Saturday, January 20, 2018
The Left Hand of Darkness : Wave 1 Response
Genly Ai comes from a planet where humans are labeled as female, male, he, or she. As he visits the planet called Winter, where it's people are called Gethenians, he soon discovers the difficulty of how "they" live, and how odd it is for them to be neither male nor female most of the time, only during the time of kemmer. Once he is on this planet, Genly decides to call them "he" because it seems easier that way for him. Like, when he goes to go speak with his "landlady" or when he sees Faxe more as a woman, all of that made it hard for him to fully understand why they are so different, including the cultures, and way of life generally. For the time being of Genly being there, he is labeled as a pervert because Genly is always male and is always in kemmer, which also causes the Gethenians to not support his culture either. Despite the oddness of this place, Genly is actually open to learning about their culture, which reveals how from where he comes from, they are always curious and nosy. How they think it might be weird for them to be more passive towards gender. He also makes it clear on how Winter is always cold, whereas to Earth, it can be warm or cold. We as readers can connect on what Genly feels because in a sense, we are actually like him, more than Gethanians.
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In addition, to your statement about how "we are actually like him" this is true because we share the same characteristics as Genly, but more importantly we share the same feelings as we read the book. The curiosity and the feeling of being lost in a world you don't understand and you submerged into, is really quite unusual for someone who has never experienced or thought such things. As an envoy Genly has to get used to their culture, so he has to be curious about the discrepancies he has noticed in Winter. Also, I agree that Genly and the Gethenians way of life is very different, but I think this is mostly due to the conditions they have lived in and the bodies they are born with. If we relate this to history, the explorers of the who found different people were all intrigued and curious of the way they lived their life. They all lived in the same planet yet their cultures are different and the scope of the world has been broadened by these interactions, and I think Genly will become more knowledgeable of Winter from these interactions.
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