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Four Ways to Forgiveness

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Four Ways to Forgiveness is what sf writer LeGuin calls a "story suite"--four interconnected short stories, one of which takes up nearly half the book. All four stories are set on the planet Werel and its colony of Yeowe, where a dominant black-skinned race holds a primarily white-skinned population in slavery. Werel and Yeowe have both been contacted by the Ekumen, the interplanetary federation of LeGuin's future history, but neither can join until the problems of slavery and gender imbalance have been solved. In "Betrayals", two old people find tenderness together after long and difficult lives; in "Forgiveness Day", the brash young Envoy of the Ekumen is kidnapped, together with the stiff-necked bodyguard she despises, and falls in love with him. "A Man of the People" is the story of Havzhiva, born to the pueblo culture of Hain, the parent world of all human races and cultures. Feeling out of place, he goes off to become a historian and winds up as the Envoy to Yeowe, the colony world where the slaves have successfully revolted and become free. It is mirrored by "A Woman's Liberation," the memoir of Rakam, born a slave, used sexually by her mistress as a child, used by men at another plantation in her adolescence, who escapes to Yeowe with the help of another Hainish envoy, the mysterious Esdardon Aya (whose name means Old Music) and becomes a teacher and, eventually, the lover of Havzhiva.

I love this book and have read it repeatedly. While I don't like all of LeGuin's work equally well, some of her books I have re-read many times and been deeply influenced by--the Earthsea books, The Dispossessed, this one, and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, which I am now reading yet again. LeGuin writes science fiction based on sociology, anthropology, biology; she's not interested in shiny spaceships or the technology that runs them, and if she writes about conquering colonists, it's usually from the viewpoint of the conquered. Plus, she can do so much with her rich, spare language. If you like unconventional sf, try LeGuin.

Readable, but that's about it -- this book lacks the energy and complexity of previous brilliant LeGuin works. It is mostly a much less rigorous reworking of the extraordinary novel "The Dispossessed", with an inadequte attempt to address the issue of Ekumen superiority vs."native" wisdom -- the question which formed the center of the astonishingly brilliant "Left Hand of Darkness." All the conflicts here drift away, not only unresolved but unfaced in the rigorous way I expect from LeGuin. Never gets to the main issues, either those between the twin planets or regarding their relations with the Ekumen. Derivative and disappointing -- read "Left Hand," or LeGuin's neglected masterpiece "Malafrena" for sustained thought, not vagaries.

Fine SF explores the nature of the human condition under special circumstances--with observations of lasting import. LeGuin does that in her works. While this one, a collection of 4 interrelated novellas, is not her best work (see The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed), it is very fine work nonetheless. I like it much better than her short story collections (e.g. Orsinian Tales). This book is about the relationships between politics and people. It also speaks of the differences and similarities between the internal and the external such that changing external circumstances may not have much lasting effect if the internal circumstances (within the people) don't change. There is an interrelationship here too. There are several pithy quotes for my collection in it as well:

Love of God and country is like fire, a wonderful friend, a terrible enemy; only children play with fire. p.57

To live simply is most complicated. p. 90

The right use of knowledge is fulfillment. p.117

Loquacity is half of diplomacy ... The other half is silence. p.127

Ignorance defends itself savagely. p.197

Ursula LeGuin has always been one of my favorite writers, and I particularly enjoy the many books and short stories of hers that take place amongst the worlds of the Ekumen. Of course, a book with a title like "Four Ways to Forgiveness" might be somewhat off-putting to lovers of hard science fiction, but this book is a must-have for fans of Ms. LeGuin. When we read of worlds that are gradually being welcomed into the Ekumen, we read of cultures and traditions in much the same way as we might read of foreign nations in "National Geographic." LeGuin writes humane, anthropological science fiction, and this book is an excellent example. When I came to the last page and read the last few words, I breathed a deep sigh of warmth and satisfaction. Ursula LeGuine writes that beautifully. The real tragedy is that this book is out of print and almost impossible to find. Get this book back in print!

A marvellous book, the four stories of Yeowe & Werel intertwined subtly and beautifully.

