[In the following essay, Barry and Prescott discuss the function of narrative rhythm in The Left Hand of Darkness as a method of juxtaposing, and ultimately transcending, opposing preconceptions about gender and sexuality.]

In her extraordinary introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin sets for herself an apparently impossible task, claiming that “the novelist says in words what cannot be said in words” （vi）. Like all paradoxes this one seems unresolvable until readers are willing to leave behind their comfortable ways of thinking and allow their minds to transcend conventional, rational patterns. Writing about God, Joseph Campbell discusses that which transcends thought and words, providing some insight into Le Guin’s aim: “The best things can’t be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood, because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can’t be thought about. The third best are what we talk about” （The Power of Myth 49）. Perhaps the realistic novel belongs on a fourth level, for it refers to what we can talk about. Campbell would undoubtedly place The Left Hand of Darkness on the second level, because he would recognize Le Guin’s attempt to introduce readers to a mystery by referring in her novel to truths that are misunderstood when they are anchored to everyday logic. In his survey of Le Guin criticism, James W. Bittner recognizes that Le Guin’s critics often confine themselves to the task of measuring her vision against a reality that is mundane and familiar:

From the beginning, debate about the artistic quality of LHD has centered on whether the plot, variously construed by different critics, is integrated with the most striking thing in the novel—Gethenian androgyny and ambisexuality—and whether Le Guin succeeded in creating really androgynous aliens or just thinly disguised males.

（34）

Bittner’s conclusion and the debate inspired by the novel suggest that Le Guin’s critics read the novel measuring it against some standard of realism and emphasizing what they can “talk about.” Perceptive critics have discussed, for instance, the novel’s intriguing focus on complementarity which emerges through Le Guin’s specific reference to light and darkness and the yin-yang. The novel has also generated comments about Le Guin’s skill with narration and the mechanics of structure and its relationship to her central ideas.¹ Such critical insights are essential to an appreciation of Le Guin’s mastery of her art, but her own remark about saying in words what cannot be said in words is a hint that she is working in a realm beyond rational standards of what is orderly, mechanical, and even speakable.

Ursula Le Guin’s introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness generalizes about the functions and strategies of novels, as if she believed that they all worked the same way and promoted the same interest in the knowable. At the same time she makes obvious her preference for an unknowable reality that cannot be “described” in conventional ways. When she claims that describing reality is the business of novelists, she appears to be referring to a knowable set of details and circumstances. “All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like—what’s going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen” （ii）. Continuing, however, she undercuts this knowable reality. “This is what the novelists say. But they don’t tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies” （ii-iii）. The Left Hand of Darkness is itself evidence that Le Guin in fact chooses the second reality as her subject—a reality that is deeply individual and universal and as mysterious as dreams and lies. Her preference distinguishes her from those she calls extrapolative science fiction writers and also from conventionally realistic novelists. Le Guin seeks to achieve ignorance in the sense that the Handdara use the term—an awareness of and awe before mystery. Her reliance upon paradox in her introduction takes readers beyond the rational and the knowable, and her reliance upon rhythm in her novel is perfectly expressive of the mystery she explores. E. K. Brown writes in Rhythm in the Novel that “to express what is both an order and a mystery rhythmic processes, repetitions with intricate variations, are the most appropriate of idioms. Repetition is the strongest assurance an author can give of order; the extraordinary complexity of the variations is the reminder that the order is so involute that it must remain a mystery” （115）. The introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness communicates Le Guin’s preference for a strategy that, by its rhythmic emphasis upon perceptions of sexuality and shadow, reveals a truth understood through imagination, empathy, and intuition.² Rhythm allows her to be indirect and implicit in what Le Guin would call “a peculiar and devious way” （iii） and raises the novel to what Campbell refers to as the level of second-best things.

E. M. Forster, considering rhythm in Aspects of the Novel, poses a question that Le Guin tries to answer in The Left Hand of Darkness. “Is there any effect in novels comparable to the effect of the Fifth Symphony as a whole, where, when the orchestra stops, we hear something that has never actually been played” （168）? Simply defined, rhythm is repetition with enough variation to preclude a hardening into symbolism. Its purpose is expansion, not completion, for it resounds with meaning that is liberated from the mechanics of language and conventional thinking.³

Le Guin manipulates readers of The Left Hand of Darkness toward understanding through a contrapuntal technique that allows her to inform them gradually about Gethenian androgyny and at the same time to score the theme of Genly’s bias.⁴ The opening pages of the novel describe a public ceremony and introduce the counterpoint between fact and personal response. The narrator, Genly Ai, refers to Karhiders as “men” or, conscientiously, as “persons” but never as “women,” supporting the interpretation that this is a ceremony similar to the medieval pageants and parades of guilds, in which women would not necessarily play any significant part. We begin to question our conclusion, however, when we become aware of Genly’s discomfort with his own account. Describing someone we later come to know as Estraven, prime minister of Karhide, Genly refers to him as a man and then interrupts himself, explaining “man I must say, having said he and his” （5）. Genly’s comment obscures the sexual distinctions that have figured into our interpretation of this official event and also demonstrates his struggle as reporter to work within logical, dichotomous ways of thinking about sexuality, which even enlightened readers will demand.

Le Guin’s elaboration upon the two contrapuntal patterns forces readers to respond to the narrator’s sexual biases, because at the same time that Genly reveals details of the Gethenians’ sexual nature, he recounts his antipathy toward what he perceives as their feminine characteristics. He scorns the political intrigue of Karhide, calling it “effeminate” （8）, and denigrates Estraven’s skills as a dinner host. “Thus as I sipped my smoking sour beer I thought that at table Estraven’s performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit” （12）. His description of the superintendent of his residence displays his contempt for women in no uncertain words. “I thought of him as my landlady, for he had fat buttocks that wagged as he walked, and a soft fat face, and a prying, spying, ignoble, kindly nature” （48）.

The next phase of Le Guin’s strategy is to conclude the informational theme and at the same time set a trap for readers, who have naturally established their own assumptions about gender in reaction to Genly’s. Le Guin could anticipate a range of responses to Genly’s antifeminine remarks, from agreement to condemnation and feelings of superiority. In chapter 7, “The Question of Sex,” she challenges those assumptions and responses. Ong Tot Oppong, writer of the field notes that comprise this chapter and whose name reveals nothing about gender, is an investigator of the first Ekumenical landing party. The report itself is for the most part impersonal, anthropological, clinical, and quite explicit about Gethenian sexual practices. Conventionally organized, moving as it does from facts to possible conclusions, the chapter stands in stark contrast to the more personal narratives of Genly and Estraven and represents the culmination of the informational theme. Perhaps because the chapter contrasts so strongly with the personal voices of Genly and Estraven, or perhaps because the narrator is so authoritative, clinical, and explicit, readers are likely to assume that the report writer is masculine.⁵

Le Guin is deliberately playing with the traditional dichotomy of “masculine” objectivity and “feminine” subjectivity to educate her readership in “a peculiar and a devious way.” The report will surprise readers who agree with Genly’s chauvinistic remarks about women, because the report writer of chapter 7 does not appear to conform with the stereotype that Genly proposes in earlier chapters. But readers who consider themselves too enlightened for such sexual biases are nudged toward self-recognition when the narrator of the chapter reveals, “I am a woman of peaceful Chiffewar” （96）. Because this revelation is irrelevant to the intended readers of the report, leaders of the Ekumen and the First Mobile, it is surprising that any reference to the writer’s gender appears at all. It is simply not in keeping with the objective tone of the rest of the report. Moreover, the placement of the reference is intriguing. Le Guin appears interested in giving readers ample time to establish a mental image of this unfamiliar narrator. She places the reference to gender only at the end of Ong Tot Oppong’s report where it is likely to have the greatest impact upon the expectations of readers who have unconsciously adopted the assumptions of the masculine/feminine dichotomy and have concluded that the narrator is a man.

