Blog #2

After reading this far into the book, I tried to consider the story from a Karhidian perspective. To be more specific, I considered the idea of Gethenians as a symbol for us earthlings. What would we do if an odd-looking creature suddenly landed on our planet in a strange capsule that he claimed to be a spaceship? How would we react to his claims that he is from an alien planet, comes in peace, and wishes to recruit our planet to join a massive interplanetary union? Like Karhide, we would be suspicious of the envoy and conduct studies of his spacecraft and his anatomy. We would probably be scared of him initially, not knowing his capabilities. We may consider the ansible communicator a dangerous device; perhaps with a click of a button our beloved earth would be no more.

I enjoyed reading chapter 7 because it helped me to understand the Gethenians better. It also helped to answer my question in the previous blog. I asked why everyone was referred to as males when there was no gender. It turns ou the simplest answer was the best, that it was simply the most convenient. The male pronoun is often used as the default pronoun, even in our society.