Gethen Culture

The Gethen culture is really talked about throughout the whole novel, so I guess I will just go back to the first myth to begin with. In chapter two, the kemmering sibling story is told between, Hode and Getheren. They are forced to separate after their kemmering cycle together, and Hode “commits suicide” which is one of the worst things to do in Gethen culture. Although we find out later in that chapter that the siblings eventually find each other again in the cold storm when the other brother, Getheren, decides to abandon his homeland.

This was when genders and the whole idea of kemmering was first introduced to us. But where we are now in the novel, we are assured by the myth and by the novel that when siblings kemmer, they are not allowed to vow to each other. So that is what went wrong in their situation. Not only that, but Hode’s pretend action of “committing suicide”  led Getheren away from him completely. I think the Gethen culture is something we are definitely not used to, it is foreign to us. But it displays the morally right way that Gethian people believe in. 

In terms of the actual novel regarding Genly Ai, that myth has many connections to what eventually happens. 

One of the connections that I managed to find was when Genly gets taken to the ‘Farms’ and meets the elder, Asra, he gets to a comfortable relationship with him. They try not to focus on the idea of death, so that is when he tells Genly dozens of myths about the Gethenian culture. And I think that is where all of these small chapters are coming from. These stories are all told by Genly’s point of view, so he must of gotten all these myths from his source of his elder friend at the farm!!

Did anybody else catch this when they were reading chapter 13? What else did you guys connect about the myth and the novel?

Wave 3: Myths and Legends

OK, Bloggers:  time for the last wave of discussion for this unit.  Here is your prompt:

REFLECT on the myths presented in the various chapters of Left Hand of Darkness.  Consider them as little symbolic parables and ask yourself:  what does this myth tell you about Gethen culture? Some of the myths make direct connections to the plot.  Discuss some of the Gethen myths and folktales.  How do such stories function in a culture

Remember, the following people need to post, and your post is due by 6:00 p.m. on Monday, February 6.  ANYONE can comment, and everyone needs to comment at least twice over the course of this unit.

Wave 3 Bloggers: Mya O., Amanda R., Marquee R. ,Israel R., Milli R., Tim S., Justin S., Arely V., Londone W., Ryan Y., Jether Y.

Isolation in Left Hand of Darkness

Genly is kind of an outsider so far, which makes sense, he is from another planet.  This makes him stick out in this world as he is not suited for the harsh climate of Gethen, therefore hampering him against making a real connection with the people.  He is constantly cold and this leads to him being lonely as everyone else around him is able too stay warm, leading him to feel left out.  Some other reasons he is left out is due to his height as well as him atually having a set gender in this world of neutral people.

Snow,Snow Go Away..

The constant cold of Gethen definitely contributes to the theme of isolation and loneliness in The Left Hand of Darkness because at the beginning of the novel Genly Ai states that he doesn't feel like he really belongs. Genly is already feeling secluded because he is a stranger to the new lifestyle on Gethen. He looks different and has different mannerisms than the Gethenians and most of us can understand that not fitting in can make you feel like an outcast which can also bring feelings of loneliness. To continue, living in freezing temperatures 24/7 can put an automatic damper on your mood and increase a feeling of isolation as we have witnessed Genly Ai experience in this novel.

Constant Cold

Throughout the whole novel the constant cold plays a huge part in isolation and loneliness. While Genly has been on Gethen for a while now he is still not used to harsh cold weather of the planet while the others are used to this weather. While I was reading chapter 15, I found it interesting on how it mentions that Genly would still wear his huge thick clothes seeking warmth and Estraven would be the opposite not affected at all by how cold the weather is. Many when thinking of the cold, tend to feel cold when we are more isolated and alone. In contrast, while you are with company or people you tend to feel more warm as you completely forget that you are currently feeling cold.

Winter on Planet WInter

Isolation and loneliness are big factors in the book Left Hand of Darkness. In my opinion, although the planet and its population have major characteristics of helping each other, looking out for one another, and working together, the cold weather makes all these actions look gloomy. It's almost as if the actions aren't exactly being done out of the goodness of people's hearts, rather it is done for an ulterior purpose,
Now if we look at the ACTUAL fact of this planet being cold, we can see how isolating the weather can be. As Genly is not even from the same planet, the harsh cold weather makes him feel extremely left apart from the Gethenians who are used to the weather and are adapted to survive in it. Considering he looks different, the coldnesws just adds onto his already outcasted persona.

