The Left Hand of Darkness

“Do you know the saying, Karhide is not a nation but a family quarrel?”

As Estraven notes, politics work differently on Gethen than among the Ekumen. In Earth’s past, grand-scale political diplomacy prevented war. On Gethen, grand-scale war is unknown, and so politics take on an informal and sometimes personally deadly aspect.

“For it was impossible for me to think of him as a woman, that dark, ironic, powerful presence near me in the firelit darkness, and yet whenever I thought of him as a man I felt a sense of falseness, of imposture: in him, or in my own attitude towards him?”

Genly’s notion of identity is inseparable from the notion of gender. Through Genly’s acknowledgement of the role of his own attitude in his difficulty to understand Gethen genderlessness, LeGuin explores how concepts of gender inform cultural norms and human interactions.

“No doubt this was all a matter of shifgrethor–prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and all civilizations on Gethen.”

Genly prefers a sort of radical honesty which puts qualities such as personal identity and privacy in the backseat. By contrast, and in the absence of gender performance, the Gethen strive for shifgethor, a sort of stylized personal presentation, or “face,” in which things are spoken artfully but not openly. This mismatch represents a communication challenge both for Genly and for Estraven.

“One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time; plenty of time; but time is the thing that the Ekumen has plenty of…”

Neither the Gethen or the Ekumen know war, though the potential for war works in the periphery of all negotiations, invoking redundant precautions against it. The Ekumen’s ability to put themselves into stasis means that the Ekumen have great stores of time and patience unknown to the less-advanced Gethen, who come by their patience naturally due to the climate on Gethen.

“But I do fear you, Envoy. I fear those who sent you. I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well.”

King Argaven embraces the political mode of nationalism. His dedication to the nation state and the accrual of power within it means that truth and progress must take a secondary role in state affairs. This prioritization of power over progress relates to the slow technological development on Gethen and posits another aspect of identity and culture developed in the absence of gender.

“Quarrels, murders, feuds, forays, vendettas, assassinations, tortures and abominations, all these were in their repertory of human accomplishments; but they did not go to war. They lacked, it seemed, the capacity to mobilize. They behaved like animals in that respect; or like women. They did not behave like men, or ants.”

Genly reveals sexism and his prejudice against the Gethen; because they do not perform a masculine notion of gender to Genly’s understanding, he feminizes them and therefore considers them inferior. Repeatedly, Genly interrupts his progress in negotiations by recognizing and reacting against the feminine element in the Gethen.

“Five years from now Gethen would be a member of the Ekumen: yes. No riddles, no hedging. Even then I was aware of the quality of that answer, not so much a prophecy as an observation. I could not evade my own certainty that the answer was right. It had the imperative clarity of a hunch.”

Genly makes steps toward better understanding the Gethen by engaging in the mysteries of Farseeing—the ability of certain Gethens to read the future, which roughly parallels the Ekumen telepathic ability. Past and future intermingle for the Gethen, informing the pace of their negotiations and the sense of their traditions.

“There’s really only one question that can be answered […] and we already know the answer… The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”

Faxe the Weaver here suggests that official reports, negotiations, and even Foretelling may be something of a science, but storytelling is an art. The former may fulfill a desire to make life more ordered and predictable, but the latter is what gives life meaning.

“It is hard, I found, to be called traitor. Strange how hard it is, for it’s an easy name to call another man; a name that sticks, that fits, that convinces. I was half convinced myself.”

LeGuin suggests that with ideological nationalism comes self-doubt for any person seeking to look past false narrative toward the truth. Here, Estraven weighs the truth of what they know about themselves and the world—that the coming of the Ekumen would be good for Gethen—with their ideological conditioning. Additionally, LeGuin suggests that national identity is an important notion of self to the genderless Gethen.

“The somer-kemmer cycle strikes us as degrading, a return to the estrus cycle of the lower mammals, a subjection of human beings to the mechanical imperative of rut. It is possible that the experimenters wished to see whether human beings lacking continuous sexual potentiality would remain intelligent and capable of culture.”

The very first Ekumen scouting party thinks even less of the Gethen than Genly does. This report hints strongly of colonialism, the erasure of one culture by that of a stronger and more technologically advanced culture for profit. This scout speculates using historical charts without the benefit of engaging in Gethen storytelling and culture, which would tell a different truth.

“An enemy, in Karhide, is not a stranger, an invader. The stranger who comes unknown is a guest. Your enemy is your neighbor.”

One of the curious aspects of Gethen society is that, while it can be shiftless and secretive in terms of politics, family, and national borders, it takes interpersonal hospitality among strangers as automatic. This notion of intimate knowledge of another person as dangerous is consistent, however, with the principle of shifgrethor.

“Winter hasn’t achieved in thirty centuries what Terra once achieved in thirty decades. Neither has Winter ever paid the price that Terra paid.”