“The Question of Sex,” then, satisfies Forster’s definition of rhythm. It is a repetition and a culmination of the novel’s informational theme, but Le Guin emphasizes expansion rather than completion. The chapter expands readers’ awareness of their own preconceptions and liberates Genly from the burden of having to explain the facts of Gethenian sexuality throughout his story. Instead, he can focus upon his growing ability to get beyond questions of sex. In her essay “Is Gender Necessary?” Le Guin writes that in The Left Hand of Darkness she is most concerned with “reversals of an habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination” （163）. She goes on to say that she fashioned androgynous characters, a fascinating proposition, for a particular, rather ironic purpose—to draw a reader’s attention away from the compelling question of sex. “I eliminated gender, to find out what was left. Whatever was left would be, presumably, simply human. It would define the area that is shared by men and women alike” （163-64）. The rhythmic use of the gender theme throughout the entire novel challenges readers to imagine what it might be like to think of others as human rather than sexual beings. Genly spends most of the novel contending with this challenge and reconciles himself to Estraven’s humanity as a result of their common trial on the ice. His attention to what is human becomes apparent when diplomats representing the Ekumen arrive in Karhide. Their obvious—and, in Genly’s eyes, irrelevant—proclamations of their sexuality now offend him.

Out they came, and met the Karhiders with a beautiful courtsey. But they all looked strange to me, men and women, well as I knew them. Their voices sounded strange: too deep, too shrill. They were like a troupe of great, strange animals, of two different species; great apes with intelligent eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer.… They took my hand, touched me, held me.

（296）

The visitors repel Genly; he retreats to his room, where the human company of his Gethenian physician soothes him. “His quiet voice and his face, a young, serious face, not a man’s face and not a woman’s, a human face, these were a relief to me, familiar, right” （296）.

Rhythm allows Le Guin to say in words what cannot be said in words. Although she could argue explicitly against the validity of the masculine/feminine dichotomy, she rhythmically elaborates upon her theme so that readers might find their preconceptions about and obsessions with the questions of sex implicitly challenged by Genly’s experience. An appreciation of Le Guin’s skill at saying in words what cannot be said in words will prevent critical readers of The Left Hand of Darkness from dwelling unnecessarily on questions of sex at the expense of human concerns.

Le Guin uses rhythm, then, to lead readers to a certain level of perception where the duality of gender becomes irrelevant. The novel expands beyond even human concerns, however, and toward the transcendent through Le Guin’s use of shadow. Her treatment of shadow challenges the same mode of dualistic thinking that she exposes in her treatment of sexuality. Joseph Campbell claims that we become vulnerable to the dualistic way of perceiving reality once we have fallen out of the realm of the transcendent. He cites the major dualities, including male and female, good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, past and future, dead and alive, being and nonbeing. He contrasts this dualism with the way of thinking represented by a huge Hindu statue of two heads facing in opposing directions and a central figure, which he calls the mask of God.

The mask represents the middle, and the two represent the two opposites, and they always come in pairs. And put your mind in the middle; most of us put our minds on the side of the good against what we think of as evil. It was Heraclitus, I think, who said, “For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.” You’re in the field of time when you’re man, and one of the problems of life is to live in the realization of both terms. That is to say, I know the center and I know that good and evil are simply temporal apparitions.… Here’s a whole mythology based on the insight that transcends duality. Ours is a mythology that’s based on the insight of duality. And so our religion tends to be ethical in its accent—sin and atonement, right and wrong. It started with a sin, you see.

（“The Message of the Myth” 3-4）

Campbell’s insight reveals Le Guin’s purpose, for her consideration of the dualistic world view is not limited to questions of sex: she also confronts an ethical dualism which is such a crucial feature of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Le Guin asks her readers to assume the position of the central mask in the Hindu sculpture, which transcends the limited focus of the dual, opposing figures.

