The Word for World Is Forest

by Ursula K. Le Guin

That oppression corrupts the oppressors is well enough known. That resistance to oppression can profoundly change those resisting, and for the worse, is less widely recognised – particularly among those who give that resistance their sympathy and solidarity.

She remains subversive, and her work dangerous reading, because it changes the reader and makes them look at the real world in a different light.

The desire for power, in the sense of power over others, is what pulls most people off the path of the pursuit of liberty.

“The world is always new,” said Coro Mena, “however old its roots.

. I was well taught in dreaming, and then I’m old. I dream very little for myself any more. Why should I? Little is new to me. And what I wanted from my life, I have had, and more. I have had my whole life. Days like the leaves of the forest. I’m an old hollow tree, only the roots live. And so I dream only what all men dream. I have no visions and no wishes. I see what is.

The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.

Lyubov, why aren’t you like the others?” “I am like them. A man. Like them. Like you.”