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He was so feminine in looks and manner that I once asked him how many children he had. He looked glum. He had never borne any. He had, however, sired four. It was one of the little jolts I was always getting. Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters.
Key world-building plot point.
But on Gethen nothing led to war. Quarrels, murders, feuds, forays, vendettas, assassinations, tortures and abominations, all these were in their repertory of human accomplishments; but they did not go to war. They lacked, it seemed, the capacity to mobilize. They behaved like animals, in that respect; or like women. They did not behave like men, or ants.
Another interesting tidbit of world-building.
The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) “tied down to childbearing,” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be—psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.
No systemic sexism.
One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
“Apalling?”
Yet now and then during that long, heavy, talkative supperparty, though all my attention was given to those complex and powerful Orgota who meant to befriend or use me, I was sharply aware of him: of his silence; of his dark averted face. And it crossed my mind, though I dismissed the idea as baseless, that I had not come to Mishnory to eat roast blackfish with the Commensals of my own free will; nor had they brought me here. He had.
I’m not sure Estraven is really present, or if this is another of Genly’s “dreams.” He also had a “dream” of war a few days ago just after crossing the river/border into this new country, which, weirdly, turned into a real and violent and war-like raid by Karhidians.
What, asked Obsle, was the Ekumen—a world, a league of worlds, a place, a government? “Well, all of those and none. Ekumen is our Terran word; in the common tongue it’s called the Household; in Karhidish it would be the Hearth. In Orgota I’m not sure, I don’t know the language well enough yet.
This whole passage, Genly explaining what the Ekumen is, is super-interesting
I should have spoken to him days ago. It is too late. Fear undoes his mission and my hope, once more. Not fear of the alien, the unearthly, not here. These Orgota have not the wits nor size of spirit to fear what is truly and immensely strange. They cannot even see it. They look at the man from another world and see what? A spy from Karhide, a pervert, an agent, a sorry little political Unit like themselves. If he does not send for the ship at once it will be too late; it may be already too late. It is my fault. I have done nothing right.
I like Estraven. He sees the big picture. But I still don’t understand why Genly doesn’t trust him.
Some time between midnight and dawn I was awakened by strangers, informed that I was under arrest, and taken by an armed guard to the Kundershaden Prison.
Again, why is Genly such a dumbass? Once again, Estraven tried to warn him but he didn’t listen. Why?
A night or two after that he went into a coma, and presently died. I had not learned what he had been sent to the Voluntary Farm for, what crime or fault or irregularity in his identification papers, and knew only that he had been in Pulefen Farm less than a year. The day after Asra’s death they called me for examination; this time they had to carry me in, and I can’t remember anything further than that.
That chapter fucking sucked balls. If this shit doesn’t start getting better, I’m stopping. Why is this crap so fucking popular?
“All right,” he said with peevish haste. “I see, I believe you—what can I do but believe you. Here I am, here you are. . . . But I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you did all this for.” At that my temper broke, and I must stare at the ice-knife which lay close by my hand, not looking at him and not replying until I had controlled my anger.
Fuck these two! They’re on the same side, they both want Gethen to join the Ekumen— why do they continue to misunderstand each other???
“But for what purpose—all this intriguing, this hiding and power-seeking and plotting—what was it all for, Estraven? What were you after?” “I was after what you’re after: the alliance of my world with your worlds. What did you think?”
Ugh. 2/3 of the way thru this story and only NOW are these two finally communicating!
Do you think I would play shifgrethor when so much is at stake for all of us, all my fellow men? What does it matter which country wakens first, so long as we waken?”
Estraven assumes Genly to be able to understand his inner thought without he himself communicating them. (Although Genly can, apparently, read minds)
“How the devil can I believe anything you say!” he burst out.
Genly still doesn’t trust Estraven… fucking why???
“I don’t mean to be unjust, Estraven—” “Yet you are. It is strange. I am the only man in all Gethen that has trusted you entirely, and I am the only man in Gethen that you have refused to trust.”
Indeed! Why???
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
The unity of opposites.
Within an hour after our evening meal Estraven turned the stove down, if it was feasible to do so, and turned the light-emission off. As he did so he murmured a short and charming grace of invocation, the only ritual words I had ever learned of the Handdara: “Praise then darkness and Creation unfinished,” he said, and there was darkness. We slept. In the morning it was all to do over.
Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished.
“Do you know that sign?” He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, “No.” “It’s found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness . . . how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.”
Darkness is the right hand of light.
“There’ll be one condition that Karhide must fulfill before it can join the Ekumen. Argaven must revoke your banishment.” He said nothing, but stood gazing at the fire. “I mean it,” I insisted. “First things first.” “I thank you, Genry,” he said. His voice, when he spoke very softly as now, did have much the timbre of a woman’s voice, husky and unresonant. He looked at me, gently, not smiling. “But I haven’t expected to see my home again for a long time now. I’ve been in exile for twenty years, you know.
I love that Genly is proposing this condition! But Estraven has been in exile for 20 years? What? Howso?
took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, “Arek!” Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark.
Goddammit! Sobs…
What does it matter what fools call him?” The old lord nodded slowly, smoothly. “It matters,” he said. “You crossed the Gobrin Ice together,” Sorve demanded, “you and he?” “We did.” “I should like to hear that tale, my Lord Envoy,” said old Esvans, very calm. But the boy, Therem’s son, said stammering, “Will you tell us how he died?—Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars—the other kinds of men, the other lives?”
Ok. Good, solid ending. This book was quite a challenge, with long passages of harshness, both human and natural. And lots of sadness. But the future looks bright for Gethen and the Ekumen.
