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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Left Hand of Darkness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth and Storytelling
Sex, Gender, and Behavior
Duty and Loyalty
Otherness and Connectedness
Light and Dark, Religion and Spirituality
Summary
Analysis
This chapter is from “The Sayings of Tuhulme the High Priest,” a Yomeshta religious text written nine hundred years ago.
As with other supplementary chapters, this chapter provides non-narrative background information on Gethen and one of its primary religions.
Themes
According to this text, Meshe began to See when he was thirty, which was perfectly halfway through his life, in the Center of Time. Nothing is unseen to Meshe.
Practitioners of the Yomeshta religion believe that enlightenment can be reached through the acquisition of knowledge.
Themes
In one anecdote, a man came to Meshe complaining of his poverty. Meshe told him to dig in a field where he would find precious stones. His advice was good, but Meshe cried because could see that the jewels would lead to fighting in thousands of years.
The Handdara believe that ignorance is the path to enlightenment, and that knowledge isn’t useful. However, even in Yomeshta, which worships knowledge, information comes at a cost.
Themes
In Yomeshta, there is no darkness. Darkness only exists for mortals. Meshe can See everything, and everything is in light. There is no beginning and no end, no darkness and no death, and everything is in the Center of Time always. The text also notes that those who “call upon the darkness,” the Handdara, “are made fools.”
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