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.
If I were in Genly's position I would probably do the same especially being surrounded in an environment that you aren't used to. I've always found the state of kemmering very interesting since the person is basically genderless before kemmering happens. To your last point on how parenting is based solely on the person and not the gender caught my attention. I have never really thought about how we usually associate parental instincts towards mothers or women instead of both genders.
ReplyDeleteIt's understandable that Genly is confused and likes to compare Tia new world to his own, I mean who wouldn't. If you were put somewhere new you're going to compare everything because it's human nature. I like that he compares because it gives insight into the differences of each planet.
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