Just as Le Guin prompts readers to respond conventionally to the question of sex early in the novel, her introduction of shadow invites readers to interpret the image in a traditional way. Estraven’s home, formerly the home of Emran the Illfated, lies in shadow, an unhappy reminder of past crimes. “The tragedy is so old that its horror has leached away and only a certain air of faithlessness and melancholy clings to the stones and shadows of the house” （11）. The familiar, negative association resurfaces in Genly’s description of King Argaven, whose face, “reddened and cratered by firelight and shadow, was as flat and cruel as the moon” （31）. In both of these passages shadow hints at the particular ethical standards being applied to Emran the Illfated and King Argaven. These ethical standards are by their very nature indications of dualistic thinking, which draws clear, socially validated distinctions between right and wrong behavior. But between these two references, Le Guin links shadow with a different meaning, suggesting that individuals are sometimes obliged to transcend their society’s standards of right and wrong behavior. When Estraven challenges Genly’s assumption of the role of the public servant, he establishes himself as one who is willing to transcend the dual concepts of loyalty and treason: “‘I’m not sure I’ve ever served the king,’ said the king’s prime minister. ‘Or ever intended to. I’m not anyone’s servant. A man must cast his own shadow’” （20）. At this point it is apparent that Le Guin is contributing another meaning to the conventional negative association, for Estraven uses shadow as a metaphor for substance and integrity. Described frequently as dark and shadowy, Estraven stands in contrast to the insipid, insubstantial citizens of Orgoreyn, described by Genly Ali.

Each of them lacked some quality, some dimension of being; and they failed to convince. They were not quite solid.

It was, I thought, as if they did not cast shadows.

（147）

Le Guin implicitly presents Estraven as a person of substance, although Genly still mistrusts him, and in the process she contests our conventional interpretation of darkness.

Rather than simply reversing readers’ expectations about the meaning of shadow, Le Guin uses the image rhythmically, associating it with Estraven, to transcend dualistic notions of right and wrong.⁶ Writing of Taoistic magic and Ged, the mage of the Earthsea trilogy, Robert Galbreath is aware of that character’s “integrative transformation” （265）, through which “Ged accepts, and is completed by, his mortality, his fear, his shadow side” （264）. Similarly, Estraven’s stature as a character depends upon his ability to dramatize that transcendence. According to Gethenian conventions and some of ours as well, he is an outlaw, for he apparently betrays his country and Genly breaks the code against vowing kemmering with a sibling, an act analogous to marriage, and is held responsible for his brother’s suicide. Finally he kills himself, the most reprehensible act that a Gethenian can commit. His motives, though, call into question the dualistic distinctions between treason and patriotism, suicide and survival. In his efforts to end the incessant border skirmishes between Karhide and Orgoreyn by discreetly surrendering territory to his supposed enemy, Estraven demonstrates his distaste for rigid, dualistic thinking.

How does one hate a country, or love one? … I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry?

（211）

Estraven’s questions suggest his ability to see beyond dualities and arrive at a sense of larger possibilities exposing the madness of patterns of ethical thinking which require for every good a corresponding evil. To love one’s country, for instance, a person must be able to imagine an enemy and hate it. In his rejection of simple dualities, Estraven avoids the blindness that prevents the Karhiders and the Orgoryens from appreciating the validity of Genly’s proposal. To inform his world of the vision of the Ekumen, Estraven sacrifices power, reputation, and his life, even in the face of his society’s repugnance toward suicide. Although the rationale behind Estraven’s suicide is a mystery, it is possible to interpret it as an act of self-sacrifice, the only means to promote Gethen’s admission into the Ekumen. As a criminal and an exile, after all, Estraven would doom Genly’s mission by his continuing association with it.

