The Word for World is Forest

by

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Themes and Colors
Violence, War, and Colonization Theme Icon
Nature and Ecology Theme Icon
Communication and Translation Theme Icon
Gender and Masculinity Theme Icon
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.
Nature and Ecology Theme Icon

In The World for World is Forest, Terrans (Earth-based humans) have colonized various planets to exploit their natural resources. On World 41 (known as Athshe to its native population, the Athsheans), Terrans are logging the forests for wood to send back to Earth. Despite the fact that wood no longer exists on Terra (Earth), presumably due to over-logging, most of the humans on World 41—even the ecologists—believe that World 41’s natural resources are expendable. But to the Athsheans, the forest is not a resource but a home and way of life: their society lives in and around trees, and their culture and customs are often compared to tree growth. Humans in the novella believe that they can separate themselves from nature and treat natural resources as disposable, but the Athsheans’ existence proves that this isn’t true. Rather, the book suggests that nature is not an expendable resource, and that the destruction of nature is detrimental to people.

At first, most humans in the novella believe both that nature is a commodity separate from their own identity, and that nature is something to tame rather than respect. For instance, hunting has been banned on Athshe and isn’t necessary for the humans’ survival on the planet, but loggers in Captain Davidson’s camp continue to hunt deer for sport. Even though deer are already extinct on Terra, the humans refuse to respect the wildlife in Athshe. In fact, Davidson goes so far as to refer to hunting as a necessary “hobby” for his bored men. The humans also over-log Athshe for financial gain. At the start of the novella, one of the planet’s islands, which the humans call “Dump Island,” has eroded due to over-logging—wanting maximum wood, the humans didn’t leave enough trees standing, which would have been necessary to maintain the land. But even after this erosion, one of the colony’s ecologists, Gosse, insists that the humans’ logging plan is a sound one and shouldn’t be rethought. Meanwhile, humans like Captain Davidson view the landscape in Athshe as a hindrance. Davidson frequently comments on the fact that the wild nature in Athshe slows men’s reflexes by distracting them, and he also notes that the planet has to be “tamed.” Rather than respecting the wildness of Athshe, Davidson wants to control it, and his people view that control as beneficial to them.

But the Athsheans’ existence proves that nature directly impacts people, regardless of their species. The Athsheans live in harmony with the forest, and their lives are inextricable from the nature that surrounds them: Athshean homes are built into the roots of trees, and their people are defined by the trees in their area. (Selver, one of the novella’s protagonists, belongs to the “Ash” people.) At one point, the human anthropologist Raj Lyubov reveals that the Athshean word for “world” is also their word for “forest” (hence the title of the novella), which speaks to the interconnectedness of Athshean society and nature. Beyond their society’s structure, Athsheans’ customs and culture are also tied to nature. They spend large chunks of their day in a dream state, and their dreaming is frequently compared to tree growth. When Selver became unable to dream after experiencing violence, he worries that he was “cut off from his roots”—and after Selver introduces this violence to his people, Lyubov notes that Selver has changed “from the root.” In other words, Athsheans’ lives are so intertwined with the forest that any violence against them is likened to violence against nature.

Ultimately, the humans’ insistence on treating nature as a harvestable resource proves self-destructive, both on Terra and on Athshe. Athshe’s future is foretold at the very start of the novella, as an angry ecologist, Kees Van Sten, chastises Davidson for helping to turn Athshe into another planet Earth, which is now a “desert of cement.” This comment suggests that Earth’s ecosystem has been destroyed not due to any natural disaster but rather because of human greed—the same greed that now encroaches on Athshe and causes humans to over-log the planet. Ultimately, the humans’ greed in Athshe leads to the Athsheans’ retaliation against them. Even after the humans free the Athsheans whom they’ve enslaved, Selver continues to attack their camps, partly because he’s afraid they’ll wipe out the Athsheans and partly because he’s afraid they’ll cut down all the trees. Ironically, the contrast between the Athsheans’ keen understanding of their land and the humans’ comparative cluelessness is what enables the Athsheans to attack the humans more effectively. After Davidson goes rogue and isolates himself in New Java Camp, an army of Athsheans reaches New Java’s perimeter unseen, likely because they’re able to camouflage within trees. At the end of the novella, the humans are left to stew in their own ecological destruction: the majority of humans are isolated in their logging camp, and Davidson is exiled to the eroded Dump Island. The novella invites readers to view these endings as a fitting punishment, as the humans are literally surrounded by the consequences of their own greed and disrespect for nature.

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Nature and Ecology ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Nature and Ecology appears in each chapter of The Word for World is Forest. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Nature and Ecology Quotes in The Word for World is Forest

Below you will find the important quotes in The Word for World is Forest related to the theme of Nature and Ecology.
Chapter One Quotes

Get enough humans here, build machines and robots, make farms and cities, and nobody would need the creechies any more. And a good thing too. For this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men. Cleaned up and cleaned out, the dark forests cut down for open fields of grain, the primeval murk and savagery and ignorance wiped out, it would be a paradise, a real Eden. A better world than worn-out Earth. And it would be his world. For that’s what Don Davidson was, way down deep inside him: a world-tamer. He wasn’t a boastful man, but he knew his own size. It just happened to be the way he was made. He knew what he wanted, and how to get it.

