How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"It keeps spreading," Orr said, feeling inadequate and despondent. "The war, I mean." (3.8)
What is it about George's world that makes war keep spreading? How would you compare his world to our world? Why is it so difficult to stop the violence?
Quote #2
She felt no mercy for him; as she should have felt for a sick man, a schiz or paranoid with delusions of manipulating reality. Here was "another casualty of these times of ours that try men's souls," as President Merdle, with his happy faculty for fouling a quotation, had said in his State of the Union message; and here she was being mean to a poor lousy bleeding casualty with holes in his brain. (4.40)
President Merdle has mangled a quote from Thomas Paine's "The American Crisis," which was a series of pamphlets published to encourage the soldiers during the American Revolution. It appears that President Merdle is trying to make the American people believe that the wars they are currently involved in are as noble as the American Revolution. However, the last sentence, referring to "a poor lousy bleeding casualty with holes in his brain," seems to reference the Vietnam War, which was going on while Ursula Le Guin was writing this novel. In other words, whatever President Merdle says, it seems like people see this war as something like Vietnam—a war that a lot of people in the '60s and '70s saw as a total sham.
Quote #3
"I was burying them. In one of the big ditches ... I did work in the Interment Corps, when I was sixteen, after my parents got it.... Only in the dream the people were all naked and looked like they'd died of starvation. Hills of them. I had to bury them all. I kept looking for you, but you weren't there." (5.94)
George is telling us a dream he had about the plague years. With references to "Internment Corps" and hills of dead people, it seems like he is using imagery related to World War II and the Holocaust. Why do you think Le Guin is reminding us of that war and those atrocities?
Quote #4
The effects of the Plague were visible in everything, it was itself still endemic, and yet it hadn't prevented war from breaking out. In fact the fighting in the Near East was more savage than it had been in the more crowded world. [...] This gave a line-up of twelve Nuclear Powers in all, six to a side. So went the speculations. Meanwhile Jerusalem was rubble, and in Saudi Arabia and Iraq the civilian population was living in burrows in the ground while tanks and planes sprayed fire in the air and cholera in the water, and babies crawled out of the burrows blinded by napalm. (6.48)
We hope you guys paid attention in history class, because this is another war reference. The mention of napalm brings us back to the Vietnam War, which was infamous for its extensive use of napalm on forests and villages all over Vietnam. But George also tells us about the spread of war in a way that reminds us of the Cold War, when the world was divided into nuclear powers that could pull the trigger at any time. In our world, they didn't—but in George's world, they did.
Quote #5
Orr knew, with dreary clarity, what he would get on with today: the war. The papers were full of it, even Orr's news-resistant mind had been full of it, coming here. The growing war in the Near East. Haber would end it. And no doubt the killings in Africa. For Haber was a benevolent man. He wanted to make the world better for humanity. (6.72)
There are a lot of things going on here, but we want to bring your attention to the phrase "Near East." What's that? Well, you're probably more familiar with the term Middle East, but they refer to pretty much the same place. So why is Near East being used instead? It's possible that the term Middle East has become too politically charged, so Le Guin is using a term that's a bit more archaic and refers specifically to members of the former Ottoman Empire, in order to distance the world of her novel from the real world and its current conflicts.
Quote #6
"I'll have to skip a bit. All right." Now it was his voice on the tape again, saying, "— peace. No more mass killing of humans by other humans. No fighting in Iran and Arabia and Israel. No more genocides in Africa. No stockpiles of nuclear and biological weapons, ready to use against other nations. No more research on ways and means of killing people. A world at peace with itself. Peace as a universal life-style on Earth. You will dream of that world at peace with itself. (6.93)
Dr. Haber is trying to end warfare, but do you think that a world like the one he describes is even possible? Why or why not?
Quote #7
"It's curious that you used the Defense of Earth as a symbol or metaphor of peace, of the end of warfare. Yet it's not unfitting. Only very subtle. Dreams are endlessly subtle. Endlessly. For in fact it was that threat, that immediate peril of invasion by noncommunicating, reasonlessly hostile aliens, which forced us to stop fighting among ourselves, to turn our aggressive-defensive energies outward, to extend the territorial drive to include all humanity, to combine our weapons against a common foe. If the Aliens hadn't struck, who knows? We might, actually, still be fighting in the Near East." (6.98)
The idea that an alien invasion will cause world peace is rampant in sci-fi and pop culture, and you've probably seen it before. Exhibit A: Star Trek.) Exhibit B: Paul Krugman. But what do you think about it? Could it work?
Quote #8
Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you're handling something outside reason. You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams?" (6.99)
It's interesting for George to be unable to understand war rather than peace, considering the fact that humanity seems to have constantly been at war for pretty much as long history has existed. Why do you think he is unable to understand why we wage war? Do you think Dr. Haber has the same problem?
Quote #9
But he had learned that they existed. He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in. (6.104)
Hmmm… someone's a little critical of politicians. We wonder why… Could it have something to do with pictures of the Vietnam War showing little children injured by warfare? Because that was a big deal back in the late '60s and early '70s.
Quote #10
The huge, heavy, metallic arm came up again. "We are attempting to make peaceful arrival," the elbow said all on one note. "Please inform others that this is peaceful arrival. We do not have any weapons. Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear. Please cease destruction of self and others. We do not have any weapons. We are nonaggressive unfighting species." (8.56)
This is the longest version of "we come in peace" that we have ever heard. Why do you think humanity assumed that these peaceful aliens were violent? Are humans just predisposed to interpret everything in terms of violence? Why?
Quote #11
People didn't sit home and watch TV much any more; Fed-peep television was on only two hours a day. The modern way of life was togetherness. This was Thursday; it would be the hand-to-hands, the biggest attraction of the week except for Saturday night football. More athletes actually got killed in the hand-to-hands, but they lacked the dramatic, cathartic aspects of football, the sheer carnage when 144 men were involved at once, the drenching of the arena stands with blood. The skill of the single fighters was fine, but lacked the splendid abreactive release of mass killing. (9.33)
Are we the only ones who are creeped out? We guess the Freudian desire for killing people had to be fulfilled in some way, so people went back to the gladiator days and started watching people kill each other for fun. Yay?