Estraven, with Le Guin’s approval, transcends the dualistic, ethical conventions applying to treason and suicide. His early crime of vowing kemmering with his brother, though, and his implicit connection with Arek’s suicide are as heinous as his other offenses and signal his capacity to accept both the unacceptable experience—a powerful love for his brother—and its consequences. Estraven acknowledges the influence and memory of his brother in a statement that suggests he is never free of the implications of their relationship: “My brother’s shadow followed me. I had done ill to speak of him. I had done ill in all things” （75）. The horror of his brother’s death and his complicity in the crime do not paralyze Estraven, however. Like Getheren, the surviving brother of “A Place Inside the Blizzard,” he does not submit to death. Le Guin emphasizes Estraven’s achievement implicitly, using the similarity between the two surviving brothers to say in words what cannot be said in words.⁷ Estraven’s progress from incestuous lover to lover of other worlds is reasonable in Gethenian terms. The Gethenian code demands that a person love what is most like himself or herself only temporarily before submitting to other experiences of love. Estraven in fact meets the demands of the code in the sense that he gives himself for the sake of Genly’s mission. Ironically, it is Estraven’s judges, the other Gethenians, who are most incestuous in their initial fear and mistrust of the other, represented by the Ekumen.

Le Guin also emphasizes the transcendence of dualities by rhythmically referring to the concept of shifgrethor, defined early by Genly Ai as “prestige, face, place, the pride- relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority in Karhide and all civilizations of Gethen” （14）. As the novel progresses, Genly continuously gathers information about shifgrethor. Although Genly does learn that “shifgrethor” is the ancient word for “shadow,” he stresses the fact that its complexities are untranslatable and unspeakable. Le Guin offers a counterpoint to Genly’s naivete by providing Estraven’s more informed remarks. Estraven, for instance, interprets Orgoreyn’s reluctance to invite Genly’s ship to land as a sign that its leaders fear the resulting diminishing of shifgrethor should they fall victim to a hoax （150）. Because Orgoreyn is willing to sacrifice the opportunity to be the first nation on Gethen to communicate with the Ekumen, it appears that Gethenians will guard shifgrethor at any price. Estraven understands that shifgrethor dictates the conduct of nations, confining them to patterns of behavior that guarantee their duality and their alienation from one another and preclude possibilities for change. “Orgoreyn and Karhide both must stop following the road they’re on, in either direction, and break the circle” （153）. Shifgrethor acknowledges the substance and integrity of individuals and nations, but Estraven recognizes that it also feeds a fear of the other that solidifies the circle. To break the circle is to surrender one’s essence in an act of acceptance of the other, a painful process of transcending duality that is dramatized during Genly and Estraven’s ordeal in the land of the Unshadow.

Le Guin delicately yet unmistakably predicts this shedding of shifgrethor and its insistence upon individual integrity and duality when she places her two characters in a situation where neither casts a shadow. The harrowing encounter with the Unshadow suggests the enormity of Estraven and Genly’s decision to reveal themselves completely to one another and to love one another despite the risk and the potential for “doing profound hurt” （249）. Genly and Estraven’s decision to surrender shifgrethor expands their power and substance even as they relinquish themselves to one another. In a disavowal of shifgrethor, Estraven gives Genly permission to accept advice that will guarantee the success of his mission and enhance his status. In addition, Le Guin’s attention to the myths that inform Gethenian culture and behavior implies a resurrection of Estraven’s shadow. Robert Galbreath recognizes a similar implication when he writes of Ged that “by accepting his shadow as part of himself and part of the pattern （death）, he transcends finitude” （264）. Estraven’s name will, of course, be forever linked with the story of Genly and the Ekumen, ensuring that his shadow will take on a mythic dimension indicative of his influence over the future of his planet.

