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A review by pascalthehoff
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
challenging
slow-paced
3.0
For most of the time, The Dispossessed made me think of these movies where an East German citizen crosses the border to the West for the first time – like an extraterrestial in a futuristic world. Similarly, but in a more extreme approach, the novel views hypercapitalism (with streaks of neo-feudalism) from the perspective of a protagonist who never lived in a capitalist system at all. Though he takes a very privileged perspective of a VIP seeing the most pleasant sides of capitalism from a gilded cage.
There are blatant parallels to the Cold War dichotomy, but those are also brought to the extreme. The novel has an incredible eye for detail. Culturally, interpersonally, linguistically... But in broad terms: Urras, the capitalist planet, has superior goods, Anarres, the anarchist planet, has the superior human values… At least that’s what it seems like at first.
The novel takes a lot of time to get to the very interesting points where everything is actually not so clear-cut. It isn’t all black and white before that, too, but in the first half, there’s a lot of worldbuilding tourism that lacks the tension of the latter half. Like in actual history, one might argue, what holds these two competing planets and systems back is that they are competing at all.
There is this is notion of one-upmanship that sours even the most positive concepts like solidarity, which it turns into toxic compulsion. Both systems suffer from demonizing the other. And slowly seeing that unfold is what’s most interesting about the novel, even though it’s a slog for the most part. A setting on Earth might’ve actually worked better to get readers to the point more quickly, without needing so much abstract world building. The novel is multi-faceted and smart enough to stomach the blow of taking it down a notch.
The alternating timelines make for a good balance between life on Urras and life on Anarres, but I can’t help but feel that the present arc would’ve been way more compelling with the knowledge of the protagonist’s resolve and motivation towards the end of the past arc. Without this context, the first chapters in the present arc lack the necessary drive, which makes the novel a drag right from the beginning.
There are blatant parallels to the Cold War dichotomy, but those are also brought to the extreme. The novel has an incredible eye for detail. Culturally, interpersonally, linguistically... But in broad terms: Urras, the capitalist planet, has superior goods, Anarres, the anarchist planet, has the superior human values… At least that’s what it seems like at first.
The novel takes a lot of time to get to the very interesting points where everything is actually not so clear-cut. It isn’t all black and white before that, too, but in the first half, there’s a lot of worldbuilding tourism that lacks the tension of the latter half. Like in actual history, one might argue, what holds these two competing planets and systems back is that they are competing at all.
There is this is notion of one-upmanship that sours even the most positive concepts like solidarity, which it turns into toxic compulsion. Both systems suffer from demonizing the other. And slowly seeing that unfold is what’s most interesting about the novel, even though it’s a slog for the most part. A setting on Earth might’ve actually worked better to get readers to the point more quickly, without needing so much abstract world building. The novel is multi-faceted and smart enough to stomach the blow of taking it down a notch.
The alternating timelines make for a good balance between life on Urras and life on Anarres, but I can’t help but feel that the present arc would’ve been way more compelling with the knowledge of the protagonist’s resolve and motivation towards the end of the past arc. Without this context, the first chapters in the present arc lack the necessary drive, which makes the novel a drag right from the beginning.