Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” found me during the summer of 2024, when both the relative adequacy of the Biden administration was ending, and then-former President Trump came crashing back with Project 2025. Yet the 1974 science-fiction novel inspired me. It reminded me of the power that we, as individuals, have to stay firm in our beliefs, to not acquiesce, and to personally push back against atrocities around us.
The novel follows Shevek, a physicist on the anarchist moon Anarres, as he journeys to the wealthy planet Urras, an allegory for Earth. Anarres was born two hundred years earlier out of an anti-capitalist revolution on Urras that instead espoused the new philosophy of Odonianism. With its core tenet “cooperation, solidarity, [and] mutual aid,” Odonianism molded Anarres into a utopian attempt to liberate humanity from property and hierarchy.
Shevek discovers that even this idealistic experiment has developed its own rigid norms and a centralized power structure in the Production and Distribution Coordination (PDC), clashing with true Odonian values. Conversely, Urras captivates him with its beauty and abundance, until Shevek realizes the unrelenting presence of inequality makes Urras antithetical to human connection. Remembering the future Anarres promised, Shevek spearheads a strike in protest of Urras’ exploitation before returning home to execute the vision of Odonianism.
Through Shevek’s disillusionment and return, Le Guin testifies that — despite being fraught with flaws — Anarres can inspire today’s individualistic America to learn solidarity and undermine oppressive power structures.
Le Guin first warns how interpersonal division is fabricated even in a society built upon Odonianism’s principle of mutual aid. In Anarres, subtle dogmatism turns Odonianism into a stiff moral rulebook, reducing its meaning to a vague memory of the nation’s admirable creation. To the people of Anarres, known as Anarresti, the principle is twisted into empty words, a slogan of national identity more than an ideology actually lived by.
Exploiting this vacuousness, the PDC co-opts Odonianism and designates itself the arbiter of what is acceptable in Anarres, therefore using Odonianism as a façade for its authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, the PDC claims the Odonian identity to brand its opponents, including Shevek, as “anti-Odonian” and “traitors.” This tactic alienates Shevek and prevents him from criticizing the PDC, painting him as a dangerous carrier of foreign hatred, as opposed to a patriot who loves Anarres’ founding principle.
The PDC also manipulates Anarresti by exploiting a “basic societal bond, the fear of the stranger,” to justify its harsh isolationist policies and cling to power. It promotes the narrative that collective survival is irreconcilable with divergence, and the Anarresti do not dispute this. They yield to an altered reality of intolerance, rooted in passivity and an “averted eye” beneath which the oppressive, fearmongering PDC emerges.
Unfortunately, this parallels populist and nationalist movements such as President Trump’s, who aggressively mongers fear against immigrants and mythologizes himself as America’s savior. In 2023, Trump proclaimed, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. […] I am your retribution,” positioning himself as the incarnation of American safety and identity. Since Le Guin’s youth, when McCarthyism labeled anything left-wing as disloyal, the American right-wing has been calling liberals “traitors” for attempting to progress the nation.
Like the PDC with Odonianism, the far right has appropriated symbols of American identity to promote fundamentally anti-American politics: division, suppression, and xenophobia. For instance, the Make America Great Again movement has furthered the transformation of the U.S. flag from a symbol of unity into one of partisan defiance, nationalism, and bigotry. Like in Anarres, even when our foundations are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, authoritarian structures materialize when we forget to reinforce solidarity.
However, recall that historically, civil rights activists have flown the flag to remind the U.S. of its bedrock of equality and freedom — with conservative resistance criticizing its usage. There is a scene in my favorite movie, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” in which three men hurl insults at an anti-Vietnam War protester, shouting “Put down the goddamn flag, you c***!” In fact, activists like her are far from betraying American ideals.
Le Guin, who wrote “The Dispossessed” against the backdrop of the counterculture movement in the U.S., shows us how we can reclaim our revolutionary roots and recenter our foundational values. Let us not forget that, like Le Guin and the free speech movement of the 1960s, we can be loyal to our country, not by unquestioningly standing with the current leadership, but by critically examining its institutions and pretences.
When Shevek participates in the strike against Urras, he emphasizes that solidarity is necessary for change, proclaiming to the crowd that “the bond that binds us is beyond choice.” Le Guin establishes that oppression, greed, and authoritarianism should not pit people against each other, but unite humanity to fight for freedom. Shevek acutely understands the solidarity vital to our own survival — that “no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand” — championing the collaboration that characterizes our species’ progress.
Despite that, Shevek concludes that, on Urras, “you cannot act like a brother to other people. […] Inside [Urras is] a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others.” Le Guin contends that a desecration of fraternity is inherent in a society that places individualism on a pedestal. She foreshadows a violent, irreversible death of morality, compassion, and kindness if we do not condemn divisive politics. A hand “shot off” is not a hand slapped or burnt — it is destroyed without possibility of growing back.
But while reading, we often forget that to criticize, we must first care, and then hope. Although Le Guin writes that Urras is “full of evils, full of human injustice,” she describes that, “it is also full of good, of beauty, vitality, achievement. […] It is alive, tremendously alive — alive, despite all its evils, with hope.” Le Guin is adamant about the direness of solidarity precisely because she adores Earth, thinks it wondrous, and encourages us to shape it in this image.
The final chapter sees Shevek return with Ketho, the first foreigner to step foot on Anarres. Neither knows if they will be embraced or attacked upon landing, yet Shevek acknowledges that “Freedom is never very safe,” planning to transform society anyway. Whatever the outcome, the novel’s ending accentuates that interpersonal connection and a willingness to open our doors to others are essential to liberate humanity — that a new world can be formed, and we must try.
“The Dispossessed” has matured my political views, reshaped my values, and changed my life. Reading it showed me how to confront a political landscape increasingly hostile to productive dialogue. It taught me to doubly criticize everything I think I know and to acknowledge flaws in systems I once glorified, despite persistence in the belief that they are a way forward. Although I am not advocating for anarchism, the “thought-experiment” that Le Guin urges us to view her science-fiction as remains a molding force of my opinions, and a useful lens through which to assess our world.
Le Guin believed the ultimate purpose of reading is to “listen” to those who have “imagined life” so we can make sense of our own. In her essay “Why Americans are Afraid of Dragons,” Le Guin illuminates that we fear fantasy because “its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false […] in the life [we] have let [ourselves] be forced into living.” Fantasy reminds us that we could inhabit a different world, that the rules we take as fact are not fact, and that the box we are stuck in is of our own making — a consequence of our lack of imagination. “[We] are afraid of dragons,” Le Guin explains, “because we are afraid of freedom.”
So I urge you, like Le Guin, to read and to imagine freedom. And if you pick up “The Dispossessed,” even better.