Genly Ai is aware of Estraven’s mythic significance, thinking of his friend’s death in terms of the ceremonial laying of the keystone which locks an arch in place. “Therefore for the first time it came plainly to me that, my friend being dead, I must accomplish the thing he died for. I must set the keystone in the arch” （289）. Genly’s far-fetching, his intuitive grasp of the meaning of Estraven’s death, recalls the opening scene of the novel, in which Argaven ritualistically mortars a keystone with a pinkish color cement. A person we later come to know as Estraven explains for Genly the significance of the color. “‘Very-long-ago a keystone was always set in with a mortar of ground bones mixed with blood. Human bones, human blood. Without the bloodbond the arch would fall, you see’” （5）. Estraven sacrifices himself to cement the relationship between Gethen and the Ekumen, expanding upon the significance of the ancient ceremony in the process. Le Guin’s rhythmic use of the keystone image establishes without question Estraven’s personal, political and mythic power, his shifgrethor.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness challenges the world view that informs the Western World.⁸ By positing an alternative to the dualism that characterizes Western thinking and behavior, she demonstrates that a reliance upon dualism satisfies the demands of logical thought but leads to political, philosophical, and ethical dead ends. Rhythm enables Le Guin to say in words what cannot be said in words, relying as it does upon the reader’s ability to intuit the significance of repetition and variation. In E. M. Forster’s words, then, “we hear something that has never actually been played” （168）. But she moves beyond the unspeakable to the unthinkable as she forces us to perceive the difficulty of relinquishing our dependence upon dualistic thinking. Her decision to place rhythmic emphasis upon the question of sex and the shadow is her way of testing our abilities to break out of our own circles. Perhaps the novel is most compelling in its ability to anticipate the new myth of the future as described by Joseph Campbell:

The only myth that’s going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that’s talking about the planet—not this city, not these people, but the planet and everybody on it. That’s my main thought for what the future myth is going to be. And what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with: the maturation of the individual, the gradual—the pedagogical way to follow, from dependency through adulthood to maturity, and then to the exit and how to do it. And then how to relate to this society, and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos. That’s what the myths have all talked about; that’s what this one’s got to talk about. But the society that it’s going to talk about is the society of the planet, and until that gets going, you don’t have anything.

（“The Hero’s Adventure” 11）

The myth of Estraven meets Campbell’s definition and expands Gethenian perceptions of self and other, since in Estraven’s story dualism does not finally reassert itself. Le Guin’s recommendation that we see things—humans, planet, cosmos—whole in defiance of dualistic, rational, logical analysis raises her novel to the level of mystery and into the realm of those “thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can’t be thought about” （Campbell, The Power of Myth 49）.

Notes

1. Dena C. Bain discusses the influence of the Tao Te Ching on Le Guin’s work in “The Tao Te Ching as Background to the Novels of Ursula Le Guin” （209-22）. Robert Galbreath interprets Le Guin’s holism in terms of Taoism in “Taoist Magic in the Earthsea Trilogy” （262-68）. James W. Bittner also discusses the yin-yang in his preface to Approaches to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Also see Eric S. Rabkin, “Determinism, Free Will, and Point of View in Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness” （5-19）; Karen Sinclair, “Solitary Being: The Hero as Anthropologist” （50-65）. The articles by Bain and Rabkin are reprinted in Ursula K. Le Guin, ed. Harold Bloom.

   For discussions of Le Guin’s narrative technique, see Martin Bickman, “Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Form and Content” （42-47）; James W. Bittner, “A Survey of Le Guin Criticism”; Harold Bloom’s introduction to Ursula K. Le Guin; Rafail Nudelman, “An Approach to the Structure of Le Guin’s Science Fiction” （210-20）; Robert Scholes, “The Good Witch of the West,” in Structural Fabulation （77-99）, reprinted in Bloom’s Ursula K. Le Guin （35-45）.

2. The recurring references to sexuality and shadow have been documented by nearly every scholar who has written about The Left Hand of Darkness. For this reason we will be selective in our references to these motifs. Our reading detects fifty-eight significant references to gender and forty-six significant references to shadow.

3. An examination of Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions, which predate The Left Hand of Darkness, reveals two species of repetition and variation: cyclical plots and the disappearance and reappearance of objects. In Planet of Exile, for instance, the momentous cycle of the seasons turns the plot, as does the recurring motif of the taking of the alien as wife. A lost and found necklace features in Rocannon’s World. City of Illusions offers the cycle of people who leave their world and must return to it. With the help of E. K. Brown’s definition, we distinguish these repetitions from Le Guin’s use of rhythm in The Left Hand of Darkness. Brown refers to the “extraordinary complexity of the variations,” and we do not detect this complexity in the earlier novels. What is more, these novels lack the sense of mystery that the rhythmic strategy promotes, according to Brown.

