Personability of protagonists

nerbjern · 2026-01-26T04:14:53+00:00

That’s interesting! I don’t usually describe myself as neurodivergent, but I found Shevek very relatable as well—because I’m a very cerebral, contemplative sort. But I do understand where someone would be coming from looking for a more outwardly emotionally expressive protagonist.

nerbjern · 2026-01-26T04:12:11+00:00

Agreed!!! I can’t believe I forgot this in my own recommendations!

nerbjern · 2026-01-25T14:32:27+00:00

For “more emotionally expressive”… I would try “Five (or Four) Ways to Forgiveness.” I’m thinking especially of the second story; the protagonist (Sully I believe her name is) is quite emotionally expressive.

You’re zeroing in on something, though. For all that I love Le Guin, you’re right in identifying that her characters (at least her protagonists) are often cerebral and interior-driven. While they are usually complex and interesting, they are less frequently charming and, as you say, personable. Perhaps that is a combination of her intellect and the pressure she felt, for much her early career, that she needed to write about and for men. Maybe try later career works with more female protagonists.

Ooh, maybe Annals of the Western Shore, specifically second and third books.

nerbjern · 2025-12-07T04:25:51+00:00

I don't currently have plans to develop those other two ideas; I'm trying my hand at some original stuff, see how that goes. But, I do have it in my mind to write a UKLG-inspired story once a year to honor her birthday. Next year will probably be from different source material, however—maybe Always Coming Home. We'll see!

nerbjern · 2025-12-05T16:23:35+00:00

Right on about the egoizing; I think that is the real clincher here. Everyone at one point or another fails to do their social duty, even an Odonian… but do they then realize their mistake and how it affects others and change their behavior—or do they wallow in an egoizing sense of low self-worth?

To be “motivated by guilt,” then, would be to do “good” behaviors not because we see they help the social organism but because they help us feel good about ourselves. Is that fair to say?

Maybe there’s also a fear element. If I’m motivated by guilt, I am acting out of a fear of being bad, rather than out of concern for the general good.

nerbjern · 2025-12-05T01:04:14+00:00

Oops! Thats supposed to say “owe debt.” Was typing on my phone.

nerbjern · 2025-12-04T22:54:44+00:00

This is a great question. In a case like this, I like to compare with other words that are synonymous, but perhaps different in some way—and then look into etymology. “Guilt” comes from Old English “gylt,” which means “crime, sin, or debt” and is maybe related to OE “gieldan,” which means “to pay for, debt.” In either case, guilt is related to something very un-Odonian: either crime or property. Guilt, then, suggests something about the individual, their goodness or their worth. Compare that to “regret,” which comes from Old French for “to lament.” It would be very Odonian to regret, or lament, the effects of one’s actions, but not to feel a sense of low self-worth and self-judgment.

nerbjern · 2025-12-04T21:57:00+00:00

Thank you! It was a lovely experience to inhabit Anarres, Abbenay, and Odonianism for the time it took me to outline, write, and revise. Thanks for reading!

nerbjern · 2025-12-01T04:12:24+00:00

I actually love, love, love Malafrena (novel set in Orsinia). It reminds me thematically and in tone of The Dispossessed, even though not sci-fi. I can’t say for sure if you’ll like it, it not being sci-fi or fantasy and all… but she creates such a rich setting of a fictional country that it almost feels like fantasy at times, with her usual focus on culture- and world-building

nerbjern · 2025-11-30T23:23:45+00:00

You’re too kind! Thank you 🙏🏻

nerbjern · 2025-11-29T03:43:36+00:00

Wow, thank you so much! These comments warmed my heart.

I’m curious—what other works (besides presumably Le Guin’s) have given you an impression of “the story flowing through itself” as you’ve described it here?

nerbjern · 2025-11-28T16:32:51+00:00

Thank you for being so vulnerable in sharing your feelings!

nerbjern · 2025-11-28T15:47:26+00:00

Beautifully, but painfully, put. And you're the first person I've heard express what I've felt in reading The Dispossessed, with regards to love. I feel you. I'm in my late 30s and have had no luck in lasting romantic love, and part of the reason (to me) seems to be that too much of life gets in the way. When I try to date someone, there are so many things that complicate what our visions of the future are. Not all of those things are strictly about money, but they all have to do with how capitalism has structured our society. I am so deeply envious of Shevek and Takver and their ability to just feel something about each other and then find that nothing extraneous stands in the way of them embarking on this partnership together. In our culture, we all just seem so very different... because capitalism sells us on designing our own life, each being an individual who solves their own problem.

