The world of Gethen was nicknamed ‘Winter’ for an obvious reason - it is always cold. On page 133, Genly expressed just how cold the world was: “..months and months of unrelenting cold, sleet, ice, wind, rain, snow, cold, cold inside, cold outside, cold to the bone and the marrow of the bone.” This piercing coldness affects every aspect of the people’s lives. For instance, it affects how the buildings are structured as well as the people's behavior. Because weather influences all aspects of Gethenian life, the people tend to live in isolation and loneliness.
Physically, cold weather makes people secluded behind walls of buildings. On page 115, the structure of the city Mishnory was described as "..a queer-looking city, all blank stone walls with a few narrow windows set too high, wide streets that dwarfed the crowds, ....shed-roofs sticking out of housewalls eighteen feet above ground like big aimless bookshelves." This illustration portrays how buildings were built in Gethen to adjust to the cold. In a sense, the structure of the buildings contribute to the isolation of the people. The high walls, making them feel like dwarfs also literally separated them with huge barriers from others making them lonely.
On page 96, it is explained that "the dominant factor in Gethenian life is not sex or any other human thing: it is their environment, their cold world. Here man has a crueler enemy than himself." The society is centered around the unfortunate weather conditions. The people are not concerned with socializing and building strong relationships - they simply live to survive in harsh conditions. As a result, they live secluded from each other and live in isolation and loneliness.
I agree that the coldness isolates the people of Winter. I feel like this makes Genly even more lonely because he is not used to people being by themselves. On Earth, we are always socializing and making connections. Yet the conditions of Winter makes the people uncomfortable, especially Genly. He also states that he has never felt welcome on this planet which can show the character of the people.
ReplyDeleteColdness does isolate a lot of people for the fact that, you can't really doing anything when its col outside. And I don't think that Genly is used to that because he is from earth where people are always around one another. Living in these condtions also might throw him off because back on earth he has never experienced any weather conditions like Gethens. He feels isolated due to this for the fact that everybody on that planet has experienced the weather except for him.
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