Samantha McDonald

30 April 2002

Exploration:  More than a Physical Journey

            Literature of space and exploration provides readers with much more than simple tales of adventure and the exotic.  Exploration is much more than finding a new land and looking around.  In addition to the physical challenges, each explorer is also faced with a barrage of new images and concepts that he must find a way to understand and incorporate into his personality.  Exploration literature can convey an explorer’s internal struggles as well as his struggle with the new environment in which he is immersed.  Linking foreign concepts and images to known objects using vivid descriptions and logical analysis gives the reader a means of relating to literature that he may otherwise unable to comprehend.  With the inclusion of the thoughts and motivations of explorers, students can more fully understand the more complicated how and why of the journey instead of relatively factual when and where.  Many of the topics inherent to exploration literature apply to everyone’s lives and can provide students with an opportunity for introspection few other forms of literature do.

            In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai’s primary goal was to explore Gethen and arrange for trade relations between the Ekumen and the Gethenians.  While Genly did actively explore Karhide, Orgoreyn, and the Foretellers Hearth, Le Guin also provided detailed glimpses into Genly’s mind and the internal struggles he experienced when dealing with the Gethenians.  The androgynous nature of the Gethen people was counter to all Genly ha experienced previously.  While he was able to logically accept the sexual nature of Gethenians, Genly was unable to overcome his need to categorize Gethenians as male or female.   Genly was forced to explore his own feelings and beliefs in order to reconcile his perceptions of Gethenians with how Gethenians really are.  In Genly’s eyes Estraven was “neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand’s touch, changelings in the human cradle” (Le Guin 213).  One of the most fundamental aspects of human nature could not be applied to Estraven who, in most other senses, was as human as Genly.  Until Genly was willing to accept Estraven “was a woman as well as a man” (Le Guin 248) he repeatedly tried to fit Estraven into a category that was not present in Gethenian society.  Estraven had to be accepted as a Gethen, not as a human similar to Genly, before Genly was able to trust and develop an honest relationship with him. The concept of neutral sex is so alien to Genly that, in the end, he must accept the Gethenians on faith, without explanation, since no explanation can overcome the gender categorizing Genly has been taught since birth.

Estraven must also cope with this strangeness.  In a society where permanently assigned sexuality was considered a perversion, Genly was an affront to Estraven’s social norm.  Estraven seemed to more readily cope with the difference, though he still cannot understand certain aspects of Genly’s behavior, such as his unwillingness to allow Estraven to see him cry.  Unlike Genly, Estraven has enough respect for Genly as a person that he did not need any further explanation.  Instead Estraven was willing to accept Genly as a human being rather than attempting to accept him as a Gethenian.

Critics have analyzed Genly’s struggle to cope with the gender-neutral Gethenians from a variety of perspectives.  Hayles ties Genly’s unwillingness to accept Estraven’s androgyny to a more fundamental aspect of human nature.  Hayles notes that androgyny “can be seen either as the augmentation and completion of the self or as a form of self-annihilation, the intrusion of the alien into the self” (White 60).  While Genly unconsciously avoided accepting Gethenians completely due to their truly alien physiology, Hayles points out that the Gethenians have achieved a state of being that Genly never can.  Humans in Genly’s world will be forever separated by gender, no matter what else may change.  Genly must come to terms with being unable to participate in the entire cycle of life; he can never give birth to a child, even if he wished, while that is an option for Estraven every twenty-eight days.  Exploration literature is the ideal context to demonstrate that human nature is a driving force not only in how people act, but also in how people perceive the world around them.  Exploration literature, especially in the science fiction genre, provides new worlds to see and often an explorer must look inside himself and decide whether his judgement is based on sound and unbiased observations or on biased principles that he has been taught from birth. 

