Ursula Kroeber Le Guin and her Roots in Anthropology

Ursula K. Le Guin’s parents were Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, two famous anthropologists. Alfred specifically was known for his work at the University of California, Berkeley with Ishi, the last member of the Yana people. Ishi and Alfred developed a close friendship during their time spent together. Theodora notes the reason she is the one who wrote the biography on Ishi’s life was because Alfred found the subject to be too painful to write about. Theodora also began writings months before her daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin, began her own writing career. Le Guin’s fiction can be understood as an investigation of contact between “primitive” peoples living in harmony with the land and a extractive force of modernity; i.e. colonialism. Much of Le Guin’s science fiction has been recognized for its feminist and ecological themes. This blog focuses on the connections between these themes and the anthropological work of her parents, specifically the history and myth of Ishi in, “Ishi in Two Worlds”.

The title Rocannon’s World mirrors Ishi in Two Worlds
Originally written as the short story, “The Dowry of Angyar”, which was then used as the novel’s prologue
“Because lost things are known of in deep places… and gold that came from earth has a way of giving back to the earth. And sometimes the made, they say, returns to the maker” (pg 10). In this quote Semely is talking about the necklace she is trying to recover. However, her sentiments touches on the experiences (living in the caves) and beliefs of the Yana people
“And I’ll bet they can’t do this kind of work anymore, since they’ve been steered to industrial…” (pg. 16).
“When a resounding knock came at his door he said in the strange tongue he would have to speak from now on ‘Come in!'” (pg.22). Rocannon’s character and experience resembles that of Ishi’s own, both are a fish out of water
“The High-Intelligence Life Forms of the planet, of which there were at least three species, all of low technological achievement, they would ignore or enslave or extirpate, whichever was most convenient. For to an aggressive people only technology mattered” (pg. 26),
“Would it not be well to learn a little of the different shapes and minds come inn, and their powers? The League’s policy was too narrow, it led to too much waste…” (pg. )
“At first, to Roannon’s shame as an ethnologist, they all looked alike. As Chinamen had to the Dutch, as Russians had to the Centaurans…” (pg.28).
“‘Trust is on both sides, or neither,’ the iron-crowned Claymen in the center said in the common tongue” (pg.30). The clayfolk and the League have a relationship similar to the Yana and the white settlers.
“First we encouraged them, then suddenly for forty-five years we drop them no messages, discourage their coming, tell them to look after themselves” (pg.30-31).
“…one man’s fate is not important” (pg.31).
“‘…The Fiia have no swords, they have no riches, they have no enemy! Look, his people are all dead…Why would they harm his people?’ ‘To make their power known,’ Rocannon said harshly” (pg.32).
“‘But my part of the darkness is to rule a failling domain alone, to live and live and outlive them all…” (pg.36). Haldre the fair is an Ishi like figure.
“To be sure, there was more intermingling between the two castes, the Angyar and Olgyior, than most Angyar like to admit; there were light-skinned warriors, and gold haired servants” (pg.37).
“…they seemed to have no creeds at all. Yet they were quite credulous. They took spells, curses, and strange powers as matter of fact, and their relation to nature was intensely animistic; but they had no gods” (pg.38).
“Plenot was a little place, ruder even than Tolen, lacking a village of midmen…but poor as it was, Mogien’s confidence that six men could subdue it seemed excessive” (pg.40).
“Swayed by his companion’s genuine courage, he had been ashamed to wear his protective and almost invisible impermasuit for t his fray. Owning armor that could withstand a laser-gun, he might die in this damned hovel from the scratch of a bronze-headed arrow. And he had set off to save a planet, whom he could not even save his own skin” (pg.42-43).
“…he kept seeing in his mind’s eye a different face, bright-haired and dark: Mogien, whom he had come to love as a friend and somewhat son…Nothing came to him from all his earlier life, though he had lived many years on many worlds, lesrned much, done much. It was all burnt away” (pg.50).
“There are tales at home of places where we Olgyior are both lords and servants. Its even said that in old days only we midmen lived in Angien, and were hunters in the forests and had no masters” (pg.53). The character Yahan resembles the Yana people
“They call my people slaves…but I’d rather be a man serving men than a beast hunting beasts, like these” (pg.57).
“‘To see a ‘lord’ toss away a jewel worth a kingdom’s ransom to save a midman’s life…it was wrong, Lord!’ ‘To buy your life with a rock?'” (pg.60).
“A hundred years I’ve lost without living them, between the worlds” (pg.62).
“…Yahan, who was full of joy when he got his hands on a bow again. The creatures out here on the plain almost flew upon the arrows…It looked as if all this immense grassland were void of intelligent life” (pg.64).
“Raho, whose brown hair and skin testified to the attraction one of his grandmothers had exerted on some Angyar nobleman” (pg.65).
“This is a fair country- woods for hunting and hills for herds and heights for fortresses. Yet no men seem to live here now” (pg.67).
“‘Liuar’ he said, the old word Mogien had used to mean both nobles and midmen” (pg.74).
“Though in the flesh clothing they gave him he looked like them, moved and gestured like them, in the group of them he stood absolutely. Was it because as a stranger he could not freely mind speak with them, or was it because he had in his friendship with Rocannon, changed, having become another sort of being, more solitary, more sorrowful, more complete?” (pg.78).
“‘But those are micknames, descriptions…You greet each comer with a nickname…And yet you have no names” (pg.79).
“‘My name given me at birth was Gavarel Rocannon, yet I’ve named myself. And when I see a new kind of tree in this land I ask you…what its name is. It troubles me until I know its name” (pg.79).
“Summoning to his aid the last shreds of common sense, of scientific moderation, of the old life’s rules, Rocannon tried to speak authoritatively” (pg.82).
“Rocannon’s head spun with the impingement of alien thoughts and feelings, a thousand strangers eroded in his skull” (pg.86).
“They came here last winter, many of them riding in great windships, armed with weapons that burn. No one can say what land they come from; there are no tales of them at all…They killed or drove out all the people of eight domains” (pg.89).
“From a window high up in Breygna Tower a soft, dark face also watched, for a long time after it was out of sight and the sun had risen” (pg.91).
“Vows break when names are lsot. You swore your service to Rocannon, on the other side of the mountains. In this land there are no serfs, there is no man named Rocannon” (pg.90).
“What had they to fear, after all, from the Bronze Age aborigines of the little nameless planet?” (pg.92).
“What was one man alone, against a people bent on war?” (pg.94).
“And for that, Raho had died, Iot had died, Mogien had died; for a message that got nowhere. And he was exiled here for the rest of his life, useless, a stranger on an alien world” (pg.94).
“Knowledge in his own flesh of the death of a thousand men all in one moment. Death, death, death over and over and yet all at once in one moment in his one body and brain. And after it, silence” (pg. )