Though Gethen has “modern” social infrastructure and technological sophistication, they came by it very slowly and peacefully. By contrast, Earth’s rapid technological progress came at the cost of violent social convulsion, exploitation, war, and mass-death. LeGuin suggests that this propensity for violence is related to the oppression inherent in an unequal gender dynamic.

“But the Ekumen is not essentially a government at all. It is an attempt to reunify the mystical with the political, and as such is mostly a failure; but its failure has done more good for humanity so far than the successes of its predecessors.”

As a result of learning repeated hard lessons through a past defined by rapid change and warfare, the Ekumen now organize themselves according to an advanced technological form of cooperative anarchism. Within the charged hierarchies of the Gethen, the idea sounds like heresy.

“But I think we shall have trouble learning how to lie, having for so long practiced the art of going round and round the truth without ever lying about it, or reaching it either.”

Estraven describes two forms of Gethen shifgrethor. In Orgoreyn, the leaders lie outright; in Karhide, truth is obscured in the dreams and half-truths of a more informal ideological hierarchy.

“It was the second time I had been locked in the dark with uncomplaining, unhopeful people of Orgoreyn. I knew the sign I had been given, my first night in this country. I had ignored that black cellar and gone looking for the substance of Orgoreyn aboveground, in daylight. No wonder nothing had seemed real.”

At first glance, Orgoreyn appears to have the more sophisticated and open society, seeming to welcome Genly with open arms. In fact, this surface hides a reality of anti-immigration laws and prison work camps. Genly ignores his initial impression at his peril, misled by his own biases.

“I never had a gift but one, to know when the great wheel gives to a touch, to know and to act.”

As a member of the Handarra, Estraven shares some of the predictive ability of the Farseers without sharing their devotion or diligence. This manifests in a reliance on luck, or hunches, when all other resources give way; this also contributes to his appealing modesty in considering his own resourcefulness.

“A friend. What is a friend, in a world where any friend may become a lover at the new phase of the moon? Not I, locked in my virility: no friend to Therm Harth, or any other of his race.”

Genly’s prejudices face a difficult challenge when, locked by survival needs to Estraven’s side, Estraven begins to enter kemmer. In his mind, sexuality and friendship exist at entirely separate binary distances, the same distance at which he considers gender itself to be separated.

“‘I thought myself an exile.’ ‘You for my sake–I for yours,’ he said, and laughed again, a slight cheerful sound in the heavy silence.”

The two exiles find common ground in no longer having a recognizable home; Genly is exiled by the enormous distance in time and space between himself and home, Estraven by politics. Both find common cause and friendship in a duty to progress larger than their artificial allegiances to birthplace.

“Light is the left hand of darkness

And darkness the right hand of light.

Two are one, life and death, lying

Together like lovers in kemmer…”

This traditional Gethen poem epitomizes the theme of Left Hand of Darkness, which strongly upholds binary categorizations while advocating freely for their increasing entwining play, total equality, and entanglement as a measure of progress. For Genly, this poem invokes the Earthen “yin-yang” symbol.

“But the difference is very important. I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one’s life, is whether one’s born male or female. In most societies it determines one’s expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners—almost everything.”

Genly falters when he attempts to describe the social roles of women in his world to a person who has never encountered the concept of gender. Through Genly’s attempt to articulate the influence of gender, LeGuin posits several elements of culture and civilization that may be directly informed by gender identity.

“My metabolic rate is slightly over the Gethenian norm, as are my height and weight; Estraven had figured these differences into the food-ration calculations, in his scrupulous way, which one could see as either house-wifely or scientific, and from the start I had had a couple ounces more of food per day than he.”

Estraven’s self-sacrifice on their journey, and on behalf of Genly, becomes nearly superhuman near its conclusion, when the outcome is still in doubt. This small but significant self-sacrifice foreshadows the greater sacrifice Estraven will give at the end of the book. Notably, Genly creates a binary of “womanly” and “scientific,” as his sexist conception of gender roles does not allow for women’s academic achievement.

“Alone, I cannot change your world. But I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak.”

As Genly’s understanding of Gethen culture deepens, he realizes the real reason why Ekumen diplomats undertake their missions alone. Rather than creating a nonthreatening façade for an effort at colonization, a single person is just as likely to be influenced by the culture of the world they visit; this ability to recognize value in others is even more important than asserting one’s own value.

“It’s well known that honorable men come to be outlawed, yet their shadow does not shrink.”

Estraven must play several roles throughout the story, turning from a rugged survivalist practicing strange rituals of self-revelation for an alien, to practicing a very sly and commanding performance of shifgrethor to avoid being handed over to the nearest authorities by their rural hosts. LeGuin acknowledges that Estraven’s navigation of expectations and his exile mark him as a hero who prioritizes his people over personal glory; he is steadfast in his values.