Wintertime Sadness

The constant coldness and isolation helps contribute to the Left Hand of Darkness theme in the light of the fact many of the characters in the novel are extremely dull. Throughout the book, there are not many, or if any characters, that are described as electric, fascinating, and out of the ordinary. Each person as Genly Ai comes across, since he is the Envoy, seems ordinary and or  plain. This can relate to the weather since many times a new person one encounters can be said to have different personalities that can be used metaphorically with the weather. If someone is happy and amicable, they can be described as "the sun" for their shiny personality. Not only does the coldness and isolation help the theme in for the people of Gethen, but it can help readers understand the point of views of Genly and Estraven. Because Genly is away from home on an alien planet where he feels he has no place or friends and how Estraven, despite on his home planet, is declared for exile to want to secretly help his planet be apart of something bigger than themselves can be viewed as cold and isolated from the people around them.

Cold

Throughout the novel, Genly Ai seems to become more separated from the people of Gethen. His size makes him stand out in Gethen, and it makes him feel alone. He does not see any others who are like him. The constant cold of the planet does not help either. The people of Gethen have been used to the cold weather of the planet, while Genly is still struggling to adjust to the cold harsh climate. As I read on Genly continues to have increasingly more differences between Gethenians and himself. This is leading him to feel alone and  more isolated.

Coldness

The constant cold of Gethen contributes to the loneliness and isolation because gently doesn't feel that he fits in. His size and looks make him stand out as the outcast which conveys the loneliness Genly feels. He seems to always be confused with how this society is, for instance the sexual orientation of the people. Because he is unsure of what he thinks this displays the isolation he has with the people of winter. In addition he cannot adjust to the climate, he seems to be always cold unlike the rest of the population whom are used to the weather and have adjusted. These internal and external struggles have left Genly feeling alone and not apart of everyone.

Overall this book had been enjoyable, if anyone has any comments about my destruction of this loneliness question please comment. Thank you for reading. :)

Cold Isolation

Throughout the novel, we see Genley feeling like he doesn't belong, which leads to this sense of loneliness and isolation.  He doesn't look like the people of Winter, he doesn't quite understand the way gender (or the lack thereof) works in their world, etc.  Plus, Genley is always cold.  The people of Winter are obviously acclimated to the harsh weather conditions of their planet, but, after two years of being on Winter, Genley is still not used to the cold.  The constant extreme cold weather is just one more thing that separates him from the people of Winter, which leaves him feeling isolated and alone.  The weather is definitely a factor that keeps him from meeting his goal of uniting his world with theirs.  As I continue to read this book, more and more differences seem to appear between Genley and Gethenians, pushing them farther away from each other, and I wonder: How can two completely different worlds come together as one?

Loneliness

In the novel The Left Hand of Darkness, the cold weather of Gethen heavily relates to the book's theme of loneliness and isolation. For instance, in the beginning of the novel, Genly Ai is walking through the snow to the palace to have dinner with Estraven where he says "though I have been nearly 2 years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes" (12). Since he's not from Gethen, it's hard for Genly to grasp their ways; for example, the way they perceive gender. Seeing how gethenians are androgynous, it comes as a complete culture shock to him and even after 2 years of being on Gethen it's still hard for him to grasp. Since Genly isn't from Gethen, he doesn't share the same physical characteristics as gethenians which must contribute more into making him feel isolated and different from those around him.
When Genly goes back to the palace after his dinner with Estraven to talk to the King, he was alone and mentioned "I, however, a tropical bird, was cold" (29). When the King finally arrives, Genly and Argaven begin to speak about why Genly came from Earth to have Gethen be apart of the Ekumen. The King isn't in favor of his mission and refuses to be apart of the Ekumen. In a way, this contributes to Genly's loneliness in Gethen because he believes that no one is in favor of joining the Ekumen.

AF: Wave Two - Left Hand of Darkness

Here comes the prompt for the second wave of blogging for The Left Hand of Darkness.  Wave Two Bloggers must post in response to this prompt by 6:00 p.m. on Monday, January 30.  As before, anyone can comment on any post (Wave 1, 2, or 3), so by the time the unit is complete, you should have posted once, and commented twice.  Remember, we are always looking for students who are working ABOVE AND BEYOND the minimum requirements.

Wave Two:  How does the constant cold of Gethen contribute to the theme of loneliness and isolation?

Bloggers for Wave Two:  Dominique G, Matthew G, Jessica H, Kaitlyn H, Crystal K, Samantha L, Jennifer L, Kristian L, Daniela L, Rhea M, Melissa N

Different

     In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai struggles with understanding the people of Gethen due to his upbringing on another planet. From the planet he comes from, similar to ours, gender is a natural and normal phenomenon. However, the planet Gethen, its habitants are genderless and go through a state of Kemmering. Kemmering is the period of a month where they become sexually active which lasts from 26 to 28 days. This makes it difficult for Genly to understand because he is constantly a man and is seen as a pervert due to him being seen by the Gethenians as being in a state of "constant kemmering."
     As Genly starts to learn more about the people of Karhide, he begins to compare how they do things to that of the planet from which he came from. One such thing is how they treat and raise their children. He notices that they are more gentle toward the kids and says, "I never saw a Karhider hit a child... Their tenderness toward their children struck me as being profound, effective, and almost wholly unpossessive. Only in that unpossessiveness does it perhaps differ from what we call the 'maternal' instinct" (99-100).
     Genly also references to how they parent saying the parental instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked character (100) which states that parenting is based solely on the person and not the gender they are. This statement agrees with the book's theme suggesting that dividing people by genders changes your perception of them.

Poor Genly, Shall We Cry?

Genly is the misfit on Gethen, and he is quick to naturally assign genders to Gethenians. He often refers to them as “he”, but is sometimes confused by his own interpretation of male and female characteristics. Where he is from everyone is considered a “pervert” which is the Gethen word for one who keeps their male or female sex permanently, but on Gethen everyone is androgynous and does not develop their gender roles until kemmer. In fact Genly says, “Cultural shock was nothing compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters” (Le Guin 48). Genly expected to be unfamiliar with how the Gethenians lived, but he did not imagine meeting people who did not keep their gender permanently. Being a male human among Gethenians automatically made Genly an alien and set him apart from everyone. Which was worse than being foreign in his opinion. Furthermore, when Genly talking to the king about Gethen becoming part of the Ekumen he states, “None of [it] caught the king’s curiosity or gave him any reassurance. I went on a bit, trying to suggest that his shifgrethor, or Karhide’s, would be enhanced,...but it was no good” (Le Guin 35). Genly is not sure why joining the league does not impress the King, he only sees it as beneficial, but the idea only makes the king fearful. Illustrating that he has a hard time seeing through the point of view of Gethenians. Genly is also puzzled by the fact that the king does not go to the foretellers to seek answers, and how he is often questioned about where he is from/ how he arrived instead of being questioned about his gender. Genly has a difficult time learning how to adapt to how Gethenians think because he has many questions about why they think a certain way and why they do certain things.

Genly and Gethenians

In order to talk about Genly's struggle with Gethenian culture and biology, you will need to look at it three different ways- Genly's way, Gethen's way, and "our" way.

            The Gethenian people were created through an experiment.  They're essentially modified humans with a mating cycle.  They're also quite a bit shorter when compared to non-Gethenian humans. When they were left alone for a long time, they developed their own culture and mythology.

            Gethen is advanced in that there is no gender (and all the problems associated with it). Because of the mating cycle, a Gethenian is only fertile (and can access his reproductive organs) during "kemmer," and can't have sex outside of this timeframe, so there isn't rape. In addition, Gethen is probably  more productive since they're not concerned with sex most of the month.  A small percentage of the population is in a constant state of kemmer.  These people are known as "perverts" that have their reproductive organs all the time, and, since most people of Earth are like that, Genly is considered an anomaly.  A pervert is equated as being morally inferior.

            Genly is a human from Earth.  Humans don't have a cycle like that. Humans are more fertile at some times than others, but it doesn't stop them from having sex.  Genly, although he lives in the future, is still accustomed to pronouns and gender roles associated with the set of reproductive organs Earth people are born with.  Genly has been on Gethen for about two years but he still struggles to not use gendered pronouns,  Another important point to make is that he only uses the male pronouns, no matter how effeminate or masculine a person might be, so that's a start.  However, the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun unique to the book makes it more difficult for us to really see a truly gender-neutral world.

            In traditional patriarchal societies such as our own, the women are expected to birth and raise children and carry out domestic work.  The men are perceived as the stronger sex and are expected to support the household. On Gethen, a person is gender-neutral until they randomly adopt a gender during kemmer. A Gethenian can both father and mother a child, though after weening the child, the "mother" can return to a neutral state. These gender roles do not apply on Gethen.

            Perhaps Genly is a reflection of the audience experiencing a gender-neutral society. It's important to remember that this book was written in the sixties, and it probably would have attracted negative attention. Also, this book would have been much more confusing if Ms. Fletcher hadn't told us that the Gethenians had no gender in the first place.

            Another important point to make is that although Genly refers to the Gethenians as "he," he notes that some of the Gethenians have some more feminine mannerisms and Genly doesn't think highly of them. His thoughts about Estraven are quite negative and send the message that women are deceiving.

            The premise of any science fiction book begs the question "what if?"  It also presents realistic fictional science to  1) develop the plot, and 2) make it more believable and interesting. Science fiction bends the rules and norms we are used to and changes the variables in the story to see the outcome. Sci-Fi novels offer a glimpse into the author's perception of human nature.  The question Le Guin poses is, "What if there were no genders?" And Genly is experiencing the answer as a man from Earth on a different planet.  We can see that even without gender, there are still huge problems on Gethen regarding border disputes, xenophobia, and insane kings.

Assuming Genders

As the new guy on Gethan, Genly often falls into the habit of assigning a gender to people he meets. He gets in the habit of calling everyone a ‘he’ which makes it difficult for him to remember that Gethenians are androgynous. For instance, Genly notes “Wiping sweat from his dark forehead the man- man I must say, having said he and his- the man answers…” (Le Guin 5).  Resultantly, Genly is constantly experiencing culture shock. Even though he has already been on this new planet awhile, he realizes “though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people on the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own” (12). Obviously, Genly is used to the gender roles on his own planet making it difficult for him to look past them and focus on his mission on Gethan. As he continues to remind himself the realities of this new planet, he notes that gender doesn’t really matter. His realization of this is obvious when he notes that he can “suspect that the distinction between a maternal and a paternal instinct is scarcely worth making; the paternal instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked characteristic” (100). To the Gethenians, gender doesn’t matter because that’s all they know. It may seem strange to Genly (and to us) that the Gethenians are androgynous, however, their lack of gender has influenced various aspects of their lives. For example, Genly questions if “they consider war to be a purely masculine displacement activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femininity that is raped? (96). Genly’s inability to see the Gethenians as they see themselves prevents him from connecting with them and understanding their culture and society as a whole. What other ways could his incapability be harmful to his mission on Gethan?

The continuous difficulty that Genly faces to accept the androgynous Gethenians illustrates that his home planet is very set in their ways and their gender influences many aspects of their culture, much like gender roles play a huge part in our lives. If any of us were to travel to a place with no gender, we would experience the same difficulties that Genly faces on Gethan.

Genly vs. Gethenians

The world in which Genly Ai comes from (Earth) is very different from the place of Gethenians. Being from different origins, much of their beliefs differ, Genly has trouble deciphering genders in the Gethenian community, because of their way of becoming female or male which doesn’t happen till “kemmering”. This is shown when Genly talks and describes the people around him that he knows/meets, “He laughed shrilly like an angry woman pretending to be amused.” (Le Guin 31). Here Genly describes Argaven (the King) as womanly but calls Argaven as a he. Genly is very used to seeing people as a certain gender from the beginning, from Gethenian perspective they find Genly to be different and see him as an “alien” or a “pervert” and vice versa. Genly is taken aback at how Gethenians see themselves and are very accepting in who/what they become whether female or male, and are all about seeing the “soul” in each other. They also don’t really care for other world customs, “If there are eighty thousand worlds full of monsters out there among the stars, what of it? We want nothing from them. We’ve chosen our way of life and have followed it for a long time.” (Le Guin 39). I believe the King declines his offer because he fears Genly’s world, since he has no understanding of it. In a sense, Genly also feels isolated from this world as he doesn’t understand how Gethenians think or why they do the things they do.

Due to being stubborn Gently is blinded by his own beliefs and self-interest. This attitude reflects Earth and our own reality and human way of life as it shows how different societies are, and how through politics and other sources we try and implement our way of life towards others. On Earth we have adopted other countries customs and vice versa. Genly’s journey through this different world shows how perspective and environment can really change how you see things. I believe Gethenians reveal something about humans that we can’t become, and that is their interaction with each other in which they see each other as their personality and (change gender) to fit each other. This is probably why Genly finds it hard to accept their customs, on Earth as humans we are lead by gender roles and what society defines man and woman as. The message that Le Guin is trying to convey is that gender and love aren’t inseparable and in the long run gender doesn’t matter when it comes to love. We humans need to see past that barrier of categorizing everyone and recognize each other’s humanity and have them recognize you as who you are as well.

AF: Left Hand of Darkness, Wave One

WAVE ONE:

Discuss Genly Ai's struggle to see Gethenians as they see themselves. What do Genly Ai's attitudes reveal about the world he comes from?

Reminder, your post should be between 250-300 words long. Anything shorter will not be effective. Also, include page numbers when you reference the text.

Wave 1 responders, you have until 6:00 pm Monday, January 23th to post your response to this question. All other students in the class may comment on any of theLHoD posts at any time.

Who shall post:
Marciya A., Ronie A., Kiana A., Jade B., Amanda B., Sally C., Celesten C., Logan C., Paul C., Brooke E., Cynthia G. 

Remember, anyone can comment on these posts.  The total requirement for this novel is ONE blog post and TWO comments, and as always, I hope some students will EXCEED EXPECTATIONS and go ABOVE AND BEYOND this 1:2 minimum requirement.