As an outsider to a culture, no matter how long you live amongst them and study them, you will never have a true understanding of it unless you go on a treck through the ice with just one of them, forming a deep connection with them based on how on your differences makong you both alien far from anyone else besides eachother, and understanding eachother through that and agknoledging but never enacting on your sexual tension because it would mean you would have to be and agknoledge them as stranger and alien once more, and they still havnt healed from their grief from a past love which they cannot separate their love for you from, and you will never know if that decision was right because just as you were about to accomplish your goal they get mortally wounded in a rushed move influenced by that same grief that haunted them all their life, so they die in your arms, leaving you traumatised, depressed, and eternally alone as you find yourself so changed by the expirience and by them that you feel alien to your own people and culture when you meet them once more
I had a dream that I was watching The Terror again and it was… a bit different.
There was a plot where Francis Crozier was pregnant. Not by Fitzjames, no; they weren’t close like that. I think by someone who was 1) a casual hookup and 2) dead. He was confiding in Fitzjames about it, though, and complaining of breast soreness. Fitzjames asked him if he was sure he was pregnant and he said yes, that he recognized the symptoms from when he was younger, and then told a story about how his mother had helped him get an abortion when he was a teenager so he could pursue his then-incipient naval career.
Unfortunately, in the dream, I was watching this version of The Terror with my father and brother and they were confused. “But he’s a man! How is such a thing possible?”
“Transgender,” I explained impatiently, because it was obvious this was the direction the show had gone with the character, even though the actor playing him was still cisgender actor Jared Harris.
“But still, no way this would happen,” I added. “I mean, look at him. He’s GOT to be post-menopausal.”
Imagine your ex-spouse (who you are still hopelessly in love with even though they rejected you) gets in trouble with the law. You give them your life savings to help them out at least a little in their new hard life of crime.
A few months later you learn that they used all your money to finance an cross-country trip with their new alien lover. And to top it all off, every single person in the country knows about it.
I am not an artist, but I did make this plate a few months ago at a paint and sip, so now I always have a shaky rendition of Genly and Estraven’s journey in my kitchen cabinet.
I love how it takes 11 chapters for Estraven to have a moment of realization where he’s like “maybe all those times I thought I was being extremely direct with Genly, it still wasn’t direct enough for him to understand me.”
And then you look back at the first chapter and Genly was BEGGING Estraven for clarification. And Estraven was still like “He probably knows what I’m talking about. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
Like Genly says, Estraven is usually right, but this one time he was so wrong that it set the plot in motion.
I loved reading The Left Hand of Darkness without context because it read like a normal pretty hard-ish sci fi until I got to the point where Genly was like “I could probably talk to Faxe telepathically if I really put my mind to it.” And I was like “…telepathy?” It’s not just the fact that the existence of telepathy smacked me out of nowhere but the fact that Genly “Deadly Miscommunication” Ai is the person who’s casually a telepath.
Over the course of The Left Hand of Darkness, Estraven makes enormous sacrifices for Gethen and for Genly. He gives up his comfort, his position in the Kyorremy, his country, and eventually his life. The entirety of The Left Hand of Darkness is about Estraven’s exile for Genly. But the reverse is true as well. Genly is also an exile. Here’s a look at the things Genly gave up for Gethen and for Estraven:
On Gethen
Moving to another culture is always difficult, but Genly has an especially rough time of it because of his complete immersion and lack of contact with anyone from his home culture. Here’s a few things that Genly probably struggled to adjust to.
First, language. We take it for granted that Genly knows Karhidish and Orgota, since it’s required for his job, but learning a language is a big investment. How long did it take Genly to learn 2 (or more) Gethenian languages to presumed fluency? Estraven is the only person who knows some of Genly’s native language and even then he just knows words, not enough to have a conversation. Which means that by the end of the book, Genly has not held a conversation in his native language for 3 years. As anyone who’s learned a language later in life can attest, it’s frustratingly isolating when your only way to communicate with people is through a non-native language. You don’t know the metaphors or the modern turns of phrase to use and feel like you cannot fully express yourself or that when you do your meaning is misconstrued. Genly himself is always second-guessing if the sayings Estraven quotes are actual Karhidish metaphors or just phrases he made up. As for the misunderstanding. Genly prominently misunderstands and is misunderstood for most of the book.
Second, culture. From the moment Genly arrives on Gethen, he lives fully immersed in Karhidish culture. While we are not exactly sure what his home culture on Terra is like, we know a few of the ways that Karhide differs. Genly makes note of Gethenians living in settlements of around 150 people, so he is probably used to living with many fewer people. He does not enjoy Gethenian food, finding it bland and lacking variety. He is dismayed by the slow pace of Karhidish business and innovation, slower than even the Ekumen which executes plans over several generations. These are all things that are huge stressors in a new environment: being around a lot of people, food that is not familiar or enjoyable, and a different pace of life. Adjusting to this new way of life is understandably time consuming and frustrating for Genly.
