Pre-Post week 12--responding to the end of The Word for World is Forest

The second half of the book was sad and hard to read—all four chapters of it.

I wonder how Le Guin felt writing Ch 5.  She certainly packed a lot into it.  (I loved the small detail of the Athsheans carving figures of themselves in wood, not stone (p 106).)  Lyubov’s insights were pitch perfect—knowing how his people made easy pronouncements about the Athsheans being lazy or not sleeping instead of taking time to understand them (p. 107).  The deeply personal agonizing he does—Had his fear in fact been the personal fear that Selver might, having learned racial hatred, reject him, despise his loyalty, and treat him not as ‘you,’ but as ‘one of them’? (top of p 111). And the whole touching process of the Athsheans works as a critique of our ways of touching—some of the colonists sneered, unable to see in these touch-exchanges anything but their own eroticism which, forced to concentrate itself exclusively on sex and then repressed and frustrated,…every humane response…(p 111). Using Lyubov’s dilemma Le Guin expertly explores the effects of the choices we make. “He (Lyubov) preferred to be enlightened rather than to enlighten; to seek facts rather than the Truth.  But even the most unmissionary soul…is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. “What are they doing? Abruptly becomes, “What are we doing? And then, “What must I do?” (p 124).  Le Guin makes it plain that because he loved his friend he wrote “a soothing report, and the most inaccurate one” (top of p 127). We forgive him because he made his decision based on inaccurate information, too. He didn’t know about the killing Davidson had done or that the Athsheans were indeed preparing to murder everyone. He was fully warned, but he couldn’t fully hear much less heed the message perhaps in part because it came from his friend.  

The unfolding violence of the other chapters was no surprise, but still, it was rough going. I did like that Davidson’s life was spared and that he received creative justice—banishment to Dump Island.

The very last lines—Selver’s reflection about the future—“Lyubov will be here…Davidson will be here.  …Both of them. Maybe after I die people will be as they were before I was born, and before you came.  But I do not think they will. (p 189). This is not an expression full of positive feelings, but neither is it completely dark. What Le Guin has done is capture the complexity of pain and not knowing. But I believe she might also want us to remember Lyubov’s creed—“In diversity is life and where there’s life there’s hope… (p 125).  Ah, yes,…hope.