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Summary
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
When Captain Davidson wakes up, he thinks about two pieces of news, one good and one bad. The good: a shipload of 212 women has just arrived in Centralville. A town on the planet of New Tahiti, Centralville is 27 light-years away from Earth and about four hours by helicopter from Smith Camp, where Davidson lives. The women have been shipped to the New Tahiti Colony to breed.
Immediately, readers know that Captain Davidson’s world isn’t like their own, as humans like Davidson are living on distant planets. Because Tahiti is an island on Earth, the fact that Captain Davidson knows his current planet as “New Tahiti” suggests that humans might have named this planet and thus control it. Notably, women don’t seem to have much agency in this new world: they’re treated as cargo, and their central purpose is to have children.
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The bad news came in a new report from Dump Island: erosion has wiped out the crops. This began happening before Davidson was sent from Dump Island to run Smith Camp. He vividly remembers the bare soil washing into the ocean.
This passage hints at Captain Davidson’s purpose on New Tahiti: the planet is being used for agriculture. But the fact that they refer to one of its islands as “Dump Island” is the novella’s first hint that humans don’t respect the planet’s ecology.
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The erosion apparently means that, on New Tahiti, they need to create farmland around stands of trees. Davidson finds this silly; nobody has to waste valuable acreage on trees back on Earth. But then again, Earth is tame and New Tahiti isn’t, which is why he’s here—“to tame it.” Grinning, Davidson thinks about men like him conquering this planet. He likes a challenge.
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Davidson gets out of bed and calls for his creechie, Ben, ordering him to prepare the hot water. After dressing, Davidson exits his hut into the clearing where Ben has heated the water over a fire. Ben seems to be staring vacantly—typical of a creechie—and Davidson orders him to make breakfast.
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Today, Davidson plans to go to Central and see the shipload of women, who will be distributed among the 2,000 men on New Tahiti. Most are Colony Brides and only 20-30 are Recreation Staff—he wants to claim one of those quickly, as they’re “real good greedy girls.”
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Ben is taking forever to bring breakfast, so Davidson yells again. While Ben is old and “dumb even for a creechie,” Davidson knows how to get him to work. He could tame any creechie, but he’s excited not to need them anymore once there are enough humans on New Tahiti. This is the planet’s destiny—it’s been “literally made for men.” Once they’ve cut down forests to make fields and eliminated “savagery and ignorance,” it’ll be perfect, and it will be his. Davidson considers himself a “world-tamer.”
Walking through the camp, Davidson runs into Kees Van Sten, who asks him to stop the loggers from hunting red deer. There’s a law against hunting red deer, but Davidson doesn’t want to enforce it—it’s the men who matter, he says, not the animals, and it’s fine if “a little extra-legal hunting” helps the men have fun. Kees protests that the men have other hobbies, including movies, drinking, and—for those who don’t want to participate in the Army’s sanctioned “hygienic homosexuality”—there are the new women in Central. According to Kees, Davidson’s “frontier heroes” are spoiled already and shouldn’t wipe out rare native species for fun—he’ll report Davidson if he doesn’t do something.
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Davidson calmly condescends to Kees, saying that it’s fine to report him, but it’s silly to want to preserve and study the planet’s forest. Unlike Kees, Davidson puts Earth first; Earth desperately needs wood, so they’re here to log New Tahiti. Kees scoffs at the idea of remaking New Tahiti into Earth, which is just cement now.
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Kees storms away, and Davidson thinks about deer, which he first saw on New Tahiti—they’re amazing animals, especially compared to the “robodeer” on Earth. It’s only natural to hunt them, he thinks, since that’s what they’re for. While Davidson admits that Kees is smart, he’s not a realistic thinker; he doesn’t see the advantage of siding with mankind, even though Man wins every challenge.
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Davidson continues his walk through the logging camp. With their 200 men, they’ve already tamed a good chunk of wilderness—it was “nothing” before, only trees. New Tahiti is largely water, and the rest is forest. On Earth, wood is more valuable than gold, which is why the men are here: transforming New Tahiti’s forest into lumber and then giving the clear-cut land over to farming.
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New Tahiti has been colonized previously, about a million years before. Someone—it’s not clear who—brought plants and animals from Earth, and Earth and New Tahiti have evolved in parallel over the centuries. The big difference is that humans died out on New Tahiti, and creechies—three-foot-tall descendants of monkeys—have become humanity’s closest replacement. They’re quite inferior to humans, though.
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Someone greets Davidson, and he’s a little slow to turn around—this stupid planet makes him daydream. It’s Oknanawi Nabo (Ok), a dark-skinned, tough-looking guy. Davidson lights a reefer (his first for today) and admires the scenery as Ok tells him that he wants to let the creechies in the mill go, since he—unlike Davidson—can’t get them to work. The history course that Ok took during training warned him that slavery was uneconomical, and Davidson stops him there: this isn’t slavery, because creechies aren’t human.
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Ok argues that the creechies too little and it doesn’t work to starve them, but Davidson says that they’re tough and don’t feel pain. Ok should know this, since he and Davidson have both had sex with the females, who just lay there. Back when Davidson was in Central, a crazy male creechie jumped him, even though creechies supposedly don’t fight. Davidson almost killed him, but the creechie kept coming back, like a squashed bug that won’t die. Davidson still has a scar. You have to be hard on them, Davidson tells Ok.
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Davidson senses that Ok won’t hurt creechies due to their small size, so he suggests that Ok threaten them with hallucinogens, which they’re afraid of. Davidson then asks if Ok wants to have a Collie Girl set aside for him, and Ok asks Davidson to leave a few for him. They watch creechies pass, and Ok confesses that creechies freak him out. Davidson agrees—if Lyubov wasn’t on New Tahiti and Colonel Dongh didn’t care about following the Code, Davidson would want the creechies killed instead of sticking with this Voluntary Labor thing. The creechies will be wiped out eventually, anyway, since men can hardly assimilate green monkeys.
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Davidson checks out a hopper from HQ, and the guy on duty tells him to bring back a Collie for him. As Davidson flies over camp, he passes by swaths of trees until he gets to Centralville, which looks like a real city. This makes sense, because it was built when the Colony started four years ago. The ship in Central looks huge, even though it’s just a launcher. Davidson tears up at seeing the ship—he’s not ashamed of being patriotic. Walking down the streets in Central, he passes women and stares at their bodies.
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Davidson goes to meet up with a friend (Juju Sereng) at the bar and sees Raj Lyubov there, sitting with some Navy men. Davidson doesn’t respect the Navy, since they leave the hard work to the Army, but it’s still funny and unusual to see Lyubov getting along with any soldier, since he isn’t one. Davidson greets Lyubov, who hates him deeply. This amuses Davidson. Lyubov is probably girly like all other intellectuals; that’s why he hates Davidson. Someone brings over some new Collie girls—luckily, these women aren’t Brides, but rather the “fruity beauties” on Recreation Staff. Sometimes, the Colonial Administration manages to come through. Davidson happily spends the afternoon with the women.
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As Davidson is flying back to camp, he notices that there’s smoke above it. Flying closer, he can see that everything is burned—the hoppers, the hangar, HQ—but it wasn’t a forest fire, because the trees are standing. He touches down and hides behind a shack, but he can’t hear anything. The attack must have been either from an enemy camp or another planet, and the latter seems likelier. Maybe it’s the humanoids (the Cetians and Hainish), whom Davidson never trusted.
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Davidson is about to get to the hopper to send out an alarm when he hears alien voices. As he ducks behind the shack’s roof, four creechies pass by, none wearing the shorts and collar that tame creechies wear—the Volunteer creechies must have been killed. Davidson assumes these creechies are spying for the invaders, but then one turns, and he recognizes it as the crazy creechie who attacked him in Central under a year ago and became Lyubov’s pet.
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Brandishing a gun, Davidson jumps out and asks who started the fire. The crazy creechie, who has a scar from Davidson on his face, says that the creechies burned the camp and all its humans are dead. Previously, this camp held 200 men and 90 enslaved creechies, but while Davidson was gone, 900 creechies came from the forest, killed the humans, and burned the camp. The creechie assumed Davidson was dead—he’s glad to see him now. But Davidson doesn’t believe anything this creechie has said; as a species, creechies never fight back, they certainly don’t massacre, and they only have bows, anyway. Davidson asks who told them to do this, and the creechie tells Davidson that the creechie’s wife did.
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The creechie jumps at Davidson, dodging Davidson’s gunshot. He then pins Davidson down, grabs his gun, and, bizarrely, begins to sing. The other three creechies smile, which Davidson has never seen. Davidson has also never seen a creechie from above. The crazy creechie—Scarface—points a knife and Davidson’s gun at Davidson. He ends his song and then inexplicably tells Davidson that if Davidson can’t sing, he can head back to Central to tell the humans what happened.
Davidson gets up and notices that another creechie is pointing a gun at him: it’s his creechie, Ben. Davidson begins walking away, and one of the creechies shoots near him. Scarface tells him to run. Now Davidson remembers that Scarface’s name is Selver—they’d called him Sam before Lyubov prevented Davidson from killing him.
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Davidson runs, certain that they can’t kill him; it’s impossible. He jumps into the hopper and circles around looking for the creechies, but they’re gone. Using the hopper’s machine guns, he shoots at the ground until the ammo runs out, then he flies back to Central feeling calmer, certain that no one can blame him for what happened. In fact, the creechies clearly waited until he was gone to strike. Now, no one will be able to prevent the humans from clearing the planet of creechies—not even Lyubov, since his pet was at fault for the attack. Maybe Davidson will be put in charge of extermination. This makes him smile.
