The Anthropological Perspective in LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness

The Anthropological Perspective in LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness

In his essay on The Left Hand of Darkness, Martin Bickman discusses the ways in which Ursula K. Le Guin plays with different formal elements to more clearly express the content and themes of her novel. While Bickman points to the use of structural arguments and descriptive passages, he neglects to mention one of the main stylistic techniques through which Le Guin illuminates her theme of finding unity through diversity, that of the narrative voice or point of view through which the story is told. The narrator, Genly Ai, claims that he will make his report on the planet Gethen as if it were a story (Le Guin, 7), but through the majority of the novel this record is rather told as if it were field notes on an unknown culture, that is, as an anthropological survey. As we are given little of Genly’s emotional responses or personal history, it is primarily through, and against, this anthropological perspective that we see the narrator struggling to understand the otherness of the alien culture in which he is placed.

Le Guin herself was the daughter of the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber, and this fascination with the studying of other cultures influences a number of her works. From the sociological study of the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, to the all-encompassing cultural portrait of a world in Always Coming Home, Le Guin presents other peoples and places with the attention to details of custom that make individual cultures unique. It is perhaps a testament to her abilities as an author that she is able to create a narrator who also sees the strange world he comes to from this anthropological perspective. For instance, Genly goes to great page lengths to accurately describe the New Years celebration of Karhide, from its socio-political stratification to specifics of costume, entertainment, and ritual (Le Guin, 8-12). Elsewhere Genly analyzes the Karhidian diet, the floor plan of the royal Palace, and the planet’s political and technological history as if these were the necessary or obvious perspectives to the telling of his story. Though he is afraid the Gethenians think he will, “judge as an alien” (Le Guin, 11), the only judgments Genly makes at first are objective and observational ones.

The clearest we learn of Genly’s subjective past is that he comes from Earth, but more directly he arrives as an Envoy from the Ekumen, an interplanetary federation socially and technologically more advanced than the cultures on Gethen. This cultural difference is so vast and incomprehensible to the Gethenians that the king of Karhide asks why they should have, “anything to do with all these nations of monsters living out in the Void” (Le Guin, 38). This response may have been similar to what Western, imperialist cultures on our planet encountered when ‘discovering’ other indigenous peoples during the age of colonization. While Genly has been sent to communicate with, and not colonize, the Gethenians, he faces the same problem faced by real world anthropologists: that of having to understand the native people with whom he would talk. Genly is aware that he has to, “see the people of the planet through their own eyes” (Le Guin, 17); to which end he collects local myths and stories throughout the text. Despite the inclusion of these narratives of the other, Genley still sees his task as difficult due to differences in Gethenian sexuality or the socio-political intricacies of shifgrethor, but it may actually be because of the way his anthropological perspective treats the other.

In his essay, Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters, Carl D. Malmgren sets up a three-tiered model for the perspectives through which aliens, the other, are generally encountered in science fiction: “other as enemy, other as self, other as other” (Malmgren, 18). The narrator of The Left Hand of Darkness clearly wants to reach the point of viewing the Gethenian other as self, but until he achieves that perspective he does not see them as either enemies or wholly other. From his broader cultural background in the Ekumen, which has abolished war ages ago, Genly has no desire to see Gethenians as enemies. Even when he is sent to the prison farm in Orgoreyn he discusses events with no sense of animosity, and at worst only feels further away from understanding the cultures around him. On the other hand, Genly’s perspective does not treat the other as wholly other, that is, as impossible to understand from our human vantage point. They may be other now, but through observation they might become known, even if that requires long, inhospitable journeys such as Genly goes on to see the Foretellers. But until these journeys are made, the anthropological perspective treats the other as an object, as something to be studied, classified, and perhaps even used. While Genly wants to understand Gethenian culture, his objective attention to cultural details keeps him from participating in the kinds of individual relationships necessary to apprehending the other as self, the relationships that are at the core of Le Guin’s novel.

Objectivity, it seems, is the greatest fallacy of the anthropological perspective. Is it possible to encounter the other without affecting and being affected by the other’s culture? Genly’s arrival on Gethen and his attempts to educate the Gethenians of the Ekumen drastically reshape the political machinations of both the Karhidians and the Orgoreyns. Each side wants to use Genley to leverage their own socio-political position on the planet, despite his warning that, “we’re all sons of the same Hearth” (Le Guin, 39). Genly’s own objective perspective similarly suffers from or is changed by this commingling of cultural ideas and values. While he participates in a number of feasts and civic ceremonies as an outsider, Genly chooses to participate directly in the Foretelling at the Otherhord Fastness. The answer he receives not only changes Gethenian culture by determining that the Ekumen will arrive within five years, but also introduces Genly to the religious Handdarata concept of, “the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question” (Le Guin, 71). This clearly non-objective state of mind haunts Genly through the rest of the book, making it increasingly difficult for him to interpret what he observes when he arrives in Orgoreyn. Estraven points out that Genly demands an “inordinate trustfulness,” and can not see that the machine of Orgoreyn conceals its machinations (Le Guin, 144 and 146), which lands the Envoy in the prison farm of Pulefen.

Genly and Estraven’s escape onto the Ice marks the place in the story where the novel’s theme of unity through diversity may become possible. It is also when Genly’s anthropological perspective begins to break down. The narration at this point goes back and forth each chapter between the two characters, signifying that one perspective alone is not enough to convey unity. Similarly, it is Estraven’s narratives that here take a scientific and objective turn, describing the quality of the Ice and its effect on the cultures of Gethen with the details that only someone from within that culture could know. Genly meanwhile has little culture to observe, and his narratives tend toward the minutia of physiological survival rather than the objective studying of the other. The other here is now nature itself, but the act of survival disallows the separation from the world that is necessary to the anthropological perspective.

Though the narrator’s perspective weakens as The Left Hand of Darkness draws to a close, it is still uncertain whether the cultural differences between the Ekumen and Gethen are surmountable enough for Genly to understand the other as self. Each of these cultures has their own method for directly connecting to others; for Gethenians it is the sexual state of Kemmer, while for members of the Ekumen it is Mindspeech, a form of telepathy. When they are alone on the ice, Estraven says that he and Genly are, “equals at last, equal, alien, alone” (Le Guin, 221). Yet when he goes into Kemmer, Genly is not able or refuses to participate, denying the form of connection from Gethenian culture. Instead Genly convinces Estraven to participate in Mindspeech, which he claims is “the only important thing” his culture has to give to Gethen (Le Guin, 233), equating this act as an instance of cultural dominance. Even then Estraven can only hear Genly through the voice of one of his own people, and consequently rejects the cultural gift of connection and communication between equals.

Throughout the story then it seems that it is not Genly’s objective anthropological perspective, or even his culture’s “superior” values, that enables him to achieve his mission of bringing the Ekumen to Gethen. All these things do is succeed to alienate the narrator from his own people when they finally arrive, leaving Genly more culturally adrift than when he arrived. He becomes other from himself. Instead it is Estraven who allows the Ekumen culture into his own, for he alone was broadminded enough from the beginning to not only understand his own culture, but also the necessity of welcoming an alien other into their midst. While he has been the Envoy’s strongest ally, Genly was unable to see this, let alone trust Estraven, precisely because of his dehumanizing perspective of the other as an object of study.