UNIVERSITAT DE VALÈNCIA

FACULTAT DE FILOLOGIA, TRADUCCIÓ I COMUNICACIÓ

DEGREE FINAL DISSERTATION

BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

THE FRUIT OF FEAR IS RIPENING. VIOLENCE IN

URSULA K. LE GUIN’S THE WORD FOR WORLD
IS FOREST.

Submitted by Lluís Dalmau Mestre

Supervised by Miguel Martínez López
Academic year: 2021-2022
 Student Statement of Original Authorship

I, Lluís Dalmau Mestre, confirm that this dissertation has been written solely by the undersigned and
contains the work of no other person or persons except where explicitly identified to the contrary.
I also state that said dissertation has not been submitted elsewhere for the fulfilment of any other
qualification.
I make this statement in full knowledge of and understanding that, should it be found to be false, I will
not receive a grade and may face disciplinary proceedings.

Word count (excluding reference list, figures, legends, tables and appendices): 9982

Signature:

Date: 09/06/22

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Abstract
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest deals with human complexity and its relation to
nature, imagination, gender or violence. Science fiction and dystopia help the author to build new
worlds so she can set out the same problems we have on our own planet.
The goal of this dissertation is to analyse the concept of violence in the most inner and profound part
of the human being. We will discover it is not so easy to appeal to non-violence and that there are
different types of violence people can practise and suffer, as also the nature. Humanity and nature form
part of a whole in Le Guin’s universe, and it would have to be in our own.
In a nutshell, the answer is not unique, simple and clear, but it is multiple, complex and a bit opaque.
The solution is not obvious. Nevertheless, we cannot accept the existence of violence, and we have to
lessen it to its minimum with our imagination
Keywords: Violence, Non-violence, Resistance, Suffer, Nature, Dream, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Le
Guin.

Resum
El nom del món és bosc és una novel·la d’Ursula K. Le Guin que tracta sobre la complexitat humana i
la seua relació amb la natura, la imaginació, el gènere o la violència. La ciència ficció i la distòpia
ajuden l’autora a crear nous móns que plantegen els mateixos problemes que els que tenim en el nostre
planeta.
L’objectiu d’aquesta dissertació és analitzar el concepte de violència en la part més profunda i interna
de l’ésser humà. Descobrirem que no és tan senzill recórrer a la no-violència i que n’hi ha diferents
tipus de violència que es poden exercir cap a les persones i també cap a la natura. La humanitat i la
naturalesa formen part d’un tot en l’univers de Le Guin, i també ho hauria de ser en el nostre.
Com a conclusió, veurem que la resposta no és única, simple i clara, sinó que és múltiple, complexa i
un poc opaca. No queda clar quina és la solució a la violència, però no ens hem de conformar a la seua
existència, sinó que hem de reduir-la fins el que puguem amb la nostra imaginació.

Paraules Clau: Violència, No-violència, Resistència, Patiment, Natura, Somni, Distòpia, Ciència
Ficció, Le Guin.

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Resumen
El nombre del mundo es bosque es una novela de Ursula K. Le Guin que trata sobre la complejidad
humana y su relación con la naturaleza, la imaginación, el género o la violencia. La ciencia ficción y la
distopía ayudan a la autora a crear nuevos mundos que plantean los mismos problemas que tenemos en
nuestro planeta.
El objetivo de esta disertación es analizar el concepto de violencia en la parte más profunda y interna
del ser humano. Descubriremos que no es tan sencillo recurrir a la no-violencia y que hay diferentes
tipos de violencia que se pueden ejercer hacia las personas y también hacia la naturaleza. La
humanidad y la naturaleza forman parte de un todo en el universo de Le Guin, y también lo tendría que
ser en el nuestro.
Para concluir, veremos que la respuesta no es única, simple y clara, sino que es múltiple, compleja y
un poco opaca. No queda clara cuál es la solución a la violencia, pero no nos tenemos que conformar
con su existencia, sino que tenemos que reducirla hasta donde podamos con nuestra imaginación.

Palabras Clave: Violencia, No-violencia, Resistencia, Sufrimiento, Naturaleza, Sueño, Distopía,

Ciencia Ficción, Le Guin.

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INDEX

1. Introduction ……………………………………………………… 6
2. Dystopia ……………………………………………………… 7
3. Ursula K. Le Guin, a versatile writer…………………………… 10
4. The Word for World is Forest ………………………………….. 11
4.1. Forest, dream-time and violence …………………………… 12
4.2. Characterization ……………………………………………….. 15
5. Violence in The Word for World is Forest ……………………. 16
5.1. On violence ………………………………………………………. 17
5.2. Violence within the narrative …………………………………. 18
5.3. Otherness ……………………………………………………… 19
5.4. Crowd vs leaders ……………………………………………….. 22
5.5. Non-violence ……………………………………………………… 24
6. Conclusion ……………………………………………………… 26
7. References ……………………………………………………… 29

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1. Introduction
"The fruit of fear is ripening" (Le Guin 43). This admonitory statement warns us to shun what
produces more demise and suffering in humankind, violence. It is an inner force that comes from our
inner self or from an external factor. It is limited by the shape of our bodies. The body is a boundary by
which you can be depicted and differentiated from the other. Violence can be inflicted on your own
self or on another. It can be used by an individual or collectively. Description, manipulation and
narrativity about the other have been used to dehumanise and characterize, to exert power on the other
(a physical and a narrative one). Leaders use the crowds to transform society, to use the power of the
mass and change reality. They are a kind of gods that change the storytelling. Violence is not only used
against other humans, but against nature. The environment in The Word for World is Forest is not only
a landscape, it is an acting role in the novel, who suffers, inflicts pain and deserves love and respect.
This profound relationship with the flora and fauna is increased by the use of dream-time. It will help
to establish better connections with nature and as a mechanism to defeat violence. Nevertheless, the
process of unbearable struggle will increase constantly and it will seem there is no way of returning.
The ripening will progress and there is not a Deux ex machina to plead. Violence will be a devastating
force, a black hole destroying all and sundry.

Le Guin’s dystopia lends a hand to imagining another world where contentions are faced
differently, without a massacre. Brutality unbinds brutality, and this author toys with the idea of a
better world. As a dystopia, the story is about a group of humans on a random planet of the universe,
ones fighting for their land, autonomy and survival and others for the resources and monopolisation of
the whole planet. These antagonists’ visions are confronted. However, Le Guin is not refusing the
quarrel, the hustle and bustle produced by the distinct opinions, but she is trying to imagine how can
we live without this human brutality. This is the main point of this dissertation. This novel speaks
about goodness and meanness to the highest extent. It leads to some questions: can we fight meanness
with more meanness? Can tolerance be tolerant to intolerance? How can symbiosis and peacefulness
resist the rampant violence that is springing up? This perspective will aid in determining whether
human warmonger attitudes can be avoided even when individuals are at odds.

