Emrah Goker and Martha Bartter wrote:
>>So a child in Anarres cannot become a citizen until he/she undergoes an
>>implicit rite, I refer to the imprisonment game, symbolizing Odo's own
>>pains; it was described in extreme detail in the book.
>
>As I remember this, Shevek and several of his friends literally invented
>this game -- it was not imposed from above (although the teachers did
>act in authoritarian ways; e.g. when Shevek added a 'new' idea he was
>accused of egoizing).
Indeed, this is the case. Regarding the prison game:
"They had picked up the idea of "prisons" from episodes in the Life of Odo,
which all of them who had elected to work on History were reading. There
were many obscurities in this book, and Wide Plains had nobody who knew
enough history to explain them; but by the time they got to Odo's years in
the Fort in Drio, the concept of "prison" had become self-explanatory. And
when a history teacher came through the town he expounded the subject, with
the reluctance of a decent adult forced to explain an obscenity to
children." (p. 27, Avon paperback)
Shevek and four peers are so fascinated by this strange concept that they
decide to try it. The situation gets out of hand, and one of them ends up
closed in the makeshift cell for 30 hours. The incident is traumatic enough
for all of them that only one of them ever mentions it again, and they
never return to the site. Le Guin uses the situation to point out the
snowballing effect of power differentials. It starts out as a game, but by
the time Kadagv is pushed into the cell, "They were not playing the role
now, it was playing them." Psychologically, I'm not sure I agree with her
conclusion, but it's thought-provoking.
>> Following Terry Eagleton, questioning about a literary text's (in fact,
>>writer's) "silences" would help us read the text deeper. And Benford says:
>>
>> "The principal ignored problem of Anarres is the problem of evil and
>>thus violence... Guilt (social conscience) simply overcomes such
>>discordant elements. In the middle of a drought in which people starve, no
>>matter how evenly shared, somehow no one thinks of taking up arms with
>>some friends and seizing, say, the grain reserves." (p. 77)
>>
>> So no criminals, no insane people, no naturally violent types.
>
>The playwright who puts so much of himself into playing the
>"beggarman" may not actually go insane, but he does get treated as
>though he had. I don't think Le Guin sees Anarres as a Perfect Place.
>
>>And I remember a prison camp in Anarres for unwanted people.
>
>Here, I read the text to make an analogy to Solzhenitsyn's _Cancer
>Ward_ rather than an actual prison camp -- adjudging those who fail
>to follow the party line as "insane."
With all this talk about crime on Anarres, I decided to track down whatever
Le Guin may have said about it. She does, in fact, take a position on the
matter, and it's a very interesting one. Early in the novel, Shevek is
attacked by another man and beaten. There are other people nearby, but
seeing that Shevek is capable of defending himself, they do not intervene.
It is implied that if he had asked for help or the situation was obviously
skewed the others would have stepped in, with no shame or gratitude attached.
Later in the book, the subject of the Asylum comes up between Shevek
and Bedap, when it is revealed that their childhood friend Tirin has been
forceably sent there because his criticism of Annarean society has been
judged "unbalanced." Rather than paraphrase, I will quote, once again:
"Bedap hunched his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them,
as he sat sideways on the chair. He spoke quietly now, with reluctance.
"Tirin wrote a play and put it on, the year after you left. It was
funny -- crazy -- you know his kind of thing." [...] "It could seem
anti-Odonian, if you were stupid. A lot of people are stupid. There was a
fuss. He got reprimanded. Public reprimand. I never saw one before.
Everybody comes to your syndicate meeting and tells you off. It used to be
how they cut a bossy gang foreman or manager down to size. Now they only
use it to tell an individual to stop thinking for himself. It was bad.
Tirin couldn't take it. I think it really drove him a bit out of his mind.
He felt everybody was against him, after that. He starting talking too much
-- bitter talk. Not irrational, but always critical, always bitter. And
he'd talk to anybody that way. Well, he finished at the Institute,
qualified as a math instructor, and asked for a posting. He got one. To a
road repair crew in Southsetting. He protested it as an error, but the
Divlab computers repeated it. So he went."
"Tir never worked outdoors the whole time I knew him," Shevek
interrupted. "Since he was ten. He always wangled desk jobs. Divlab was
being fair."
Bedap paid no attention. "I don't really know what happened down
there. He wrote me several times, and each time he'd been reposted. Always
to physical labor, in little outpost communities. He wrote that he was
quitting his posting and coming back to Northsetting to see me. He didn't
come. He stopped writing. I traced him through the Abbenay Labor Files,
finally. They sent me a copy of his card, and the last entry was just,
'Therapy, Segvina Island.' Therapy! Did Tirin murder somebody? Did he rape
somebody? What do you get sent to the Asylum for, beside that?"
"You don't get sent to the Asylum at all. You request posting to it."
"Don't feed me that crap," Bedap said with sudden rage. "He never
asked to be sent there! They drove him crazy and then sent him there. It's
Tirin I'm talking about, Tirin, do you remember him?"
"I knew him before you did. What do you think the Asylum is -- a
prison? It's a refuge. If there are murderers and chronic work-quitters
there, it's because they asked to go there, where they're not under
pressure, and safe from retribution. But who are these people you keep
talking about -- 'they'? 'They' drove him crazy, and so on. Are you trying
to say that the whole social system is evil, that in fact 'they,' Tirin's
persecutors, your enemies, 'they,' are us -- the social organism?"
"If you can dismiss Tirin from your conscience as a work-quitter, I
don't think I have anything else to say to you," Bedap replied, sitting
hunched up on the chair. There was such plain and simple grief in his voice
that Shevek's righteous wrath was stopped short. (pp. 137-138)
Sorry for the extremely long quote, but I felt that it illuminates much
that has been discussed in this thread. It is clear that:
1) There is violence and "crime" on Anarres and it is dealt with by the
people closest to the offender. Thus a murderer or work-quitter can expect
"retribution" for their behavior unless they leave and go someplace like
the Asylum. "Retribution" is unspecified, but I would imagine something
similar to the situation in _Woman on the Edge of Time_ where offenders are
criticised, shunned or even killed to prevent further damage to the community.
2) The decay of Odonian principles into the stifling reign of "public
opinion" (p. 134) is a major concern of the novel. Bedap is a harsh critic
of the society he sees around him, and his questioning of conventional
wisdom literally rocks Shevek's world. Ironically, I think that the sense
that Anarres is in stasis and thus not a "real utopia" is taken straight
from this character in the book!
Le Guin certainly does not ignore the problem of evil. The character of
Sabul, the physicist with whom Shevek works early in his studies, is a
shining example of someone who uses influence to keep people out and
advance his own position. Even though, according to the structure and
principles of Odonianism, he can't and shouldn't do this, in reality he
does, and Shevek has to work with and/or around him in order to keep in
touch with physicists on Urras and get his work published.
I have just realized that this message is becoming much too long! So I will
send it now. Looking forward to more discussion --
-- Janice
-----
Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Feed Your Head, Volume 2; The Best of Márta Sebestyén
"...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected;
the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and
servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
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