religions (the Handdara and the Yomesh).The Left Hand of Darkness traces Ai’s adventures on this planet in the course of fulfilling his mission. He gradually convinces the Gethenians—in particular, Estraven—that his stories of other worlds are true. Equally important, he himself comes to understand Gethen.

The novel begins in Ehrenrang, Karhide’s capital, where Estraven has arranged Ai’s audience with the king. Ai does not trust Estraven, however, and he is scarcely surprised when Estraven tells him that he can no longer represent Ai’s interests to the king. The following morning, however, Estraven is gone, banished from Karhide on pain of death; the king condemns him as a traitor and shows no interest in the Ekumen. Despondent, Ai decides to leave Ehrenrang.

He goes to eastern Karhide to learn more of the country and to learn the answer to a question. In eastern Karhide are the Fastnesses, retreats for practitioners of the Handdara. Like Taoism, this religion advocates living in the moment as a meaningful response to the one certain fact known by every person: He or she will die. In order to demonstrate the uselessness of all other knowledge, the Handdarata perform a ritual in which a “weaver” foretells the answer to a stranger’s question. Handdarata legends confirm both the answers’ accuracy and the questions’ essential irrelevance. Nevertheless, Ai asks this question: Will Gethen join the Ekumen within five years? Hours later, he receives his answer: yes.

When Ai arrives in Orgoreyn, he finds Estraven already there, garnering support for Ai’s cause among the ruling Commensals. Yet Ai still does not trust him, even though Estraven’s kemmering, Foreth, begged him to assist Estraven in his exile. To Ai, Estraven’s presence in Orgoreyn merely confirms his treachery and his political expediency. Ai therefore ignores Estraven’s warning that his life is in danger. The next morning, he is arrested and sent to a work farm—where he almost dies, but for Estraven’s brilliant rescue.

By crossing the dangerous Gobrin Ice, Estraven and Ai hope to return to Karhide, where Ai’s mission may fare better now. On this journey, they risk starvation, injury, and death—and become true friends. Ai teaches Estraven a form of telepathy that precludes misunderstanding; they call each other by their first names; and, when they reach Karhide, Estraven skis directly toward the border guards’ guns—a sacrifice that facilitates the political success of Ai’s mission in Karhide.

Karhide does join the Ekumen, confirming the Foretellers’ answer to Ai’s question. Yet as Ai journeys to Estre to tell Estraven’s father of his son’s death, he realizes that question’s irrelevance to what he has learned on Gethen. At Estre he meets Estraven’s son Sorve, who asks a better question in the book’s final sentence. Rather than assuming a yes or no answer, Sorve begins a dialogue: “Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars—the other kinds of men, the other lives?”

Gethen/Winter

Gethen/Winter. Planet similar to earth in size and having an atmosphere capable of supporting a humanoid but not human population. It exists in an unspecified galaxy and in a distant future. It is called Gethen by the people of Hain, an advanced and distant planet from which the protagonist comes, and is sometimes called Winter for reasons that quickly become obvious. The central figure is Genly Ai, a diplomat who represents an intergalactic political organization called the Ekumen; it is Ai’s task to live on Winter for as long as it takes to slowly and gently convince the Gethenians that they want, of their own free will, to join the Ekumen. This organization, a noncoercive political confederation of loosely linked planets, is often alluded to in the novel but is never directly encountered. It is Ursula K. Le Guin’s ideal political organization, and its purpose is to represent a potential alternative to the modern organization of competing nation-states.

Modern nationalism/patriotism is the subject against which the novel cleverly and entertainingly argues. Genly Ai’s mission is impeded by the two conditions that are the most significant features of the planet. First, Gethen is in the midst of an ice age: This means that every feature of the planet, from its flora and fauna to its various cultural rituals and religions to its machines and technology, is shaped by the fact that Gethen is at all times extremely cold. The second factor that shapes the planet and the most interesting feature of the novel is that the people of Gethen are completely hermaphroditic. These preoccupations clearly mark the novel as a product of the 1960’s American fascination with “alternative lifestyles.”

Karhide

Karhide. Nation on the planet Gethen. While for the sake of symmetry Le Guin mentions several places on Gethen, none is ever seen or visited except the two central nations. The first and most significant is Karhide, which, with its dedication to a sort of quasi capitalism and to individual liberty of various kinds, seems to be intended as a simplified representation of early, even primitive, democracy. For all the talk about total equality between people, the novel clearly prefers this to the form of government represented by its chief rival, Orgoreyn.

Orgoreyn

Orgoreyn. The second of the two main places on Gethen/Winter. With its highly organized and regimented social system, it is presented as a simplified image of communism. Much less time is spent there, however, than in Karhide, and it is clear that Le Guin’s purpose in creating it is to have a balance between competing social systems which will allow her to make comments about the governments of Gethen that apply equally well to modern political situations on earth.

The Left Hand of Darkness can be compared to other works of fantasy or science fiction that concentrate on gender. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s separatist feminist novel Herland (1915; 1979) imagines an entire society of women. Herland—whose architecture, economy, industry, and religion is described in considerable detail—is a land of peace, harmony, and creativity. So, at first, is the society of hermaphrodites that Theodore Sturgeon describes in his classic science-fiction novel Venus Plus X (1965); Sturgeon’s novel darkly suggests, however, that such utopias can only be attained by means of genetic engineering. Doris Lessing’s science-fiction novel The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1980) suggests the difficulty and necessity of leaving behind separatist models of men’s and women’s “zones.”

Because science fiction facilitates imagining alternatives to contemporary society, many feminists choose this genre to express their ideas. Yet The Left Hand of Darkness—which won both Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science-fiction novel of 1969—stands out among other works, for both the originality of its conception and the care with which it is worked out. The novel was a “thought-experiment,” as Le Guin explains in her introduction, in which she tried to imagine a world without gender. Le Guin’s solution to this problem—making the Gethenians utterly androgynous and asexual, except in kemmer—also enabled her to imagine a world in which sexuality is separate from daily life. On Gethen, no one is limited by predetermined gender roles; which partner bears children, for example, is a matter of chance. On Gethen, war and rape do not exist. Yet cruelty, violence, and injustice still flourish there—along with kindness, compassion, and pursuit of truth. Significantly, this planet of androgynes is neither a utopia nor a dystopia. Indeed, The Left Hand of Darkness resists such dualistic thinking. Le Guin’s novel forgoes separatist feminism in order to establish common humanity beyond assigned gender roles.

The Left Hand of Darkness is not without flaws. Early critics claimed that the Gethenians’ ambisexuality was a gimmick and was unimportant to the plot; however, careful reading shows that this is not the case. Other critics have claimed, more convincingly, that the novel is not truly feminist, because it emphasizes a masculine perspective rather than a feminine or androgynous one. It is true that The Left Hand of Darkness tends to express its humanist vision in terms of men and masters. In her essay “Is Gender Necessary?” Le Guin admits that her consistent use of male pronouns fails to convey the Gethenians’ androgyny.

Le Guin’s essay also makes clear, however, that she considers The Left Hand of Darkness an ongoing experiment to be completed in the minds of individual readers. In this sense, the novel is certainly successful: Critics continue to debate its merits in the contexts of feminist theory, male feminism, and gay and lesbian studies. Ultimately, however, The Left Hand of Darkness is a feminist novel because it challenges readers to transcend gender and discover a common humanity shared by both men and women.

The Space Race
The year that The Left Hand of Darkness was published, 1969, was the year that the first human, Neil Armstrong, set foot on the moon. The idea had, of course, been present in science fiction for hundreds of years, in books by authors ranging from Daniel Defoe to Edgar Allan Poe. One of the most realistic early works about space travel was Jules Verne's 1865 novel From Earth to the Moon, which was the basis for one of the earliest silent movies made at the beginning of the twentieth century; another was H. G. Wells' The First Men on the Moon, published in 1901. The first real progress in space exploration came in 1957, when Americans found out with a shock that the Soviet Union, the world's other super power, had put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. Later in 1957, when the Russians put a living being, a dog, into space in Sputnik 2, the race to put a man on the moon immediately became a priority with the U.S. government, which poured millions of dollars into the space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Agency, NASA, was established in 1958, and in 1959 it had started work on Project Mercury, with the goal of sending animals into space, then robot-operated flights, and finally manned flights. The first human to go into space was the Russian Yuri Gagarin, in April of 1961; the first American was Alan Shepard, the following month. In an address to Congress in May of that year, President Kennedy made a historic declaration that determined the course of the space program: "I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," he said. At the same time that the Mercury project was being carried out, NASA began a separate project, code-named Apollo, with the intent of putting a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. The one-man rockets of Mercury were replaced with two-man Gemini craft in 1964, but at the same time the Soviets announced that the three-man Voslhod I had been in space. In the middle 1960s the Soviets fell behind, pushing their old technology while the Americans made new advances and gained new ground.

The Feminist Movement
One of the reasons that critics took the androgyny in this novel to be such a strong feminist statement was that the Feminist Movement had not yet made much progress at the time it was published, in 1969. During the 1950s and 1960s, the American public's attention was drawn to racial inequality by the Civil Rights Movement, which was led by such dynamic leaders as Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. During those years, hundreds of thousands of white Americans were made aware of the unequal treatment of blacks. One of the greatest achievements of the Civil Rights Movement was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which changed the face of American society. The bill received strong unexpected supported from President Lyndon Johnson, although, as a rich Texas politician, he had never seemed to be particularly zealous about the rights of minorities before. The Civil Rights Act did not put an end to discrimination, but it made it illegal. While most people focused on the act's provisions regarding racial minorities, it also included language that prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. As the 1960s progressed, many who had been made politically aware by the struggle for racial equality shifted to other concerns. Some organized the young people on college campuses in the struggle against the Vietnam War; some went from the non-violent tactics of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference to militant racial groups such as the Black Panthers; some focused their attention on the unequal treatment of women. In 1966, feminist leader Betty Friedan and others formed the National Organization for Women as a result of their frustration over the fact that, three years later, the sex-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act were not being enforced. There were companies that would only advertise for men to fill open positions, professional organizations that would not admit women members, and open verbal and sexual harassment of females in the workplace. One of NOW's primary missions was to pass an amendment to the Constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment, that would assure fair treatment for women all across the United States—Congress approved the ERA in 1972, but it was not ratified by enough states after ten years and it expired in 1982.

Structure
The structure of this novel is a cluster of information from various sources. The main one, in terms of quantity and prominence, is the report of Genly Ai to the Stabile on Ollul, which, as he explains as the first chapter starts, is presented in the form of a first-person narrative, "because I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination." Alternating with these chapters are chapters taken from the journals kept by Estraven. The journals are also written in the first person, but since they were not created for public consumption they offer a more candid impression of Estraven than Ai gives from his observations. Juxtaposing the two against each other gives a rounded view of the self/other conflict that is at the heart of the story. Also interwoven between the chapters dominated by these two characters are fragments of civilization on Gethen/Winter: ethnological reports, accounts of native myths and legends, and descriptions of religious ceremonies. These fragments allow the culture that Genly Ai encounters to speak for itself, so that readers are not forced to know it only from his limited experiences and biased perspective. The relevance of these fragments to the overall story is sometimes easy to guess—for instance, the chapter titled, "Estraven the Traitor," an ancient East Karhidish tale, clearly reflects the support that Estraven in the novel gives Ai. Others, such as the story of Meshe in Chapter 11, are less directly related to the action, and are therefore more open to the interpretation of the reader, just like ancient myths and legends in our own world are.