4. Rafail Nudelman mentions that “the artistic originality of Le Guin’s science fiction is first and foremost the originality of a strong musically organized form.” He sees the structure of her science fiction as a scoring of vertical and horizontal recurrence through which a theme “expresses itself in variation” from one work to the next （216）.

5. We base our proposition upon our own reactions to the chapter and upon the reactions of hundreds of students who have read the novel in our courses and are surprised to learn that Ong Tot Oppong is a woman.

6. Sneja Gunew discusses Le Guin’s rehabilitation of the shadow from negative connotations in “Mythic Reversals: The Evolution of the Shadow Motif” （178-99）. In her discussion of shadow in fantasy, Ursula K. Le Guin summarizes the concept of shadow as connected to evil within the self that is pertinent to Estraven’s character. See Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow” in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction （59-71）.

7. Although we have chosen in this article to focus upon Le Guin’s rhythmic use of sexuality and shadow, other aspects of the novel might be interpreted as further evidence of repetition and variation. The sporadic appearance of myths and legends expands upon the themes of the novel by focusing upon figures and situations which mirror but are not identical with the characters and circumstances of Genly’s story. Le Guin’s inclusion of Estraven’s journals in Genly Ai’s report allows the two writers to comment upon the same events from differing perspectives, thereby contributing to the novel’s rhythmic structure. The predominance of rhythm in various guises distinguishes The Left Hand of Darkness from The Dispossessed but suggests a link between the earlier novel and Always Coming Home.

8. Barbara Brown reaches the same conclusion in “The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny, Future, Present, and Past,” reprinted in Ursula K. Le Guin. “According to Ursula Le Guin, at times we already perceive the androgynous possibilities within us. She suggests we are, nonetheless, unable to explore fully this unified duality. One reason for this limitation is the restrictive way the western mind interprets human experience. … This linear approach, characterizing western thought, focuses on scientifically provable facts. As a result it is narrow and exclusive. It fails to incorporate our peripheral senses which through intuition and mystical awareness, also contribute to knowledge” （230）. Brown’s discussion reaches this point after she has analyzed the theme of androgyny.

Works Cited

Bain, Dena C. “The Tao Te Ching as Background to the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.” Extrapolation 21 （Fall 1980）: 209-22.

Bickman, Martin. “Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness: Form and Content.” Science-Fiction Studies 4 （March 1977）: 42-47.

Bittner, James W. Approaches to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P, 1984.

———. “A Survey of Le Guin Criticism.” Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. Ed. Joe De Bolt. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1979. 50-65.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Brown Barbara. “The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny, Future, Present, and Past.” Ursula K. Le Guin. Ed. Harold Bloom. New Work: Chelsea House, 1986. 225-33.

Brown, E.K. Rhythm in the Novel. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1950.

Campbell, Joseph. “The Hero’s Adventure.” The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Series Prod. Catherine Tatge. PBS. 23 May 1988. Part 1 of 6.

—. “The Message of the Myth.” The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Series Prod. Catherine Tatge. PBS. 30 May 1988. Part 2 of 6.

—. The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Ed. Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, 1955.

Galbreath, Robert. “Taoist Magic in the Earthsea Trilogy.” Extrapolation 21 （Fall 1980）: 262-68.

Gunew, Sneja. “Mythic Reversals: The Evolution of the Shadow Motif.” Ursula K. Le Guin. Ed. Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg. New York: Taplinger, 1979. 178-99.

Le Guin, Ursula K. Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ed. Susan Woods. New York: Putnam’s, 1979.

—. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1985.

Nudelman, Rafail. “An Approach to the Structure of Le Guin’s Science Fiction.” Trans. Alan G. Myers. Science-Fiction Studies 2 （November 1975）: 210-20.

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