Left Hand of Darkness Post #5

One of the things that I noticed about the book, (especially closer to the end) was the motif of Shadows. Le Guin uses shadows in several different ways, so I'm not exactly sure what they symbolize, but I have a few ideas.

The first time shadows really stuck out to me was when Estraven and Genly were on their journey to Karhide. They keep saying that in the ice and snow, that they have no shadows. In this part of the story, I think that their lack of shadows, might symbolize them not having a past. A shadow is something that follows behind you, just like the past. I think that out there on their journey, it's sort of like they have no past. Both Genly and Estraven are trying to move on with life, and build their relationship with each other. It doesn't matter to them what the other did in the past, they are both striving to work for a better future, and to forget about what happened to them previously in life.

Another thing that shadows might symbolize are power. In the last chapter of the book, Genly talks about how some men's shadows grew and some shrank, referring to the men who were replaced as the 33 comencals. Basically by this he is saying that when a person has more power, their shadows are larger, and when they get pulled out of power, or demoted from something, their shadows get smaller.

The other thing in the book about shadows is the idea of shifgrethor. We find out towards the end of the book, that the word, translated, means shadow. One way that this could be interpreted is that your pride is something that is always with you, just like your shadow. I'm not really sure about other meanings that it could have. I was a little confused as to why Le Guin would make Shifgrethor translate to shadow. It's a little hard to understand, because it seems like shadows have so many different meanings in the book.