Point of View
The central consciousness of this novel is Genly Ai: he is the one who is strange to the ways of the people of Winter, and readers experience the planet through his eyes. Since he is from Earth, he can report his experiences in relation to how they affect a body that his reader can understand. A temperature of negative ten degrees, for instance, might be uncomfortable to a Karhidian or to the Hainish, but to Earthlings it is dangerous. This Earthly perspective makes it difficult, at first, for readers to tell the truth of the situation that is being presented. "If this is the Royal Music," he says in Chapter 1, "no wonder the kings of Karhide are all mad," little expecting that the last half of the book will be a desperate three-month race through sub-Arctic conditions to the safety of the "mad" king. In the same chapter he notes, "I don't trust Estraven, whose motives are forever obscure; I don't like him; yet I feel and respond to his authority as surely as I do the warmth of the sun." The people that he does like and trust, such as Commensals Obsle and Yegey in Orgoreyn, arrange for him to disappear from society and be sentenced to death. If this book had been written in a more objective point of view, the turns in the plot would not come as surprises to readers, and the point of how difficult it is for a person to enter into another world would be lost.

Setting
During the chapters that take place in urban settings, the extreme cold that prevails over this planet is not very relevant. Housing accommodations in Erhenrang, the capital of Karhide, and in the Orgoreyn capital of Mishnory are slightly different than Earth's, more collective in order to conserve heat, but in general social life is not much different than it would be in a cold city like Minneapolis or Buffalo. The coldness of Winter may have affected the way that civilizations on the planet developed, but it is not an important consideration until Ai is taken away to the Pulefen Commensality Third Voluntary Farm and Resettlement Community. Patterned on Siberia, the frozen province of northeast Russia where political dissidents were sent, Pulefen has an isolation that would never be possible in an area that was habitable; also, an escaped prisoner in a more reasonable climate would be hunted down and caught, rather than being left to die. It is the struggle against the brutal elements that brings Ai and Estraven to finally form a bond of trust, as they have to depend on each other's strengths and defer to each other's weaknesses. The physical details of their trek across the ice evokes a solid sense of reality that is different from that felt in the earlier chapters, which is appropriate, for the physical world is more real to the characters, too, in these chapters.

The Left Hand of Darkness is a brilliant experiment in narrative structure. Although Genly Ai is the structuring consciousness of the twenty chapters, only ten are related by him in the first person. Five of the others are told in the third person, and five in the first person by other narrators. Four of the first person narrations are by Estraven, relating the same events already told by Genly Ai, thus giving the reader an alternate view. Most of the third person chapters are devoted to background materials about life on Gethen. Some are history, some myth, and some reports by earlier interplanetary visitors. In this way Le Guin authenticates the winter planet of Gethen. Furthermore the narrative is also seasonal, as the story begins in the spring and ends in the next spring. Since it also involves a long travel sequence across the planet, the novel moves geographically and chronologically through winter.

A sophisticated novel of ideas as well as a work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness deals with a number of human, social, political, and psychological concerns. Set on a far-off planet in the distant future, the novel nonetheless touches readers directly in its consideration of gender roles in society. The protagonist is an ethnologist sent to the planet of Gethen in order to study its people and to invite them into the league of planets. Conditioned by his own upbringing in a different world, he finds his greatest challenge in accepting the androgynous human race he encounters on Gethen. These people are male part of the time and female part of the time, eliminating all gender distinction, socially as well as biologically. From his perspective, sensitive and receptive, yet biased and parochial, the reader learns to see the problems of gender roles in his own society reflected back to him in startling ways.

1969: The Woodstock Music festival took place on a farm outside of Bethel, New York, drawing between 300,000 and 500,000 young people from across the country to hear three days of music from acts including Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Jefferson Airplane. The event was surprisingly peaceful, given that many more people showed up than anticipated.

Today: Modern marketing techniques have tried to reproduce such a massive event, with no luck.

1969: The largest anti-war demonstration in the history of Washington, D.C., occurred on November 15th, when 250,000 people marched on the capitol. Another 200,000 protesters gathered at the same time in San Francisco.

