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Get every literary device explanation for The Left Hand of DarknessPlus so much more...
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Unreliable Narrator
Explanation and Analysis—Appalling:
Chapter 7 of The Left Hand of Darkness is an anthropological assessment on "The Question of Sex," taken from the field notes of an anthropologist from the first Ekumenical landing party on Winter. The following excerpt from this anthropologist's account includes a curious example of situational irony:
The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
This anthropologist documents sex differences between Gethenians and other human states, paradoxically referring to Gethenian sexual equality as an "appalling experience." One would think that all people could stomach being judged "only as a human being," yet non-hermaphroditic species often associate gender unilaterally with personal identity. The absence of gender feels dehumanizing to those entrenched within its norms.
This passage is yet another example of unreliable narration, representing the biased perspectives that anthropologists bring to the cultures they study. Obviously, hermaphroditic humans are not constitutively strange or off-putting; rather, it is the researcher's own repulsion that adds bias to the account. There is no reason that sexual variation should be seen as unnatural.
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