The issues of slavery and female subjugation, so central to any moral history of real humankind on real planet earth, are treated with Ursula's characteristic compassion and humanity, in the context of an imaginary planet and its colony-satellite.

The characters of these stories, their acts of bravery cowardice revolt submission, are so familiar from earth's own history of colonizations and exploitations! As always I marvel at how LeGuin, White American and presumably priviledged, knows so well the hearts of the enslaved and the colonized.

How familiar to see the lives of slaves who go on century after century without thinking to revolt!

How familiar to see the slave who, at the moment of choice, remains on the side of the master and sticks to the familiar, instead of striding into the unknown world of freedom!

And how familiar to see oppression and war and famine continuing, in different form, after freedom from the external oppressors.

(Former colonies of the European oppressors will remember sorely how brown/black bosses promptly took over the former_roles of the white masters after liberation.)

And how familiar to see, the lonely and driven activist, the former slave who wants all enslavements to end, the few moral beings in an often immoral world.

The cry of slave peoples on Werel -- "Oh, Oh, Ye-o-we" -- so mournful, so similar to the bittersad poetry of colonized peoples everywhere.

Actually, the four ways have now become five ways, as LeGuin has written one more story set in Werel, in the collection "The Birthday of the World".

I don't know if Ms. Le Guin was thinking of Bosnia when she crafted these tales of oppression and forgiveness, but I heard the echoes of that conflict as I read. Originally I read them separately, as they appeared in the SF magazines, but upon rereading them together I was struck by the way in which she patiently examined the roots of societal and personal oppression, and the subsequent need of a person (and a society) to forgive in order to advance. As the title indicates, there are many different approaches to healing. I wish that people who are politically or personally oppressed would be able to read these tales. More importantly, I wish that they would be read by the oppressors. I believe Ursula Le Guin is doing some of her most important work here, and I don't say that lightly. She is also writing better than she ever has. These are quietly powerful stories which should remain with you for a long time.

Le Guin, with her masterful use of seemingly simple and fluent prose, tells us the stories of how four very different people find hope after terrible ordeals. The background to the stories --and also the main source of hope-- is the need to fight: against slavery, against enormous social inequalities and brutal sexual segregation... in short, against most of the worst injustices that we can find in our world, but that Le Guin transports to the imaginary planets of Yeowe and Werel. We see in these two planets, thanks to the author's mastery, an example of nightmarish distopias whose consequences are analysed in the four main characters. However, Le Guin is always more convincing when describing a society with defects (any kind of defect), and the reactions these defects provoke in the individual, than when describing highly evolved, almost perfect societies. These latter may be better to live in, but they sure are more boring to read about, since the author has to keep within the limits of the politically corect, and that shows.

Ursula K. Le Guin's stories of life on other worlds always seem to speak of what it means to be human. This, for me, is the hallmark of her science fiction.

Four Ways to Forgiveness is a powerful showcase of Le Guin's ability to forge characters of great depth - characters real enough to play out dramas of slavery and power, of submission and rebellion, of extreme cruelty and everyday pettiness, of love and understanding. Stories of forgiveness.

A deeply moving collection of four of Le Guin's stories, Four Ways to Forgiveness is a must-read for any science fiction enthusiast, for anyone who is capable of cruelty, for anyone who is capable of love, for anyone who would like to feel a little more human for a while.

The nations of the xenophobic, imperialistic Werel did not at once permit the Ekumenical Mobiles to document and enlighten their people. Nooo, they spend three and a half centuries militarizing, industrializing, preparing to deflect the imagined alien threat. The invasion never came, and Werel instead colonized its neighbor planet - Yeowe. Exporting male slaves - "assets" - and working them to death in the mines or in the fields, the Four Corporations started a predatory program of exploitation and destruction of the environment. Soon, however, the shipping costs rose, and it became more profitable to ship women as well as men. Hoping to establish a self-replenishing slave workpool, Bosses on Werel underestimated the tenacity of female assets, with catastrophic results. First at Nadari, and then all over the place, slave rebellions flared up, soon combining into a costly thirty-year war. Waging war across the vast gulf of space is difficult business, and eventually Werel's stranglehold on Yeowe freedmen was broken. However, no war can be won, no matter what the cost: Werelian social order is crumbling under the weight of me-too young revolutionaries; and Yeowe has regressed into a mishmash of gang warfare and cruel mysoginistic practices. This is where agents of the Ekumen come into the picture...

