The Dispossessed: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Shevek wakes on an airship bound for the city of Abbenay, the night of his farewell party already “half a world behind him.” He looks out his small window to the ground below, catching a glimpse of the Port of Anarres. Though Shevek thinks Urras is despicable, another world is another world, and Shevek is desperate to see a ship from another world. The Port, though, is empty of ships today.

Freighters that arrive eight times a year from Urras are considered a necessary evil by most Anarresti. The Urrasti bring fossil oils, petroleum, electronics that Anarresti manufacturing cannot create, and other goods. They take back with them mercury, copper, tin, gold, and uranium. In the Council of World Governments, the Free World of Anarres is considered nothing but a mining colony of Urras. Each year, the PDC argues for the end of trade with the “warmaking propertarians” of Urras, but Anarresti know that if they broke their trade agreement the Urrasti would retaliate with force.

Shevek looks down on the green splendor of Ans Hos, the Eden of Anarres. Centuries ago, when Anarres was still a mining colony that had not yet been settled by the Odonians, the first town, Anarres Town, was built at Ans Hos, and miners lived there under two or three year contracts. It wasn’t until the year 771, when the Urrasti government collapsed, that the Council of World Government gave the Moon—Anarres—to the Odonians to prevent them from forever undermining “the authority of law and national sovereignty on Urras.”

Eventually Anarres Town grew to hold a hundred thousand people and was renamed Abbenay. Odo, the leader of the Odonians, envisioned Anarres as a planet of many towns and settlements connected by physical and intellectual networks through which natural resources, manufactured goods, and intellectual property would be shared and spread. However, the arid climate of the desert-like Anarres made it difficult for the growing communities to sustain themselves, let alone support another far-off town as well. The Anarresti persisted, begrudgingly allowing a central distribution and organizational center to develop in Abbenay despite fear of power cohering to the center. The Anarresti remained vigilant to ensure their anarcho-syndicalist ethos would remain intact.

The airship lands, and Shevek sets off into the streets of Abbenay, the largest city on Anarres. The streets are wide and clean, and the low, spare buildings do not create shadows. There is a vividness and a clarity to things, Shevek thinks, though Abbenay has been built and structured plainly and efficiently just like any other Odonian community. Odo always said that “excess is excrement,” and the cities built according to her teachings reflect that ideology. Abbenay is bare, accessible, and everything is laid out plainly: “Nothing [is] hidden.”

The city is busy, and Shevek takes in the sounds and sights of people talking, working, gossiping, and playing as he roams the streets. He enters a park at the end of the main thoroughfare and walks among green leafy holum trees. Soon he comes to a bench, upon which sits a stone statue of Odo. He sits down beside the statue, and contemplates the fact that though Odo is the lifeblood of Anarres, she never stepped foot on the planet during her lifetime.

As it grows dark, Shevek leaves the park and heads for the Central Institute of the Sciences. At the entrance, Shevek asks a registrar if there’s an empty bed in one of the dormitories. The registrar points him in the direction of the dorm, and hands him a note from Sabul, which instructs Shevek to meet Sabul at the physics office in the morning. Shevek follows the registrar’s instructions to the nearby dormitory, and is surprised to find that all the rooms are singles, rather than rooms of four to ten beds. Alone in a single room surrounded by books for the first time in his life, Shevek hesitantly shuts the door and goes to sleep.

In the morning, Shevek meets Sabul—the physicist who is to be his mentor. Sabul is squat and slovenly, dressed in grimy clothing. He speaks abruptly and coarsely. He tells Shevek that he must learn Iotic, the language of Urras, in order to read the major works of Urrasti physics—no one has translated them into Pravic yet. Sabul hands Shevek a book of Ioti grammar and an Ioti dictionary, and the two argue about which lectures Shevek should attend. Shevek wants to attend the courses of a woman named Gvarab in order to learn more about Simultaneity, but Sabul insists that Shevek has already surpassed her, and that Simultaneity is “profiteering crap.” He orders Shevek to “drop the mysticism and grow up,” urging him to learn Iotic quickly, and to only seek him out again when he is able to read a book of Urrasti physics.

As Sabul prepares to leave, he tells Shevek not to share the Urrasti texts with anyone. Shevek is confused by the directive to acquire knowledge which he is not meant to share, but Sabul insists that the books are “explosive.” Sabul leaves, and Shevek holds the Urrasti texts in his hands as if they are dynamite—“with revulsion and devouring curiosity.”

Shevek sets to the task of learning Iotic, isolated in his room from the rest of the Institute and the city. He is used to being isolated, as all his life he has known that he is unlike anyone else. For the first time ever, though, Shevek soon begins to treasure his privacy, independence, and isolation, leaving his room only for meals and short walks, and assigned community labor one day out of every ten. He is learning Iotic quickly, and is soon able to understand the physics textbooks Sabul provided him with. He admires the Urrasti physicists, who are far ahead of anyone on Anarres.

As Shevek delves deeper and deeper into the Urrasti texts, he grows more and more hermitic, neglecting all social and communal aspects of life at the Institute. Despite all this, Shevek never misses a single one of Gvarab’s lectures—he has been attending her course on Frequency and Cycle despite Sabul’s disapproval. Attendance at Gvarab’s lectures is sparse, but the elderly Gvarab takes pleasure in being able to share her ideas with Shevek, who hangs on her every word and whose attention redeems her life’s work.

After half a year at the Institute, Shevek presents Sabul with a critique of the Urrasti physicist Atro’s work. Sabul orders Shevek to translate the paper into Iotic, so that it can be sent straight to Atro himself on the next freighter bound for Urras. Shevek is startled to find that ideas and letters are traded back and forth just like petroleum and mercury, and though he is alarmed by the idea of communicating with a propertarian, he is also excited.

In addition to the communication with Urras, Shevek finds his ideals tested in other ways. The fact that he must learn Iotic but keep it to himself goes against the ideology of sharing he has lived by his whole life. His single private room, too, is a “moral thorn,” ordinarily a symbol of someone who is an egoizer or a disgrace. Human solidarity is a privilege, and in a communal society such as the Anarresti one’s privacy has little function. Shevek soon realizes, though, that his work is made easier through his solitude, and tells himself that because the job he is doing will someday be important to his society, he is justified in luxuriating in his privacy.

As Shevek works toward a theory of Simultaneity, he struggles with his desire to also research and develop a unified theory of Time. As Shevek’s work intensifies, he sleeps less and less, dreaming vividly for only a few hours a night. He has visions of holding time itself in his hands.

One day, Shevek stops into the physics office to see if any letters have arrived, and he runs into Sabul. Sabul holds out a book to Shevek—it is Shevek’s critique of Atro’s work, retranslated into Pravic and credited to both Shevek and Sabul. Shevek is caught off guard and upset that Sabul has taken the credit for his and Atro’s ideas. When Shevek asks if he can publish his own work under his own name on Urras, Sabul says that the PDC will not allow any unapproved written materials to leave Anarres.

The two men argue, and Shevek at last realizes that Mitis’s warning has come true: he is indeed Sabul’s man. Nevertheless, Shevek acknowledges that he needs Sabul if he wants his ideas to get sent to Urras. He decides that going forward he will work with Sabul rather than against him, and as Shevek walks home in the rain, he begins feeling ill. In his single room, Shevek succumbs to a fever, and takes to bed.

After several days, Shevek realizes he is not getting better, and he checks himself into a local clinic, where he is diagnosed with pneumonia. Shevek, like most Anarresti, feels it is shameful to be ill, and attempts to refuse medical help, but eventually allows a doctor to inject him with medicine to bring down his fever. Shevek falls asleep, raving in Iotic and Pravic about physics and time.

When Shevek wakes up again, he feels well at last. A woman sits at Shevek’s bedside and asks how he feels. When Shevek asks her who she is, she replies, “the mother,” and Shevek confusedly wonders if he has been reborn. As Shevek looks at the woman more closely, he realizes that she is Rulag, his actual mother. Shevek, horrified, shrinks away from her. Rulag explains that she found him while sorting books for the engineering library on a work rotation—she discovered his and Sabul’s book and tracked him to the Institute, then to the clinic.

Rulag asks if Shevek is still in touch with his father, Palat, and Shevek tells her that Palat has been dead for eight years, and was killed trying to rescue children trapped in rubble after an earthquake. Rulag accepts the news wearily, but without displaying much emotion. Rulag asks Shevek if he is angry at her for not having kept in touch, and Shevek replies that he cannot be angry with her, as he does not know her, and never did. Rulag attempts to explain how she and Palat were separated by work postings, but Shevek tells her that none of it matters.

Rulag explains that work has always come first for her, but that Palat was the more parental one in their partnership. Rulag offers to help Shevek find his way in Abbenay—she is well-connected, she says, and would be happy to advise him in the “dominance games” that take place at the Institute. Shevek can see the pain and loneliness on Rulag’s face as she speaks, and he resents it. He feels she has no right to swoop in after so many years and uproot Shevek’s loyalty to his father’s memory, and he rejects her offer. Rulag concedes that they are not really mother and son except biologically, but hopes that they can connect as brother and sister. Shevek tells her that he is uncertain of whether he can do so. Rulag solemnly leaves, bidding Shevek farewell, and Shevek begins to weep.