How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
She stuck out her brown hand, he met it with a white one, just like that damn button her mother always kept in the bottom of her bead box, SCNN or SNCC or something she'd belonged to way back in the middle of the last century, the Black hand and the White hand joined together. Christ! (4.65)
Heather got it right the second time. The SNCC, or Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was an organization that arose during the Civil Rights Movement. Its logo was a black person and a white person shaking hands. The organization participated in the civil rights sit-ins, freedom rides, and even the March on Washington. Heather's mom was part of all this, so it's no surprise that racial issues are important for Heather.
Quote #2
They were still massacring whites in Johannesburg, Orr noticed on a headline at a corner newspaper stand. Years now since the Uprising, and there were still whites to massacre in South Africa! People are tough.... (6.49)
The South African government from 1948 to 1994 enforced a system of racial segregation called apartheid, which means "apartness" in Afrikaans, one of the country's official languages. Obviously, the end of apartheid was nowhere in sight for people during the time this novel was written, so in George's future, Le Guin imagines the end of apartheid as an event called the Uprising. That leads to the violent massacre of white people in retaliation for the frequent massacres of black people in South Africa under the apartheid system. This is something that many white South Africans were worried about, and something that some conspiracy theorists still assume will happen eventually.
Quote #3
"No." She cleaned out the tuna can scrupulously and licked the knife. "Portland. Twice, now. Two different hospitals. Christ! But born and bred. So were my parents. My father was black and my mother was white. It's kind of interesting. He was a real militant Black Power type, back in the seventies, you know, and she was a hippie. He was from a welfare family in Albina, no father, and she was a corporation lawyer's daughter from Portland Heights. And a dropout, and went on drugs, and all that stuff they used to do then. And they met at some political rally, demonstrating. That was when demonstrations were still legal. And they got married. But he couldn't stick it very long, I mean the whole situation, not just the marriage. When I was eight he went off to Africa. To Ghana, I think. He thought his people came originally from there, but he didn't really know. (7.123)
Heather's dad is kind of a stereotype of a black male who would have been involved in the Civil Rights and Back to Africa Movements. He's poor, he's a deadbeat dad, and he's kind of idealistic about the idea of Africa as his homeland. We get this huge paragraph about Heather's parents, but we never learn anything about George's parents. Why is that?
Quote #4
But I'll tell you, what really gets me is, I can't decide which color I am. I mean, my father was a black, a real black—oh, he had some white blood, but he was a black—and my mother was a white, and I'm neither one. See, my father really hated my mother because she was white. But he also loved her. But I think she loved his being black much more than she loved him. Well, where does that leave me? I never have figured out."
"Brown," he said gently, standing behind her chair.
"S*** color."
"The color of the earth." (7.123)
Wow, this discussion of Heather and race is crazy awkward. But let's try to work through it to figure out why it's uncomfortably racist. To begin with, what on earth does it mean for Heather's dad to be "a real black"? Why does Heather's mom have a black fetish? Also, we hate to point this out, but it it's a longstanding stereotype—and racist argument against interracial marriage—that children born to interracial couples are confused and upset about their place in society. At least George doesn't agree that Heather is "s*** color," we guess...
Quote #5
They came from every part of the earth to work at the World Planning Center or to look at it, from Thailand, Argentina, Ghana, China, Ireland, Tasmania, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Honduras, Lichtenstein. But they all wore the same clothes, trousers, tunic, raincape; and underneath the clothes they were all the same color. They were gray. (9.13)
Does this make sense to you? If everyone in the world were gray, would that also somehow mean that all culture would be eradicated? Why or why not? Are race and culture connected? (Be careful—that one's a can of worms, folks.)
Quote #6
Haber's paeans of triumph made Orr uneasy, and he didn't listen to them; instead, he had searched his memory and had found in it no address that had been delivered on a battlefield in Gettysburg, nor any man known to history named Martin Luther King. But such matters seemed a small price to pay for the complete retroactive abolition of racial prejudice, and he had said nothing. (9.18)
What do you think? Is it worth it not to have things like the Gettysburg Address or people like Martin Luther King, Jr. in order not to have racism? Or would humanity have reaped more benefits from struggling through this problem and having people like Lincoln and King to help them through it?
Quote #7
That's why she's not here, he thought. She could not have been born gray. Her color, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixed nature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people's world. She had not been born. (9.20)
It's interesting that Heather is a physical manifestation of Taoism's emphasis on avoiding extremes. She's right in the middle of black and white, as if she encompasses the entire yin-yang sign. But since George is supposed to be the symbol of Taoism in the novel, why isn't he biracial? Why does Le Guin still choose to make her protagonist a white male?
Quote #8
He had, though. He could be born into any world. He had no character. He was a lump of clay, a block of uncarved wood.
And Dr. Haber: he had been born. Nothing could prevent him. He only got bigger at every reincarnation. (9.21)
Why don't George and Dr. Haber disappear when everyone turns gray? Isn't whiteness as much a part of their identity as brownness is a part of Heather's identity?
Quote #9
Orr bought a tasteless plateful of fish and chips with African peanut sauce at a crowded counter-restaurant; while he ate it he thought sorrowfully, well, once I stood her up at Dave's, and now she's stood me up. (9.34)
George is eating what should be a pretty weird international dish, but instead of finding it tasty, he finds it bland. Why is that? Is it because fish and chips shouldn't be mixed with African peanut sauce? Why not? What do you think Ursula LeGuin is trying to tell us about uniformity through this scene?
Quote #10
His wife, of course, had been gray-skinned. There were still gray people now, it was said, particularly in the Middle West and Germany, but most of the rest had gone back to white, brown, black, red, yellow, and mixtures. His wife had been a gray person, a far gentler person than this one, he thought. This Heather carried a big black handbag with a brass snap, and probably a half pint of brandy inside; she came on hard. His wife had been unaggressive and, though courageous, timid in manner. This was not his wife, but a fiercer woman, vivid and difficult. (11.36)
George says that the gray Heather was much gentler than the brown Heather. The implication is that her brownness makes her more aggressive. What is it about brownness that would make a person more aggressive? Or is it all more about grayness? Do you think George's assessment makes sense?