Customer Reviews

The Eye of the Heron

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Eye of the Heron chronicles the inhabitants of the planet Victoria, originally a prison colony of Earth. However, 'The People of Peace,' who led a non-violent movement against the great wars of Earth, were also sent to the planet be the government of a great nation. When the novel begins, the people of the prison colony enjoy great comforts in town, disdaining the People of Peace, who do their farming.

Those who live outside the city grow tired of this poor exchange, and want to go found a new city, with no oppression. The novel explores the struggle to do this, as the non-violent people question their own ideals.

This book has beautiful moments, and the characters are well-conceived. However, it lacks the depth of some of Le Guin's other novels like The Dispossesd and The Left Hand of Darkness. It is an enjoyable read, but in the end it is lighthearted rather than than deep and pondering.

While this novel may not rise to the level of her very best work, prose-wise, it nonetheless is well-written--and its explorations of nonviolence, its challenges and the ways in which it can both succeed and fail, were highly influential on me, and have had a long term effect on how I view conflict. This one is well worth reading, and is as worthy of Le Guin's name as any of her better-known works.

Written, I suspect, for a juvenile audience, The Eye of the Heron deals with many of LeGuin's favorite themes. Violence versus pacifism, hierarchy versus democracy, partriarchy versus feminism, and exile all figure in this novel. This book does not, however, have the depth or quality of writing of her best books. The plot is a bit mechanical and predictable, the characterization is a bit thin, and the quality of writing is good as opposed to outstanding. This book isn't at the level of The Lathe of Heaven or The Word for World is Forest, let alone The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness. As a juvenile book, this isn't at the level of the best Earthsea books.

The planet Victoria was founded as a prison colony, but the original mission expired. The descendents of the prisoners and guards/wardens evolved into two prime groups: the Shantih farmers and those who live in the City. The agricultural residents of Shantih believe in independence for the individual and peaceful coexistence as a group. Bosses reign over the City and employ force to severely rule over the farmers.

Tired of tyranny, some farmers decide to begin a new colony far away from their oppressors. However, the Bosses believe that one escapee could destroy their positions of power. Luz, daughter of the Big Boss of the City, knows oppression first hand though she has lived a relatively pampered life. She decides to grasp at freedom at all costs by joining the rebellious farmers.

Ursula Le Guin's "Earthsea" books were some of my first fantasy novels so this reviewer has a special bias for one of the genre greats. THE EYE OF THE HERON is a reprint of a late 1970s tale that occurs on another world, but nothing unique really makes the reader feel that they are off-planet. Still, the key cast members, especially Luz and her father, come across as genuine, so that the audience sees the quest for independence and few societal restrictions and intrusions on two levels, that within a family and that between two castes with one enjoying the fruits of a dominant position that they refuse to cede (South Africa before Mandela). This still remains a solid work of fiction just not science fiction.

Harriet Klausner

"The eye of the heron" is about a planet that started as a prison planet. There are two different groups of people living here, both with their own outlook at life. The first group is democratically organised and every decision has to be made by all the members of the group. The second group is very strictly organised and decisions are being made by the leader. The first group is being dominated by the second group and are only allowed to live in a small part of the planet. Eventually they revolt against that, but without using violence.

Luz is the main character of the book. She is the daughter of the leader of the second group. She realises that there are other ways of living your life and she has to make a decision about her future.

I didn't like this book too much. I thought it was mediocre. I liked the fact that there are two very different groups of people living in a planet, but the story was very shallow. The differences were very black & white and the people weren't becoming real people to me. I wouldn't want to read this book again!

This book, I thought, was a very hard read, mostly because it had many run- on sentences that seem to go on forever. Sometimes she goes off on a tangent, which means she continues describing something that isn't relevant to the story. Le Guin has written many amazing books, but this is not one of them.

LeGuin has written such truly amazing novels, like 'Lavinia' or the Earthsea books that its always disappointing to read one of her more average books. This was one of those. The writing was at its most strong when she was describing the wonders of the planet. She herself said it was a problematic novel for her because the hero didn't do what she had planned for him--she had to relearn how to write.

In that way it might be interesting to study. Especially in terms of where it falls between the Earthsea books, as this book is where she says she really started to look at feminist analysis of writing. The Earthsea books have a real break between her self described 'masculine' style and the real feminine style that she takes on. The writing of this book appears to be the catalyst for that.

But aside from that literary nerdiness, I didn't really enjoy the book. The characters were just sort of sketches, with hints of real depth. The conflict between them was forced and fairly boring to read about. And the part where her character did what he wanted to and not what she planned...sort of killed the novel for me.

First off, this novel comes from a larger collective novel called Millennial Women published in 1978. This novel, as well as the other stories, follow the basic theme of a strong female protagonist throwing off the shackles of some dominating male(s). So The Eye of the Heron has the sense of being constrained by what the author has to write to, as well as being ten years dated even for 1978. The secondary theme of the story is a revolution, of sorts, by non-violence. When one thinks of non-violence one typically thinks of Gandi. However, Gandi made use of non-violence in India, oppressed by the British, by the fact that there were so many of them, almost a billion at the time, and so many fewer of the British dominators, so refusing to provide services literally shut down the country if one wanted that country to run. But as someone once said, violence has 'solved' more conflicts than any other method in history. In Russia between WWI and (during) WWII, Russia so dominated in population all of the surrounding countries it occupied that if any one tried non-violent revolution, the Russians would simply tortured, kill, or starve the population until they went extinct, and then just go on to the other countries it dominated. In the novel there weren't enough of the oppressed group to have non-violence succeed, and at least Le Guin knew that, because basically that attempt fails.

The two groups, the oppressors and the oppressed, ended up on a planet by different methods. The oppressors were originally criminals sent there by earth, sort or a penal colony (think of Australia). The oppressed started as a group called the People of the Peace in a movement called Peace on Earth. This movement began the Long March through the countries of Europe and people joined them on the way. Eventually they all took boats to Montreal of Canamerica (I'm not making this up) and desired to populate the central plains of what is now Canada, but the government of Canamerica thought they were spies of some non-descript entity called the Republic and so offered to send the lucky ones on one-way ships to the penal colony world. Now one can look at a modern map of Canada and see a lot of open space in central Canada, but the reason Canadians or any one else, haven't populated that area in large numbers in because of bitter cold, and people of peace dancing around campfire naked or lying in the grass looking up at the clouds don't come across as a group that would generally tolerate arctic tundra cold, but also in central Canada there exists a small gnat that gets through the holes of the typical screen and delivers a painful bite. Also the mosquitoes are in such huge numbers that they've been described as a moving mat on a lake surface. Going back to the Soviet Union/Russian Empire, the Russians took anyone who didn't follow the rules, strip them, and threw them outside of the camp. These people would freeze to death in winter, or be eaten alive by the swarms of insects in summer. My uncle described a situation in the labor camp when working on some force project in the woods where if one had to relieve a bodily function, you would climb a tree to a limb, since the insects stayed mostly along the ground, and relieve yourself from there, otherwise the insects would be relentless on any exposed skin surface. Anyway, Le Guin apparently wasn't aware of the inhospitality by nature of central arctic Canada, so this sets up a flaw in her that there's got to be some place for people calling themselves whatever to find some country that would allow them to set up shop. Anyway on another planet there's got to be enough room, but no one can know enough to do anything until our protagonist forces the issue. For the protagonist, Luz, think of a snotty 16 year old kid that has all the answers, but not responsible for anything so doesn't take any blame for anything. I'm not sure how this character would be inspiring to any adult woman that is striving for independence from dominating men (a worthy issue) and may be why this novel has been relegated to the young adult section.

Le Guin writes some interesting descriptions of the natural creatures and flora of the planet, but even her prose of this becomes tiresome after a while. Not a necessary book within feminine studies and certainly not within science fiction.

I enjoyed this book. It showed inventive ideas and was very inspirational. I hope you will also read The Word For World is Forest, because it also shows hope for oppressed peoples. I have only read three of her books, but this was by far the best.

I had to read this book for a literature class. I found the book at my local library in the teen section. The story is creative and interesting but the editor did a very poor job on this book. It was really more annoying to read than anything because I felt like I should be editing the book as I read. There were long, over descriptive sentances that I had to go back and read over again to understand. There were even sentances in the book that made no sense at all; Just a bunch of words put together. It's really frustrating to have to read such a poorly written book and it's sad because the story could have been really good.