Le Guin identifies herself with feminism, and is interested in non-violence and ecological awareness. She has participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. These sympathies can be seen in several of her works of fiction, including the Hainish universe works. [7] The novels of the Hainish universe frequently explore the effects of differing social and political systems, although she displays a preference for a "society that governs by consensus, a communal cooperation without external government." [8] Her fiction also frequently challenges accepted depictions of race and gender. [8] The Word for World is Forest shares the theme of dreaming with the later Le Guin novel The Lathe of Heaven. [51] Suzanne Reid stated that the novel examines the source and effect of dreams. [15] The Athsheans teach themselves to consciously and actively control their dreams. [61] This allows them to access their subconscious in a way that the Terrans are not able. [61] The Athsheans follow a polycyclic sleep pattern with a period of 120 minutes, which makes it impossible for them to adapt to the Terran eight-hour work day. Their dreaming is not restricted to times when they are asleep, with adept dreamers being able to dream while wide awake as well. [51] The visions they see while dreaming direct and shape their waking behavior, which Selver describes as "balanc[ing] your sanity... on the double support, the fine balance, of reason and dream; once you have learned that, you cannot unlearn it any more than you can unlearn to think." [51] If I had read this when it first came out in 1972, it could have seeded my future as a misanthropic ecologist. Here was a radical, table-turning book in which humans are the greedy, ecologically clueless aggressors who get their asses handed to them by the rusticated, forest-dwelling natives of an invaded planet. Unfortunately, I wasn't alive in 1972 (it's okay, I still became a misanthropic ecologist without it). And fortunately, in the 50 years that passed between when The Word for World was published and when I read it, some of the major paradigms it challenges - views of indigenous people, ecological thinking, anthropocentrism - have shifted in ways that make this book seem less audacious. Indigenous land management techniques, for example, are having a renaissance as we realize, belatedly, that 100 years of forest fire suppression has possibly not been the way to go. It's no longer revolutionary to portray humans as the antagonists, particularly in the face of accelerating climate change.

Qué pasa entonces con esas criaturas? Parecen hombres y hablan como hombres. ¿No son hombres? -No lo sé. ¿Acaso el hombre mata a otro hombre, excepto en un ataque de locura? ¿Acaso mata la bestia a los de su especie? Sólo los insectos. Estos yumenos nos matan con la misma indiferencia con que nosotros matamos víboras. El que me enseñó a mí decía que se matan unos a otros, en disputas individuales, y también en grupos, como las hormigas cuando pelean. Eso yo no lo he visto. Pero sé que no escuchan a quienes piden clemencia."

Broadcast

Right, but this isn't slavery, Ok baby. Slaves are humans. When you raise cows, you call that slavery? No. And it works." This is the third Le Guin book I have read this year (2011), the other two being The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia and The Left Hand of Darkness. Of the three The Word for World is Forest is my favorite. A book of this quality at this length ought to be read by everyone. Me ha parecido una historia fascinante, que va de menos a más y que te absorve completamente conforme va creciendo y haciéndose grande. Me ha emocionado mucho la historia, confirmarme de parte contraria a los humanos una vez más, ante la violencia con la que este trata siempre al mundo que le rodea, como si todo lo que hay en él le perteneciera exclusivamente. El libro refleja esta naturaleza horrible del ser humano como pocos, y te remueve ese sentimiento que todos deberíamos tener de respeto a la naturaleza.

This novella ( or a short novel, depending how you classify it) is a work of great complexity that can be studied on many levels and that raises many interesting questions, from psychological, social, political to linguistic ones. The Word for World is a Forest captures the harsh realities of any war or military conquest and stresses that it is often (if not always) the innocents that suffer and die. Once blood starts to flow, it is hard to stop it. Violence often breads more violence. The cycles of violence are hard to break, both on individual and social level. Heart-breaking and poignant, this story of colonization and conflict makes us face the darkness that exists in human kind. Le Guin's father Alfred Louis Kroeber and mother Theodora Kroeber were scholars, and exposure to their anthropological work considerably influenced Le Guin's writing. [1] [2] Many of the protagonists of Le Guin's novels, such as The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon's World are also anthropologists or social investigators of some kind. [3] Le Guin uses the term Ekumen for her fictional alliance of worlds, a term which she got from her father, who derived it from the Greek Oikoumene to refer to Eurasian cultures that shared a common origin. [4] See, you want to keep this place just like it is, actually, Kees. Like one big National Forest. To look at, to study. Great, you're a spesh. But see, we're just ordinary joes getting the work done. Earth needs wood, needs it bad. We find wood on New Tahiti. So – we're loggers. See, where we differ is that with you Earth doesn't come first, actually. With me it does." In the internal chronology of the Hainish universe, the events of The Word for World is Forest occur after The Dispossessed, in which both the ansible and the League of Worlds are unrealised dreams. However, the novel is located prior to Rocannon's World, in which Terran mindspeech is seen as a distinct possibility. A date of 2368 CE has been suggested by reviewers, although Le Guin provides no direct statement of the date. [20] [21] Plot summary [ edit ] CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics) mentions of graphic rape, slavery, genocide, graphic violence, casual racism and sexism.Speaking of evil men, I think Davidson bears some exploration. Another of the criticisms I’ve seen leveled at this book is that the characters are one dimensional compared to Le Guin’s usual characters. To be sure Davidson is wholly and irredeemably despicable, but I do have to say that it’s hard to see him as an unrealistic character after reading the book that I mentioned previously, King Leopold’s Ghost. In its account of the conquest of the Congo it described the role of men like the explorer Henry Morton Stanley and a number of colonial officials and administrators, and the kinds of tyrannical violence and brutality they engaged in are not far off from what Le Guin represented in fiction. Coro Mena enters a dream-state to verify this information. His role as Great Dreamer is to translate what he sees in his dreams into reality, as the Athsheans live both in dream-time and world-time. The village’s women then act on his observations. Coro Mena pronounces that Selver is a god, as he now knows what death is. Selver decides to gather other Athsheans to drive the humans out of their world. Lyubov taught Selver human ways, but Selver still doesn’t know whether the “ yumens” are even men, since they kill one another. Coro Mena sends Selver off, telling him that he saw Selver in his dreams prior to Selver’s arrival, and that Selver will change their world. Hovanec, Carol P. (1989). "Visions of Nature in The Word for World is Forest: A Mirror of the American Consciousness". Extrapolation. 30 (1): 84–92. doi: 10.3828/extr.1989.30.1.84.