Light and Dark, Religion and Spirituality Theme Analysis

On Gethen, there are two dominant religions. The first is Yomeshta, which follows the teaching of Meshe and resembles a Judeo-Christian religion. The second is Handdara, a spiritual practice closer to Taoism. Yomeshta is centered around the idea of light, and unity. In contrast, Handdara is interested in the interaction of light and dark, and in the way opposites can come together and complement each other.  Although both religions are described in depth, the novel more closely aligns itself with the Handdara philosophy. Gethen is a world of both light and dark. Its people are both men and women. As a result, the Handdara interest in opposites that clarify or balance each other better describes the planet and its inhabitants than does the pure, uncomplicated light of Yomeshta.

Because of its multi-millennia Ice Age, Gethen is a precarious place to live. A few degrees of difference in global temperatures could completely freeze over the planet’s narrow inhabitable zone, and a few rash decisions by Gethenian governments could easily send their nations into deadly tailspins. As a result, Gethenian people are slow moving and careful. They tend the land with great attention, they travel at moderate speeds, and they advance technologically at a snail’s pace. Ai, as he travels on a twenty-five mile-per-hour truck observes “the people of Winter…feel that progress is less important than presence.” He also observes that while “Winter hasn’t achieved in thirty centuries what Terra once achieved in thirty decades” it has endured much longer than Terran society possibly could. This is all a reflection of the importance of balance and proportion valued by the Handdarata.

Handdara is a religion of dualism — the self and the other, the known and the unknown, the light and the dark. This explicitly reflects Gethenian sexuality — every person has a dual identity, and is both a man and a woman. In contrast, the Yomeshta say “man’s singularity is his divinity,” however the narrative makes it clear that Gethenian’s divinity comes from their duality. Even the title of the book is a celebration of duality; it comes from a Handdarata proverb, which goes, “Light is the left hand of darkness / and darkness the right hand of light. / Two are one, life and death, lying / together like lovers in kemmer, / like hands joined together, / like the end and the way.” Yomeshta attempts to celebrate only life, but Handdara understands that for life to be properly celebrated, it must be set up in contrast to its opposite, death. Ai compares Handdara, and Gethenians themselves, to the Terran concept of yin and yang. He says, “Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male,” each pair of opposites exists within each resident of Gethen. 

The Yomeshta and the Handdarata have different perspectives on the usefulness of knowledge. Practitioners of Yomeshta are interested in the concept of clear and total sight, the kind practiced by their enlightened prophet. The Yomeshta look for complete clarity, and are uncomfortable with nuance and complexity. In contrast, practitioners of Handdara are comfortable with complex truths, and are also comfortable with not knowing everything. In Handdara, “ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action.” According to its believers, there is only one certainty in life, death, and therefore “the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” The most devoted Handdarata believe knowledge is, in the end, essentially futile, and spend their lives trying to become perfectly ignorant. Ai, whose mission requires him to gather knowledge of Gethen, will never be a perfect Handdarata disciple. However his experience with a group of Handdarata Foretellers helps teach him how to ask the right questions, and how to become content with ambiguous answers.

Handdara isn’t organized like a traditional religion, and does not have clergymen. The most authoritative religious figures are its Foretellers, men who get together and are able to answer questions about the future. Ai understands these Foretellers as being able to domesticate a hunch, a skill that Estraven has as well, to a lesser extent. Estraven is able to sense when his luck is good and when it is bad, and can feel the wheel of good fortune turning beneath his hand. This phenomenon can be described through Handdara, but there is no framework to describe this kind of skill in Yomeshta.

Handdara is a more useful framework with which to view Le Guin’s world. While Yomeshta attempts to shed a light on everything, past present and future, and leaves little room for nuance, Handdara is built upon the idea of balance, of light and darkness working together. Within a Handdarata framework, ambiguity is natural, and a person’s knowledge will always remain incomplete. Yomeshta, by framing light as good, necessarily designates darkness as bad. In Handdara, in contrast, there is no good and evil. Instead, the world is a complex place, where opposites can happily coexist, and neither elevated above the other.