Previous
Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Truth:
In the following excerpt from the very beginning of Chapter 1, Genly provides his personal philosophy about anthropological observation and storytelling. He utilizes simile in this philosophizing:
I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.
Genly compares truth to a pearl: beautiful on the neck of one person, but dull and obsolete around the neck of another. Pearls are among the most sensitive gems, and shine brighter depending on their context. So, according to Genly, does truth.
Genly's philosophy reflects his own perspective: his preconceived notions about gender are his pearl, shiny around his neck but dull around the necks of the Gethenians, who do not share his truth. Genly must learn to see his "pearl" differently—to understand his own truth differently—before he can truly understand the Gethenians on their own terms.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Mobilization:
In the following passage from Chapter 5, Genly conveys some of his observations about Gethenian society, all of which are infused with his distinct bias. He uses a simile to juxtapose his own society with Karhide's, providing a flawed, gendered framework through which to consider the subjects of his study:
[O]n Gethen nothing led to war. Quarrels, murders, feuds, forays, vendettas, assassinations, tortures and abominations, all these were in their repertory of human accomplishments; but they did not go to war. They lacked, it seemed, the capacity to mobilize. They behaved like animals, in that respect; or like women. They did not behave like men, or ants.
Genly compares Gethenians to animals and "women," stating that they don't have the capacity to mobilize like "men, or ants." Note the casual misogyny in this passage, present throughout The Left Hand of Darkness: Genly is a man from a patriarchal society, naturally interpreting his observations about Gethen through this flawed framework. As Genly grows more accustomed to living in a society that is not gender-segregated, he loses some of this misogynistic rhetoric, coming to see himself and the Gethenians as human first. He is less apt to other the Gethenians or look at them through a gendered framework by the time the novel concludes.
Related Themes:
