An Outsider’s Perspective
A deep dive of Ursla K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing
“Mainstream society needs the perspective of it’s outsiders and recluses to illuminate problems and alternatives that aren’t visible from the inside”
— Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
Odell’s How to do Nothing is book that follows what appears to be a continuous mind dump of Odell’s thoughts about society and productivity. It is sprinkled with several outside sources and ideas from books that Odell has pulled from what seems like years of reading. The implications of these sources are truly seamless as she uses them to support her ideas but also bring new light to them. One such tangent of hers following utopias and outsiders caught my attention along with the book The Dispossessed. Looking into the book further I found it was a Sci-Fi classic and being an avid reader of the genre, I deemed this was the book I wanted to read. I was a little surprised that Odell found this book interesting, to the point that it was included in her own writing.
I find that after reading The Dispossessed that Odell only used a broad theme of the book to contribute to her ideas about outsiders and differing perspectives. Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel follows Shevek, a native from the moon Annares. He is a brilliant physicist who is summoned by the neighboring planet Urras to help their society with faster than light travel and bring the two societies together. Shevek faces several hurdles and challenges during his stay on Urras, dealing with the major differences between his anarchist colony and the Earth like society on Urras. Odell has taken this story and formed the broad theme of the importance of outsiders, saying the society “needs the perspective of its outsiders and recluses to illuminate problems and alternatives that aren’t visible from the inside”(Odell 56).
In the tail end of Odell’s chapter, The Impossibility of Retreat, she mentions the idea of utopia and Hauptstrom, which translates “to something like mainstream in the sense of an electrical current” (Odell 54). In the midst of the other outside sources she says the communes “opened up new perspectives on the society they had left” (Odell 55). I believe Odell was informed of this idea of an outsider’s perspective from Shevek’s experiences and challenges during his stay on Urras. When he first arrived at the plant, Shevek was depicted as “a towering giant of a man, that was unshaven and possessed a mane” in the local papers (Le Guin 79). Of course, his presence drew a crowd, and a common question was what he eats on Annares. He replied that he is a vegetarian and does not drink alcohol (Le Guin 79). The idea of not drinking or eating meat is odd for those on Urras, but also in the real world, though it is something that is practiced. This is a small example of how Le Guin steps out of the social norms of life on earth and applies them to her book, making Shevek an outsider. A larger more interesting example is one that deals with the differences in work motivation between Urras and Annares. When sharing a meal with a humble family that took him in, Shevek explains that on Urras “ the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire profit,” while those on Annares people work because they like to (Le Guin 150). On Annares there is no money so they work “because they take pride” in working and ‘egoize’ or show off to those who cannot perform such jobs (Le Guin150). I was amazed with Le Guin’s ability to one apply the idea of a world run without a monetary system, but also to convey the idea of working for enjoyment and put that idea into an outsider character. I think it is brilliant to step away from something so common in our society. While I was amazed, I can imagine this also fueled Odell’s thinking, the idea of looking at something from the outside. Odell referenced The Dispossessed in The Impossibility of Retreat and concluded what is in the epigraph above. This of course was drawn directly from Shevek and his position as an outsider, but there are also ideas in Odell’s novel that could have been indirectly influenced by Le Guin.
At the very beginning of her book, Odell introduces the idea of ‘doing nothing’ and the possible benefits. An example she includes in the section is her father’s leave of absence from work. During this escape he was not necessarily ‘productive’ as he did not work or earn money, but he instead worked on himself and improved his “creativity and state of openness” (Odell 11). Odell concluded from this that productivity does not always refer to working. The idea of productivity and working is very different between Annares and Urras, which is another challenge Shevek faces during his stay. On his home world there is a period of everyone’s lives where they work in hard manual labor for a few years. Coming to Urras, he was met with “Complete leisure to work; all materials at hand; intellectual stimulation . . . whenever wanted; no pressure. . . Paradise indeed!”, yet he was unable to get any work done ( Le Guin 129). He was very accustomed to working for everything, meaning it was not just handed to him. His idea of being productive was rooted in working for everything, rather than using given tools. I believe that there is a chance Odell was inspired by this when writing about what it means to be productive, but Le Guin’s novel was not directly referenced, meaning it is simply an inference.
