#shevek

[saltshroud]

the dispossessed is kind of funny

[evelasco-art]

Rereading The Dispossessed and I’m more convinced than ever that yes, it is a political work, but ALSO a psychogical novel about an autistic man struggling to connect with other humans.

The sheer amount of walls that appear in it. Shevek’s obsession with them. His disconnect, his naïveté, his difficulties to understand social norms and be understood by peers. His iron-clad personal principles. Him being overwhelmed by crowds and social interactions, to the point of shutting down and not processing anything that’s happening around him. Him taking refuge in physics because at least that has rules he can understand.

This sentence. I don’t know how I didn’t took more notice of this sentence the first time I read it:

And he had been fool enough to think that he might serve to bring together two worlds to which he did not belong.

Also, the way he is inspired by Odo’s teachings and life. He’s in many ways her successor. The parallels are everywhere. Just a couple pages earlier, we find Odo’s epitaph:

To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.

This is literally the story of his life! His biggest dream (to be part of a whole), the essence of his work and the novel as a whole!

In this book about big ideas and politics, an autistic person is the one trying to bridge the gap between two societies. Which I find really interesting.

So it’s driving me nuts that I can’t find virtually any discussions on the psychological side of it!!!! Where is the discourse on Shevek’s character!!! Why is it that in one of Le Guin’s psychologically richest novels, the discussions are never about him!!! Just the politics!!!

But politics! Is! Personal!

Anyways, if you know any resources around this topic, please let me know! I’m thirsty.

[heyitsrink]

All you have to do to see life whole is to see it as mortal. I’ll die, you’ll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun’s going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?

-

Shevek and Takver from The Dispossessed

[putall]

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed, Swedish edition (Shevek) with cover by Per Åhlin.

[littlenimart]

just finished up Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. the way she describes the Annaresti is so intriguingly just-slightly-alien and my imagination conjured this slightly muppet- esque image of Shevek early in reading that it refused to let go of.

I’ve read a few books recently that have me compelled to illustrate them a bit- I just finished TP’s The Monstrous Regiment and am of course dying to draw them, and on the Le Guin subject I want to pick back up my sketches from when I read TLHOD back in 2021

[mutantoftomorrow]

Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex.

- Ursula K Leguin, The Dispossessed

[bookwyrmghost]

spoilers for the dispossessed

i finished reading it a couple days ago and i have been finding myself going back and back and back again to that ending.

no man can step in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and it is not the same man.

can shevek go home again? even if he isn’t killed or driven to exile, can he go back to his family and together live a relatively normal anarresti life? can he find peace? does he even want to?

[spacegayboy]

He is helping