I like how this book (The Word for World is Forest) interprets history and its repetitive events. For instance, the oppression of people who we think are beneath us. I think it's interesting how racism can still exist in the time and world of the story, considering the other races that are integrated as part of their intergalactic society. Don Davidson is just like a blast from the past. He's a man's man. Obsessed with the well-being of men with less care for women and a racist. He's on top of his own world and because he's on a developing planet, he thinks that he's entitled to do whatever he feels like (like raping Thele).
To my understanding, racism is not something that can be totally obliterated since there will always be differences amongst people, and that may or may not cause rifts but this story takes place in the future. I would've thought that understanding amongst people and races would have progressed and been more widely accepted. Or even history be learnt (that acceptance is more powerful than obliteration; what it takes years to develop, it takes only minutes/seconds to destroy).
Another thing I want to discuss is Selver Thele's god-ness. The Athsheans treat him as a god because he is a prominent being that affects history, but why do they say he can't be reborn? Is it because he's done what is not right, but necessary and therefore, having sinned, cannot be reborn? I find it interesting that the Athsheans can accept what we would interpret as a normal man, as a god, but then again, we also do not actively practice daydreaming as a form of fortune telling.
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