This novel calls for the reader to question many concepts, including the definitions of insanity and reality. In the beginning of the book, we learn that George is sent to Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment for drug abuse, but the reason he is sent to Haber is because the medical school sends him “the nuts they [can’t] crack” (16). At that moment, the question of George’s sanity emerges; before that he was just a guy with a prescription drug problem.
What does it mean to be insane? In this book, it means that your version of history and reality is not the same as everyone else’s. Society defines what insane is, and if George is the only one with memories of how things used to be, his version of the past does not mesh with society’s memories of history and therefore his memories must be incorrect. This ties into the history aspect of postmodernism we were discussing the first day of class. History is important in this novel because your memories of the past determine how you view the present. George needs his history to be validated by someone else in order for him to trust his mind.
When he first starts seeing Haber and the psychologist denies that the picture on the wall has changed (from Mt. Hood to a horse), Orr recognizes that he is “alone: knowing that he was insane and knowing he was not insane, simultaneously and intensely” (35-36). If he simply accepts other people’s version of reality, denies what he knows, he is not insane. He flirts with the line between sane and insane when he later decides to ignore his memory that came with the new reality he dreamt: “He was aware that in thus relegating to irreality a major portion of the only reality, the only existence, that he in fact did have, he was running exactly the same risk that the insane mind runs: the loss of the sense of free will” (146). At another point in the novel, George tries to communicate to Haber that he does not have the power to change the world the way Haber wants, that he is not being difficult, but does in fact lack that aspect of control over his dreams. So if George does not have that free will, does that make him insane? He is being controlled by the memories of worlds that have continued to change over four years. He believes that the world has to be left alone, so free will does have to be surrendered in the sense of Haber’s attempts to create a Utopian society, because “We’re in this world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try to stand outside things and run them, that way…there is a way but you have to follow it” (136).
By the end of the novel, George and Haber have changed places to a degree. Haber is in a mental asylum because he cannot reconcile the “unreality” he knows with the way the world is because of his dreams. Haber is a higher degree of insane because he frightens the other patients just by being there. He has become a monster because he used recklessly used technology to change the world for the better and it has backfired. He has free will in a conscious state but not in his dreams, so he succumbs to insanity while George is freed because he asked for help when he dreamt and was able to cure himself. Only by giving up control was he able to stop his dreams and be able to gain control again. Le Guin punishes Haber with a severe degree of insanity because he would not give up control.