Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
[...] And I never really got the whole honour code thing that a lot of the plot depends on.
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Yes, I did feel as if the "shifgrethor" thing could have done with a bit more elaboration. I'm not sure whether Le Guin left it this vague deliberately, so that the reader should feel as lost as Genly ... but then, since Genly appears to come to some sort of understanding by the end, I felt as I though I should too, and I didn't, or not that I could express. Which maybe brings us back to that that saying in words what can't be said in words? Or ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
[...]
The gender issue does hit quite hard at the very end when Genly suddenly sees his own race from the perspective of the people of Winter. This was a direct result of the depth of his relationship with Estraven.
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I really liked that part of the ending, Genly seeing his own people as foreign, but I interpreted it a bit differently. It seemed to me an expression of what I felt to be the core of this story: that ultimately it wasn't gender differences that set people apart, it was a lack of familiarity. That Genly can empathise so much with the Gethenians, at the end, I think is a hopeful message.