The Left Hand of Darkness Man and the Natural World Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

But I really don't see how anyone could put much stock in victory or glory after he had spent a winter on Winter, and seen the face of the Ice. (7.24)

As the theory goes, if you're too busy fighting nature, you've got no time for the whole war thing. (But we have to say, we suspect that people are always going to find a way to wage war.)

Quote #5

Winter is an inimical world; its punishment for doing things wrong is sure and prompt: death from cold or death from hunger. (8.3)

What more can we say than that? You watch where you step on Gethen, or Gethen might step on you.

Quote #6

The time was ripe, perhaps. Slow as their material and technological advance had been, little as they valued "progress" in itself, they had finally, in the last five or ten or fifteen centuries, got a little ahead of Nature. They weren't absolute at the mercy of their merciless climate any longer […]. (8.12)

Since the Gethenians have finally gotten ahead of nature, is war destined to come? Guess we'll have to wait for another novel to find out.