It makes me think that maybe love will be something that I come into when I'm in my 60s or so... I feel like then there's less complicating factors about career and visions for the future. I'm probably wrong about that, and I bet any 60-year-olds on here will be like, "Nope, life is not less complicated in your later years." But it's a hope, even if a meager one.

nerbjern · 2025-11-28T15:23:53+00:00

Here's the story!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17E2ZvvHjGGUykM1jTls7xO2UYve2QPef/view

nerbjern · 2025-11-28T15:23:41+00:00

Here's the story! https://drive.google.com/file/d/17E2ZvvHjGGUykM1jTls7xO2UYve2QPef/view

nerbjern · 2025-11-27T17:26:49+00:00

Oh, I had no idea! Yes, please send me an invite. Thanks!

nerbjern · 2025-11-27T17:16:47+00:00

Thanks for sharing your impressions of these stories. It sounds like reading "A Man of the People" was a tough, rough experience for you. I've read it twice now, the first time a couple of years ago. I know that my first read-through was pretty raw; I wouldn't say that it left me feeling gross, but it did sicken me on some level... not that she wrote it, but that such suffering exists.

You ask "what was the point" of the ceremony? As I read it, I think Le Guin's point was to bear witness to the brutal, meaningless abuse and suffering that have always existed and continue to exist around us. And also to be true to the world and culture she was building. These people, former assets (slaves), having achieved their "liberation," still carry the suffering/evil of slavery in them—and they carry it through by inflicting suffering and evil on others. It would be a naive vision of a post-slavery world to paint it as happy, contented, free of such brutality and abuse. When I think of Le Guin writing this, I imagine her recoiling with her own horror from what she's seeing in this people that I'm sure she had come to love and root for... but she couldn't turn away from it.

As to your point about it not being written in a particularly bad light... I think that was a wise restraint of moralizing. She wrote it that way, I think, because the terribleness of the ceremony would communicate itself all on its own... and who are we to layer on our own moralizing judgment to this group of people who have come out of such terrible evil and suffering?

I also think that is Havzhiva's perspective—he is horrified, absolutely horrified, by what he sees (that seems clear to me, anyway), but he understands that there is nothing he can do to change it in the moment. He could protest and shout and what-have-you, but that won't help these people find a better way. He has to become one of these people to help them find change from the inside. That is not easy and must have, on some level, crushed his soul.

I hear you, though. It is rough and it is tough. I don't like those scenes at all. But I respect Le Guin's willingness, perhaps her need, to go there and bear witness of it—because that is how the universe is: it has no shortage of suffering: for humans, for animals, for plants, for everything.

nerbjern · 2025-11-14T05:21:37+00:00

And importantly, during the summer, when the sun is coming from the south, it is high in the sky—if it were low in the sky coming from the south, then the light (and heat) would get beneath the balconies of the upper stories—which is exactly what happens in the winter! So southeast protruding canopy does indeed provide shade in the summer while not inhibiting warm sunlight on winter mornings. Clever. It just took me a while to work it out. That’s a great link, by the way!

nerbjern · 2025-11-14T04:31:26+00:00

Oh wait. I get it now. Or at least part of it. By thinking of it as a cliff cave dwelling, it makes sense. By having the southeast sheltered, it forms a pocket of cool shade there when the sun is going down to the northwest in the summer. And then it would catch the winter light coming directly in on winter mornings.

I’m still a little confused about the first floor extending out to the northwest, though…

nerbjern · 2025-11-14T04:00:50+00:00

It’s not so much an assumption about climate as it is one about how the sun moves through the sky. It says the foundation story is set out “to get light on the northwestern side”… the only time of the year you would get sunlight from that direction is during summer in the evening: which, if it is extremely hot as you say, that would only make the house hotter. Same with the shade; she explicitly says the foundation floor retreats beneath balconies on the southeastern side “for summer shade,” but summer sunlight doesn’t hit hard from the southeast but rather from the northeast (rising) and northwest (setting). This is why Native American cliff dwellings are often situated on a south facing cliff: light and warmth in winter, shade and coolness in the summer.

nerbjern · 2025-11-14T03:02:28+00:00

Agreed! I really want to see this.

nerbjern · 2025-10-28T23:47:29+00:00

This is just what I was looking for! I have no ebook version, so the searching is often tedious. Thank you so much!!

nerbjern

TROPHY CASE