            Science fiction is not the only genre that provides readers with the opportunity to study an explorer’s thoughts and how they deal with the unknown.  Francis Spufford’s “I May Be Some Time” augments historical facts with plausible supposition to create an account of the Scott Expedition that readers can relate to more readily than detailed statistics.  Since these explorers did not venture into as alien an environment as Genly, the Scott expedition members did not experience as many internal conflicts during their experiences.  But they were driven to relay their observations and experiences to readers, many of whom have very limited points of reference.  Much of the fictional material is added to help the reader understand how the explorers perceived their new surroundings, though the explorers’ first-hand observations were just as poignant. Spufford helps the reader understand the purity of the air by expressing the feeling in terms the reader knows and can imagine.  The air “has a slight edge to it that you feel when you inhale, tingling when it meets the warm blood in your lungs” (Spufford 295).  Ponting tries to match the colors he sees in the sea and walls of ice to the colors in his paint palette.  The colors are there, but just giving names to the colors is not enough to convey the beauty of the scene.  Ponting goes on to describe the sea as a playground for “hundreds of Peter Pan fairies – rainbow-hued flashes of light, mirrored by the dancing, lapping wavelets” (Spufford 296).  Though no one really knows what Peter Pan fairies look like, Ponting provides a description that would allow others to comprehend the level of beauty he was seeing but unable to describe adequately.  By coupling the unknown scene with an image known to the reader, Spufford is able to create images and feelings that readers can relate to, understand, and be inspired by.

            The internal struggles that Spufford does mention are generally centered on Scott himself.  Scott blames the problems with the expedition on bad luck and never expected the bad luck to end.  “Scott will never recognise his own contribution to the malignancy of his fate, but by the same token expects no favours from providence” (Spufford 305).  Knowing this about Scott, a reader is able to understand some of his motivations and how they led to many of the problems the Scott expedition encountered.  Regardless of the hopelessness of the situation, Scott believed that, with enough hard work, any difficulty could be overcome and any goal could be reached.  Since Spufford does explicitly describe the internal workings of Scott’s mind, how Scott viewed both his physical surroundings and the men he worked with can be more easily understood and related to by readers.

            Red Mars is similar to “I May Be Some Time” in that the characters struggle to describe the environment in terms those who have not visited Mars could relate to as well as dealing with internal personal struggles.  Michel, the psychiatrist in the first 100, knew the mental criteria that used to determine what people were suitable for early colonization of Mars.  He also realized shortly after arriving at Mars that he did not meet those criteria.  Michel considered himself “a doctor in a hospice in a prison in hell; and the doctor was sick” (Robinson 215).  Robinson details Michel’s inability to adapt to the sterile confinement of the habitat.  Trying to recall why he had fought so hard to be chosen for the journey, Michel wanders around aimlessly, on the edge of despair.  When he goes to join Hiroko’s group Michel realized at least one reason for his misery.  “The lack of children accounted for the colony’s pervasive feeling of sterility, that they could build buildings and grow plants and yet without children this sterile feeling would still permeate every part of their lives” (Robinson 227).  Michel analyzes not only his surroundings, the physical aspect of his exploration of Mars, but also the psychological impact of his environment.  While Michel and the first 100 do not have an alien culture to understand, they all must cope with the impact the sterile and confined environment of Underhill has on their psychological well being.

            Exploration literature provides a unique opportunity to examine both the internal and external struggles explorers experience during their journey.  Regardless of the journey itself, whether into an unknown land or into an unknown culture, explorers will encounter mental obstacles that they must overcome to complete their journey.  One method of creating understanding is to relate the alien concept or object to something the explorer knows and understands.  This is very effective when describing new or unusual objects or scenery as seen in “I May Be Some Time.”  But when the concept is so foreign as to deny comprehension, the explorer may be forced into unconditional acceptance, such as Genly and Estraven developed for one another’s sexuality.  Even within an explorer’s own society it may become necessary for him to reevaluate himself, like Michel did in Red Mars.   The environment impacted Michel in such a way it became necessary for him face his own inadequacies and find a way to cope with the situation.  Regardless of a reader’s reason for studying exploration literature, the struggle to cope with internal conflicts in addition to the external or physical problems experienced during exploration adds depth to the overall story by tying the environment, both physical and mental, to the explorer’s personal beliefs and psychological makeup.

Works Cited

Le Guin, Ursula.  The Left Hand of Darkness.  New York:  Ace, 1976.

Robinson, Kim Stanley.  Red Mars.  New York:  Bantam, 1993.

Spufford, Francis.  I May Be Some Time.  Ice:  Stories of Survival From Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis.  New York:  Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1999.  285-326.

White, Donna R.  Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics.  Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999.