In The Word for World
is Forest Ursula Le Guin creates an entire new planet and portrays the
human characters as the “bad” guys. Readers usually side with the peaceful
underdog, the Athsheans. These small, green, furry beings have trouble even
comprehending the violence and cruelty that is happening to them while the “yumens”
are colonizing their planet and killing their forests. This lack of understanding
is even more dangerous when they are taught about murder, but not about grief
or guilt. Many people today accept that humans are our own worst enemy; we are
the most dangerous thing on the planet. This book can be seen as commentary on
the cruelty of humans upon animals or the cruelty we show each other. We are
somehow able to immediately know that someone who is different from us is evil
or stupid just as Davidson sees the “creechies” that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment