The Word for World Is Forest

I was immediately drawn in by the struggles of the indigenous people to the conquering settlers through excellent characters who I cared about. The irony of what the indigenous peoples must do to save themselves runs subtle but tragic throughout the narrative. Given its relevance to our own colonial history and present situation, this simple tale rang through me like a tolling bell.

Though I admire her classic work, The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s The Word For World Is Forest that most lingers in the mind.

Ursula Le Guin worried that the book was too simple and that its portrait of the mad colonialist soldier, Captain Davidson, was too unshaded a vision of militarist evil. Well, perhaps. However, men like Davidson can be found in equally brutal forms in accounts of the European invasion of the Americas or in Roger Casement’s report on the Belgians in the Congo.

But it is the otherworldly Selver who possesses my imagination, that archetypal ‘little… show more.

LeGuin wrote Word for World… as a visceral reaction to the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Here, a human logging expedition to the world of Athshe has enslaved the entirely peaceful and non-violent natives in order to further its aims, and when the natives rise up against their conquerors, the human occupiers send out military expeditions to eradicate them. Even though the natives in the end win their freedom, it’s not without having to abandon their innately non-aggressive nature.

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my favorite writers. The story reminds me a bit of the movie, Avatar, in that a peaceful earth-loving society is being taken over by a group that enslaves them and exploits their resources. I love trees and so the title of this classic attracts me right off. Le Guin explores ideas of how to stand up to oppression and environmental and cultural destruction without losing the most precious parts of ourselves, our communities, and our natural environment.