The Dispossessed: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Shevek has long been stationed in the Southwest of Anarres, and now he is being taken across the desert by a truck driver—the man has been running people across the desert for the last several years and enjoys the work, though occasionally his rig breaks down in the arid desert. The men discuss the advantages and joys of partnership, and Shevek reveals that he has been separated from Takver, who is still stationed in the northwest, for over four years.

The driver asks Shevek where he has been working, and Shevek tells him “Grand Valley.” The driver solemnly acknowledges that he has heard about what happened at Grand Valley, and looks at Shevek “with the respect due a survivor.” While the mills there were running during the famine, may workers died of hunger. As the men discuss the looting and raiding that has gone on in the desert, it becomes clear that the famine has taken a devastating toll on Anarresti society. Shevek’s job at the mills was “making lists of who should starve,” though on Anarres nobody is supposed to ever go hungry while one of their brothers or sisters eats. Shevek says that after he quit, unable to stand the pain of the work anymore, someone else took over for him—there is “always somebody willing to make lists” now, as individuals posted to those jobs receive rations.

Shevek arrives in a city called Chakar at late dusk. He approaches a domicile and enters it, examining the list of residents. One of the apartments is registered to Takver, and someone named Sherut. Shevek knocks on Takver’s door, and she answers it—they embrace one another, and Takver invites him inside. A “serious, watchful” child is in the room, and Takver introduces her as Sadik—this is their child, but Sadik is frightened of Shevek, and clings to Takver’s legs. All three start crying—Shevek and Takver are overjoyed to see one another, and Sadik is uncertain of what is going on.

Shevek sits on the bed and wipes his eyes, and Sadik offers him her handkerchief. Shevek examines Takver—she has lost two teeth over the course of the years, and her skin and hair have grown dull, but he notices these changes “from the standpoint of years of intimacy and years of longing.” Takver tells Shevek that though she likes the town and she and Sadik have been happy here, she feels her work is not of great consequence, and she would like to return to Abbenay. She asks Shevek if he has received a reposting—he says he hasn’t checked, and hasn’t asked for one since he has been on the road from the desert for a full decad.

It is Sadik’s bedtime, and Takver and Shevek walk her to the children’s dormitory, where she sleeps each night, though she is only four. As they return to Takver’s room, she tells Shevek that the effects of the famine were not so bad in the northeast—children were fed, and wild holum grew abundantly, so nobody starved. Takver’s Syndicate at the laboratory wanted her to give Sadik up to the nursery and focus on her work, and then accused her of being a propertarian when she refused. Takver left that posting soon after the tangle with her coworkers and came to Chakar, where she and Sadik have been living since.

Takver regrets not having refused her initial posting away from Abbenay, but Shevek reassures her and urges her not to linger on the past. They embrace, grateful to be reunited at last. After eating dinner, they return to Takver’s room and make love. At dawn, Takver wakes up and watches Shevek as he sleeps, marveling at the distances they have crossed for one another.

Takver puts in her notice at work, but still works long shifts even though the drought has broken. Shevek, mildly sick with a chronic Dust cough, spends his days sleeping and taking walks, often stopping by the learning center to watch Sadik play. After school, Takver and Sadik and Shevek spend their evenings together before Sadik returns to her dormitory. The days are peaceful, and Shevek feels he is living in a “time outside time.”

Takver and Shevek discuss Sadik, as well as their childhood friends, on their nights alone. They reminisce about Tirin, who is now out of the asylum and is writing and rewriting the same play he was originally “punished” for putting on. Takver says that Tirin should have refused his multiple labor postings, as she should have refused her work posting to the Northeast. Shevek says that because Anarresti believe they are free, they do whatever they are told, believing they are acting of free will when really they are just following the orders of the PDC. Bedap was right, Shevek says—social conscience has overwhelmed individual conscience to the point that Anarresti are no longer anarchists, but obedient cogs in a flawed machine.

Takver draws parallels between Tirin’s persecution for artistic expression and Shevek’s for “unproductive” research. Shevek looks back on his own capitulation to Sabul’s “authoritarianism,” and argues that though his book was printed—the right end—it was achieved through “the wrong means.” When it comes to the book, Shevek says, though he and Takver believed they were actively choosing to follow the path of least resistance to publication, they had actually let “convention, moralism, [and] fear of social ostracism” guide their decision making. Shevek resolves to never succumb to that impulse again.

Shevek expresses his desire to return to Abbenay, with Takver and Sadik beside him, and start a printing syndicate in order to print his own unedited theories as well as “whatever else [they] like”—Tirin’s scandalous play, for example. Shevek resolves to spend his life unbuilding walls.

That night, after Takver falls asleep, Shevek lies awake. He reflects on how over the last four years, he has learned the strength of his own will, and has recognized its irrepressible nature. He has reconciled this drive with his Odonian values, and now has realized that his sense of “primary responsibility towards his work” is a force that can engage him with his fellow brothers and sisters, not estrange him from them. He believes he is obligated to carry out his sense of responsibility to his work.