Reviews - The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

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5.96k reviews for:

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Ursula K. Le Guin

4.28 AVERAGE

soben's review against another edition

5.0

hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jfuel's review against another edition

4.5

challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Thought-provoking and engaging.

aryenshr's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A masterpiece. Le Guin dissects anarchism both as a political philosophy and a school of thought, exploring the question: “what does it mean to be free?”

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

As someone hoping to go into research, Shivek’s allegiance to truth above all, to people, to freedom, is inspiring.

I hope to return to this book again and again.

tiredcreature's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

akick's review

4.25

adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

gecomm's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

We each of us deserve everything, and we deserve nothing… There is no help for us but from one another, and no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is.

As profound as it is imaginative, this book is important. If we cannot imagine the revolution, we will never be the revolution; this story is just one look at what that could be, and what it might mean, and that was my favorite element of the novel.
PS, a surprising amount of physics

caya25's review

5.0

There’s a saying: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

Not for Le Guin.

This book does not have a particularly enticing plot, nor the most memorable characters, and yet it will stick with me for a long, long time.

What Le Guin accomplishes is beyond any science fiction book I’ve ever read. Anarres is not some unattainable fantastical world. There is no magic, no fun and flashy alien race, no colorful planets. No: Anarres, in fact, bears the physical elements of what one would expect from a dystopian society. Anarres is desolate, dry, ugly, and harsh.

The point of the book is to stretch the reader’s creativity, but not in the way that Star Wars or Dune do. It is an earnest re-imagination of society as we know it. This is Le Guin asking us: “What is possible in human society, if we allow ourselves to wonder? What could we create?”

The Dispossessed is about possibility.

~ ~ ~

“But tell us about Anarres—what’s it really like? Is it so wonderful there really?”

“I don’t know,” he said; his tongue felt half paralyzed. “No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and big feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed.”