The Dispossessed

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

This chapter introduces the planet of Anarres: there is a sixty-acre, walled-in field as its only port, and foreigners never venture beyond its walls. From one perspective, the walled-in area is a quarantine. From another perspective, however, “the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet [is] inside it, a great prison camp” (2). As the action opens, there is a mob outside the wall, protesting, as a passenger from Anarres boards a ship, Mindful, bound for the planet Urras and the State of A-Io. The “traitor,” Shevek, is hit by a thrown rock before boarding the ship, and then put in quarantine to receive immunizations. He is despised by his countrymenbut treated as an “honored guest” on the ship, and assured he will be one on Urras as well (14).

On the ship, he discusses the culture he will be visiting with Dr. Kimoe, an Urrasti and his sole companion. Shevek remarks on his confusion that, on Urras, women have a lower status than men—and that “superiority” and “inferiority” are such important concepts in general. Upon landing, he encounters a number of new experiences: the presence of large animals, the grandeur of his rooms, and the clear fascination he holds for the Urrasti.

Chapter 2 Summary

This chapter flashes back to Shevek’s boyhood on Anarres and provides more information about the Anarresti. Anarres is a separatist colony based on the teachings of Odo, who rejected capitalism and theorized an anarchic socialism. As an infant, Shevek is put in a nursery full-time when his mother is posted to a different city. There, he learns the collectivist spirit of Anarres—with some trouble. He is often accused of “egoizing” (29). He nonetheless learns the lessons of his culture through experience with the other children at the nursery; given much independence, they are encouraged to govern themselves. With his friends, he debates why they have been taught to hate Urras. Is it because life there is truly horrible, or to keep Anarresti from wanting to go there? Shevek believes that, to an Odinian, nothing is “forbidden,” including visiting Urras. His clear gifts for math and physics develop throughout his boyhood, and he is invited to Abbenay to work with a preeminent physicist, Sabul. The other students he grew up with throw a party to see him off, where they debate whether love or suffering is what ties humanity together. Shevek believes brotherhood begins in suffering, but he admits he does not know where it ends.

Chapter 3 Summary

This chapter returns to Anarres. Shevek notes the luxury of his new bedroom and view, and thinks, “This is what a world is supposed to look like” (65). He gets to know colleagues including Pae, Chifoilisk, and Dr. Atro, and for the first time in his life, enjoys “the conversation of his equals” (71). They are surprised by his belief that men and women are intellectual equals and are interested to hear that he is considered a radical on Anarres. He finds that they are not “gross, cold egoists,” but are rather varied in their characters and perspectives (77). He must remind himself, however, that the “community” is not a true collective but a hierarchy. As he explores, he learns that the Urrasti want him to complete his theory of simultaneity so that they can develop spacecraft that teleport. Although he is unwilling to oblige, he begins to see that the resources of Urras—its bounty—can and should be shared by Anarresti.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The first three chapters draw a stark contrast between life on Anarres and on Urras. Anarres is a collectivist society that lives in poverty: children grow up in collective living, sometimes from infancy, and parents are not expected to stay with their children. The barren landscape of Urras includes little plant life and no animals; Anarresti are utterly dependent on their collectivist communities for their survival. Urras, the planet they fled, is a capitalist society, marked both by the abundant resources available on that planetas well as the unequal distribution of those resources.

As we are introduced to Shevek, he is in some senses a good Anarresti: skeptical of Urrasti life, harshly critical of capitalism, and puzzled by the various frames of “superiority” used to frame life on Urras. However, we also know he is considered a heretic on his home planet, in part because he chooses to leave and take knowledge of Anarres back to the planet his forefathers fled. His character is clearly interested from childhood in weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the Urrasti and Odinian ways of life, and considering how the planet and its moon, the motherland and its colony, might help each other to move forward. These chapters thus mark the novel as one particularly interested in examining the differences between socialism and capitalism, anarchism and democracy, and equality and hierarchy.

These chapters also suggest that equality between men and women will be a central theme in the novel. Shevek twice speaks with Urrasti who are shocked to hear that men and women are truly treated as equal on Anarres. He remarks that Odo was a woman, and privately considers the effect that patriarchy has on women’s views of themselves, and on the sex lives of men and women. We learn that not only is gender difference less significant on Anarres, but so is sexual preference: Shevek grows up freely experimenting with men and women, which is the norm in his culture. This will shape his interactions on Urras.