting idea Le Guin puts out the world. Unfortunately this message is pretty hard to take from the book without analyzing it extensively.

     The Left Hand of Darkness isn't your run of the mill sci-fi adventure story. It's story is slow, there is little to no action throughout the entire book, the main storyline is drowned out by boring mythical political battles and random side stories. I believe the main message of the book is that learning about the unknown is hard sometimes, but in the end its usually worth it. Because knowledge is power! Sadly this message is faint and isn't focused on or brought up directly at all throughout the entire book. I feel if Le Guin would've included some kind of part in the book where Genly had to debrief his superiors about his exploration on Gethen, and he could explain how it was tough, but because they gained an ally and some intelligence it was worth it. Some kind of summary to shove the message of the book into the readers face. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book. Because I have seen this same story been done better in many different mediums such as video games, books, and movies. I feel it's better left for those who are looking for a book that requires lots of thinking and analyzing.