“… you are so sane as to be an anomaly…in quantifiable terms, you’re a median… Neither dominant nor submissive. Independence/ dependence—same thing. Creative/destructive… same thing. Both, neither. Either, or. Where there’s an opposed pair, a polarity, you’re in the middle; where there’s a scale, you’re at the balance point. You cancel out so thoroughly that, in a sense, nothing is left.” (137)
George Orr, as a character, has become more enigmatic to me over the course of this novel. Every time I think I understand who he is, the understanding only lasts for a few pages before I have to redefine him again. He is an elusive protagonist, to say the least. The above passage in particular yet again redefined my thoughts of him, but also gave insight into some of the larger themes that Le Guin is addressing in this novel.
To begin with, it is important to note that it is Haber who is describing Orr in this passage. For most of the novel, we have been seeing Orr’s personality in terms of how it is a foil to Haber’s: weak where Haber is strong, submissive where Haber is dominant, etc. But I would argue that the view the reader gets of Orr here, as a perfectly balanced, evenly weighted personality, makes him a more perfect foil to Haber than before. Orr is still very much the opposite of Haber: where Haber is single-minded and has a personality that deals only in extremes, seeing what he wants to see in stark black and white, Orr knows that there are shades of grey. But Haber scoffs at the idea that this balance is a desirable quality; for a man defined by extremes, balance in personality means that “nothing is left.” This is, I think, why Haber is constantly tweaking the worlds he is creating, why he can’t stop trying to make things just slightly different; without an inner sense of peace and balance, he cannot find it in the world around him. It was also interesting to compare Haber’s reaction to this revelation about Orr to Heather’s, earlier in the novel. Haber sees Orr’s balance cancel out into nothingness, while Heather sees “the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything” (96.) And again we find Orr in the middle: between everything and nothing, what remains is just himself.
What was also striking about the above quote was how much it reminded me of a scientific text of some sort, and I don’t think that this is unintentional on the author’s part. Orr is described here in scientific terms: “an anomaly,” “in quantifiable terms… a median,” and “the balance point” of a scale. These are terms used in talking about data, about test subjects, but not about people, about human nature and personality. It’s disorienting, hearing these terms in this context, and I think is used by the author to highlight how dehumanizing science can be. When we define ourselves in terms of science, we lose that which makes us human. Haber, here and elsewhere in the novel, is trying to quantify things which unquantifiable: human nature and dreams. These are not things that can be explained scientifically, or follow logic or reason, and when Haber tries to make dreams (and humans) into something they’re not, destruction follows. Le Guin here addresses the fears that many of us have (I think) of losing our sense of self, of uniqueness, in a world of increasingly complex, dehumanizing and isolating technology. No wonder Orr struggles against Haber’s control—he is, in a sense, fighting for his humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment