Captain Don Davidson’s gun represents human violence, as well as the Athsheans’ transformation from a peaceful society to a violent one when they encounter this violence. During the massacre at Smith Camp, Davidson confronts a group of four Athsheans, including Selver, and threatens them with a gun. Selver takes this gun from Davidson before pinning him down. After this encounter, he takes Davidson’s gun with him as he travels away from Smith, and the machinery confuses other Athsheans, who have never seen anything like it before. The Athsheans are a nonviolent species by choice, and although they decide to violently retaliate against the human colonists, they initially fight them with bows, arrows, and fire. The introduction of Davidson’s far more sophisticated weapon to Athshean society demonstrates a fundamental shift, as the Athsheans now have the same ability to kill as humans do and can accomplish that killing in the same way.
Selver begins to dream about shooting Davidson with this gun, but when he fires in the dream, nothing comes out. This foreshadows Selver’s ultimate decision to let Davidson live at the end of the novella, even though Davidson asks Selver to kill him. Yet even though Selver doesn’t kill Davidson, the introduction of human violence—which the gun represents—fundamentally changes Athshean society, as Athsheans now know the many ways they can kill one another.
Davidson’s Gun Quotes in The Word for World is Forest
Davidson saw then the telltale tension of the creature’s stance, yet it sprang at him so lithe and oblique that his shot missed, burning an arm or shoulder instead of smack between the eyes. And the creechie was on him, half his size and weight yet knocking him right off balance by its onslaught, for he had been relying on the gun and not expecting attack. The thing’s arms were thin, tough, coarse-furred in his grip, and as he struggled with it, it sang.
He was down on his back, pinned down, disarmed. […] He had never looked up into a creechie’s face from below. Always down, from above. From on top. He tried not to struggle, for at the moment it was wasted effort. Little as they were, they outnumbered him, and Scarface had his gun.
He went out to see what kind of trees they were. They all lay broken and uprooted. He picked up the silvery branch of one and a little blood ran out of the broken end. No, not here, not again, Thele, he said: O Thele, come to me before your death! But she did not come. […] Outside the other door, across the tall room, was the long street of the yumen city Central. Selver had the gun in his belt. If Davidson came, he could shoot him. He waited, just inside the open door, looking out into the sunlight. Davidson came, huge, running so fast that Selver could not keep him in the sights of the gun as he doubled crazily back and forth across the wide street, very fast, always closer. The gun was heavy. Selver fired it but no fire came out of it, and in rage and terror he threw the gun and the dream away.
Davidson’s Gun Symbol Timeline in The Word for World is Forest
