a close study
obdurate
in which we learn a little bit about Gethenian politics while our main character firmly refuses to see from outside his own perspective.
we start the story watching the mad king of Karhide cementing a keystone with blood mortar - uniting two separate piers with death. "Without the bloodbond the arch would fall, you see."
already Genly Ai thinks he's operating on a higher plane than these alien folk. "Power has become so subtle and complex a thing in the ways taken by the Ekumen that only a subtle mind can watch it work; here it is still limited, still visible." lol get duped.
he's also already contradicting himself. "In Estraven, for instance, one feels the man's power as an augmentation of his character; he cannot make an empty gesture or say a word that is not listened to. [...] I don't trust Estraven, whose motives are forever obscure; I don't like him; yet I feel and respond to his authority as surely as I do to the warmth of the sun."
later, "Estraven had done a great deal for me in the last six or eight months, but I did not expect or desire such a show of personal favor as an invitation to his house. Harge rem ir Tibe was still close to us, overhearing, and I felt that he was meant to overhear. Annoyed by this sense of effeminate intrigue..." the 'effeminate intrigue' you made up in your head after being offered a dinner invitation? ok Genly. he continually refers to Estraven as feminine, but only in insulting or distrustful ways.
this is an oral folktale from many generations before present.
Getheren and Hode were two full siblings who vowed lifelong kemmer to each other. they were forced to separate after conceiving a child (whom, interestingly, we hear nothing else about). Hode, who bore the child, kills himself. the blame for this suicide is placed on Getheren and he is shunned. after trying to get by for a while, he leaves to seek his own death after laying his name and his shame on the Hearth that shunned him. he flees north over the Pering Ice, further and further into the snow until his hands and feet are frostbitten and he has to crawl on elbows and knees. as he keeps moving north, he starts to warm up and finds himself in the place inside the blizzard where everything is white. an icy white version of Hode appears to Getheren and implores him to stay in the blizzard where they can vow kemmer and no one can stop them. Getheren rebuffs Hode and is like "dude we could have done that literally anywhere else if you hadn't killed yourself!" and heads back towards civilization. he is found by another Hearth and manages to survive his frostbite, though the hand Hode grabbed him by has to be amputated. Getheren goes on with his life. in his old age, he asks a traveler about his home Hearth and learns that it's been suffering from curse he laid upon in. Getheren tells the traveler his name and story and asks him to tell the Hearth that he removes his shame from them. Getheren dies soon after and the Hearth no longer suffers.
so suicides end up in the place inside the blizzard. interesting that Getheren would have gladly run off somewhere to live in unlawful kemmer, and the narrative implies that this is the route Hode should have chosen. what else do we learn from this?
this story obviously parallels Estraven's. how closely? Estraven is shunned for putting love of humanity (running away together?) over love of country (doing the 'right thing'?).
we get more "ew effeminacy!" commentary from Genly, this time about the King. interesting how these two have similar attitudes of arrogant incredulity.
"As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information becomes unprofitable, sleep."
i feel like there's much more to be said about this chapter.
this is another oral folktale that introduces us to the Foretellers. we see a man go seek the date of his
death - the Foreteller says that he will die on Odstreth (Karhidish for the nineteenth day of the
month).
this man, Lord Berosty, is so mad that he didn't get a straight answer that he threatens to kill the
Foreteller, but the telling has been done and there's nothing to be done about it. Berosty goes back
home and shuts himself up in paranoia and despair. his kemmering, Herbor, is so distraught on Berosty's
behalf that he goes to the Foretellers himself and offers his life in exchange for a Foretelling.
foreshadowing is a literary device in which-- when Herbor pleads his case and explains the nature
of his question, he is allowed a Foretelling with no payment. how long, then, will Berosty live? "longer
than Herbor," is the answer he receives. naturally, he returns to his kemmering and gives him the news.
Berosty is not saddened, but enraged, and crushes Herbor's skull with a table. naturally there's nowhere
to go but down from here, Berosty goes insane and eventually hangs himself. on Odstreth.
i like this chapter. i think it's interesting that we are told Berosty's first name - Ashe - which is also the name of Estraven's kemmering. i don't feel like LeGuin wrote many coincidences.
this is a really meaty chapter from a worldbuilding perspective and it's all fascinating.
"We're a lot of newcomers, see, for my Lord Meshe was born 2,202 years-ago, but the Old Way of the Handdara goes back ten thousand years before that." the Handdarata have been Indwelling and Foretelling for over a myriad. this is comparable to how long humans have been practicing agriculture.
Genly is such a sexist piece of shit. more disparaging remarks about people's effeminacy. "I thought of him as my landlady, for he had fat buttocks that wagged as he walked, and a soft fat face, and a prying, spying, ignoble, kindly nature." bro SHUT UP?