Third, being a sexual minority. A large part of the narrative of The Left Hand of Darkness centers around Genly coming to understand and accept the androgyny of the Gethenians. But the Gethenians also do not understand Genly. His sex is seen as either an oddity or an abomination, something either frowned upon or actively scorned. In both Karhide and Orgoreyn, Genly’s sexual deviancy is used to dismiss and discredit him. The Orgota commensals laugh at the idea of believing a Pervert. The Karhidish king recoils from the idea of a whole society of people like Genly. Genly has to constantly explain why he exists the way he is, and is often not believed. He is alone in his experience of sex and gender. Genly is often wrong in his assessments of Gethenians because of his refusal to let go of his own views on gender, which is partially a way to cope with his relatively new status as a sexual minority.
Fourth, the cold. Genly and is constantly freezing on Winter, even in the summer. Gethenian buildings, which lack heating, only make the cold worse for him. That kind of continual stress wears you down VERY quickly. When you are cold enough that the tips of your fingers and toes are numb and you are trying to do other tasks, it’s difficult to think about anything except how cold you are. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Genly owes some of the brusque despondency of his narration to the unrelenting misery of being chronically frozen.
All of these points paint a picture of Genly being someone who is off balance and lonely due to complete immersion in an alien culture he is still adjusting to. Add that to the fact that most of the people Genly interacts with don’t even believe that Genly IS from a different planet. To them he is a socially inept and sexually deviant Karhider rather than an alien doing his best to understand their culture. By living on Gethen, Genly voluntarily gives up his comfort (both mental and physical) and any sense of belonging.
Before Gethen
The above section looks at Genly’s experience on Gethen. Next we’ll look at what he gave up before arriving on Gethen.
It took Genly 87 years to travel to Gethen. Though relativity makes this only a few years for Genly, it is still 87 years for everyone else around him. As Estraven says “While he lived a few hours in one of those unimaginable ships going from one planet to another, everyone he had left behind him at home grew old and died, and their children grew old.” By the time Genly gets to Gethen, everyone he knew is dead. He is profoundly alone.
It’s not just the people Genly knew that are dead, but also his culture. If Genly ever went back to Terra, over 170 years would have passed since he left. A lot can change in that time. How much does our generation have in common with people from the 1800s? Whatever life, places, and belief system Genly grew up with probably don’t exist anymore.
By going to Gethen, Genly knowingly consigned himself to being not only an alien cut off from his own people, but the last remnant of a culture that no longer exists. An exile with no chance of returning home.
The Perils of the Job
While Genly does live through the events of The Left Hand of Darkness, he probably wasn’t expecting to.
Genly remarks that First Envoys on other worlds are often killed and sometimes imprisoned. Which means that he knows that he has a high chance of dying himself.
Other indications of the permanence of Genly’s mission come in Chapter 5 when Genly notes that his beard was removed permanently so that he could better fit in with the Gethenians and in Chapter 3, Genly says that his entire life “could be, and might as well be used in achieving [his] mission for the Ekumen.”
Genly’s disregard for his own life is shown in his willingness to block his own routes of escape. The ship that he came on lies disassembled in Karhide, something which Genly allowed to happen shortly after he arrived. Because of this, he has no means to return to the larger ship in orbit. He also eventually gives his ansible, his only means of communication with the Ekumen, to the Orgota. Genly has no way to escape Gethen, no plans to leave, and no way to protect himself.
All indications that Genly expects to die. By becoming First Envoy, he preemptively gives up his own life.
Choosing Exile
Estraven first comes up against the consequences of his own exile from Karhide in Chapter 6. After being asked about living in Orgoreyn permanently he muses “The joke was gone out of it with that word permanent, a skull-word if there ever was one.” Never being able to return to his own country terrifies him.
Genly’s own ultimatum came long before The Left Hand of Darkness began, when he left Terra knowing that everyone he knew would be dead if he ever returned. By the time we meet Genly he is already living with a permanent lost century of distance between Terra and Gethen and has spent years in self-imposed exile.
One of my favorite quotes in The Left Hand of Darkness comes when Genly is having a conversation with Asra in Pulefen Farm. Asra is talking about the Yomeshta afterlife where adherents are sent to different planets as reward or punishment. Genly asks what type of planet Gethen is. Neither, Asra responds. Gethen can be neither reward nor punishment because no one chooses to live on Gethen, they are just born on it. “I wasn’t born into it,” says Genly. “I came here. I chose it.”
This is the truth at the heart of Genly’s character. That he chose exile just as Estraven did. It is not an accident that Genly talks about choice while he is dying in Pulefen Farm. He chose to be First Envoy and with it chose the strong possibility of imprisonment and death. He chose the loneliness of being an alien on Gethen, without anyone who understands his language, culture, or even his gender. He chose to live in permanent cold. Genly Ai chose life on Gethen fully knowing how painful it would be.
