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Allegory
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Nioti:
On Urras, in A-Io, the dominant spoken language is Iotic. Through his servant Efor, Shevek learns to recognize the city dialect of Iotic, spoken by the “Nioti,” the lower class of Urrasti living in A-Io. It is characterized by omitted words and a perpetual present tense.
After Shevek discovers the solution to his theory of time, he is physically weak from the effort, and his servant Efor looks after him. Shevek takes the opportunity to ask about the side of Urras that Efor is familiar with, of squalid hospitals, poverty, and crime. During their conversation, Efor drops his high-class diction and speaks in a Nioti dialect, represented by a different syntax:
“Our kind. Dirty. Like a trashman’s ass-hole,” Efor said, without violence, descriptively. “Old. Kid die in one. There’s holes in the floor, big holes, the beams show through, see? I say, ‘How come?’ See, rats come up the holes, right in the beds. They say, ‘Old building, been a hospital six hundred years.’ Stablishment of the Divine Harmony for the Poor, its name. An ass-hole what it is.”
Dialect on Urras is as much a marker of class as it is in our world, and it is only by speaking to the Nioti that Shevek comes to understand the full scope of Ioti society. Language and speech is a significant concern in The Dispossessed, to the extent that the Anarresti language Pravik was deliberately constructed to better match the ideals of Odonian thought. Speaking in "Niotic," Efor is able to express his perspective more truthfully. Shevek recognizes this and encourages Efor to continue speaking in his own tongue.
Related Themes:
