The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin Essay - 580 Words

To answer the question, How is the utopian society Anarres structured, one can attack it at many ways. First one can look at the cultural context of the time period in which the novel was written. LeGuin wrote The Dispossessed in 1974. One can argue that the community of Anarres was in inspired by the social movements of the late 1960s and early seventies. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and the 60s counter culture or hippie values are all reflected in the culture and society of Anarres. Anarres is a society of anarchists. The society was formed after a revolution and war against the centralized government and plutocracies of Urras. On Anarres every one was created equal because†¦show more content†¦Although refusing posting is met with great disapproval and rejection from their peers. An Anarrastis incentive to work is not a need for money, finances or the desire for profit but they take pride and pleasure in completing tasks and working with others. A person likes to do what he is good at doing. People take the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can egoize (they call it) or show off to the weaker. Its is the opinion of they neighbor that becomes the all mighty driving force. The private and social conscience knows that, there is no other reward, on Anarres, no law. Ones own pleasure, and the respect of ones fellows, that is all they have. This relationship between the individual and society is later recognized as the bureaucratic machine (centralized government) that these Anarchists fight against. The Anarresian people can not refuse a posting (order by PDC) because they are ashamed. The social conscience completely dominates the individual conscience, in stead of striking a balance. We dont cooperate--we obey. We fear being outcast, being called lazy, dysfunctional, eoizing, as Shevek once pointed out, We fear our neighbors opinion more than we respect our own freedom. Because this was part of there thinking the Anaressian people could not see these laws, laws of conventional behaviorShow MoreRelatedEthical Values From The Book The Dispossessed Written By Daniel P Jaeckle1761 Words   |  8 Pagesethical values into their stories, which sometimes give the reader an insight into the kind of person the author is. Making references to an article by Daniel P Jaeckle, I will be analyzing the three ethical values from the book The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. LeGuin, that have been layered together in a way that it creates interpersonal ethics, ethics of mutual aid, ethics of shared pain, and ethics of the bond, designed to meet the needs of an anarchist society. Anarchism is a philosophy basedRead MoreThe Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin1486 Words   |  6 PagesThe Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is a criticism of today’s capitalism by investigating what society structure would be best for human society. Le Guin uses the two models of capitalism and communism to be compared and contrasted against one another to determine which would function better and how to achieve such success. In order to depict what a replacement structure would look like; Le Guin creates two worlds to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of influence that each of these models