McMaster English Literature The Word for World is Forest Summary and Analysis PDF

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McMaster English Literature The Word for World is Forest Summary and Analysis...

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McMaster English Literature: The Word for World is Forest Summary and Analysis

Overview The Word for World is Forest is a novella by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It was published as a self-contained story in 1976 but had appeared in a science fiction anthology four years earlier. Le Guin included the story in her series, the Hainish Cycle, which details an alternate version of the future in which Earth is a colonizing force on other planets. The story examines themes of imperialism, racism, friendship, and the corrosive effects of violence on a society. When the story begins, humans are already years into the colonization of a forest planet called Athshe. Wood has become a luxury on Earth, and loggers are on Athshe to cut down the trees and send them home for use. A man named Captain Davidson is flying over Smith Camp in an airship and thinking eagerly about the shipment of women that has recently arrived on Athshe. When he returns to camp after his furlough, it has been destroyed. All the humans have been killed by Athsheans, who are referred to by Davidson—and others—by the derogatory term “creechies.” The Athsheans have been enslaved by the humans and forced to labor for them in the camps. As Davidson walks through the ruins of the camp, four Athsheans approach him and restrain him. One of them is Selver, an Athshean whose wife was raped by Davidson. She later died. In the ensuing fight following her death, Davidson badly scarred Selver’s face. At Camp Smith, Selver releases Davidson so he can spread the message of the camp’s destruction. At the base known as Centralville, human officers—as well as two alien emissaries—discuss the massacre and begin an investigation. A man named Raj Lyubov says that the mistreatment of the Athsheans is responsible for the revolt. Lyubov is an academic and a friend of Selver’s who has learned the Athshean language. The others disagree with his assessment and claim that his classification of the Athsheans as peaceful allowed them to let their guard down and made the attack possible.

The two alien emissaries announce that a League of Worlds has been formed. Normally, communication between planets takes twenty-seven years, but they have brought a radio communicator that will allow instantaneous communication. They announce that the League has ordered the release of all Athsheans. Meanwhile, Davidson attacks another camp as payback for the destruction of Camp Smith. _ _

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He is transferred, as punishment, to a distant camp called New Java. Selver leads another attack against Centralville, and his people kill many humans, including all of the women. Lyubov is killed in the chaos. The Athsheans imprison the surviving humans and come to terms with their officers: In three years, when the ship that brought them returns, they will leave the planet forever. Until then, they must live on a reservation, in an area with no trees. Davidson continues to attack Athshean settlements but is captured by Selver when his ship crashes. Selver refuses to kill him. They march Davidson to an abandoned, treeless, lifeless area of the planet and leave him there. Three years later, the ship returns. Selver delivers Lyubov’s anthropological documents and work to the humans, who then prepare to leave. Before the humans came, the Athsheans had never known murder. Selver worries about the future of his people. Now that they know how to kill, their planet is changed forever, even though the humans are leaving. The World for World is Forest won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1973, with particular attention given to its parallels between American involvement in the Vietnam War. It remains timely and topical and continues to receive critical acclaim today.

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses Chapters 1-2 Chapter 1 Summary Captain Don Davidson awakes, thinking about how “the new shipload of women had arrived” (9) at Centralville, which is twenty-seven light years from earth on the planet of Athshe. There were 212 of them. Davidson’s duty in New Tahiti, as the Earth humans call their colony on Athshe, is to tame it: “Can’t keep us down, we’re Men. You’ll learn what that means pretty soon, you godforsaken damn planet” (10). When he goes outside, a “creechie” (the derogatory term Earth humans have given to the Athsheans) named Ben is preparing hot water for the captain’s shave (10). Davidson decides to go to Centralville to see the women for himself: “He intended to be first in line with at least one of them this time” (11). Ben brings Davidson’s breakfast. Ben is one meter tall and covered in white fur. Davidson knows that once he can get enough humans and machines here, they won’t need the creechies anymore, which pleases him: “This world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men” (11). He knows he will get what he wants because he always does. A “spesh” (anthropologist) named

Kees Van Sten approaches with news that loggers have been poaching in an area called the Strips (11). Davidson tells him that he is there to care for the men, not for the wildlife, and the men need recreation. Kees turns red and argues that there is already recreation for the men, and they don’t need to exterminate an endangered species for entertainment. Davidson says they are there to collect wood and to make the new planet in Earth’s image. When Kees leaves, Davidson thinks, “He didn’t see that you’ve got to play on the winning side or else you lose. And it’s Man that wins, every time” (14). New Tahiti is mostly water, and what is not water is dense and dark forest. “Men were here now to end the darkness” (15) because back on Earth, wood has become a luxury. Alien forests are now being cut to supply wood to Earth. Davidson knows that everyone on New Tahiti was brought there from Earth over a million years ago. This is proof that it is intended for human use. Someone calls his name, and Davidson turns to see Oknanawi Nabo, his logging foreman,

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known as Ok. Ok says he wants to get rid of the creechies, who are annoying him. He says he can’t get them to do what he wants, even when he tries to starve them. Davidson reminds him that the creechies don’t feel pain like humans do. They have more primitive nervous systems. He tells Ok to pick out the leader and say that he’s going to give them a shot of a hallucinogen, which the creechies are afraid of for reasons Davidson does not understand. “‘Primitive races always have to give way to civilized ones,’” he says (21). In Centralville, Davidson walks down the streets. It reminds him of a frontier town. He smiles at the women lining the road, goes into a bar to eat a steak, and then flies back to camp. A man named Jumu arrives with two of the “new Collie girls” (24), specifically imported to be part of the Recreation Staff. Davidson enjoys a “long, hot afternoon” (24). From the air on the way back to camp, he sees fire and smoke. The camp and the equipment have been destroyed. As he walks through the ruin, he believes it must have been an alien invasion. He hears voices. Four wild creechies walk by, and he hides behind a shed. One of them is the pet of a man named Lyubov, and Lyubov hates Davidson. Davidson orders the creechies to stop and explain what happened. Their leader, who has a scarred face, tells him that they burned the camp and that the humans are all dead. The scarred creechie says that it took 900 creechies to kill the more than 200 humans who were there. He says that his wife showed him how to do it, then lunges at Davidson. He and the other

creechies pin Davidson down as the scarred leader sings an unfamiliar song. He instructs Davidson to leave and tell his superiors that the humans are dead. Davidson notices that one of the creechies pointing a gun at him is Ben. Davidson remembers that the scarred creechie’s name is actually Selver. Davidson turns and runs. He makes it to his small ship and thinks that some good will come out of the massacre because “[n]ot even Lyubov could stop them from rubbing out the creechies now, not when they heard it was Lyubov’s pet creechie who’d led the massacre!” (31).

Chapter 2 Summary Selver is walking up a path. He sees “an old man dreaming” (36) and stops to ask the old man if he can come to his Lodge. The old man asks if Selver is “of the dream-time or of the world time?” (36). Selver says that he is of the world-time. The old man’s name is Coro Mena, and the town Selver has come to is called Cadast. Selver introduces himself as being from the Ash. _ _

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They go together into a Men’s Lodge. Selver lies down on a cot and “slipped, with great relief and gratitude, into the great darkness” (37). In the night, the people in the lodge, including a healer named Torber, watch him and care for a wound in Selver’s arm. They wonder about the scars on Selver’s face. Coro Mena feels a fear he does not understand. He enters a dream in which giants walk in front of massive iron machines that crawl across the earth, felling trees. Coro Mena exits the dream and tells Torber that Selver must have come from Sornol, because that is where the giants are. That evening, Coro speaks with Ebor Dendep, his sister. She wants Coro to wake Selver up so that they can hear his story. When Selver wakes, he tells them about humans arriving to begin harvesting the forest. They raped his wife, Thele, and she died. Selver left the city for another town called Penle, but the humans—he calls them “yumen” (38)—came there as well and imprisoned 100 of them. Selver escaped without being caught. One night he crawled among the cages holding his people and learned that the man who raped his wife was there. The next day Selver and his people burned the camp and killed the humans, “[b]ut that one had gone away” (40). Selver’s wound came from one of the man’s weapons, which Selver shows them, because he picked it up after Davidson dropped it. Selver says he left no trail and does not believe the giants can follow him. But he does worry that they will find them and try to kill them all, since he helped kill them: “‘There is a wish to kill in them, and therefore I saw fit to put them to death’” (43). He says that they dream only in sleep,

like children, and “[n]one of them are trained, or have any skill in dreaming” (44). Selver falls asleep again, and Coro says that he is a god, and Torber nods with relief. Coro adds that Selver is “‘not like the others […] Not like the Pursuer, nor the Friend who has no face, nor the Aspen-leaf Woman who walks in the forest of dreams. He is not the Gatekeeper, nor the Snake” (45). He says they have been dreaming of Selver for years, and now Selver has left the dream-time. He is “a god that kills and is not himself reborn” (45). The town of Cadast is put on alert, and all families prepare to leave quickly, if needed. Ebor takes Selver into the town and makes him tell the story about how he killed the humans, so that her people will know it is possible and take courage from him. She also sends runners to other towns to spread the story. Their world is split between Forty Lands, and there are more languages than lands. Women run all of the cities and towns, and each municipality has a Men’s Lodge. In the Lodges, the “Dreamers spoke an old tongue” (46). Most writing is in the

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Lodge-tongue, so the messages must be carried from Lodge to Lodge and then interpreted by the Dreamers to the Old Women, for “[i]t was always the Old Women’s choice whether to believe or not” (46). Selver sits in a room with Davidson’s gun in his belt. He sees him coming and shoots at him, then wakes from the dream. He has been at Cadast for fifteen days. He keeps having dreams of attacking Davidson and of being attacked by him. Ebor is sitting with him when a young girl comes with a message: A runner has returned from the coast. The messenger arrives and tells them: “There are new giants in the great city of the giants in Sornol, and many of these new ones are female” (53). She also says that some of the Dreamers report visions of a time when there are more of the giants than there are trees. Selver tells Ebor about Lyubov, who saved him from Davidson once, healed him, and set him free. Lyubov was curious about Selver’s people, and they shared information with each other freely. Selver tries to make sense of what Lyubov told him: The yumens come from a place outside the forest, and their sun is a star. He relates a time when he saw a yumen kill one of Selver’s people with as little thought as one might give before stepping on an ant. “They are men unfit or untaught to dream and to act as men” (56), and Selver says he must go back to his people and leaves. Coro goes with Selver, and they talk as they walk. He tells Selver that “‘the fruit of fear is ripening. And I see you gather it’” (59). He says that he saw Selver in a vision once, walking, as young trees grew behind him They say goodbye and Selver keeps walking It starts raining and

he lies down and sleeps on the ground.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis Chapter 1 uses Davidson’s narrow viewpoint to sketch out the realities of the logging camps on Athshea. The Athsheans—as well as the slur by which they are known—are introduced. The extent of their enslavement is not obvious until the confrontation with Selver, because Davidson does not view the coercion of the natives as enslavement. But his history with Selver shows the depravities that men like Davidson have subjected the Athsheans to. As Chapter 1 ends, Davidson looks forward to the coming conflict eagerly. He does not know why the Athsheans have spared his life, but he now believes that the humans will have no choice but to exterminate them. Davidson’s astonishment at the attack on Smith Camp show that, whatever his views of the _ _

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natives, until then they have been almost completely pacific. The exception is when he and Selver fought after his wife’s rape. Chapter 2 begins explaining the purpose of dreaming among the Athsheans, something that will be elaborated upon further in chapters with Lyubov. Their dreams serve as a combination of visions, prophecies, and warnings. However, even though the Old Men dream the dreams, it is the Old Women who interpret what they say. There is an assumption that the Old Men tell the truth when saying what they dream about, but it is made clear that the Old Women have no obligation to believe them. The discussion of gods shows that the natives have a spiritual facet to their lives, but it is not obvious whether the gods are to be taken as literal truths, or as metaphors, until it is proclaimed later that Selver has become a god. By the end of Chapter 2, the foundation for the conflict comprising the rest of the story has been laid.

Chapters 3-4 Chapter 3 Summary Lyubov has a headache. He tries to daydream the headache away, as Selver taught him. He can’t concentrate; he is too preoccupied with the burning of Camp Smith because “[h]e had believed the Athsheans to be incapable of killing men, his kind or their kind” (63). He goes to a meeting at HQ. Davidson is already there. The room is filled with people from the ship Shackleton. Several of them are new to him, “non-Terran humans” (65), including a hairy Cetian named Mr. Or and a Hainishman named Mr. Lepennon. Commander Yung gives a debrief of the destruction of Smith Camp and opens the floor up for

those present to question Davidson, who returned to the camp the day after the attacks and set fires to drive creechies out of hiding. Mr. Lepennon asks him if the camp staff—the creechies—were content. And if so, why would they revolt? Davidson says they were well treated and were never required to perform unusual work. Lyubov asks Davidson if he is aware that Selver—who they know as Sam—had a grudge against him. Davidson says he did not know. This audacity surprises Lyubov, who says, “‘Since his wife died immediately subsequent to sexual intercourse with you, he holds you responsible for her death. You didn’t know that?’” (70). He asks how Davidson landed when Selver knocked him down and the four Athsheans were standing over him. He asks if Selver sang a song while they were holding him down. Davidson again says he does not know. Lyubov tells the group that the Athsheans “use a kind of ritualized singing to replace physical

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combat” (72). The males will often hold aggressive singing matches in which they try to outbellow one another, but in addition to releasing aggression, the vocal battles are treated as an art form. If Selver sang over Davidson, Lyubov believes it is because he preferred “the bloodless victory” (73). Lyubov attributes the lack of rape and murder among the Athsheans to their singing methods. Lyubov also describes the Athsheans as a “static, stable, uniform society. They have no history. Perfectly integrated, and wholly progressive. You might say that like the forest they live in, they’ve attained a climax state. But I don’t mean to imply that they’ve incapable of adaptation” (74). Initially, the Athsheans recognized that the yumens were men like them but larger. Now he believes that the Athsheans have adapted to their mistreatment by the yumens by deciding that they are not from the same species. Once they classify them as animals, they are able to kill them. Colonel Dongh says that he does not consider the creechies to be human, despite scientific evidence that they all, as Or says, “come from the same, original Hainish stock” (76). Davidson says he does not know whether to consider the planet’s natives human or not. Or then asks him why he would have sex with Selver’s wife if he thought her to be only an animal. The Commander interrupts to say that their purpose is not just to deliver to the girls, but also to “give the government an ansible. That is, an ICD transmitter” (77). He asks Mr. Or to explain the ansible’s purpose, since his people invented it. Or says that the ansible allows for immediate transmission of messages, with no lag for space time, and that “‘[t]his is as important to us as an interstellar species, as speech itself was to us earlier in our evolution. It’ll have the same effect: to make a society possible’” (79).

Lepennon says that he and Or left Earth twenty-seven years ago as representatives of the governments of Tau II and Hain. While they were en route, a League of Worlds was established and has now existed for eighteen years. He claims that he and Or are Emissaries of the Council of the League, “‘and so have certain powers and responsibilities we did not have when we left Earth’” (79). Lyubov wonders if they are lying. But Or says that with the ansible, they will now be able to communicate with the Terran Administration to verify what he has said and that “[t]here is no longer any excuse for acting on outdated orders; for ignorance; for irresponsible autonomy” (80). Lyubov is nervous. It is not clear who is in charge now or what position an Emissary of

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the Council of the League of Worlds occupies in the ranking hierarchy. Lepennon says that they are there to observe. They do not have the power to command but will only report. Lyubov worries that after they leave, the natives will be targeted by Davidson, who will want revenge for the massacre. The Shackleton will return in three years, and Lyubov believes that by then the Athsheans will be extinct. As the conference ends, Lyubov whispers to Lepennon: “‘You must tell the League to do something to save the forests, the forest people’” (87). Lepennon says nothing.

Chapter 4 Summary Davidson is ashamed of how much latitude Or and Lepennon were given in the conference: “A Starfleet ship’s commander bootlicking two humanoids” (89). He has been sent to New Java Camp under Major Muhamed, but he doesn’t care about the punishment. The ansible is now relaying messages saying that they cannot force the creechies to work and that any contact with them must be initiated by the creechies. They are also forbidden to use weapons, except in self-defense. In Davidson’s view, “[a]ny fool could tell that that wasn’t the Colonial Administration talking” (91). He beli...