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Commander Yung
Gosse is an ecologist working on World 41 and living in Centralville. He and Raj Lyubov work closely together but eventually develop an antagonistic relationship, as Gosse doesn’t see the same danger in overlogging that Lyubov does, nor does he believe that the Athsheans need to be saved from extinction. At one point, Gosse berates Lyubov for helping Selver and tells him that it’s human nature to destroy other worlds. He then wonders why Lyubov came to World 41 at all if he wasn’t prepared to see the Athsheans wiped out. This leads Lyubov to distrust Gosse, something that hurts Gosse’s feelings, as he’d wanted to be a “father-figure” to Lyubov. After the massacre at Central, Gosse speaks on behalf of an injured Colonel Dongh and interacts directly with Selver, whom he blames for the deaths of Central’s men and women. Gosse is terse with Selver and clearly distrusts the Athsheans, though his hatred isn’t as deep as Don Davidson’s or even Dongh’s.
Gosse Quotes in The Word for World is Forest
The The Word for World is Forest quotes below are all either spoken by Gosse or refer to Gosse. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter Three Quotes
“ […] We’ve succeeded, here on Central, by following the Plan: erosion is minimal, and the cleared soil is highly arable. To log off a forest doesn’t, after all, mean to make a desert—except perhaps from the point of view of a squirrel. We can’t forecast precisely how the native forest life-systems will adapt to a new woodland-prairie-plowland ambiance foreseen in the Development Plan, but we know the chances are good for a large percentage of adaptation and survival.”
“That’s what the Bureau of Land Management said about Alaska during the First Famine,” said Lyubov. […] “How many Sitka spruce have you seen in your lifetime, Gosse? Or snowy owl? or wolf? or Eskimo? The survival percentage of native Alaskan species in habitat, after 15 years of the Development Program, was .3%. It’s now zero.—A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.”
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Chapter Six Quotes
“Should we have let them live?” said Selver with vehemence equal to Gosse’s, but softly, his voice singing a little. “To breed like insects in the carcass of the World? To overrun us? We killed them to sterilize you. I know what a realist is, Mr. Gosse. Lyubov and I have talked about these words. A realist is a man who knows both the world and his own dreams. You’re not sane: there’s not one man in a thousand of you who knows how to dream. Not even Lyubov and he was the best among you. You sleep, you wake and forget your dreams, you sleep again and wake again, and so you spend your whole lives, and you think that is being, life, reality! You are not children, you are grown men, but insane. And that’s why we had to kill you, before you drove us mad.”
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Gosse Character Timeline in The Word for World is Forest
The timeline below shows where the character Gosse appears in The Word for World is Forest. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Three
The room continues to fill with personnel, including the colony ecologist (Gosse) and Captain Davidson. The purpose of this meeting is obviously to find out who’s to...
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...the Voluntary Autochthonous Labor Corps. Or asks how many of each race there are, and Gosse says there are 2,641 Terrans and three million natives. Or laughs, saying that the colonists...
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...through four more years of humans, and the humans have damaged the planet by logging. Gosse says that this is a leap. Yes, Dump Island was over-logged and is now lost,...
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Chapter Five
...no policy about that (technically, the Athsheans weren’t slaves). But his colleagues, including the ecologist Gosse, were annoyed. Gosse wanted to know why Lyubov came to an Open Colony, knowing that...
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Chapter Six
...compound. They head to the creechie-pen, where Reswan asks for Colonel Dongh in broken English. Gosse comes out instead, saying that Dongh is sick. They open the gates for Gosse, and...
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...should wait quietly for a ship to come in three years to take them away. Gosse is surprised that Selver knows when the ship is coming, and Selver tells him that...
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Before Gosse reenters the pen, he asks if Selver organized the raid. Selver says yes, and Gosse...
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...creechie-pen ask to speak to Selver. Along with Reswan and a few others, Selver meets Gosse, Dongh, and three other yumens under a tree—Selver’s people are afraid to be in the...
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...Selver gets for him. Benton offers to speak on Dongh’s behalf, but Dongh says that Gosse should do it instead. The yumens agree to Selver’s terms: they’ll live in one region...
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Chapter Seven
...killed Lyubov anyway. It’s safe to assume that anyone still alive is a traitor, including Gosse and Benton.
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...and it’s weird how many of them survived the massacre—the only euraf left alive was Gosse. Here in Java, the 55 men who remained loyal and are therefore still here are...
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...whole islands—including Central, if they don’t man up. Later that day, someone on the radio—maybe Gosse—berates Davidson for thinking he can make the creechies surrender. Davidson asks if he can pick...
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Chapter Eight
...to speak of Lyubov. He steps back and watches the yumens gather, including Dongh and Gosse, who look unkempt, lost, and somewhat insane.
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Selver says that there haven’t been killings; Lepennon can ask Dongh and Gosse. But Lepennon says that he meant to ask if there had been killings among Athsheans....
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