Related Characters: Don Davidson (speaker)
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Two Quotes

No way was clear, no light unbroken, in the forest. Into wind, water, sunlight, starlight, there always entered leaf and branch, bole and root, the shadowy, the complex. Little paths ran under the branches, around the boles, over the roots; they did not go straight, but yielded to every obstacle, devious as nerves. The ground was not dry and solid but damp and rather springy, product of the collaboration of living things with the long, elaborate death of leaves and trees; and from that rich graveyard grew ninety-foot trees, and tiny mushrooms that sprouted in circles half an inch across. The smell of the air was subtle, various, and sweet. The view was never long, unless looking up through the branches you caught sight of the stars. Nothing was pure, dry, arid, plain. Revelation was lacking. There was no seeing everything at once: no certainty.

Related Characters: Selver Thele (speaker), Don Davidson
Page Number: 35-36
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Selver Thele (speaker), Don Davidson, Thele
Related Symbols: Davidson’s Gun
Page Number: 48-49
Explanation and Analysis:

“[…] Much of what he told me, I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t the language that kept me from understanding; I know his tongue, and he learned ours; we made a writing of the two languages together. Yet there were things he said I could never understand. He said the yumens are from outside the forest. That’s quite clear. He said they want the forest: the trees for wood, the land to plant grass on.” Selver’s voice, though still soft, had taken on resonance; the people among the silver trees listened. “That too is clear, to those of us who’ve seen them cutting down the world. He said the yumens are men like us, that we’re indeed related, as close kin maybe as the Red Deer to the Greybuck. He said that they come from another place which is not the forest; the trees there are all cut down; it has a sun, not our sun, which is a star. All this, as you see, wasn’t clear to me. I say his words but don’t know what they mean. It does not matter much. It is clear that they want our forest for themselves […] ”

Related Characters: Selver Thele (speaker), Raj Lyubov
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

“A human society with an effective war-barrier! What’s the cost, Dr. Lyubov?”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Lepennon. Perhaps change. They’re a static, stable, uniform society. They have no history. Perfectly integrated, and wholly unprogressive. You might say that like the forest they live in, they’ve attained a climax state. But I don’t mean to imply that they’re incapable of adaptation.”

[…]

“Well, I wonder if they’re not proving their adaptability, now. By adapting their behavior to us. To the Earth Colony. For four years they’ve behaved to us as they do to one another. Despite the physical differences, they recognized us as members of their species, as men. However, we have not responded as members of their species should respond. We have ignored the responses, the rights and obligations of non-violence. We have killed, raped, dispersed, and enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and cut down their forests. It wouldn’t be surprising if they’d decided that we are not human.”

Related Characters: Raj Lyubov (speaker), Mr. Lepennon (speaker), Selver Thele, Coro Mena
Page Number: 74-75
Explanation and Analysis:

“ […] 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.”

Related Characters: Raj Lyubov (speaker), Gosse (speaker)
Page Number: 85-86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Seven Quotes

The raiding party burned up that warren by hand, and then flying back with a couple of his boys he spotted another, less than four kilos from camp. On that one, just to write his signature real clear and plain for everybody to read, he dropped a bomb. Just a firebomb, not a big one, but baby did it make the green fur fly. It left a big hole in the forest, and the edges of the hole were burning.

Of course that was his real weapon when it actually came to setting up massive retaliation. Forest fire. He could set one of these whole islands on fire, with bombs and firejelly dropped from the hopper. Have to wait a month or two, till the rainy season was over. Should he burn King or Smith or Central? King first, maybe, as a little warning, since there were no humans left there. Then Central, if they didn’t get in line.

Related Characters: Don Davidson (speaker), Colonel Dongh
Page Number: 163-164
Explanation and Analysis:

No sound, no noise at all, until that screech from the guard; then one gunshot; then an explosion—a land mine going up—and another, one after another, and hundreds and hundreds of torches flaring up lit one from another and being thrown and soaring through the black wet air like rockets, and the walls of the stockade coming alive with creechies, pouring in, pouring over, pushing, swarming, thousands of them. It was like an army of rats Davidson had seen once when he was a little kid, in the last Famine, in the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, where he grew up. Something had driven the rats out of their holes and they had come up in daylight, seething up over the wall, a pulsing blanket of fur and eyes and little hands and teeth, and he had yelled for his mom and run like crazy, or was that only a dream he’d had when he was a kid?

Related Characters: Don Davidson (speaker), Selver Thele
Page Number: 170
Explanation and Analysis:

“Look, Captain Davidson,” the creechie said in that quiet little voice that made Davidson go dizzy and sick, “we’re both gods, you and I. You’re an insane one, and I’m not sure whether I’m sane or not. But we are gods. There will never be another meeting in the forest like this meeting now between us. We bring each other such gifts as gods bring. You gave me a gift, the killing of one’s kind, murder. Now, as well as I can, I give you my people’s gift, which is not killing. I think we each find each other’s gift heavy to carry. However, you must carry it alone. Your people at Eshsen tell me that if I bring you there, they have to make a judgment on you and kill you, it’s their law to do so. So, wishing to give you life, I can’t take you with the other prisoners to Eshsen; and I can’t leave you to wander in the forest, for you do too much harm. So you’ll be treated like one of us when we go mad. You’ll be taken to Rendlep where nobody lives any more, and left there.”

Related Characters: Selver Thele (speaker), Don Davidson
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis: