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Chapter Three
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Word for World is Forest, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Violence, War, and Colonization
Nature and Ecology
Communication and Translation
Gender and Masculinity
Summary
Analysis
Captain Davidson thinks that everyone who was at the meeting has gone crazy. He can’t believe that a commander was bowing down to humanoids who clearly stole the idea for an ansible from humans. And things haven’t improved since the meeting. It’s fine that Davidson is now under Major Muhamed’s command at New Java Camp—while Dongh might have liked Davidson’s raid at Smith, he still had to punish him for it. Fair. But the orders from the ansible are insane. They’ve been told to limit contact with the Athsheans unless the Athsheans initiate it, and they can’t enforce labor—which means they can’t work efficiently. Clearly, the ansible messages aren’t coming from Earth, because Earth needs wood.
Again, Davidson’s distrust of “humanoids” points to planetary nationalism (a sense of identity and pride based on one’s planet of origin), which is apparently widespread among the Terran humans. This passage shows that Davidson did face consequences for his impulsive raid on Smith, and the humans are now facing consequences for their enslavement of the Athsheans. At the moment, it seems like the ansible is functioning as Or and Lepennon hoped that it would: the colonists have freed the enslaved Athsheans. That said, they’re still having a negative impact on the Athsheans’ lives, since the Athsheans depend on the trees that the humans log.
Active
Themes
The messages also say that World 41’s colony status is “under consideration,” that colonists can’t use firearms, and that they can’t retaliate. Davidson assumes that humanoids have planted these messages, since the men on Earth are more practical than this. The Cetians are probably trying to take over the Terran Government, and the Hainish are in on it, since “rats help rats.” They’re planning to let creechies kill the New Tahiti humans, and Dongh is going to let them. Dongh told Davidson that he’s following Terra-HQ’s orders and that Davidson has to follow Muhamed’s. Davidson can’t betray humanity by following those orders, but he feels bad for Dongh, who isn’t a natural traitor like Lyubov.
Earlier in the novella, Davidson insisted that violence and dominance were natural and manly. The fact that the humans on Earth now forbid the colonists from acting violently suggests that the colonists’ violence is a choice they made rather than any natural, inevitable action. Rather than examine his own culpability, Davidson again blames outsiders, dehumanizing the Hainish and Cetians by comparing them to rats and suggesting that they’re plotting nefariously—when of course, the only person plotting is Davidson. The fact that Davidson is able to so easily dismiss the ansible’s orders as fraudulent again suggests that the ansible may not be the cure-all that Or hoped it would be.
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Some people, particularly asiatiforms and “hindi types” are natural traitors, and euraf-descended men like Davidson are natural saviors—that’s just how things are. Davidson is especially annoyed that HQ removed the 10 Collie women in New Java and sent them to Central for safety reasons. But Davidson will get things back to normal. After the meeting, the men let the creechies out of the pens, and none were loyal enough to stay, the way even a monkey would have been. Now, the wild creechies have access to the formerly enslaved creechies who know the place. If Central burns, it’ll be the men’s fault. Davidson knows what the creechies are like—he saw the bodies at Smith. Ok had an arrow in each eye.
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Themes
Despite the orders against retaliation, the men at Central have hoppers with guns to defend themselves. It makes Davidson excited to think about dropping “firejelly” and watching the creechies scatter, especially because he associates the thought with beating up Sam. According to some books Davidson has read, men are only men when they sleep with women or kill other men. Even though the creechies aren’t men, it’s fun to imagine killing them.
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New Java is wetter than Central or Smith, though if you were in the forest during a monsoon, you wouldn’t notice the rain until you reemerged and got bowled over by it. Then you’d have to head back into the forest, where it’s easy to get lost. Unfortunately, Muhamed is a by-the-book commander. The only good thing about him is that he doesn’t radio Central often and he doesn’t like HQ’s orders. However, he obeys them when they come. Back at HQ, Davidson once saw papers that said that his own IQ was higher than Muhamed’s, but Muhamed still assumes he knows better than Davidson.
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Men at New Java distrust Davidson because he was the only man to survive Smith, but soon they’ll see that he’s not a traitor, since he knows they have to get rid of creechies to make this place safe. Davidson starts disseminating this message among the loggers, who have always hated creechies but never knew they were dangerous. Davidson also tells them that the humanoids want to wipe out the Terrans who are here for their own benefit, and that humans are outnumbered by creechies, which frightens the men.
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Even the ecological officer here, Atranda, hates creechies—to an absurd, extra-paranoid degree, actually, but he’s a good man to have around. Davidson doesn’t bother trying to get Muhamed on his side, since Muhamed is militant and doesn’t trust Davidson because of something related to Smith. But it will actually be easier to take control of Muhamed’s camp when it’s so well-organized than it would be otherwise. And Davidson will have to take over eventually.
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When Davidson has convinced a group of trustworthy men of the creechie threat, he takes them to a creechie town in the woods, which they burn together. When the creechies emerge, the men drop more fire. It’s not actually exciting, since it’s kind of like rat-hunting on Earth, but the creechies can at least fight back. This time, though, they don’t—they lie on their backs instead, a sight that makes one of Davidson’s guys sick to his stomach.
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The men don’t take a female creechie to rape, since they agreed with Davidson that it was perverted. Perversions like homosexuality are normal enough, but it’s better to kill the female creechies and “stay clean.” When they get back, no one tells Muhamed about the trip. Davidson knows that the creechies will attack the humans soon enough, and then the men will know he was right all along.
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