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 At the end of the book, Le Guin underscores that violence will remain once introduced to one’s
inner self. The environment of this book and its reflection on violence will be examined in this
discussion. This topic has been chosen because of its universality and relevance. Le Guin is displaying
the victory in war, the defeat in using violence. It is a very interesting point, in which victory is not
useful anymore but the triumph is obtained. In a society where there was no violence, wickedness has
been inserted. Violence has beaten harmony, even the existence of a system against it. This dissertation
is interested in the constant warning of our worst inner actions, and the way we can face them. The
author sets out the problem but she does not suggest a triumphant solution. Nevertheless, she considers
dreaming a palliative that can be used. Analysing these facts will be the main aim of this essay, and we
will try to go further, looking forward to a solution or multiple of them. Moreover, there will be
themes treated briefly due to the extension of this study, such as imprisonment as a way of human
correction that can be studied in other dissertations.
All in all, science fiction constructs imaginaries and creates new realities. Le Guin helps us, not to
imagine a rare world with different kinds of human races, but to conceive a world where we can lay
out our problems without suffering defeat. Imagining is the supreme weapon we have to combat, to
face conflicts more peaceably.

2. Dystopia
This novel displays two different societies fighting to the last and there is no possibility to
escape. That is why it is a dystopia. Constant anxiety when there is no possibility to flee, to find an
alternative. Some people are recalling what is going to happen but no one can prevent it. Sophocles
eloquently defines the function of dystopia in the following text:
Ah me, what countless woes are mine!
All our host is in decline;
Weaponless my spirit lies.
Earth her gracious fruit denies;
Women wail in barren throes;
Life on life downstriken goes,
Swifter than the wind bird’s
flight, Swifter than the Fire-God’s
might,

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 To the westering shores of Night. (Sophocles 14; sc.1)

This excerpt acts as a chorus that seeks to warn people to shun the tragedy. Nevertheless, no
matter how loud it is declared, the problem will remain. "In Greek tragedy, lament seems to follow
rage and usually belated. But sometimes there is a chorus, some anonymous group of people gathering
and chanting in the face of propulsive rage, who lament in advance, mourning as soon as they see it
coming." (Butler 102)
We must not forget that literature is inherently entertaining. Thus, it serves as the perfect
medium to captivate the disturbing images of the Apocalypse, the universal flooding or biblical
landscapes where ruin, death and destruction present a universal decay. (Claeys, 3) The concept of
Apocalypse has been related to dystopia, but dystopia occurs before and after an Apocalypse. (Claeys
270) Despite being coined in 1747, the term became meaningful in the late twentieth century with a
great variety within the genre. (Claeys 275)
This raises the question of how the difference between utopia and dystopia can be teased apart.
They are in an intimate relationship. Both "conceive of ideal harmonious groups which privilege close
connections between individuals and the unity and interdependence they exhibit." (Claeys 7-8) The
central issue here is knowing if they include or exclude, in this exchange of interests. The collectivistic
dystopia has two ways of understanding society: "internal, where coercion pervades the privileged
main group; and external, where coercion defines the relationship with outsiders as a means of
upholding the main group, who are, however, free of most of the repression inflicted upon outsiders."
(Claeys 8) A utopia is a society which tries to exclude people from their paradise whereas a dystopia is
a society in which everyone is suffering Dante’s hell and they cannot flee from it.
Climate change, overpopulation, technology, political instability, and more have contributed to
the common belief that we are living in a dystopian time. This impression is being translated to a
proliferation of dystopian literature which is exploring what final we will have, what problems we
confront and we will face and if there is any solution or if we have to wait until the Apocalypse comes.
The truth is that "we may view ourselves as a mentally fragile species today. But many of us have far
less to fear than our ancestors." (Claeys 9) However, we live in a psychological time where the truth
has been lost within the perspectivism and we need something to believe. Migration, ecologism and
democracy are such difficult concepts that we have to avoid them in our daily life to continue with our

8
lives or to stop our actions and respond in defence of our ideals. We live in a "constant mental
anxiety." (Claeys 9) We only have to see that there are new psychological problems such as eco-
anxiety which is defined by Andrew Gregory in The Guardian as "the chronic fear of environmental
doom." (Gregory para. 2)
Regardless of the dominant individualism, problems nowadays need collective action. Whether
these communal movements work for good or for bad, it is a different thing but it does not negate its
strength. We have to take into account that "when individuals feel en masse, they express these fears
differently, and the numbers involved usually magnify and intensify their feelings." (Claeys 16) This
coup de force of people can be used for good, such as the fight for civil rights, the defence of the
democracy, or for the protection of the land; or for bad, to disrupt the U.S Capitol or to defend ideas
against other people’s rights. Moreover, if you live in a war, the importance of the mass is more
decisive. "Societies at war naturally generate hate: «If you don’t hate enough, you’re going to be
beaten»". This was written by an observer of the Pacific war in 1945. All kinds of people can be
identified as an adversary (women, blacks, Muslims, Jews) but the imaginary enemy, or the enemy
created in one’s mind, poses the greatest threat to them all. (Claeys 17)
This imaginary enemy needs a faithful mass guided by a leader. "Personal loyalty is easier to
grasp than group loyalty. (…) Leaders thus provide the second form of empowerment in the group
through a process we can call vertical vicarious enhancement." (Claeys 46) Here, the individuals are
identified with the heroic attributes of the hero. People feel the leader’s traits, such as strength,
valour, passion, etc., as something that belongs to their own. (Claeys 46) This reality can be
exemplified by imagining a man sitting on the sofa, drinking a beer while saying: "We have won the
World Cup." In this statement, he assumes all the qualities of the hero and he is so blind that he will
not be able to criticize the leader. Moreover, it is important to define realist fiction and fantasy. The
former describes cases where "the story is purely fiction but there is nothing inherently contradictory
that could prevent the narrative from actually happening in the real world." (Bernardo and Murphy 14)
The latter, on the other hand, "relies on things like magic, weaving spells, and casting curses."
(Bernardo and Murphy 14) The interesting thing about this book is that it could have not happened
but nothing prevents us to have similar events. If we simulate living within an ecological disaster,
the reader can become more aware of what is happening in real life.

