The Limits of Utilitarianism
The Lathe of Heaven takes place in a dystopian future where climate change, overpopulation, food scarcity, and global conflict wreak havoc on the world. Meanwhile, George Orr, a man who possesses the strange ability to have “effective” dreams that change reality, finds himself increasingly at odds with Dr. William Haber, the psychiatrist Orr solicits to cure him of his peculiar condition. While Orr is a passive man who thinks it’s wrong to use…
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Dreams and the Limitations of Knowledge
One of the central conflicts of The Lathe of Heaven is George Orr’s internal struggle to know what is real and what is imagined. At first, it appears that the novel’s baseline reality (from which all Orr’s dreamed alternate realities diverge) is the world where Orr is apprehended for drug abuse and sent to Haber for Volunteer Therapeutic Treatment (VTT). However, it’s later revealed that this reality is itself a dream that Orr willed…
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Cosmic Balance
Taoism, a Chinese philosophical and religious tradition, influences The Lathe of Heaven in several ways. One Taoist idea that figures prominently in the novel is the idea that the universe exists in a state of cosmic balance, wherein every force has a corresponding, balancing counterforce. Many of the novel’s characters struggle with the misconception that their actions have the power to disrupt this balance and force irrevocable changes onto the world. George Orr, the…
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Power and Selfishness
In The Lathe of Heaven, any attempt to exert power over others eventually has corrupting results. When Haber tries to manipulate Orr’s effective dreams to uplift humanity, his initially altruistic intentions are stymied by his selfish thirst for power. While each reality that Haber indirectly creates comes with a multitude of unanticipated conflicts and challenges for the people of the world, his own position of power and status in those worlds predictably increases…
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