Deftly amalgamating United States history and her Hainish universe, Ursula LeGuin has produced yet another masterful work dealing with personal freedoms and one's social obligations, adopting a format she has made familiar in such other works as her "Fisherman of the Inland Sea" and "Tales from Earthsea": a series of novellas connected by setting and characters.

- closely mirroring LeGuin's own "Tehanu", "Betrayals" speaks of an aging woman's willingness to see past a disgraced revolutionary's sins and love him for his humanity;

- in "Forgiveness Day", she brings together two opposites who can't see each other as anything but ignorami - Solly, the Ekumen's Envoy to Werel, who can't see past its people's stuffy ritualism, and Teyeo, a Werelian soldier assigned as Solly's guard, who finds Solly garish and dimwitted - and makes them fall in love;

- her "Man of the People" documents the personal quest of a Hainish villager, who, unable to adapt neither to his village's ritualistic beliefs, nor to the university's vast intellectual breadth, finally finds peace of heart as a social reformer on tumultuous Yeowe;

- lastly, "A Woman's Liberation" tells of a woman's struggle for personal freedom that she can find neither in slavery, nor in revolutionary movements, only in learning. Those who read any of Frederick Douglass' autobiographies may find this somewhat familiar.

My only personal qualm is that LeGuin - however measurely and masterfully - depicts literally everything and anything as a profound formative experience, neither right nor wrong, but just sort of there. None of her characters seems to feel passionate, explosive emotions. They are all placid, timid lumps of clay. Furthermore, almost every novella prominently features at least one sex scene (which apparrently takes a center place in LeGuin's idology). The occasional profanity feels artificial and sophomoric.

Each and every time I open a LeGuin book I know that some aspect of my life is about to be depicted as "human" and "necessary" and packaged in a tiny parcel and then spoon-fed to me in a most unobtrusive, all-pervasive manner possible. I can only take so much of "All knowledge is local" before I explode. I can hear that "everything is right in its own way" only so many times before I stop reading.

I just offered to give a copy of Four Ways to Forgiveness to my brother, but he would not accept it if it were "more sci-fi/fantasy stuff". Of course, when he thinks science fiction, he thinks of "Lost in Space". The only similarities between Four Ways to Forgiveness and his perception of spaceships shooting it out in space are that (1) the stories take place on three distant worlds and (2) there are some brief references to the vehicles that transport the characters between these worlds. Oh yes, and at one point there is a threat of a space battle that never materializes.

These four stories are about people trying to find meaning in their lives in the midst of social upheaval. About how love between two people in can give meaning to the struggle of thousands. About being true to yourself in the face of hopeless adversity. While these are very lofty themes, Le Guin's writing never slips into preaching. These are stories that for the most part focus on individuals attempting to overcome difficult situations. Although each of these stories can stand quite well one its own, together they paint a broad picture of a society in flux.

While much of Ursula Le Guin's earlier work is ultimately rewarding, some of it is difficult to get through. It seemed that she was concentrating more on the message than on the story. Here are four wonderful stories whose message comes through loud and clear. This is a mature, thoughtful work that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking.

So is this science fiction? Technically, yes. There are enough elements of science fiction (space travel, relativity) to keep this story solidly within the realm. But the story could have been told without these elements. I think the reason that this story is told as science fiction is that it gave Le Guin the freedom to create her own cultures as the framework for the story. She didn't have to worry about being historically accurate or concern herself that the reader get so involved with the politics and history that he loses sight of the fundimental elements at work. So instead of historical fiction about Bosnia or South Africa, we get science fiction about Hain, Werel and Yeowe. And I'll stack this up against any piece of fiction, regardless of genre.