The Left Hand of Darkness

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1969

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Symbols & Motifs

The Eternal Winter of Gethen

On Gethen, the first snows come in the beginning of fall, eventually burying the planet in several feet of snow. The Ekumen scouts visiting the world call it Winter (a possibly pejorative name), defining it solely by is climate. The central struggle in the book is represented by a trek across a vast, 600-mile sheet of ice. The winter motif runs strongly throughout the book, standing as a powerful metaphor for the difficulty of cross-cultural exchange. As Genly is ill-suited to survive the frozen Gethen wilderness, he is ill-prepared to navigate the court politics and nuances social dynamics of the Gethen people. At the beginning of the novel, the cold and inhospitable climate also references the slow progress of Genly as he attempts to convince the leaders of Gethen to join the Ekumen.

The Pace of the Land Barge

On Gethen, technological change comes slowly. “Winter hasn’t achieved in 30 centuries what Terra once achieved in thirty decades,” Genly muses (98). This indifference to the pace of technological change on Gethen represents a profound cultural difference between the Ekumen and themselves: The Gethen are in no hurry to be anywhere. When Genly transports himself by Landbarge from place to place, the rate of travel is barely twice that of going by foot. This pace of change starts as a source of great frustration to Genly, but soon it becomes the key to successfully completing his mission. Slow travel leads to close observation and well-told stories, and only with the gradual collection of Gethen stories will Genly be ready to accept the Gethen not as aliens, but as partners.

The Taijitsu Symbol

The Taijitsu, or “yin-yang,” symbol is of ancient Chinese origin, recognized universally as a profound pictorial symbol of balance. It usually features sinuous dark and light shapes entwined within a perfect circle, interpenetrated with two precise dots alternating dark to light and light to dark. In ancient interpretations of this symbol, the yin, or light element, represents femininity and daylight, whereas the yang, or dark element, represents masculinity and night. According to Genly Ai, the symbol is found on other planets within the Ekumen, leaving scholars to wonder whether the symbol is an accident or has a more universal, extraterrestrial origin. He soon recognizes that the symbol lives within a Gethen poem beginning, “Light is the left hand of darkness / And darkness the right hand of light” (233). It is significant, in a book with a genderless civilization, that the light and dark of this symbolic order has a clear demarcation, with no shading of gray. In the context of LeGuin’s novel, however, the symbol indicates the total reconciliation of two seemingly oppositional forces.