Personally, I think there are several different overarching themes that Odell could have included from the novel, though I do value the theme she used. I think she was drawn to the book because there are several elements in The Dispossessed that challenge society. The idea of going against social norms is a very prevalent idea in Odell’s novel, so I would assume Le Guin’s novel caught her attention. From Diogenes and his odd habits to her father taking a break from work and digital detox, Odell is constantly referencing ideas and people who break societal norms much like Shevek. Diogenes was famed for always doing the opposite of what was expected which included rolling “over hot sand in the summer, and hugging statues covered with snow”, though childish it was his way of refusing society, while also remaining in it(Odell ). Shevek on the other hand could appear to be similar in certain aspects as he would not name items as ‘mine’ or ‘my’, which was common when talking about ownership on Urras. Though his reasoning for doing so was not to do the opposite of those around him, it is more akin to his beliefs. From his point of view, those who live on Urras are propertarians, solely focused on property and ownership of material goods. The idea of being ‘propertarian’ is frowned upon, and when Shevek mentions holding light “in my hands”, his wife scolds him, saying “don’t be propertarian” (Le Guin 190). Though Shevek challenges society, him doing so is related to his beliefs, but also the environment he was raised in, which leads me to believe a major theme in The Dispossessed is nature vs. nurture.
The theme of nature vs. nurture is the idea that there are some traits that people are born with and there are others that some gradually gain from their environment. Gaining different knowledge depending on one’s environment is a major element in Le Guin’s novel as Shevek has thoughts and ideas that may not have come about if he lived on Urras. When striking up conversation about Urras while still on Annares, Shevek shouts at his collegue, saying “Would you really like to live in a society where you had no responsibility and no freedom” in which Bed-ap replies “Oh, hell no” (Le Guin 61). Shevek was raised in a society with responsibility and freedom without money dictating his decisions. To those on Annares, living in a world with money and government is like prison. Living on Annares has also contributed to Shevek’s metaphor between plants and life. When talking with his wife late one night he ponders “If you can see a thing whole, it seems that its always beautiful, but up close, a world’s all dirt and rocks” ( Le Guin 190). He continues by saying that people’s lives are full of challenges and it’s easy to lose motivation and “the way to see that earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death” (Le Guin 190). Shevek is wrapped up in a very existential way of thinking that pushes his thoughts towards the idea that everyone’s lives are dirty and the best way to view life is from a distance. This is extremely contradictory to the thinking of the those on Urras, as of course their main goals are to acquire tangible things and enjoy life in the moment. Shevek points out that Urras is incredibly beautiful, which could distract anyone from his way of thinking. Overall, I think a major theme in The Dispossessed that Odell missed or could have added is the idea of nature vs. nurture.
It could be concluded that the idea of nature vs. nurture shapes outsiders in their environments. This is mentioned in Odell’s book when she writes about St. Anthony, a hermit whose experiences were left in Athanasius’s biography. A “self-exile in the desert” is indeed an extreme environment to live, though St. Anthony did so with “his mind stripped of the world” (Odell 56). Odell includes this example to highlight an outsider, but she dives deeper into the mental side of completely abandoning society. She questions “what responsibility do you have to the world left behind and what are you going to do” once one has retreated from the world (Odell 56). Obviously, there are mental tolls to being an outsider which make these questions hard to answer. In another example Odell writes about Thomas Merton. Merton was a monk who was “zeroing in on spiritualty and the idea of recounting the world” (Odell 57). He found that after his exile he “loved all these people”, that they did not have to be “alien” to one another (Odell 57). Though it appears that Odell has overlooked or missed the theme of nature vs. nurture, she dives deeper into the struggles of an outsider and highlights some key and contrasting experiences from those who have abandoned society.
It is clear that Odell was fascinated with the idea of challenging society and bringing the idea of productivity to a new light. This idea of an outside perspective was very prevalent in Odell’s novel but also in Le Guin’s, which is where I presume, she was informed of the idea. Le Guin’s extreme example of an outsider who is foreign to customs and an environment that is relatable to Earth is very intriguing and impressive. Of course, I believe Odell could have been indirectly influenced by Le Guin when she talks about productivity and escaping societal norms. It can also be noted that the theme of nature vs. nurture is another key theme of The Dispossessed that Odell either overlooked or missed in her novel. I think it can be concluded that yes an outsider’s perception is important and much needed, but it is really the environment that shapes an outsider, so a variety of backgrounds and ideas is needed to truly make a difference in society.
ODELL, J. (2020). HOW TO DO NOTHING: Resisting the attention economy. Place of publication not identified: MELVILLE House.
K., LE. GUIN. (2015). The Dispossessed. HARPER PERENNIAL.
