Reflection #2 : The Left Hand of Darkness

Title: The Left Hand of Darkness

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin    

1.      The protagonist of this story is Genly Ai, who is a part of an organization called Ekumen, and desires to get more countries to join into this organization of unity, but his main focus is to get the country of Gethen “winter” to be a part of it. Many character traits that are important to note about this protagonist is that he is from Terra “earth”, so after he learns about Gethen and goes there in order to get the country to join, many people think that he is a weird species because on their planet, the citizens are neither male nor female, and he faces this problem a lot especially as he moves from one “country” to another.

2.      There is not one set antagonist of the story, but there are many things holding the protagonist from achieving his goal. For one the government of each different country he goes to, and trying to adapt to that government is a challenging problem. Such as moving from a bureaucracy to a country where there is a monarchy. Other challenges that he faces is also weather problems such as moving from winter countries to summer ones.

3.      There are several themes that this story has in it such as gender roles, politics, and religion. Also there are many ways in which the author went about trying to get her message across such as using the point of view and settings to show the readers that these are important things, that even though the story was set in a different world it is something that affects everyone.

4.      The author’s tone within the story is a calm one, where the author uses more techniques on the scenery and what is happening around these characters, also the corruption of the government and how someone may have to adapt in order to be fully free in different environments.

5.      The crisis action of this story was when the protagonist friend is killed because he was betrayed by a corrupt politician. In the end the protagonist does achieve what he desired when the King decided to be a part of the Ekumen, but he realizes that there is dualities with in his societies, and instead of thinking of the people on the winter planet to be weird, he now understands that things aren’t white and black.

6.      I liked this story a lot especially when how there is not a real time period that the author set the story in. The “countries” are a span of worlds over 100 light years border to border, and I think that it is interesting that even though the main character and his friend were born on earth, that when they space travel there ages and other things are affected as well.