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 The Word for World is Forest, is a dystopian written in 1972, worried about dehumanisation,
freedom and the survival of the species. It aims "at avoiding the horrors imminent in this present: «the
mission is to motivate the reader, not merely to horrify.»" (Claeys 283) The terrible happening, in this
case, is the aspiration to extinguish a whole race of humans and break down the whole ecosystem of
the planet Athshe. This is a dystopian novel, not a tract, which makes the reader feel through the
subjective experience of its characters. Furthermore, it is an external dystopia, because there are the
people from planet Athshe the ones who suffer coercion and repression, treated as outsiders as if they
have to be banished from that planet. Moreover, this apocalyptical context explores how mentally
fragile is humanity nowadays and the necessity of a collective action guided by a leader to feel safe.
When obstacles come, it is easier to be under the umbrella of a leader, protected and blurred by the
mass. Individuality is banished and collectivism musters strength. It is a realistic fiction making us
aware of the challenges of the present and the future. Le Guin is inviting us to think about power, life,
nature, love, and our existence.

3. Ursula K. Le Guin, a versatile writer

Ursula K. Le Guin is a multifaceted writer. She has flaunted her proficiency in novels, poems,
short stories, essays and translations of various texts. "At their heart, both science fiction and fantasy
are fictions that rely heavily on world-building; in other words, both genres" have to be described in
depth because they are strange, unconnected to our reality. (Bernardo and Murphy 2)
Her father, Alfred L. Kroeber, was a well-known anthropologist who studied American Indian
ethnology. Certainly, the science of anthropology is another way of world-building, of creating new
realities based on the exploration of ancient societies and their relationship with their environment. Le
Guin, for instance, dug up this transcending pattern where humans and nature have to comprehend the
whole ecosystem. In the case of her mother’s influence, Theodora Kroeber was also an
anthropologist but she was renowned for her writing, such as Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the
Last Wild Indian in North America, "a biography of the last Yani Indian, who was found in 1911
hiding in California slaughterhouse and suffering from dehydration and malnourishment." (Bernardo
and Murphy 2) It is perceived Le Guin’s background was well substantiated by her parents’ careers.
Literature and archaeology will support her to develop her writing style.
Le Guin’s science fiction is characterized by a delightful megatext with the Hainish sequence,

10
where we can find The Word for World is Forest. All the novels’ stories are connected by a general
history of "the Hain, an initial race that has spread their seed across the galaxy and created a variety of
offshoot human species with cultural variations and at times radically different ethnographic histories."
(Bernardo and Murphy 19) This is an alternative theory of the evolution that Darwin established in the
XIX century, but with an interstellar origin. Space is a wilderness for Le Guin, where we can
investigate and where new realities can be seen to reflect on our own ones. Ultimately, reality fades out
into fiction showing we are all the same.
One of her most celebrated novels is The Dispossessed, which also has two different worlds, one
anarchist and the other opposed, where she reflects on the use of an "openly hierarchical" power to "be
effective and oppressive". It is "about the dangers of informal power, and how revolutionary dogma
can rhetorically mask it." (Cross 1129) As The Word for World is Forest, it considers different features
of the use of power and it also shows the case of a "society imperiled even as it succeeds" (Cross 1330)
Summing up, "le Guin describes her early style as «fairy tales in space suits.» Aside from this
humorous judgment of her work, it also demonstrates" her "unwillingness to be restricted to rigid
genres; as a result, Le Guin has made a career writing beyond literary borders." (Bernardo and Murphy
3) Le Guin creates tales that concern humanity and nature, in a place where they do not coexist in
reality. It helps her to make us aware of our position on violence, culture, nature, feminism, and all the
features that make us humans.

4. The Word for World is Forest

"It’s often presented as a key example of the growing ecological commitment of SFF authors in
the 1970s as the environmentalist movement got into full swing. The novella is a blunt
condemnation of colonialism that emphasizes how a regime of resource extraction wreaks
havoc on indigenous cultures, not only physically and mentally, but culturally as well, causing
a once-peaceful culture to adopt violence as a means of resistance." (Guynes para. 2)

Colonialism is a synonym for violence. "The history of colonization which means one country’s
intruding another country in order to use its natural resources traces back to earlier times in history and
(...) shows there will be no difference in the future." (Ateş 206) When colonized, slaves have been
neglected their humanity and they couldn’t find a way to improve their lives. However, there will be a
day when slaves could not resist more, and they will want to achieve all. All these actions are practised

11
with violence, as the inner engine to transform reality. No one can escape from the growing rampage.
This is seen through the prism of characters that show their perception of the conflict.
This is a book about three main characters: Selver, Lyubov and Davidson within a context of
"invasion, exploitation and oppression, and on the necessity and cost of resistance." (Le Guin 1) The
three of them have different ways to face this situation. The context is located some centuries in the
future on the planet of the Athshe. The political system has not changed a lot but degraded over time.
Capitalism continues in its greatest expression, imperialism or interstellar imperialism and racism are
still evident not among the homo sapiens in its maxim expression but among the different humans in
the universe that descend from the Hainish. In this sense, the Athshe are a kind of humans that are
"gentle, tribal, matriarchal, and small, they are easy prey. Just strong enough to be slaves, too weak to
be a threat, their likely fate is extinction." (Le Guin 1) Furthermore, if there is a war depicted in a
novel, it would usually have a relation with other existing conflicts, we can live them vicariously. In
this sense, we can think of the war of Vietnam, because it was happening while Le Guin was writing
the book but it can represent any oppression suffered through history, colonialism, slavery, or any kind
of story that resembles David versus Goliath. In addition, we can see parallelism with the ecological
problems we confront nowadays. In this case, humans have ecologically destroyed the Earth and they
need to predate other planets to survive, they act in the same way as a virus. In this sense, Le Guin is
tricking the reader "into looking down by making us feel as if we are looking up, searching for other
planets which are never really other planets, but our own, a mirror into which one looks and finds
perhaps not Earth, but reflections of and on Earth." (Savi 535) On the other hand, the Athshe live in
harmony with nature, in complete symbiosis. They are pacific, they do not know how to face violence
and they do not have "a White Messiah or even any aid from outsiders." (Barnhill 496)
Moreover, in a war, you try to dehumanize or adapt your form to define the other. In this
sense, humans from the planet earth are called yumens, and the humans from the planet Athshe are
called creechies, in a pejorative way. In the case of Selver, it is called Sam for the humans of the planet
Earth and for Captain Davidson he is only Scarface. To clarify, we will use more objective terms such
as Terrans (humans from the planet Earth) and Athsheans (humans from the planet Athshe). These
terms were magisterially used by Le Guin because in each chapter you can perceive the different
conceptions of the world the two sides have.

4.1. Forest, dream-time and violence

This title presents the three main aspects of the novel. The word forest transcends its original

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meaning to be more spiritual, something related to your own self, your home. When Terrans cut down
the trees, they are cutting down the world of the Athsheans. The roots of the trees are their houses, the
Terrans are devastating entire cities. The forest is also a mysterious entity, almost religious. As Charles
Marlow in Heart of Darkness navigates throw the river Congo, in the forest it appears a space not
controlled by Terrans. If you do not control a place, you fear it, and that is why Terrans need to cut
down the trees, to have a free space to control. "No way was clear, no light unbroken, in the forest.
Into wind, water, sunlight, starlight, there was always entered leaf and branch, bole and root, the
shadowy, the complex. (Le Guin 27)
The forest is what protects the Athsheans from the Terrans, as in the Vietnam war. "Only a solid
roof kept the rain off you, or else the forest. The damn forest was so thick it kept out the storms". For
the Athsheans the forest is the whole, it is their home, it is their protection, and it is part of
themselves. The Word for World is Forest. It is "a real Eden". (Le Guin 13) If Terrans want to set the
forest on fire, it will rain and the damage will be little. They do not even have a word for desert, they
say a dry beach. The exuberance of nature is always present. They live in a simple but respectful way
with nature, with complete symbiosis:
The timber houses were three-quarters sunk, fitted in among tree-roots like badger’s sets. The
beam roofs were mounded over with a thatch of small branches, pinestraw, reeds, earthmould. (...) Yet
the voices calling here and there and the babble of women bathing or children playing down by the
stream, were not so loud as the morning bird-song and insect-drone and under- noise of the living
forest of which the town was one element. (Le Guin 38)

Terrans on the other side destroyed a piece of forest and called it the New Tahiti Colony. For
them, nature is treated "as an endless resource presenting materials for" their "goals". Nature is used to
be "turned into commodities and given importance in accordance with the market value they possess"
(Ateş 206) Le Guin is reminding us of what have we done with our planet. In the novel, there is no
more planet Earth to rape and Le Guin describes previous examples of human deforestation: "it might
have been in Idaho in 1950, this clearing. Or Kentucky in 1830. Or Gaul in 50 B.C." (Le Guin 17) She
raises awareness of the impact we have on earth. The past, history, is always an incentive to reflect on
society. For good or for bad. Terrans want to destroy history, as in Orwell’s 1984, to predate as they
can. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that history has not always been used for good. In
Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert tries to justify his paedophilia through history:
"Mariage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East

13
 Indian Provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds.
After all, Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, (...) And when Petrarch
fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was a fair-haired nymphet of twelve. (...) Virginia was
not quite fourteen when Harry Edgar possessed her." (Nabokov 46)

As we can see, the evil always finds his path to justification. It is said that those who do not
learn history are doomed to repeat it. We can see that sometimes history is the main motor to justify
the greatest atrocities as the extermination of a collective or the destruction of nature.
Another feature that differentiates Terrans from the Athsheans is the dream-time and the world
time. For the Athsheans the dream-time is a spring of reality that Terrans do not have. They use it to
know what to do, to take distance from themselves and act, it evades them and it helps them to avoid
violence. Due to the dream-time, Athsheans adults only need to sleep two hours a day. Terrans dream
as Athshean children, they are not able to see. The only form of evasion that Terrans have is the use of
drugs or sex (in this case, arrangements for "hygienic homosexuality" or the use of the new shipload of
women, of breeding females for the New Tahiti Colony). The following excerpt will define the
Athsheans’ surprise, analysing how the Terrans dream, the need they have for drugs and their way of
comprehending society:
But they only dream in sleep, you said; if they want to dream waking they take poisons so that
the dreams go out of control, you said! How can people be any madder? They don’t know the
dream-time from the world-time, any more than a baby does. Maybe when they kill a tree they
think it will come alive again! (...)
No, they understand death very well... Certainly they don’t see as we do, but they know more
and understand more about certain things than we do. (Le Guin 40-41)

Terrans have their intelligence to the service of power, while Athsheans use their intelligence to
the service of nature, even their nature because they are part of it. Terrans conceive it as an enemy to
combat.
The crueller the war will be, the less useful their dream-time system for Athsheans will be.
Selver, the Athshean main character, will not be able to sleep for more than four days and will not
dream for longer than that. He is unable to keep up with his way of being due to the war. Terrans,
instead, will need to use drugs to survive the forest and the war. From the Athsheans perspective, they
will poison themselves with maryjane that was only supposedly used by the loggers but not by the

14
 soldiers "of a tiny outpost marooned on a hostile world." (Le Guin, 114-15)
The third point is violence. This is the main topic of this study. We will treat this theme more
profusely in the following sections of this research. We will study the possibilities of a non-violent
society, the non-violence resistance, the spread of violence by the Terrans as a fruit that is ripening or
the need for a new Messiah to change things. As in The Leopard of Tomasi de Lampedusa, "if we want
things to stay as they are, things will have to change." (Lampedusa 31) Athsheans do not want to
change, but they were forced to. In the subsequent lines, we will try to prove the veracity of
Lampedusa’s statement.

4.2. Characterization
The three main characters, Selver, Lyubov and Davidson are the foundation of the narrative.
They are three males involved in a context of wickedness, predation and war. We will see through these
three characters’ different positions towards the conflict.
Selver. To start, we have to define what is a creechie. Selver is a creechie. Humans treat him as a
pet, and they have the power to change his name to Sam or Scarface. A creechie is a kind of human,
with a well-trained body, who is always saying hurry-up-quick, like a mantra. "Creechies never
slept, they just sat and stared." They are "about a metre high" and they have green fur, or white if they
become older. For Terrans, they are tough, they’ve got terrific endurance and they do not feel pain like
the humans from the Earth. (Le Guin 12, 17) It is difficult for Terran to see them smile because they
look from an upper perspective, but they laugh with "queer noise like birds twittering". (Le Guin 24-
25) As we know, they live in the forest, in the rots and they have dream-time as a way of relaxing,
thinking, and understanding the world in a pacific way. For Terrans, they are lazy, they are dumb, they
are treacherous and they do not feel pain. This is a great justification to be tough with them, to hit
them. (Le Guin 18)
Selver is an upright man who has been captivated by Terrans. His city, Estreth in Sornol, was
destroyed (the trees were cut). His wife, Thele, was also captured and raped by Davidson and then she
died. That is why Selver breaks with the nonviolent attitude and quarrels with Davidson. This fight is
the reason why he has a mark on his face and why some Terrans call him Scarface. "The yumens know
me, you see, they know my face; and this frightens me, and those I stay with." (Le Guin 31) For Ebor
Dendep, a Greater Dreamer, "Selver was a god, a changer, a bridge between realities, she believed and
acted. (...) He was what must be done; she saw that I was done." (Le Guin 34) He is also a translator

15
because he "had brought a new word into the language of his people. He had done a new deed. The
word, the deed, murder. Only a god could lead so great a newcomer as Death across the bridge
between worlds." (Le Guin 85) This is a kind of god who brings a new thing, violence, the one who
transforms society. This is Selver.
Secondly, Lyubov is an equidistant Terran. He is a naive character who has gone on an
extraplanetary expedition to study the Athshe planet as a scientist. This is the fight between reason and
feelings. And, as Goya foresaw, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Once he is on the Athshe
planet he cannot stop the predation, the state of war. He has a good relationship with Selver but the
conflict overcomes this friendship. Selver tries to save him but, in the end, he dies accidentally during
a battle. War cannot make the distinction between good or bad Terrans. He is defined by Davidson as
an effeminate guy, like many intellectuals. (Le Guin 21)
Lyubov is the one who studies the behaviour of the Athsheans. This information is useful for
Terrans to fight. Nevertheless, his interest is purely scientific. He studies the Athsheans, nature and
everything he can about this new planet. In the end, his study will be the only positive thing Terrans
will have done and received on this planet, knowledge.
Davidson. Davidson, as Selver, is also a god. He is the main expression of meanness on the
Terran side. He is a "rapist and trigger-happy murderer whose actions against a “creechie” named
Selver bring about the Athshean revolution." (Guynes para. 4) If he would have enough human force to
cut trees, he would have killed all the Athsheans. He tries to burn the forest. Here, he is displaying all
his rage. His attitude seems to say: if I am losing the war, I could not send wood to the planet Earth
and I do not have the support of the Terrans to fight, I will set the forest on fire. Thank goodness, the
rain appears as a Deux ex machina, as another character of this novel.
For Ursula K. Le Guin "neither Lyubov nor Selver is mere Virtue Triumphant; moral and
psychological complexity was salvaged, at least in those characters. But Davidson is, though
not uncomplex, pure; he is purely evil – and I don’t, consciously, believe purely evil people
exist. But my unconscious has other options. It looked into itself and produced, from itself,
Captain Davidson. I do not disclaim him." (Le Guin 8)

5. Violence in The Word for World is Forest

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines violence as "the use of physical force so as to injure,
abuse, damage, or destroy" while the Cambridge dictionary defines violence as "actions or words that
are intended to hurt people." We have recently seen the world divided by Will Smith’s slap at Chris

16
Rock. Slapping is a clear act of violence but other people justify it because of the words of Chris
Rock. Words can also be violent.
Ahluwalia and Miller define violence as "one of the world’s most pressing, yet enduring issues.
From time immemorial, it has been a key theme of religion, social organization, family dynamics, and
politics, and hence a central concern of public policy (...) A universal problem" (...) that "stalks both
macro- and micro-discussions of social and interpersonal relations" (Ahluwalia and Miller 107). The
word "immemorial" make us think if there is an intrinsic relation between being human and being
violent. Le Guin imagines different possibilities that in the end, do not succeed.
The foremost aspect fiction or science fiction can give us is imagination. Le Guin in this text can
imagine a world without violence, and she can imagine how a society without violence can react
against violence. Imagination is the only way to save us, and we do not know, but it might have come
true. Subsequently to the book’s release, she discovered the existence of the Senoi. The Senoi are or
were a culture that used the resource of dream actively and creatively, as the fictional Athsheans do.
"They come out of their dreams with a new song, tool, dance and idea. (...) It appears that the Senoi
have not had a war, or a murder, for several hundred years." As we can see, imagination can create a
world with not such great violence. Despite that, in Senoi’s society, "women are socially inferior." (Le
Guin 8-9)

5.1. On violence
Ahluwalia and Miller present violence as a central problem which belongs to all the social
structures and organizations of humanity. This is a general definition. Nevertheless, this dissertation
tries to analyse whether there are different kinds of violence, looking for a more precise form to study
it.
To commence, we are going to consider some questions by Judith Butler in The Force of
Nonviolence: Fair and unfair violence, "is it always possible to make that distinction?", "Does the
use of violence reduplicate violence, and in directions that cannot always be restrained in advance?",
"Can violence remain a mere instrument or means for taking down the violence – its structure, its
regime – without becoming an end in itself?", "What is the use of violence as a means to achieve
a goal licenses, implicitly or effectively, the use of violence more broadly, thereby bringing more
violence into the world?" (Butler 13-14)
These questions represent a great dilemma that is not easy to be solved. Can we justify Selver’s
violence but not Davidson’s violence? Does Lyubov’s position of no-acting change the course of the

17
events? As mentioned before, in The Leopard they say "if we want things to stay as they are, things
will have to change" (Lampedusa 31). Selver has changed, he has transformed all of his society by
introducing violence to their souls to return at the exact point where Terrans do not exist. Is he
responsible for that or, are the Terrans responsible for his suffering and he has no other option? In this
sense, the only fact we know for truth is that the use of violence has been reduplicated. This is the
main point of this novel. The novel display two different possibilities at the same time: dream-time
pacifism and violence. The use of dream-time as a nonviolent attitude "through mentalization and
perceived morality (…) without suffering perceptions of being less powerful or less efficacious"
(Orazani and Leidner 702). It is an alternative to violence, that does not deny the conflict in human
relations but face it in a more civilized way, and tries to balance the harmony of the different forces.
However, this option will be broken into pieces when the Terran violence puts it all upside down. This
second option is less rational but more effective. It is the fastest way of action and of obtaining power.
The less you think, critique and analyse yourself, the more your success will be. This possibility
uproots the nonviolence process through narrativity.

5.2. Violence within the narrative

To analyse this process of violence, it is necessary to retrace the steps to continue. Athsheans are
a peaceful society that lives in symbiosis with nature. They use the roots of the trees as natural houses
and they use dream-time to be relaxed. They face conflict with a ritualised singing, and if you have a
prone position, the adversary respects the defeat. Afterwards, Terrans appear, destroy some part of the
forest and use the Athsheans as slaves or "Voluntary Autochthonous Labour Personnel" (Le Guin 83).
The work of these Athsheans is to cut down trees so the Terrans can send the wood to the planet Earth.
They are obliged to cut down their own houses, which is their way of understanding the world. At this
point, it becomes necessary to analyse Lyubov’s words:
The Athsheans aren’t incapable of personal violence, that’s never been asserted in any of my
studies of them. Adolescents who haven’t mastered controlled dreaming or competitive singing
do a lot of wrestling and fist-fighting, not all of it good-tempered. But Selver is an adult and an
adept; and his first personal attack on Captain Davidson, which I happened to witness part of,
was pretty certainly an attempt to kill. (…) At the time, I thought that attack an isolated
psychotic incident, resulting from grief and stress, not likely to be repeated. (Le Guin 50)

18
 This excerpt explains the first moment of Athshean’s violence. Athsheans have violence in their
lives but, through culture, they transform it into an art-form. This violent scene is something that we
can naturally justify. If your land is devastated, your people are enslaved and your wife is raped and
killed, you have a justification to act violently. Nevertheless, Selver is breaking the rules of his society,
he is becoming more primitive, as an Athshean adolescent, more Terran. Butler says that this
justification is one of the most popular arguments on the left, which affirms that the violence is already
happening, and we cannot shun it:
"the distance that moral deliberation takes on the question of whether or not to act in a violent
way is a privilege and luxury, betraying something about the power of its own location. In that
view, the consideration of violent action is not a choice, since one is already – and unwillingly –
withing the force field of violence." (Butler 7)

This is what normally occurs to minorities. In this sense, Athsheans are a majority taking into
account the population but not in the sense of the use of violence (the use of it means power). It is
really easy to say "I am a pacifist" in a situation where there is no violence or when you have can avoid
that savagery but, what can we do when you cannot run away. We know that Athsheans face the
conflict with "vocal competing between two males, a lot of howling and whistling; the dominant male
may finally give the other a cuff, but usually they just spend an hour or so trying to outbellow each
other." (Le Guin 52) These acts are art-forms, and the better artist can win the contest. They are not
only a way to release rage and hatred. Athsheans have their own ways and until the moment the
Terrans arrived, they used them. Nevertheless, what can they do when rape, murder and violent assault
come into their lives.

5.3. Otherness
If we believe Athsheans are acting in the name of self-defence, how can we delineate the good
from the bad? Not all Terrans are evil, and we have the example of Lyubov and the women used as
breeders. And, "how is that self delineated from other selves, from history, land, or other defining
relations? (…) There is a sense in which violence is done to another is at once violence done to the
self, but only if the relation between them defines both quite fundamentally." (Butler 8-9)
Jesus Christ enquired "any why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye; and seest not the

19
beam that is in thy own eye?" (Matthew 7:3) Christianism affirms that the other does not exist because
we are all the same, we are sons of God. In that sense, the physical reality is that when you fight
against someone, there is also violence introduced to yourself. To justify this brutality, we need to
create the concept of otherness through language: these people are not like me, they are not people,
they are lazy, they bring conflict and they do not adapt to my way of living. We only have to analyse
their language to understand the dehumanisation: Athshean (creechies), Terran (yumen), Selver (Sam
or Scarface), humanoids, rats, green fur, etc. Terrans are the best at doing this; they need to build up an
imaginary enemy to combat.
In this sense, the truth is that Athsheans started by recognising Terrans as a part of the same
species, but it does not happen the same with the Terrans to the Athsheans. Let’s analyse these two
different excerpts:
Terrans:
(…) slavery never worked. It was uneconomical. (…)
Right, but this isn’t slavery, Ok baby. Slaves are humans. When you raise cows, you call that
slavery? No. And it works. (Le Guin 17)

Athsheans (explained by Lyubov):

Despite the physical differences, they recognised us as members of their species, as men.
However, we have not responded as members of their species should respond. We have ignored
the responses, their rights and obligations of non-violence. We have killed, raped, dispersed,
and enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and cut down their forests. It
wouldn’t be surprising if they’d decided that we are not human. (Le Guin 53)

There is a great difference in attitude among them but once violence starts, there are no
contemplations but devastation. All the breeding women were killed by Athsheans to disrupt the
possibility of reproduction among Terrans and Lyubov who was a bridge between Terrans and
Athsheans passed away. Some Athsheans start to dehumanize Terrans as a way of constructing the
other.
If you talk to your enemy, bring him closer, look at his face, and treat him as an equal, he will
probably be no longer your enemy. Nevertheless, if your enemy is in your mind, you are depicting,
distorting the image of the other. This idea of the distinct is well depicted by Said in Orientalism

20
 concerning Europe and the Other (Orient):
"The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place for Europe’s greatest and richest
and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one
of its deepest and most recurring images to the other. In addition, the Orient has helped to
define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of
this Orient is merely imaginative." (Said, 9-10)
It is an ideological and cultural discourse that defines the other pretending that it is a passive
subject. We, as a group, are going to define you and tell you what are you and what are your flaws. As
we can see it is easy that the force of the group, of the crowd, can be used to misshape the other. The
Athsheans and the Terrans have the same origins, Athsheans are as ancient culture as the Terrans but
these last ones dominate the discourse. In fact, we can know a lot of information about how the
Athsheans live through Lyubov’s voice, a Terran. Wars are not only won by the arms but by the
discourse. Athsheans instead, do not have even a history, they do not capitalize the time:
A human society with an effective war-barrier! What’s the cost, Dr Lyubov?
(…) They’re a static, stable, uniform society. They have no history. Perfectly integrated, and
wholly unprogressive. You might say that like the forest they live in, they’ve attained a climax
state. But I don’t mean to imply that they’re incapable to of adaptation. (Le Guin 52)

And Terrans, in their control of history discredit everything that contradicts the reason to create
brotherhood with Athsheans:
We all came from the same, original, Hainish
stock? That is the scientific theory, I am aware.
Colonel, it is the historic fact.
I am not forced to accept it as a fact. (…) The fact is that these creechies are a metre tall,
they’re covered with green fur, they don’t sleep, and they’re not human beings in my frame of
reference! But you had sexual intercourse with one – this Selver’s wife. Would you have sexual
intercourse with a female animal? (Le Guin 54)

The Athsheans admitted in the beginning Terrans and Athsheans are both human. They can
despise Terrans but by their behaviour not by dehumanizing them. On the other hand, Terrans build up
the concept of the Other, dehumanized, even if science goes against their discourse. They distort

21
 history if it is necessary for their own purposes. In this dialogue, the Terran theory of dehumanising
the Athsheans is ridiculed because Terrans are having sex with Athsheans. With an acid humour, here
the humanity of the Athsheans is questioned. Or they are humans or Terrans are having sex with
animals.

