The Word for World Is Forest

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This novella is an absolute masterpiece! Poetically written, deeply profound and wonderfully imaginative, The Word for World is a Forest is an exceptional book. The story Le Guin created is a incredibly tragic and sad one, but it rings absolutely true in its sadness and tragedy. Wisdom is something I have come to expect in Ursula K.Le Guin's writing but this novella seems to be especially abundant in it. Wisdom is a big word, yet I cannot use another, for Le Guin's writing truly strikes me as wise. Written in 1972, this second book in the Hainish cycle is chillingly prescient about the modern world we are living in today. Although the main theme is deforestation, echoes of "The Handmaid's Tale" and of conservative attitudes regarding economic imperatives, lesser races, sexism, militarism, selfishness as the highest virtue and even 'alternative facts' are sadly too easy to correlate from this almost 50 years old story to the daily news we hear in 2017. Primitive races always have to give way to civilized ones. Or be assimilated. But we sure as hell can't assimilate a lot of green monkeys. Kees looked at him sideways out of those blue golf-ball eyes. "Does it? You want to make this world into Earth's image, eh? A desert of cement?"

But the Athsheans’ existence proves that nature directly impacts people, regardless of their species. The Athsheans live in harmony with the forest, and their lives are inextricable from the nature that surrounds them: Athshean homes are built into the roots of trees, and their people are defined by the trees in their area. ( Selver, one of the novella’s protagonists, belongs to the “Ash” people.) At one point, the human anthropologist Raj Lyubov reveals that the Athshean word for “world” is also their word for “forest” (hence the title of the novella), which speaks to the interconnectedness of Athshean society and nature. Beyond their society’s structure, Athsheans’ customs and culture are also tied to nature. They spend large chunks of their day in a dream state, and their dreaming is frequently compared to tree growth. When Selver became unable to dream after experiencing violence, he worries that he was “cut off from his roots”—and after Selver introduces this violence to his people, Lyubov notes that Selver has changed “from the root.” In other words, Athsheans’ lives are so intertwined with the forest that any violence against them is likened to violence against nature. When it comes to Earth/Terra men, there is a definite conflict between the two men. You could call them the protagonist and antagonist of this novel. While Selver is the representative of the forest humanoids, Captain Davison and Raj Lyubov ( the anthropologist in the colony) are perhaps the representatives of our Earth/Terra humanoids. The two men hate each other and I found their contrasting very interesting. I had trouble with this book in the beginning, mostly because the first chapter is about the hyper-masculine, misogynistic, racist, rapist, pro-pro-colonialist, protagonist-antagonist. I wondered if this was finally going to be that one Le Guin book that I would absolutely hate. But as always, she surprised me in no time. The three main characters of the novella, Selver, Lyubov, and Davidson, have been described by reviewers as representing three different historical attitudes towards nature. Davidson represents the machismo of some early explorers, who feared nature and wanted to overcome it. [64] Lyubov has a more positive but highly romanticized view of the forest, while only Selver and the other Athsheans are able to live in harmony with it. [51] Resemblance to Avatar [ edit ]A biweekly series, The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread explores anew the transformative writing, exciting worlds, and radical stories that changed countless lives. This week we’ll be covering the novella The Word for World Is Forest , first published in Harlan Ellison, ed., Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). My edition is from Tor (2010) and this installment of the reread covers the entire novel(la). For me, there is much to discuss here. Without going into too much depth about this distorted and destructive viewpoint, the novel brings out strikingly important themes about the nature of imperialism, colony, and slavery. Arguments for environmental justice are irrevocably linked with how we treat other humans and their cultures, and how we view the notion of what is "animal" and how it should be treated. Condemnation of neutrality. It was set up that we would see that remaining neutral in the face of injustice is to side with oppression, but it didn't quite feel like that was explored fully. By the end I'm not sure this was intended at all, actually. Hard to say if this was part of the pointe

La ecología de un bosque es muy delicada. Si el bosque perece, la fauna puede extinguirse junto con él." Westfahl, Gary (20 December 2009). "All Energy Is Borrowed: A Review of Avatar". Locus Online . Retrieved 30 July 2015. See, you want to keep this place just like it is, actually, Kees. Like one big National Forest. To look at, to study. Great, you're a spesh. But see, we're just ordinary joes getting the work done. Earth needs wood, needs it bad. We find wood on New Tahiti. So – we're loggers. See, where we differ is that with you Earth doesn't come first, actually. With me it does." The Word for World is Forest also challenges the idea of colonialism; the Terran colonists are depicted as being blind to the culture of the Athsheans, and convinced that they represent a higher form of civilization. [15] Le Guin also challenges the metaphorical preference in Western cultures for pure light, in contrast to deeper and more complex shadows. [15] Ecological sensitivity [ edit ]Los crichis, habitantes nativos del planeta, están trabajando en calidad de "voluntarios" junto a los terrícolas, pero, como siempre, hay una discrepancia entre la palabra y las acciones, y la población nativa se ve dominada y reducida la explotación como mano de obra, y también la de su hábitat, el inmenso bosque. Lo interesante es ver con qué profundidad este hecho afecta a todos estos sujetos, ya que antes que nuestra especie los invadiera, eran pacíficos y vivían de la forma más cercana a una utopía posible; sin embargo, luego de estos cambios que se dan y las interacciones con nuestra cultura (no muy agradable), comienzan a desarrollar ciertos comportamientos violentos, entre otras cosas, que muestra que la colonización dejó una marca en la historia de aquel pueblo para siempre (he aquí la importancia de recordar la historia). Ya puedo decir alto y claro que me he estrenado por la puerta grande con Ursula K. Le Guin. ¡Vaya gustazo más grande! Llevaba años queriendo iniciarme con la autora, aunque no tenía muy claro cual sería una buena opción. Al inicio dudaba entre "La mano izquierda de la oscuridad" y "Los desposeídos". Menos mal que una amiga (Carol, esa eres tú jaja) me recomendó empezar por "El nombre del mundo es Bosque". Y ha sido un acierto total, porque me ha maravillado.

Several reviewers have noted that the narrative of the 2009 film Avatar has many similarities to that of The Word for World is Forest. [65] [66] Specific similarities include the notion that the Earth's resources have been used up, the extraction of resources in an exploitative manner from another planet, a native population on that planet which lives in close harmony with their world, and a rebellion by those natives against the exploitative human colonizers. [65] A key difference lies in the roles of the "benevolent" humans in both works: Raj Lyubov in The Word for World is Forest, Jake Sully and the human scientists in Avatar. While Lyubov made an impression as a "sensible" human and did help mediate peace between the Athshean people and humanity, he is not the savior of their race, and he does not survive to claim any "prize" from it. Additionally, in The Word for World is Forest militarism is regarded by the Athsheans– especially Selver– as an unfortunate but necessary addition to Athshean culture, and one that may destroy their way of life. In contrast, militarism is seen less critically in Avatar. [65] In the introduction to the second volume of the Hainish Novels and Stories, [67] Le Guin signals the similarities with "a high-budget, highly successful film" which "completely reverses the book's moral premise, presenting the central and unsolved problem of the book, mass violence, as a solution" and states "I'm glad I have nothing at all to do with it". [67] Style and structure [ edit ] All of the books that I've read by the late Ursula Le Guin were pre-Goodreads reads (though I did reread the single fantasy novel among them, A Wizard of Earthsea, last year). This novella is the only remaining one of them that I haven't reviewed until now (though, ironically, it's also the one I'd rate the most highly in terms of literary quality). 2001 is a rough guess at when I read it (it was originally published in 1972 in Again, Dangerous Visions, the sequel to Dangerous Visions, but I've never read either of these anthologies completely). Set in the far future, like most of her SF, it fits into the broad framework of her so-called "Hainish Cycle," the premise of which I explain in my review of Planet of Exile (here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). However, it's set much earlier, at a time when the Ekumen (though not yet called that) is in its infancy. Trata temas como la colonización, el machismo, la xenofobia, el racismo y el más importante, el medio ambiente, y todos los trata de manera exquisita. La autora es capaz de crear personajes redondos en muy pocas páginas (el libro es muy cortito) y dotarlos de un carácter muy definido. El personaje de Davidson refleja todo lo que está mal en la sociedad, el de Lyubov representa a ese hombre horrorizado ante la verguenza de pertenecer a una especie que solo destruye, y Selver es un personajazo que se ve obligado a convertirse en un lider. Our setting here is the planet Athshe (called "New Tahiti" by the Terran "yumans"), some 27 light years from Earth. It's mostly water (like the author's fantasy world of Earthsea), but with a large cluster of heavily forested islands. The indigenous population is humanoid (and Hainish-descended, as Earth humans supposedly also are, in Le Guin's fictional universe), albeit short-statured and green-furred; but they're technologically primitive. They have a very peaceful culture (physical confrontations can't escalate to extreme violence, because the weaker party can make a submissive gesture that the other party is culturally conditioned to unquestioningly respect) and generally live in sustainable harmony with each other and with their forest environment. So they initially have no psychological equipment to understand, or effectively resist, when Terran colonists descend on their world to log its timber and establish military bases. Submission gestures aren't respected by Terrans, and don't stop them from enslaving, raping and eventually killing Athsheans. Through the eyes of our two viewpoint characters, Athshean leader Selver and Terran Capt. Davidson, the most racist and aggressive of the invading military officers, we watch this cultural clash play out to its end --and it's virtually guaranteed that no matter how it ends, it won't be happily, and it's going to leave massive irreparable damage. This novella ( or a short novel, depending how you classify it) is a work of great complexity that can be studied on many levels and that raises many interesting questions, from psychological, social, political to linguistic ones. The Word for World is a Forest captures the harsh realities of any war or military conquest and stresses that it is often (if not always) the innocents that suffer and die. Once blood starts to flow, it is hard to stop it. Violence often breads more violence. The cycles of violence are hard to break, both on individual and social level. Heart-breaking and poignant, this story of colonization and conflict makes us face the darkness that exists in human kind.Barnhill, David (2010). "Spirituality and Resistance: Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest and the Film Avatar". Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. 4 (4): 478–498. doi: 10.1558/jsrnc.v4i4.478. The humans in The Word for World for Forrest have already destroyed their planet’s natural world, so they look outward and attempt to colonise other worlds to harvest their natural resources (namely wood.) Again, these humans have not a thought of consequences and by extension care little for the indigenous populations of their colonies. And because of this, I argue that it is an extremely important work of science-fiction because we could learn from it as a society. And this is why art is so radically essential. We have a distant future, and a distant alien world, we are dealing with intergalactic politics and racism across humanoid species, but the allegory is not too far from today.

The book is replete with thoughtful meditations on major themes, but action and gruesome things also definitely take a place. A small gem of a novel, definitely also very interesting for non science fiction lovers, a very clear sign I need to read more of Le Guin very soon! The Word for World is Forest shares the theme of dreaming with the later Le Guin novel The Lathe of Heaven. [51] Suzanne Reid stated that the novel examines the source and effect of dreams. [15] The Athsheans teach themselves to consciously and actively control their dreams. [61] This allows them to access their subconscious in a way that the Terrans are not able. [61] The Athsheans follow a polycyclic sleep pattern with a period of 120 minutes, which makes it impossible for them to adapt to the Terran eight-hour work day. Their dreaming is not restricted to times when they are asleep, with adept dreamers being able to dream while wide awake as well. [51] The visions they see while dreaming direct and shape their waking behavior, which Selver describes as "balanc[ing] your sanity... on the double support, the fine balance, of reason and dream; once you have learned that, you cannot unlearn it any more than you can unlearn to think." [51] Like H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy before and James Cameron’s Avatar after, Word for World pits the Bad Guy against the indigenous population as a representative of the worst aspects of human (Terran) life: a god-hero complex driven by greed, racism, and self-assured superiority over all life. The Davidson figure (Kellog in Piper, Quaritch in Cameron’s film) is juxtaposed by Lyubov, an anthropologist who advocates strongly for Athshe’s independence, representing a vaguely liberal they’re-human-too response to Terran expansionism. Word for World departs from the eco-capitalist fantasies of similar texts, from the idea that colonial expansion and resource extraction are OK but within reason , by presenting things from the indigenous perspective and not treating the “within reason” perspective as the final word on colonialism. He was always disagreeably suprised to find how vulnerable his feelings were, how much it hurt him to be hurt is best rendered. Davidson is the epitome of toxic masculinity and self aggrandisement, even slightly shunned by the author herself as possibly to one dimensional, but somehow instantly made me think of Donald Trump his positioning and showmanship, showing that however modern we think we are sexism is still definitely a thing. Coro Mena enters a dream-state to verify this information. His role as Great Dreamer is to translate what he sees in his dreams into reality, as the Athsheans live both in dream-time and world-time. The village’s women then act on his observations. Coro Mena pronounces that Selver is a god, as he now knows what death is. Selver decides to gather other Athsheans to drive the humans out of their world. Lyubov taught Selver human ways, but Selver still doesn’t know whether the “ yumens” are even men, since they kill one another. Coro Mena sends Selver off, telling him that he saw Selver in his dreams prior to Selver’s arrival, and that Selver will change their world.Right, but this isn't slavery, Ok baby. Slaves are humans. When you raise cows, you call that slavery? No. And it works." Similarly, the Athshean word for "dream" is the same as the word for "root". Athsheans have learned to exert some conscious control over their dreams, and their actions are dictated by both their dream experiences and their conscious non-dreaming thoughts. Thus their dreaming makes them rooted, something which is demonstrated through their use of language. [14] The Athshean word for "god" is the same as the word for "translator", representing this role that "gods have" in their society, which is to interpret and translate their dreams into actions. [46] Dreaming and consciousness [ edit ] Reid, Suzanne Elizabeth (1997). Presenting Ursula Le Guin. New York, New York: Twayne. ISBN 0-8057-4609-9. The more Le Guin I read, the more I love her. Reading Le Guin for me these last couple years, reminds me of how I felt when I first discovered John le Carré. They seem to both be able to write the same theme in so many different ways. It makes me think of Monet's many versions of the same church front or pond. Masters all. An artist doesn't have to go very wide to create worlds, sometimes the best worlds are created by just going deep.