Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lathe of Heaven, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Limits of Utilitarianism
Dreams and the Limitations of Knowledge
Cosmic Balance
Power and Selfishness
Summary
Analysis
Heather Lelache exits Dave’s. Orr stood her up, and she’s livid. Heather turns onto Morrison before remembering that this isn’t the way to the office building of Forman, Esserbeck, and Rutti anymore. She tries a different way but becomes similarly disoriented. She approaches a building on Burnside, but it’s plastered with “Condemned” signs. Heather recalls the odd hypnosis sessions she observed last week and thinks about the many questions she has for “Mr. Either Orr.”
Heather’s directional confusion shows that she’s unconsciously retained a double memory of life before and after the Plague. Heather calling Orr “Mr. Either Orr” is a play on words that refers to Orr’s capacity to retain double memories of reality before and after his effective dreams change it. “Mr. Either Orr” also reflects the balanced centeredness of Orr’s personality: he’s so middle-of-the-road that he’s “either/or.”
Themes
After Orr bails on Heather, she searches for him everywhere, including his flat. She contemplates calling Haber but remembers that Haber can’t know that she and Orr know each other. Heather calls Orr repeatedly that night but gets no answer. As a last resort, Heather rents a car and heads to the Siuslaw National Forest, where Orr leases his cabin.
Heather’s urgent need to talk to Orr is further proof that she knows—if only on an unconscious level—that something curious happened in Haber’s office the other day.
Themes
The moon appears in the darkening sky and fills Heather with dread, reminding her of the Alien invasion. She remembers that the first act of aggression occurred just 10 years after the end of the war in the Near East, when the Aliens attacked the Lunar Base, killing 40 men. Heather mourns “the stupid hatred of the universe.”
That Heather remembers the war in the Near East as having ended 10 years before the Alien invasion shows that she’s internalized the latest world Orr’s dreams have created, which traded global war for interplanetary war. Heather’s lament of “the stupid hatred of the universe” aligns her worldview with Orr’s, insinuating that powerful forces like “hatred,” or violence, or death, are so intrinsically “of the universe” that they cannot be eliminated without radically disrupting the universe’s natural balance.
Themes
Badly maintained roads make Heather’s trip difficult, but she eventually makes it to the leased cabins in the Siuslaw National Forest. She approaches the only cabin with a light on and knocks on the door. Luckily, Orr answers the door, though he looks awful. Orr invites Heather inside and explains that he’s too afraid to dream and hasn’t slept since Saturday. Heather reminds Orr of their missed lunch date yesterday. Orr apologizes and offers Heather some coffee. Heather ponders Orr’s “wholeness,” likening him to “a block of wood not carved.” She admires his immense strength, which is something she hadn’t seen a lot of growing up—she always had to be the strong person people leaned on.
Orr’s ragged state reflects the inadequacy of his attempt to control his dreams by suppressing them: if he looks so awful after only a few days, it’s clear that he can’t go on this way forever. Heather’s comparison of Orr to “a block of wood not carved” is an allusion to the novel’s title, since a lathe is a machine that can be used to carve materials like wood. It’s also likely an allusion to the Taoist principle of P’u or “the uncarved block,” a reference to a thing’s natural state of simplicity. Heather likens Orr to a solid block of material not yet shaped and diminished by the powerful force of the lathe. In emphasizing Orr’s “wholeness,” Heather suggests that escaping Haber’s manipulative influence restores Orr’s inner balance.
Themes
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Heather removes her coat and accepts Orr’s ridiculously caffeinated cup of coffee. She remembers that she has a bottle of brandy in the car and brings it inside. Orr accepts a small shot, and Heather pours some brandy into her coffee. Orr explains that he’s dozed off a few times since coming to the cabin, though always in a seated position, which makes it harder to dream. Orr knows he can’t keep this up forever, but he needed to escape Haber. He wonders if the only way to stop his effective dreams is to kill himself, though he doesn’t want that.
Orr acknowledges that suppressing his dreams is an inadequate, temporary solution to dealing with his effective dreams. The fact that he entertains suicide as a plausible (albeit undesirable) alternative reflects the strength of his moral conviction: he’s so convinced that it’s wrong to interfere with fate that he’d rather kill himself than allow his effective dreams to continue disrupting the universe’s natural balance.
Themes
Orr asks Heather what happened to her in Haber’s office on Friday. Heather admits that she has a double memory like Orr. It’s hard for her to keep things straight now: she shows Orr a bruise on her forehead from when she walked into a wall a few days ago.
Unlike Haber, Heather doesn’t attempt to wield power over Orr by denying her awareness of a double memory. Heather’s honesty allows Orr to take comfort in the fact that his awareness of competing alternate universes is real and not a figment of his imagination.
Themes
Orr changes the subject to the war in the Near East. Heather tells Orr that her husband died in the war nearly seven years ago: three days before it was called off, and one day before the Aliens attacked the Moon base. Orr feels guilty about any possible role his dreams could’ve played in Heather’s husband’s death, but she insists that it wasn’t his fault.
Heather’s refusal to blame Orr for her husband’s death shows that Orr and Heather’s relationship is built on compassion, unlike Orr’s relationship with Haber, which is built on deceit and manipulation.
Themes
Heather’s voice grows quiet as she realizes that she remembers her husband dying twice: once right before the ceasefire, and once much earlier. She pauses. In her memory of the earlier death, the war “was still going on right now,” and “there weren’t any Aliens.” Heather asks Orr if the Aliens were his creation, and he fills her in on his subconscious’s insane response to Haber’s hypnosuggestion to “dream about peace.” Heather tells Orr that he didn’t create the Aliens on his own: Haber and the Augmentor had coerced him into doing it. Orr has been addressing Heather as Miss Lelache up to this point, and she tells him to call her Heather. Orr tells her she has a pretty name.
Heather’s double memory rises from unconsciousness to consciousness when she realizes she has two memories of her husband’s death. This is a big moment for both characters. Their shared understanding of reality creates a closeness which is particularly special for Orr, whose awareness of multiple realities normally alienates and disempowers him.
Themes
Orr talks a bit about Haber’s constant condescension and manipulation, but there’s no “bitterness” or “resentment” in his words, and Heather admires him for it. She wonders if there are other people like Orr in the world.
Orr’s refusal to be bitter or resentful reflects his centered, even-keeled personality. Heather regards Orr’s passivity as a sign of strength, which is very unlike Haber, who considers it a weakness; Heather’s appreciation for Orr’s centeredness shows that she embraces the Taoist ideals Orr adheres to as opposed to the Utilitarian ethics espoused by Haber.
Themes
Orr and Heather assess Orr’s options for dealing with Orr’s effective dreams and Haber’s abuse of them. Heather says Orr doesn’t have any legal case against Haber: he’s not really doing anything illegal, he’s an important Government figure, and Orr’s a mental patient. She asks Orr if he can take tranquilizers to prevent effective dreams, but Orr explains that he doesn’t have a Pharm Card while he’s on VTT, and Haber won’t prescribe him any.
As a mental patient, Orr didn’t have much power or credibility in the first place, but he has even less agency in the new world Haber has strategically created in his VTT sessions with Orr.
Themes
Suddenly, Heather has a grand idea: she can hypnotize Orr and feed him a hypnosuggestion to have an effective dream about Haber that makes him more invested in curing Orr and less invested in ruling the world. Orr claims that he’s resistant to hypnosis, but Heather argues that it’s really Haber he is resistant to, not hypnosis itself. Orr agrees to give Heather’s idea a try.
Given the number of pages left in the novel, it’s safe to assume that Heather’s brilliant plan is going to backfire in one way or another. Heather’s speculation that Orr might respond better to her hypnotic instruction than Haber’s suggests that mutual cooperation can be more powerful than coercion.
Themes
Before they begin their hypnosis session, Orr and Heather share a meal. Heather tells Orr about her upbringing in Portland. Her dad was Black and her mom was white. They’d met at a political rally, when protests were still legal, and gotten married, though they didn’t stay that way for long. After Heather’s dad left, her mom fell apart. Heather’s mom made pottery and worked odd jobs to get by the best she could, she become increasingly dependent on drugs, and she died after using a dirty needle in the post-Plague years. Heather’s mom’s estranged, affluent family took her in, and she thinks they see her as their “token negro.” She tells Orr that her experiences as a biracial person leave her uncertain about her own identity, as she feels she’s neither Black nor white. Orr tells Heather that she’s brown: the color of the earth.
Heather and Orr might feel such a strong mutual connection because they both feel pulled in different directions. Orr feels torn between multiple realities, and Heather feels torn between identifying as Black or white. Heather’s and Orr’s internal struggles also seem to be exacerbated by their shared belief that these competing inner forces contradict rather than complement each other. Orr’s positive observation about Heather’s skin being the color of the earth suggests that he’s more open to embracing the idea that opposite forces have an interconnected, complementary relationship. Here, Orr disputes Heather’s claim that her biracial identity makes her neither Black nor white, arguing instead that these opposite identities converge and complement each other to form something beautiful: something of the earth.
Themes
Heather asks Orr about his childhood. Orr tells her he has more childhoods than he can keep track of. They compare the way their current world is better than the previous iterations—they’re less malnourished now, for example—and Heather suggests that Orr’s dreams might be a new kind of evolution, making things a little better or stronger with each new continuum. She reasons that this alone should absolve him of his guilt.
When Orr says he has more childhoods than he can keep track of, he’s referring to the multiple childhoods his effective dreams have created for him. Heather’s suggestion that Orr’s dreams might be some kind of evolutionary force absolves Orr of responsibility by reframing his effective dreams as part of a larger, interconnected system.
Themes
Uninhibited by the brandy, Orr asks Heather if she remembers when the world ended in April 1998. Heather doesn’t, though she also knows she must remember it, which frightens her. Orr describes the state of the world before it was destroyed. Only a handful of European countries had begun to address food scarcity, climate change, and overpopulation early enough, in the 1970s, so by the time the 1980s rolled around, most places were on the verge of collapse. The U.S.’s Constitution was rewritten in 1984, at which point the country became a police state, and it failed almost immediately. Schools closed. There wasn’t a Plague, but there were smaller epidemics. Most people died of starvation. The war in the Near East began in 1993.
The problems that plagued the world prior to April 1998—overpopulation, climate change, and food scarcity—are extreme versions of many of the problems that plagued the world before Haber began using Orr’s dreams to improve humanity’s quality of life on earth. Orr’s claim that the world ended in 1998 implies that the world that exists now is a version of reality that he restored with his dreams. There must be some underlying reason that Orr needs to be intoxicated to talk about this moment in history. Perhaps he’s conflicted about the role he played in saving a world that was beyond saving—in deciding that humanity deserved another chance.
Themes
Orr pauses. He remembers trying to leave Portland on foot. He’d been sick and paused to rest on some cement steps in front of a row of burnt, destroyed houses. There were dandelions sprouting through cracks in the stairs. Orr couldn’t get up, and he was suffering from delirium, fading in and out of consciousness. He’d notice the dandelions each time he came to, and they’d remind him that he and the rest of the world were dying. After that, Orr fell asleep. He dreamt about being home, and when he woke up, everything was fine, though he wasn’t in his original home. Orr wishes he couldn’t remember the end of the world. He tries to convince himself that it was just a dream, but he knows it isn’t: nothing is real. He says, “there is nothing left. Nothing but dreams.” Heather believes in Orr completely.
The dandelions and cement blocks Orr describes here also exist in the scene in Chapter 1 that immediately precedes Orr being caught abusing drugs. This implies that the scene from Chapter 1 depicts April 1998, or Orr’s memory or dream of it. Orr’s sorrowful remark about there being “nothing left. Nothing but dreams,” reveals the root cause of his dislike and distrust of his effective dreams: he doesn’t believe that they’re real. To Orr, the dying world he observed in 1998 is more real than any subsequent, restored world his dreams can create; he hates his dreams because they are a lie, and he resents the role his unconscious plays in perpetuating that lie.
Themes
Heather promises Orr that he wouldn’t be capable of doing anything he wasn’t meant to: that everything that’s happened was meant to be. She cradles him in her arms and urges him to stay awake long enough for her to hypnotize him. Heather sits Orr on the cot and instructs him to look into the flame of his lamp. Once Orr is in a trance, she tells him to have an effective dream in which Haber is honest and no longer power-hungry, and in which the Aliens are no longer on the Moon.
Heather’s interpretation of Orr’s dreams challenges his position that his dreams disrupt the universe’s natural balance. Instead, she believes that the existence of Orr’s dreams within the larger universe means that they actually complement and maintain the universe’s natural rhythm rather than disrupt it. Given Orr’s habit of interpreting hypnotic instructions in such a way that his dreams replace one form of suffering with a different, equally awful form of suffering, it’s reasonable to predict that Orr will respond to Heather’s instructions to dream the Aliens away from the moon by transplanting them elsewhere…perhaps somewhere closer to home, such as the earth itself.
Themes
Heather lets Orr sleep. To pass the time, she reads a novel about Russia during the Plague Years. Later on, she props open the front door and listens to the roaring creek. In the distance, she hears an eerie sound, like children singing. Heather shuts the door and reads some more before lying down beside Orr, gazing lovingly at his sleeping figure.
The novel uses water to symbolize cosmic balance and living in accordance with the Tao. Here, the sound of the roaring creek might suggest that the universe is responding with its own complementary force to whatever change Orr’s dream has imposed upon it.
Themes
Heather hardly closes her eyes before a burst of brightness fills the cabin, and the floor beneath her quakes. She hears the ominous moan of distant sirens and shakes Orr awake. He smiles briefly before informing Heather that the Aliens have arrived. Heather realizes Orr has successfully followed her hypnosuggestion “to dream that the Aliens were no longer on the Moon.”
Orr’s unconscious responds to Heather’s hypnotic instruction “to dream that the Aliens were no longer on the Moon” by dreaming the Aliens from the moon to the Earth. This change maintains universal balance in that it ensures that humanity still has a common enemy to band together to fight.
Themes
