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Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Shevek and Vea:
Vea and Shevek are foils: total opposites, antithetical to each other, and yet they each find the other deeply compelling. Vea, as a representation of Ioti luxury, clashes against Shevek’s Anarresti beliefs. Her total commitment to materialism and commerce forces Shevek to defend Odonianism in the presence of someone whose life starkly contrasts its tenets. Their discussions and debates have the effect of steel on steel, sharpening each other to a point.
Vea also helps Shevek better understand Ioti femininity, which is deeply foreign to him. Vea embodies everything about Ioti femininity that compels Shevek, almost in spite of himself, an ideal of femininity that he sees as underlying not just the woman herself but all of Ioti culture:
She was so elaborately and ostentatiously a female body that she seemed scarcely to be a human being. She incarnated all the sexuality the Ioti repressed into their dreams, their novels and poetry, their endless paintings of female nudes, their music, their architecture with its curves and domes, their candies, their baths, their mattresses. She was the woman in the table.
In this passage, the idea that Ioti femininity is somehow antithetical to personhood functions both as an observation of Ioti culture and an insight into Shevek's Anarresti perspective. He struggles to see Vea as a human—is that a function of Ioti misogyny or Shevek's own sexism? Shevek’s potential for sexism has grown as he is steeped in Ioti culture, but its manifestation is notably rooted in Anarresti ideals. Vea functions as a character to help the reader to understand how much and in what ways Shevek has become accustomed to life on Urras.
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