5.4. Crowd vs leaders

Selver and Davidson are the spiritual leaders of their people. They have the power exercised by
their body and the power of the crowd. Some people follow them, others suspect them, and others can
be against them. They have to lead all of them. Nevertheless, once you have thrown the crowd, you
cannot control it.
Some authors present the crowd as an antithesis of "civilization" (Claeys 19) or that individuals
are rational and civilized and crowds are atavistic and primitive. (Claeys 20) Ultimately, "the crowd
becomes our alter ego, our uninhibited self, releasing our subliminal repressed passions, including the
Id’s, supreme fantasy of unrelenting desire and power." (Claeys 27) On the other hand, it can be "the
emerging democracy of the «people» against injustice, hunger and want" or the "collective
consciousness» (…) of «people» becoming «class»". (Claeys 32)
"What most groups offer us, then, is chiefly protection or security. All groups of any size also
aim to create, shape, and sustain a common mentally or «group mind»". (Claeys 40) The larger the
"We" is, the greater is the apparent strength and virtue, the collective spirit of the group or esprit de
corps. (...) By contrast, "I", a mere speck in the cosmos can never hope to muster such powers (except
in the fantasy of the superhero: hence its popularity). (Claeys 43) Davidson and Selver act as heroes
who guide this esprit de corp who needs protection. Athsheans need to be protected from Terrans, but
Terrans are in the middle of nowhere in the universe, with a wooded landscape where nature control
you, and they need a lead to survive.
This process on which the individual pass to the collective is named identity transferral, in which
we "cede part of the individual «I» to the group in return for being empowered by associating with the
greater strength of the collective «We»." That is why this novel is personified in three or four main
characters and most specifically in two of them. Selver and Davidson are like Gods, people with their
individuality cannot achieve anything but by belonging to the group they can show their greatest
expression of themselves. As Claeys says in Dystopia a Natural History, "The most malignant, (...),
stress that while «We» in the abstract (Christians, the People, the Proletariat, etc.) are pure, «I» in the

22
concrete may be sinful and polluted." (Claeys 44)
When Claeys is saying pure, in this case, it will be better to say relentless. There are two main
examples of the group’s acts in the narrative.
A Terran’s attack on Athsheans:

All creechies, caught above-ground with firejelly and burned them, then poured kerosene over the
warren-roofs and roasted the rest. Those that tried to get out got jellied; that was the artistic part,
waiting at the rat-holes for the little rats to come out, letting them think they’d made it, and then
just frying them from the feet up so they made torches. The green fur sizzled like crazy. (...)
Hard up as the men were, they didn’t leave even one of the females alive to rape. They had all
agreed with Davidson beforehand that it was too damn near perversity. Homosexuality was
with other humans, it was normal. These things might be built like human women but they
weren’t human, and it was better to get your kicks from killing them, and stay clean. That had
made good sense to all of them, and they stuck to it. (Le Guin 69)

This fragment gives several clues to follow: the murder of people with fire, the smell of
kerosene and roasted, violence as an art-form (the greatest killers consider themselves as artists),
Athsheans considered as rats, the lack of empathy, rape, justification of homosexuality (which means
that it is not completely normalized) and the word "clean". This is the perfect cocktail in a war. The
brutal acts people must do or even enjoy doing, once they are in a war. This is not an individual act,
but rather a collective one. Butler defends humans have not become crueler, "but technology has
allowed that cruelty to produce greater destruction than before. A war without those weapons would
cause less destruction but would engage no lesser amount of cruelty." (Butler 153) Barbary has always
existed, from ancient history. All our mythological past is based on rape. Weapons contribute to the
perpetuation of violence.
This Terrans’ attack has catalysed a reaction. Cities and towns like Tuntar which "had never
been attacked by the Terrans, had suffered no slave-raids, had not seen the local forest logged or
burned" (Le Guin 74-75) decided to participate in the war.
The Athsheans attack to Terrans:
"No songs were sung that night. There was only shouting and silence. When the flying ships
burned Selver exulted, and tears came into his eyes, but no words into his mouth. He turned
away in silence, the fire thrower heavy in his arms, to lead his group back into the city.

23
 Each group of people from West and North was led by an ex-slave like himself. (…) Most of
the people who came to the attack that night had never seen the yumen city. (…) They had
waited in utter silence in the rainy darkness all around the edges of the city (…) The first
deaths, those of guards, have been silent, accomplished with hunting weapons, noose, knife,
arrow, very quickly, in the dark. The dynamite, stolen earlier in the night from the logging
camp ten miles south was prepared (…) The fires burned huge, and the smell of burning and of
butchering was foul. (…) There was not much noise any more except the noise of fires." (Le
Guin 89-90)

This act of war seems more a grieving and stark one. Terrans have killed for pleasure
sumptuously, but Athsheans are grieving by what they are doing. They are firmly convinced, but they
have not acted like that ever before. They are negating themselves, they do not sing, they do not
dream, they kill. This is the war of David against Goliath, rats against a lion, and we know that many
rats can kill a lion. Athsheans do not comprehend how war affects their lives. In fact, Selver could not
recognize that Lyubov was dead:
Lyubov is my friend, and so not dead.
"You’re children", Gosse said with hatred. "Children, savages. You have no conception of
reality. This is no dream, this is real! You killed Lyubov. He is dead." (Le Guin 97)
Selver cannot understand at the beginning the concept of killing. For him, Lyubov is alive in his
mind, in the dream-world. Terrans are this kind of people that are superficial, boisterous and "are more
protective of their machines than of their bodies" (Le Guin 103) but they know what murder is.

