The Word for World is Forest

“In the dream the giants walked, heavy and dire. Their dry scaly limbs were swathed in cloths; their eyes were little and light, like tin beads. Behind them crawled huge moving things made of polished iron. The trees fell down in front of them.”

The Dreamers’ visions of the yumens are foreboding. The men are described as giants who walk ahead of metallic monsters that fell the trees. There is never anything positive in the dreams the natives have of the yumens. Their approach can therefore not be viewed with anything but unease, which is part of Selver’s decision to launch a preemptive strike on Smith Camp and Centralville.

“‘Until the men make a fit place for the women? Well! they may have quite a wait,’ said Ebor Dendep. ‘They’re like the people in the Elm Dream who come at you rump-first, with their heads put on front to back. They make the forest into a dry beach’—her language had no word for ‘desert’—‘and call that making things ready for the women? They should have sent the women first.”

Selver’s sister laughs at the notion that the yumens are crafting a planet suitable for women. Rather, they are reducing the forests, leaving the landscape barren and inhospitable. She believes that if the women had arrived first, they would have been able to craft a better planet, which would have spared the forests.

“‘The world is always new,’ said Coro Mena, ‘however old its roots.’” 

Coro explains that the presence of unpredictability—especially as brought about by people—will always ensure that the world is new. There will always be new choices to make, new things to learn, new situations to adapt to, and new fears that will arise. The world is newly erratic to each group, despite their shared roots.

“I don’t know. Do men kill men, except in madness? Does any beast kill its own kind? Only the insects. These yumens kill us as lightly as we kill snakes. The one who taught me said that they kill one another, in quarrels, and also in groups, like ants fighting. I haven’t seen that. But I know they don’t spare one who asks life. They will strike a bowed neck, I have seen it! There is a wish to kill in them, and therefore I saw fit to put them to death.”

Selver explains his reasoning for the attack on Smith Camp. He knows that the yumens cannot be reasoned with, because they view the Athsheans as creatures below reason. If they see the natives as snakes, why should Selver assume that they will speak with them as equals? He has interpreted his dreams to mean that humans will always kill—and his own experience vindicates this—so he commits a first strike in order to prevent the inevitable extermination of his species, even though he has to kill to do so.

“‘If the yumens are men, they are unfit or untaught to dream or act as men. Therefore they go about in torment killing and destroying, driven by the gods within, whom they will not set free but try to uproot and deny. If they are men, they are evil men having denied their own gods, afraid to see their own faces in the dark…’”

Selver speaks of an attack he witnessed, where a yumen broke the spine of an Athshean who was offering no resistance. He again attributes their insanity to their lack of ability to dream properly and skillfully. The yumens are constantly in motion, reactionary to a fault, because their minds—in the absence of their access to their subconscious—drive them to action ceaselessly.

“‘You have not thought things through,’ he said. By his standards it was a brutal insult.”

The Cetian condemns Davidson for his thoughtlessness and irrationality. Davidson insists that the Athsheans are mere animals. The Cetian asks him why he would rape Selver’s wife if he saw her as an animal. Davidson has no response because he knows his contradiction. Selver’s greatest criticisms of the yumens are also that they do not think things through because they cannot. He sees yumens as walking reactions driven by appetites and insanity.

“‘A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.’” 

During the council, Lyubov insists that they are not merely discussing the fate of the planet’s trees and forests. He tries to help the other Earth humans see that to destroy the forest is to destroy the Athshean’s world because that is how they see the forest. It is inextricably linked to their thought through the language they use. He knows the consequences of their actions will have greater repercussions than mere deforesting.

“To hell with my self-respect so long as the forest people get a chance.”

Lyubov is no longer content to be an observer. He realizes that the plight of the native has affected him and that their safety is of more immediate concern than the way he is perceived. He voices his opinions, and although they are not accepted—they are even mocked by Davidson—he knows that he has taken a moral stand worth taking.

“Some men, especially the asiatiforms and hindi types, are actually born traitors.”

Davidson’s ignorance and intractability are shown through his thinking about asiatiforms and hindi people. The assumption that one can know that another person is a traitor from birth is the essence of the toxicity of racism. If he thinks this is a logical viewpoint, no one will ever be able to reason with him or convince him otherwise.

“The fact is, the only time a man is really and entirely a man is when he’s just had a woman or just killed another man.”

Davidson does not like men who are, to him, unmasculine. He does not believe that a man who has not killed is a real man. This explains his overreaction later when his co-officers make the truce with the Athsheans. It is exactly what Davidson would have expected from weak men who have never taken a life.

“Homosexuality was with other humans, it was normal.” (

Davidson reveals another contradiction in his views. He sees the Athsheans as less than human, mere animals. Yet he rapes Thele and kills her to satisfy both his sexual and violent urges. He is not shown to have any homosexual tendencies or actions, but he views homosexuality as a normal behavior. This shows that his rape of Thele was not just about his physical urges—which he could have satisfied with another man and still have met his criteria for normalcy—but also his desire to kill.

“‘I don’t know what you are. It would be better if I had never known you.’”

These are Selver’s words to Lyubov after warning him to leave prior to the coming attack on Centralville. His statement can have multiple meanings. If they never met, they would not have to part under such terrible circumstances. Selver regret meeting Lyubov because Selver’s interpretation of Lyubov’s dreams causes such destruction. It is not ultimately clear to what circumstances Selver refers with the word “better.”

“Once you have learned to do your dreaming wide awake, to balance your sanity not on the razor’s edge of reason but 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.”

For Selver, there is no true reasoning without dreams. True thinking is the combination of conscious and subconscious thought. To do otherwise is to walk on the edge of a razor and to pretend at a level of a control that one does not actually possess. But the dreaming is a skill that cannot be unlearned, and this comes with the risk of misinterpreting dreams.

“For if it’s all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it's himself whom the murderer kills; only he has to do is over, and over, and over.”

After Lyubov prevents Davidson from killing Selver, they hate each other. He has denied Davidson—a killer—the chance to kill. He knows that one murder will never satisfy a man like Davidson. He will continue to kill because it is his nature and his habit. As the story progresses, it becomes clearer that Davidson has no intention (or ability) to change his violent patterns.

“‘I don’t know what “human nature” is. Maybe leaving descriptions of what we wipe out is part of human nature.’”

Lyubov and Gosse discuss human nature. Lyubov is beginning to see that the most reliable traits of humans are those that result in violence, destruction, and domination. Because he wishes only to observe and study, he begins to see himself as existing outside human nature. He has no urge to cause harm, which makes him an anomaly.

“But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. ‘What are they doing?’ abruptly becomes, ‘What are we doing?’ and then, ‘What must I do?’”

Up to this point, Lyubov has felt no pressure to intervene on behalf of the Athsheans. He does not see that as his role. But when the council discusses the possibility of exterminating the natives, he is compelled to think and act more proactively. His emotions have begun to take precedence over his logic, and this will result in his death, although it is a death in service of his ideals.

“He preferred to be enlightened, rather than enlighten; to seek facts rather than the Truth.” 

Lyubov’s inclination is always to observe and learn. He is not interested in shaping or changing the Athsheans, only in trying to understand them better, in the hopes that it will give him a better understanding of the universe as a whole. Lyubov is not attached to a particular outcome—such as the vindication of an ideological “Truth”—rather, he follows his observations where they lead and reevaluates his positions frequently, as a true scientist.

“In diversity is life and where there’s life there’s hope, was the general sum of his creed, a modest one to be sure.”

Lyubov is intellectually curious and wishes to contribute to the sum of anthropological knowledge. He cannot expand his knowledge to its utmost without encountering and observing other species and worlds. He sees diversity itself as a logical good because diversity causes perspectives to expand.

“A realist is a man who knows both the world and his own dreams.”

For the Athsheans, real knowledge that can be relied upon is based on what the conscious mind can observe, and what the subconscious mind can contribute to the process. Only when the two are used together is a man actually dealing with what is real, which is a prerequisite for calling oneself a realist.

“By God sometimes you have to be able to think about the unthinkable.” 

Davidson cannot comprehend that the other officers will not support his desire to continue attacking after the truce. He believes they have given in to an inferior race and are therefore traitors. He sees himself as the only one who is willing to do what must be done, and he sees that as what others call unthinkable. This confirms Selver’s words that the yumens do not think or understand; they act while assuming that they are also thinking.

“‘I can’t kill you, Davidson. You’re a god. You must do it yourself.’”

After capturing Davidson, Selver still will not kill him. Davidson has interpreted his own dreams and has pursued them to their conclusion at the cost of many lives. This has earned him the status of godhood, and only a god can cancel his own life. Just as words cannot be removed from a language, Selver knows that it is not his place to remove another god from the world.

“‘Freedom had become the direction of Lyubov’s life, I think. You, being his friend, will see that his death did not stop him from arriving at his goal, from finishing his journey.’”

The Commander reflects on Lyubov’s work. He believes that Lyubov successfully saved the Athsheans and their planet. As a dreamer, Selver knows that it is not so simple. Lyubov’s journey is not over because he is still in Selver’s thoughts. And he is not sure that freedom is what his people have gained, because murder is now a reality for them.

“For the kindest of them was as far out of touch, as unreachable, as the crudest.” 

Despite his friendship with Lyubov, at the end of the story, Selver is unable to see Lyubov as different from the other yumens. Because he lacked the ability to dream, he could not evolve to his full potential. His kindness did not mean that he could learn in the same way as the Athsheans, and neither did his intellectual curiosity. The yumens are primitive to Selver in a way that is not their fault, but he does not view this in terms of racism, as Davidson might have.