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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Shevek and Chifoilisk:
Chifoilisk, the Thuvian agent, is a useful foil for Shevek because, as two of the only non-capitalists in A-Io, their similarities are unique in their environment. In this passage, Shevek counters Chifoilisk's accusation of idealism by attesting to Anarresti practicality, and Chifoilisk responds by switching topics and asserting that he and Shevek are of a common mind:
“Chifoilisk, there aren’t many idealists left on Anarres, I assure you. The Settlers were idealists, yes, to leave this world for our deserts. But that was seven generations ago! Our society is practical. Maybe too practical, too much concerned with survival only. What is idealistic about social cooperation, mutual aid, when it is the only means of staying alive?”
“I can’t argue the values of Odonianism with you. Not that I haven’t wanted to! I do know something about it, you know. We’re a lot closer to it, in my country, than these people are.
The two men both harbor a fierce belief in the value of their respective societal models. The similarities between the two, however, are only surface level, as Chifoilisk ultimately serves his state government while Shevek has emigrated from his planet and left his people for the sake of humanity. Shevek realizes their differences and pushes the issue, leaving Chifoilisk to resort to vague appeals to shared political ground. Yet their conversation, however hostile, is unrestrained. Their political differences and their different levels of experience with Iotic culture set them apart, while their total devotion to their respective ideologies let them understand one another. Anarchism is not state socialism, and the distinction is an important one, especially when their shared opposition to capitalism threatens to overshadow their differences. Le Guin is clear: Anarres is not Thu.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Shevek and Takver:
As a partner, Takver makes Shevek’s life and achievements possible. She has much in common with Shevek, but her differences complement his character by opposing some of his most fundamental traits.
He is predisposed to isolation, while she is highly sociable; he is a physicist concerned with mathematical truth, she is a biologist concerned with the messy complexities of life; he is deeply anxious and prone to depression, she is eternally optimistic and confident. Even though Takver cannot change Shevek fundamentally as a person, she changes his understanding of the world completely, for example when she exposes him to the world of aquatic life that thoroughly contrasts with his own field of study:
Shevek, intent, followed the fish’s track and her thought’s track. He wandered among the tanks for a long time, and often came back with her to the laboratory and the aquaria, submitting his physicist’s arrogance to those small strange lives, to the existence of beings to whom the present is eternal, beings that do not explain themselves and need not ever justify their ways to man.
Takver holds a very different philosophy on life than Shevek, who can only see the big picture. Yet her appreciation for the miniscule and the individual is not portrayed as lesser. She is a layman, a proxy for the audience, to whom Shevek can articulate his conceptions of time and causality, but her perspective is just as valuable, even essential, to the application of such thought to human life. Take, for example, this conversation:
“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
“That’s all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon—I don’t want it! But I’m not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, ‘O lovely!’ I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don’t give a hoot for eternity.”
Shevek’s concern with the whole is contrasted with Takver’s appreciation for the minute details of the here and now, the infinity that can be found in a single space or moment. She captures in life the eternity that Shevek thinks is only possible in death. In this moment, as in others, she provides a different perspective that enriches Shevek's own. Her vitality saves Shevek from stasis—just as revolutionary spirit saves society from stagnation.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Shevek and Vea:
Vea and Shevek are foils: total opposites, antithetical to each other, and yet they each find the other deeply compelling. Vea, as a representation of Ioti luxury, clashes against Shevek’s Anarresti beliefs. Her total commitment to materialism and commerce forces Shevek to defend Odonianism in the presence of someone whose life starkly contrasts its tenets. Their discussions and debates have the effect of steel on steel, sharpening each other to a point.
Vea also helps Shevek better understand Ioti femininity, which is deeply foreign to him. Vea embodies everything about Ioti femininity that compels Shevek, almost in spite of himself, an ideal of femininity that he sees as underlying not just the woman herself but all of Ioti culture:
She was so elaborately and ostentatiously a female body that she seemed scarcely to be a human being. She incarnated all the sexuality the Ioti repressed into their dreams, their novels and poetry, their endless paintings of female nudes, their music, their architecture with its curves and domes, their candies, their baths, their mattresses. She was the woman in the table.
In this passage, the idea that Ioti femininity is somehow antithetical to personhood functions both as an observation of Ioti culture and an insight into Shevek's Anarresti perspective. He struggles to see Vea as a human—is that a function of Ioti misogyny or Shevek's own sexism? Shevek’s potential for sexism has grown as he is steeped in Ioti culture, but its manifestation is notably rooted in Anarresti ideals. Vea functions as a character to help the reader to understand how much and in what ways Shevek has become accustomed to life on Urras.
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