The Left Hand of Darkness

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way

"All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor.

What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life-science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook among them.

Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another.

The future, in fiction, is a metaphor."

Ursula K Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness is the account of a man named Genly Ai, from a galactic federation of worlds (the Ekumen), sent to bring the world of Gethen into that Federation.

Gethen is a cold world, known colloquially as Winter.

The people of Gethen are sequentially hermaphroditic. For twenty-four days of each twenty-six day lunar cycle they are androgynes, with no sexual feelings. For the remaining two days (kemmer) the people are either male or female, as determined by pheromones. Each individual can both sire and bear children.

in the feudal kingdom of Karhide, Genly Ai, is acquainted with the Prime Minister, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven. The political intrigue is beyond Genly's comprehension and, after misadventure and misunderstanding, he arrives in the kingdom of Orgoreyn only to end up in a terrible gulag-type prison.

Estraven uses all available resources and rescues Genly.

They must leave Orgoreyn, and to achieve this safely they travel across the glaciers from Orgoreyn into Karhide, an 800-mile journey that will take them, Estraven guesses, over three months. During their journey across the ice, Estraven and Genly grow to be good friends and eventually feel a strong bond of love. The journey that they make together, on foot over the polar ice cap, has literary antecedents in the monster's journey over the ice in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and finds echoes in great stories of endurance in sub-zero temperatures, such as Joe Simpson's Touching the Void.

Like these stories, the intensity of light and whiteness is transformed into a heart of darkness, while the death-dealing extremes of nature force a reappraisal of what it means to be human and alive.

After this epic journey, they arrive in Karhide, Estraven is shot and dies. Genly is taken to the King, who at this point is ready to join the Ekumen.

Plenty of science fiction books feature journeys, usually from Earth to different planets. At first glance, Le Guin follows suit. But her journey consists of many journeys.

The journey is a powerful archetypal symbol, telling of the journey through life. It's a learning experience, through which the hero-traveler searches for an answer to the meaning of life and , by the end of the journey, the traveler gains maturity and self-awareness. It is a process of self-growth and self-discovery.

Genly embarks upon an onerous and risky journey across the wastes of ice, together with Estraven, the native, the "Other." This journey reflects another journey as Genly travels with growing awareness into himself, and into his relationship with the Other.

His outer journey parallels his inner journey.

Quite apart from its layers and meanings, The Left Hand of Darkness is a beguiling read with complex, unpredictable yet steadfast characters in a world of distinct, carefully developed cultures sharing in common an outlook born out of their frozen climate and their androgyne nature.

Perhaps because of the androgynous nature of the people of Winter, this book was categorised as 'feminist literature'. But the driving force in this novel is the examination of politics.Le Guin herself does not call herself a feminist, but a theorist.

One question this book left with me is still unanswered. How much is nationalism a result of male codes of conduct?