"An Ambiguous Utopia"

There's a lot of significance in this subtitle. Somebody mentioned in the first class that a book can be neither utopian nor dystopian; it's possible for a sci-fi book to balance in between. I didn't quite buy it, or such an idea didn't sound interesting -- but now I see it makes for quite an interesting social dialogue.

The feeling I've come away with from the novel is that both of Shevek's two worlds are simply imperfect and highly divergent versions of the same reality. That reality being the human societal phenomenon. Though at first glance The Dispossessed would seem to be a love song to Leguin's imagined anarchist paradise, light is gradually shed on the world as an imperfect place. People are full of ideals, but in practice find it nearly impossible to stay true to them. Though the concept of property is shunned, it arises constantly. The town on the railway that refuses Shevek and his fellow workers food -- "their food" is a potent exampe. For all its advances in education, in law, in constructing a social brotherhood, Anarres' integrity is ultimately undermined by one thing: human nature. The inescapable NEED to possess, perhaps, to be an individual instead of an anonymous member of a brotherhood.

Urras, likewise, has both faults and triumphs. For all his disgust with the propertarianistic way of life, upon his first encounter with the planet, Shevek can't help but marvel at the beauty of the planet, the efficiency with which many of its institutions (though he disagrees with the fundamentals of their existence) operate. That is, both the pros and cons of both societies are presented -- though perhaps not in equal balance, they are there.

The true ambiguity of the novel comes out best in the passage where Shevek argues the merits of anarchism with a group of Urrasti at Oiie's sister-in-law's party. Shevek is passionate, he is spirited, he is absolutely sure of the truth of his world-view, yet the flaws in his logic are left clear. That many of these questions are in fact open for debate remains obvious. Whether this is a fault of the author, or a deliberate effort to remain ambiguous, to show both sides of the coin, I am not sure (though, judging by the title, I would guess the latter).