Today: Lacking outrage at government policies, citizens tend not to band together in such large groups to protest; instead, large demonstrations are often intended to draw attention to areas in which ordinary people can make a difference in their communities. The Million Man March of 1995 is estimated to have brought between 600,000 and 850,000 black men to Washington to demonstrate a commitment to family and personal responsible behavior.

1969: Finding the Students for a Democratic Society to be too complacent, a group calling itself the Weather Underground split off to protest the war by violent means, such as bombing army recruitment offices.

Today: Anti-government terrorism is more likely to come from right-wing separatists, as shown by the bombing that killed 169 people in Oklahoma City in 1995.

1969: The gay rights movement began when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village, New York. The gay patrons resisted arrest, leading to a three-day riot in the street.

Today: Gay activists have made strides in securing the right of gays to gather in public, but they still struggle for rights such as employment security and the benefits enjoyed by legally married couples, such as family medical insurance and the right to adopt children.

1969: The University of California at Los Angeles, in response to a Defense Department order, developed a computer network "node" in order to decentralize information, so that it would not be vulnerable to computer attack. By 1975, over 100 universities and government research facilities had research nodes that shared computer information, and in 1985, the National Science Foundation created a network to link regional networks of academic and research sites in a new Internet.

Today: Over 180 million Americans have access to the Internet at home, at school, or on the job.

A highly original work, The Left Hand of Darkness is not so much specifically indebted to any particular work as it is reflective of the conventions of science fiction, such as detailed descriptions of life on another planet and the device of authenticating data. The use of interpolated myths to give credence to a culture is to a certain extent indebted to Tolkien's use of a mythic past to authenticate events in his Middle Earth.

An audiocassette version of The Left Hand of Darkness, read by the author, was released by Warner Home Audio in 1985.

Sources
James W. Bittner, "A Survey of Le Guin Criticism," in Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space, Kennikat Press, 1979, pp. 31-49.

Barbara J. Bucknall, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ungar, 1981.

Keith N. Hull, "What Is Human? Ursula Le Guin and Science Fiction's Great Themes," Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 32, no. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. 65-74.

David Ketterer, "Ursula K. Le Guin's Archetypal 'Winter-Journey,'" in Modern Critical Views: Ursula K. Le Guin, Chelsea House, 1986, pp. 11-21.

Ursula Le Guin, "Is Gender Necessary? Redux," in her Dancing at the Edge of the World, Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 7-16.

Philippa Maddern, "True Stories: Women's Writing in Science Fiction," Meanjin, Vol. 44, no. 1, March, 1985, pp. 110-23.

Noel Perrin, "Ursula Le Guin: Striking Out in a New Direction," Washington Post Book World, September 5, 1982, p. 5.

For Further Study
Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World, Free Press, 1998.
The author, who has published in almost all genres and is a cult figure in science fiction, has produced an insightful, well-researched, and entertaining history.

John Griffiths, Three Tomorrows: American, British and Soviet Science Fiction, Barnes and Noble Books, 1980.
This exercise in comparative sociology gives readers a good sense of where notions of the unreal come from in the imaginations of authors, including Le Guin's.

N. B. Hayles, "Androgyny, Ambivalence, and Assimilation in The Left Hand of Darkness," in Ursula K. Le Guin, edited by Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, Taplinger, 1979, pp. 97-115.
This essay looks in depth at the issues in its title, offering an advanced, scholarly study.

Suzanne Elizabeth Reid, Presenting Ursula Le Guin, Twayne, 1997.
Reid gives a clear overview of the author's career and insightful interpretations of her works.

Karen Sinclair, "Solitary Being: The Hero as Anthropologist," in Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space, edited by Joe DeBolt, Kennikat Press, 1979, pp. 50-65.
This early exploration of Le Guin's characters draws upon parallels and themes that are not evident to the reader of just one novel.

George Edgar Slusser, The Farthest Shores of Ursula Le Guin, Borgo Press, 1976.
This early study of Le Guin's career, published when she had been publishing for just thirteen years, offers a good overview of the ideas addressed in the Hainish novels.