5.5. Non-violence
The end of this story comes with the final encounter between Selver and Davidson. This last one
has lost his crowd, he is in the middle of the forest, he has suffered a helicopter accident and "he felt
groggy". (Le Guin 120) The forest is possessing him; it is dominating human nature as in The Heart of
Darkness. Davidson "turned over on his back and lay with his head tipped back, his eyes shut. His
heart shuttered in his chest." (Le Guin 120) After the entire massacre, with a position of force, this is
the moment when Selver could decide if he wants to kill Davidson or not:
"Do you wish me to kill you now?"
(…) "It’s my choice, is it? (…)

24
 "Well, you have lain all night in the way that means you wished us to let you live; now do you
want to die?"
The pain in his head and stomach, and his hatred for this horrible little freak that talked like
Lyubov and that had got him at its mercy, the pain and the hatred combined and set his belly
churning, so he retched and was nearly sick. He shook with cold and nausea. (...) Pace and spat
in Selver’s face. (...)
Then Selver, with a kind of dancing movement, spat back. And laughed. And made no move to
kill Davidson. (Le Guin 121-122)

Once the slaughtering has been done, Selver has the position to decide. He decides to return
to their traditions, and he did not kill Davidson. He is not a threat anymore. Therefore, Davidson
will be sent to an isolated island where he cannot hurt anybody. Both are gods of death, but they are
just the opposite. Throughout the novel, they have been waiting for a Deux ex machina to save them,
in the case of the Terrans a Machina ex machina (an ansible, a spacecraft with help from the planet
Earth) but nothing has come. They have had to solve the problems by themselves, there is no God to
save anyone. A question that remains is whether Selver’s act of not killing is so merciful enough.
Imprisoning a person alone on an island is not the remedy Davidson needs to improve as a person.
Why does he not learn about the Athsheans techniques of nonviolence? As we know, isolation can be
one of the worst tortures we can suffer nowadays. Angela Davis talking about the prison abolitionist
movement says: "A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more
humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the
prison system". (Davis 103) In this essay, she analyses how can we create a more human system for
people who attack the law or for those who nowadays are in prison only for being on the outskirts of
society. Imagining a good health system, also for poor people, with attention to physical and mental
health, demilitarization of schools, and reconciliation in lieu of retribution or revenge, are some
options that Davis suggests. There is not only one solution but it is multiple.
The dilemma of the use of violence will be always present in any kind of society. How to act
once theviolence has started, before and after. Butler set out the force of nonviolence not because it is a
clear option but because it is the only way to imagine a world without violence. If we cannot imagine a
better world, it would not exist. If we assume the violence, violence has won the match.
"Nonviolence has now to be understood less as a moral position adopted by individuals in

25
 relation to a field of possible action than as a social and political practice undertaken in concert,
culminating in a form of resistance to systematic forms of destruction coupled with a
commitment to world building that honors global interdependency of the kind that embodies
ideals of economic, social, and political freedom and equality." It "does not necessarily emerge
from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and
aggression." (…) "It is an ideal that cannot always be fully honored in the practice."
Nonviolence has "not an absolute principle" and it appears "precisely at the moment when
doing violence seems most justificated and obvious". (…) It is not simply as the absence of
violence, or as the act of refraining from committing violence, but as a sustained commitment,
even a way of rerouting aggression for the purposes to affirm ideals of equality and freedom.
(...) "militant pacifism." (Butler 21-28)

Nonviolence is a collective way of acting, pacifist but aggressive, and it can help to avoid the
greatest conflicts, it helps with David and Goliath’s fight and it is related to the world of the
Athsheans. In the same way, Athsheans were infected by the Terrans violence and war, Terrans (the
representation of ourselves in the narrative) can learn about more pacific ways to face a conflict. We
have to start to see the violence as something mad:
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. (Le Guin 33)

The strangeness and astonishment Athsheans have once they discovered a human can kill a
human is what we have to imitate. Let’s be creative to build a better society. If a vegetarian reads this
last excerpt, he would probably be also against the killing of animals, he is imagining a different
world. We can do exactly the same with violence.

6. Conclusion
From the outset of this novel, the reader perceives different perspectives of a colonizing conflict
to plunge into a sea of feelings, perceptions and thoughts. The colonizing effect overtakes the most
gloomily warmonger period. Even once, the war has been won and Terrans are out of the planet
Athshe, the consequences are present in the heart, culture, land and forest. The invasion has changed

26
the rhythm of time (dream-time and world-time), has spread different possibilities to practice violence
and vengeance, and has demonstrated the importance of controlling the storytelling. Throughout the
novel, different perspectives of the same situation have been displayed, and this exhibits how
important is to convince the other with your discourse. This is a story of the nonviolence failure and
the triumph of a rampant clash. These two different but similar societies do not know how to solve
different quandaries, and as in a dystopian novel, there is no possibility to escape. For the reader’s
relief, there is the chance to cunningly stop reading when feeling anxious.
This is a story where no one is either victorious or overthrown. War makes the victor stupid and
the vanquished resentful. We have studied different processes to make use of violence as the
construction of the dehumanized other and the action of the mass under the influence of their leaders.
Leaders are gods who bring new ideas, and new ways of acting to their people and then the crowd
performs its role. Davidson and Selver are the leaders who try to control their masses. Davidson is not
able to lead all his comrades and Selver organizes better his society but without preventing the
spread of violence. Furthermore, nature always plays a leading role, being eerily affected by these
fights and at the same time, presented as an uncontrolled force capable of changing the destiny.
Davidson has tried to burn the forest, but he has failed because nature has innated collective self-
defence.
The Athsheans and Selver have defeated Davidson by using the same system of the meanness of
the Terrans. They have won but not the troth to their way of being. They have ravaged Terrans by
participating in the war, setting the Terrans settlements on fire and annihilating all Terran women to
avoid their reproduction (a eugenic solution). It has been questioned if there were other possibilities for
the victory and the answer is the use of non-violence. It does not deny the conflict, it has multiple
solutions and not only one, it changes the rhythms in opposition to the blustering wind of violence, it
can be aggressive, and, it always acts collectively. Nevertheless, the solution is unclear. There is a
need for imagination. Through the hand of Le Guin and Butler, we have discovered that there are
different worlds we can imagine. For Le Guin, the introduction of violence to the Athshean inner
essence origins a great beating while Butler does not want to assume the defeat against violence, and
she tries to build up a path of stamina, commitment and imagination.
Drawing to a close, the pessimistic end of the Athshean victory introduces the self-critical
conception of oneself and builds bridges between the past and the present and a better future. It is
impossible to erase the colonizing and war period, but they have to learn from it and reshape

27
other ways of connecting among societies. We only know that there is no one answer for a better
future, but rather multiple of them. This is a give in, the story of the downtrodden who try to rebuild a
just world.

28
References
Primary
Lampedusa, Giuseppe Di. The Leopard. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1960.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Word for World is Forest. London: Orion Publishing Group,
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