Gethen doesn't have a concept of war yet, and Genly notes this, predictably, like a jackass: "They behaved like animals, in that respect; or like women. They did not behave like men, or ants." men > ants > animals > women, got it.
we cross the mountains into eastern Karhide, to the plains of Rer. this is old, old country. "No landboat or car can enter Rer. It was built before Karhiders used powered vehicles, and they have been using them for over twenty centuries."
"Goss went light and quick, graceful as girl..." oh my stars we have a non-negative comparison to a woman.
we meet Faxe the Weaver here, and Genly is in awe of him. at the height of the Foretelling he even outright sees him as a woman: "...a woman, a woman dressed in light. The light was silver, the silver was armor, an armored woman with a sword."
a few more quotes, because i need to put together my thoughts about them later:
"The emphatic and paraverbal forces at work, immensely powerful and confused, rising out of the perversion and frustration of sex, out of an insanity that distorts time, and out of an appalling discipline of total concentration and apprehension of immediate reality, were far beyond my restraint or control. And yet they were controlled: the center was still Faxe."
"...he looked at me out of a tradition thirteen thousand years old: a way of thought and way of life so old, so well established, so integral and coherent as to give a human being the unselfconsciousness, the authority, the completeness of a wild animal, a great strange creature who looks straight at you out of his eternal present...."
now we move over to Estraven's point of view as he flees the country and prepares for his exile.
"...each time I thought of the folly of trying to go home. As well kill myself. I was born to live in exile, it appeared, and my one way home was by way of dying."
Estraven meets his old kemmering, Ashe, who begs to join him in exile. Estraven steadfastly refuses - "If I must be cruel no need to hide it, pretending kindness." Ashe is a Celibate, an Indweller of a Fastness.
"The only true vow of faithfulness I ever swore was not spoken, and the man I swore it to is dead and the promise broken, long ago." coupled with "I went on, and he did not follow me. But my brother's shadow followed me. I had done ill to speak of him. I had done ill in all things."
Estraven steals a rowboat to try and make a break for Orgoreyn, but Tibe's men are after him and he narrowly avoids being executed. he is saved by a ship captain who prioritizes the king's orders (and the few hours of grace that Estraven still has) rather than Tibe's orders to get Estraven out of the picture - he drops Estraven off (much worse for wear) in Orgoreyn.
"Behind every man in Orgoreyn comes the Inspector."
"Then I assume you will declare your intention to me to enter application for permission to obtain permanent residence in the Great Commensality of Orgoreyn pending your obtaining and retaining useful employment as a digit of the Commensality or Township?" holy unconstrained communism batman. "The new Alien Registry Law enacted in the month of Kus as a move in the shadow-fight with Karhide invalidated my registration and lost me my job, and I spent a halfmonth waiting in the anterooms of infinite Inspectors. My mates at work lent me money and stole fish for my dinner, so that I got re-registered before I starved; but I had heard the lesson. I liked those hard loyal men, but they lived in a trap there was no getting out of, and I had work to do among people I liked less. I made the calls I had put off for three months." this however sounds far more like late-stage capitalism to this undereducated little possum.
we finally get a look at the politics between Karhide and Orgoreyn from a much smarter source than Genly. there's a sort of arms race of aggression building between the two nations and everyone is scared of it. Estraven sees Genly's visit and the offer to join the Ekumen as a uniting force for the all the nations of Gethen.
this is an excerpt from the field notes of one of the first Ekumenical visitors to Gethen, long before Genly. we get a woman's point of view on Gethen!
"I am not sure of divorce rules in general; here in Osnoriner there is divorce, but no remarriage after either divorce or the partner's death: one can only vow kemmering once."
"Siblings are not however allowed to vow kemmering, nor keep kemmering after the birth of a child to one of the pair."
"The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer." oop. "One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."
Genly travels around eastern Karhide for a while, but returns to west before the harsh winter sets in. we learn that the king is pregnant, cloistered in his summer palace, and Tibe has been named Regent in the meantime. naturally, Tibe goes full nationalist, and this does not bode well for Genly. "He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war." Genly starts planning to leave for Orgoreyn.
Ashe visits Genly in an attempt to send some money to the exiled Estraven. Genly makes an ass of himself because he is so fucking bothered by (his misunderstanding of) Estraven's motives.
Genly makes it to Orgoreyn and stays at an inn right on the river border between the two countries. a group from the Karhide side attacks across the river and sets the town ablaze before retreating - Genly joins a group of refugees fleeing the scene, but he is picked up by Commensals who give him new papers and send him off to Mishnory.
