Throughout her work as a novelist, Ursula K. Le Guin revisits the theme of balance. In The Word for World is Forest and The Lathe of Heaven, she brings dreaming into contact with balance as a force that either supports and facilitates a state of equilibrium or undermines and impedes it. The indigenous Athsheans of Word for World achieve psychological and physical balance by participating in a communal dreaming process in which they enter the lucid dream-time state that takes place between dreaming and waking. George Orr, in Lathe, however, fears his personal balance and that of the world are jeopardised by his capacity for “effective dreaming,” an ability that allows him to change “reality.” The ways in which balance is treated in the two novels provide grounds for comparison. This paper will reveal how balance is achieved through dreams for the Athsheans, while George Orr’s balance is threatened by dreams, and how community and threatening external forces play into this difference.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:ecommons.usask.ca:10388/ETD-2014-09-1745 |
| Date | 2014 September 1900 |
| Contributors | Hynes, Peter |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, thesis |
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