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lucybruno 's review for:
The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Obviously a book critiquing capitalism through the lens of anarchy is bound to slap.
Prose-wise, it was a little difficult to adjust to with the more cluttered style which felt jarring to me compared to Le Guin's other books, which I feel like have so much strength in their sparseness. However, I think the cluttered style suits Urras very well. The dialogue also felt stiff at times, but the more I thought about it, the more I respected the spoken language in the book as it all really felt like it was translated from other languages. Half the time Shevek is speaking a language he learned as an adult, and the other half the time the characters are speaking a language that was created to support an anarchist revolution. It is actually incredible that the book never took any linguistic component for granted and continued to let the characters struggle through the complications of communication.
I am especially struck by a conversation at the end in which Shevek is explaining he wants to give everyone his temporal theory as a gift, "so that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good."
Someone replies, "In the end, truth usually insists upon serving only the common good"
He replies, "In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end."
What would it look like to insist on the common good now instead of waiting for truth to point that way in the end?
Prose-wise, it was a little difficult to adjust to with the more cluttered style which felt jarring to me compared to Le Guin's other books, which I feel like have so much strength in their sparseness. However, I think the cluttered style suits Urras very well. The dialogue also felt stiff at times, but the more I thought about it, the more I respected the spoken language in the book as it all really felt like it was translated from other languages. Half the time Shevek is speaking a language he learned as an adult, and the other half the time the characters are speaking a language that was created to support an anarchist revolution. It is actually incredible that the book never took any linguistic component for granted and continued to let the characters struggle through the complications of communication.
I am especially struck by a conversation at the end in which Shevek is explaining he wants to give everyone his temporal theory as a gift, "so that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good."
Someone replies, "In the end, truth usually insists upon serving only the common good"
He replies, "In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end."
What would it look like to insist on the common good now instead of waiting for truth to point that way in the end?