In A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, there are several key moments that force the protagonist, Ged, to better himself as a wizard in order to continue on with his life. One of the most critical events to his development is his encounter...

Both C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea tackle the idea of the child-protagonists having to go on a type of journey to defeat their respective foes and partaking in a search for their...

In 1969, Ursula K. Le Guin published an extraordinary science-fiction novel, entitled The Left Hand of Darkness, which earned the prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards and changed the scope of the science-fiction genre in and of itself. The novel...

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, describes a utopian world in which there is an absence of gender. The novel takes place in Karhide, where winter is the nation’s only season and its inhabitants are Gethenian’s —...

“Neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand’s touch, changelings in the human cradle, they were no flesh of mine, no friends; no love between us” (229). Genly Ai doesn’t think that he will ever be friends...

In Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, protagonists Estraven and Genly Ai embark on a bleak journey across the Gobrin Glacier only to discover that they will fail without the balance of light and shadows. In response to Estraven falling...

In science fiction, composers challenge traditional perspectives on humanity in order to investigate the way in human form influences power dynamics within texts, which is conveyed through the use of a variety of forms and features in response to...

Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "Sur" lends itself easily to feminist literary criticism. As a fantasy of alternate history about polar exploration, the story tells of nine women arriving at the South Pole over a year before Roald Amundsen's...

Written during separate times of war, Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery” and Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” written in 1974, both chillingly demonstrate the concept of the scapegoat. By definition, the...

Written as an allegory for slavery and the way it affects the people who employ it, Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” questions just how much of an impact living in a society has on one’s willingness to act in ways different...

In the short stories "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "A Party Down at the Square," authors Ursula LeGuin and Ralph Ellison depict desensitized scenes in which communities show an extreme lack of empathy to human beings receiving...

Composers of negative utopic texts utilize their own contexts so that the audiences’ imagination is challenged to recognize flaws of certain governance, religious cultures and the concept of ‘utopia’ itself, subsequently stimulating readers to...

“Goodness restrained has never been a match for badness unrestrained,” writes Umair Haque, contributor to Medium, claiming that being inactively involved in unjustifiable acts is still siding with the tormentor. This claim may be observed in “The...

In The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin utilizes the unique power struggle between George Orr and Dr. Haber to assert that a single person is not capable of addressing all negative aspects of a society. Many individuals may argue that those who...

Scholar Carl Malmgren describes the common science fiction trope of alien encounters as “inevitably broach[ing] the question of the Self and the Other…The reader recuperates this type of fiction by comparing human and alien entities, trying to...

In Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel The Word for World is Forest, the concept of nature is presented in an intriguing and innovative way. The novel considers nature as a commodity, albeit a commodity that has different meanings for each of the people...

Societies attempt to create a world which is beneficial for all, in which all individuals are happy and content. A world like this, however, is hard to attain: People have various conceptions of how a perfect world operates, and how to achieve a...

The landscape in The Dispossessed contributes a great deal in shaping the cultures and characters of both Urras and Anarres. Although meant to be contrasting civilizations, Urras and Anarres are alike in the sense that they both possess highly...

The full title of Le Guin’s 1974 novel reads “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” and proves to be just what the title suggests. This science fiction novel is also a utopia, but not one which serves as “a hopeful prescription for a near perfect...

Ursula K. Le Guin’s cyclical chapter structure in The Dispossessed exemplifies the idea that particular events throughout Shevek’s life and upbringing on Anarres shaped his understanding of later experiences on Urras. Of these events, Shevek’s...