Ancestors

Written by 🪨 @ :goblin: 🏕️ on 2025-01-24 at 03:22

my hot take about The Dispossessed is that i think Ursula knew she was not depicting a perfect utopia and was in fact being a little cheeky about it

so much of that book is incredible and the society it depicts is fascinating and there’s much to be learned from it but… i think she knew she wasn’t showing us paradise

shevek fails many tests of his character, but maybe the most significant one is refusing to aid or even really acknowledge the communist revolutionaries down on the planet. in a book supposedly about a non- or even supposedly anti-egoistic society, shevek allows his own holier-than-thou attitude to obstruct and ultimately destroy the potential for revolutionary cooperation between annares and the communists on-planet. that alliance could actually lead to the destruction of the capitalist/propertarian order, but shevek is too moralistic.

remind you of anyone? a huge swath of pseudo-revolutionaries in the first world of our earth perhaps?

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from stone@goblin.camp

Toot

Written by 🪨 @ :goblin: 🏕️ on 2025-01-24 at 03:22

anyway i think it’s a lovely book and well worth reading, but i take issue with the people who believe that LeGuin was painting this as her true vision of utopia and critique the book from that standpoint.

i think she knew what she was doing more than some folks give her credit for or realize. i think perhaps on some level she was engaging with her own feelings on psuedo-revolutionary moral idealists, of whom she certainly had met and spoken with many throughout her life.

aaaaanyway. good book. like it.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from stone@goblin.camp

Descendants

Written by Liv, Citrus Reamer on 2025-01-24 at 03:30

@stone been a while since I read it, but I definitely agree.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from photophoregirl@octodon.social

Written by 🪨 @ :goblin: 🏕️ on 2025-01-24 at 03:33

@photophoregirl i just think about e.g. the contrast between shevek’s lil sermons he gives to the planetside bourgeoisie vs. how he treats the undercover revolutionary agent who comes to ask him for help. won’t hardly him the time of day. finds his whole deal kinda distasteful. but will talk at the idle rich for hours, who only listen to him as a curiosity, like a zoo exhibit

Ursula LeGuin was very smart and knew what she was up to!

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from stone@goblin.camp