"I'm going to go unbuild walls" | The Dispossessed, Chapters 10-13

We came from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance.

Today, we conclude our read-along of The Dispossessed. Later this week I’ll send the audio recording of our last Zoom call to paid subscribers, and we’ll have one more of those Zoom calls March 13 at 3PM Eastern. I’ll send the Zoom link out to paid subscribers about an hour before.

If you’re looking for details of our next read-along, which features Plato’s Republic, check out this post. That read-along begins March 31.

As we resume our reading in Chapter 10, Anarres’ drought is coming to an end. We still see the effects on the culture, like long work hours, and we especially see it in the way characters trade stories, like veterans sharing battle stories. There’s a kind of pride to them that’s premised on shared pain.

The drought has brought out the best of Anarres, but it also brought out the worst. Centralization has grown. A reliance on DivLab has led to a four-year separation of Takver and Shevek, with their daughter Sadik not even remembering her father. The moments with Takver, Shevek, and Sadik are particularly touching.

We see the worst of Anarras in the story of Tirin, whom we’ve discussed a bit before. By now, Tirin has been thoroughly ostracized. He’s been given kleggich postings (kleggich is the Pravic word for drudgery), and Shevek remarks that Tirin is no longer able to choose. He was even bullied into going to therapy on an island that functions like an asylum.

Tirin and Shevek cross paths during the drought. Tirin has continued to write the play that started all his troubles over and over. He brings it to Shevek, who at least pretends to read it. But Tirin won’t talk about it. “He was too frightened,” Shevek tells Takver. Of what?

“Of me. Of everybody. Of the social organism, the human race, the brotherhood that rejected him. When a man feels himself alone against all the rest, he might well feel frightened.”

Takver, Shevek, and Tirin are all clearly gifted, intelligent Anarresti, but Takver is different from Tirin and Shevek in one important way. Her work on marine biology works well within the existing system; she can do what we wants to do while still playing by the rules of the social organism. Shevek’s physics and Tirin’s art, on the other hand, fits uncomfortably in all of this. Tirin bears the worst of it: drudgery, the revocation of choice, weaponized empathy and therapy. Shevek still suffers, though, as we see when Sabul forces him out of the Institute.

The problem is that Odonians have given up on their initiative, as Shevek tells Takver.

“Listen, Takver. I thought the same thing, exactly. We always say that. You said it —you should have refused to go to Rolny. I said it as soon as I got to Elbow: I’m a free man, I didn’t have to come here! … We always think it, and say it, but we don’t do it. We keep our initiative tucked away safe in our mind, like a room where we can come and say, ‘I don’t have to do anything, I make my choices, I’m free.’ And then we leave the little room in our mind, and go where PDC posts us, and stay till we’re reposted.”

It is the Odonian version of false consciousness. The people of Anarres are deluding themselves into thinking they are living like real Odonians, like free men and women. The social conscience is dominating the individual rather than striking a balance with it, Shevek says, and he’s right. Tirin was a ‘natural Odonian,’ and he was criminalized for it.

Takver and Shevek decide that they will return to Abennay. There, Shevek will start a printing syndicate, print an uncut version of his Principles along with Bedap’s work on science education and Tirin’s play.

As Shevek puts it: he is going to go unbuild walls.

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The irony of Chapter 11 is that walls, along with a legal fiction of embassy’s resting on their home planet’s soil, protects Shevek.

In the aftermath of the strike and the brutal crackdown, Shevek finds himself at the Terran embassy. He’s given asylum, and he speaks with Keng, the Terran ambassador to the Council of World Governments. There we learn what will be the immediate practical effect of Shevek’s theories: the ansible.

Throughout Le Guin’s fiction the ansible appears. It is a communication device which allows for messages to be sent instantaneously between any two points in space. While it does not allow for the transference of matter, as the A-Io scholars and generals want, it would allow communication across the nine Known Worlds. Shevek is going to give this technology away, to everyone, by broadcasting his equations to everyone. The Ioti won’t be allowed to possess; no one will.

What will Shevek do next? Go home. There are more walls to unbuild.

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Back on Anarres, in the older timeline of The Dispossessed, we see the Syndicate of Initiative in action. They have opened lines of communication with Urras – the people of Urras are surprisingly eager to here from them – but they face opposition at every move from Rulag (Shevek’s mother) and the rest of the Import-Export Council. When they propose bringing new settlers from Urras, specifically some Odonians from Benbili, Rulag asks why they want to bring propertarians onto the moon. Walls, everywhere. The rest of the Council agrees, and the Odonians of Benbili are barred from entry. But then Shevek brings forward another idea: an Anarresti going to Urras. We’re rapidly approaching the events of Chapter 1.

The conclusion, Rulag says, is that Shevek is free to go…but he won’t be free to come back. Someone coming from Urras is Urrasti, and no Urrasti can go beyond the walls around the freighter. A new member of the council speaks:

“If there are people here that don’t like Anarres, let ‘em go. I’ll help. I’ll carry ‘em to the Port, I’ll even kick ‘em there! But if they try to come sneaking back, there’s going to be some of us there to meet them. Some real Odonians. And they won’t find us smiling and saying, ‘Welcome home, brothers.’ They’ll find their teeth knocked down their throats and their balls kicked up into their bellies. Do you understand that? Is it clear enough for you?”

”Clear, no; plain, yes. Plain as a fart,” Bedap says. “Clarity is a function of thought. You should learn some Odonianism before you speak here.”

The fight continues, and Rulag lets Shevek and his syndicate know that if there is violence, it will be because they have brought it on themselves.

Moral philosophy is a powerful force. Through appeals to conscience, human beings are often able to coordinate at large scales. They are able to tame their inner beasts and become better. It is a wonderful thing, but there is a danger. Moral language, along with therapeutic language, is easily turned into a cudgel. You can beat someone into submission and make them feel as if they deserved the beating. This is what has happened to Odonian society. The social conscience is now a force for domination.

So, Takver is hated by her lab and called a traitor and an intellectual by her neighbors. Shevek’s mother is his fiercest opponent. Young Odonians promise violence; we know they’ll live up to it, because they kill someone in Chapter 1. Sabul wants to bring Shevek back to the institute, but his writing will be controlled by the PDC, not the Syndicate of Initiative. Even Sadik is bullied in the dorms: kept from games, called an egoizer, abandoned by friends. “They make each other meaner,” Sadik says of the other children (a simple but heartbreaking statement).

“There are walls behind the walls,” Bedap says.

Shevek tells Takver that he won’t be going to Urras — but we know that, eventually, he does.

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Then we are back to the present. Shevek is aboard a new ship, crewed by Hainish and Terrans, and is heading back to Anarres. Friends and enemies wait for him — but there are more friends than when Shevek left. And he has a friend on the ship, a Hainishman named Ketho who wishes to see Anarres.

And then the novel ends. Shevek is soon to be on Anarres. He’ll sleep there tonight, next to Takver. He’ll see the girls. He will walk past another wall. Perhaps he will unbuild it.

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Thank you, everyone, for reading this book with me. It is my favorite science fiction novel, and one that impacts me deeply every time I read it. I have many thoughts – we’ll talk more on Thursday’s Zoom call, if you’re attending – and I am excited to hear yours.