"You can only be the Revolution" | The Dispossessed, Chapters 7-9

Today, we continue our read-along of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. The schedule for the read-along can be found here.

• February 10: Introduction to Le Guin’s life and work

• February 17: Chapters 1-3

• February 24: Chapters 4-6

• March 2: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8PM Eastern

• March 3: Chapters 7-9

• March 10: Chapters 10-13

• March 13: Members-Only Zoom Call, 3PM Eastern

This is the penultimate post about The Dispossessed, as we’ll finish reading the book next. Last night’s Zoom call was very good, and I think the second call on March 13 will be even better, as we’ll be able to discuss the text as a whole.

If you want to join the Zoom calls, become a paying subscriber. You’ll also be supporting my work here on Commonplace Philosophy and over on YouTube.

Chapters 7-9 of The Dispossessed are when the cracks in both Anarresti and Urrasti society not only reveal themselves but widen. Anarres is faced with a draught, leading to scarcity and a greater reliance on the centralization of DivLab. On Urras, a war in Benbili becomes a proxy fight between the two great powers, A-Io and Thu (US and USSR analogues, in case that wasn’t clear), and an uprising in the streets of Nio Esseia.

But we also see the toll this takes on Shevek, our protagonist. He has not made progress on his promised General Temporal Theory, the theory which should unify Sequency and Simultaneity, and his Urrasti owners are getting impatient. Back on Anarres, we see that Sabul continues to stifle his work, then to force him out of the Institute; his problems are compounded when DivLab assigns him to difficult work away from his partner Takver and their new child, Sadik.

These are the most hopeless chapters of The Dispossessed. We’ve lost the naïveté of the early chapters – whether this is the young Shevek as a true believer in Odonianism, or the exiled Shevek taken in by the splendor of Urras – and we’ve certainly lost our sense of innocence. Shevek is a deeply conflicted and compromised man.

We see this most clearly with Vea. This also marks one of the most controversial scenes in The Dispossessed.

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In Chapter 7, Shevek is desperate. He has come to realize that he is owned by the masters of Urras, that he has never truly been free. Even the birds, which symbolized the gift of nature on the propertarian planet, seem to mock him. He wants to leave the university, and he does, and he finds himself in the company of Vea, a beautiful and clever woman. This is a woman who sees a woman’s place in Iotic society as natural, not because she accepts that she must be submissive, but because she believes that this actually allows women to exercise control. Men think they own women, but in fact men are owned by their women. (On Urras, everyone either owns or is owned.) She might be the truest foil to Shevek.

She is also very beautiful, and Shevek is attracted to her. For the first time, he seems to appreciate the care and preparation a high-status woman in Nio Esseia puts into her bodily appearance. He no longer finds it so unnatural. This is just one way that he begins to think like a Urrasti man — something he has, in his desperation, resolved to do.

There’s no need to go over the entire plot; you’ve read the chapters. So you know that Shevek gets drunk and assaults Vea, attempting to force her to have sex. She eventually gets away, but it is clear that she did not want the encounter and that Shevek didn’t care. He even seems to feel that she owes him something. He feels wronged.

I said that this scene is controversial, and here is why. Nowhere in the book does Le Guin take the time to tell us that what Shevek did was wrong. Nowhere does she have Shevek reflect deeply on how he wronged Vea. When we return to the Urras timeline in Chapter 9, Shevek is moving on with the story. In fact, it is even described like this:

He did not know that this paralyzing humiliation was a chemical sequel to getting drunk, like the headache. Nor would the knowledge have made much difference to him. Shame –the sense of vileness and of self-estrangement–was a revelation. He saw with a new clarity, a hideous clarity; and saw far past those incoherent memories of the end of the evening at Vea’s. It was not only poor Vea who had betrayed him. It was not only the alohol that he had tried to vomit up; it was all the bread he had eaten on Urras.

Readers tend to focus on It was not only poor Vea who had betrayed him. They think Le Guin moves on to quickly from the assault, and that Shevek does not recognize his wrongdoing. I can see how this reading comes up — though I think this reaction is not quite right.

Here’s how I make sense of the events of Chapter 7 and the reflection in Chapter 9. Shevek realizes that he has been a fool on Urras. He is hopeless, and he decides to be a propertarian. He goes and buys things. He invites along a woman he is attracted to, a woman who seems to flirt with him. He thinks of her in a derogatory way, recalling Takver’s phrase ‘a body profiteer.’ He even drinks like a Urrasti at the party. In his drunken state, I believe Shevek can (initially) rationalize his actions. Vea must want something. She flirts with him throughout the chapter. Shevek is unused to this kind of social deception. Thus, the line that poor Vea had betrayed him. (Keep in mind that a rationalization is not a justification. You can rationalize plenty of horrendous acts.) But what I think is key is the phrase it was not only. This invites us to ask who else is guilty of betrayal. The answer, I believe, is Shevek.

Who did Shevek betray? Himself, for one. He did not live by his principles. But that isn’t enough. He betrayed Vea above all. Rape, after all, is one of the greatest betrayals of trust and human fraternity. (Rape and molestation are mentioned several times in the Anarres chapters, and they are taken quite seriously.)

It is handled quickly, and I think that reasonable readers can disagree about Le Guin’s handling of this scene and the later reflections upon it. But I do think that there is some reflection on the scene, even implied remorse. While we never get a scene with Vea and Shevek in which he apologizes or makes things right, this is simply a reflection of our painful reality. Very rarely do we make things right with the people we have betrayed.

Here is one more way of thinking about this. Shevek is the hero of the story — but he isn’t an Odonian paladin, always rigidly conforming to true morality. He is flawed; he does terrible things. Other commenters have suggested that perhaps Anarres is not as sexually egalitarian as they like to believe; that may certainly be true. Shevek’s quick recovery from this moral violation may be indicative of how he views women.

There may be other ways of approaching this. Let me know what you made of it down below.

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We’re now approaching the end of the book. A revolution is brewing on Urras, but things are looking dark. After a demonstration, Shevek helps a wounded man escape, and the final scene is him waking, alone and in silence, to discover the body is already stiff. On Anarres, the draught still looms, Shevek cannot pursue physics, and he is separated from Takver and Sadik. (We know they will eventually reunite, though, because we know a second child, Pilun, is yet to be conceived.) We’ll see where it all ends next week.