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Tone
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Genly and Gender:
Genly is an unreliable narrator, continuously projecting his own perspective onto Gethenian societies. This is in some ways unavoidable: every anthropologist is biased by their own cultural context. Genly is no exception to this, even serving as a representative for Le Guin's critique of anthropology as a discipline. Note the following passage from Chapter 1, which exemplifies this unreliable narration:
Though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own. [...] Estraven’s performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit. Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him?
In this passage, Genly imposes misogynistic attitudes and assumptions about gender onto Gethenians, viewing their genders and society through the lens of his own. This unreliability lessens throughout the novel as Genly slowly learns to "see the people of the planet through their own eyes."
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Appalling:
Chapter 7 of The Left Hand of Darkness is an anthropological assessment on "The Question of Sex," taken from the field notes of an anthropologist from the first Ekumenical landing party on Winter. The following excerpt from this anthropologist's account includes a curious example of situational irony:
The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
This anthropologist documents sex differences between Gethenians and other human states, paradoxically referring to Gethenian sexual equality as an "appalling experience." One would think that all people could stomach being judged "only as a human being," yet non-hermaphroditic species often associate gender unilaterally with personal identity. The absence of gender feels dehumanizing to those entrenched within its norms.
This passage is yet another example of unreliable narration, representing the biased perspectives that anthropologists bring to the cultures they study. Obviously, hermaphroditic humans are not constitutively strange or off-putting; rather, it is the researcher's own repulsion that adds bias to the account. There is no reason that sexual variation should be seen as unnatural.
Related Themes:
