Language

As the characters and, in turn, the reader travel through the multiple worlds that are the result of the dreams of Gregory Orr in Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, the question arises as to the impulse for the changes and the mode through which the changes are enacted. In this text, language and the subtleties of meaning and expression play a key role in the development of the story and also contribute to one of the overarching themes- language is power and powerful and necessary and dangerous. Orr, the well-meaning, altruistic protagonist, is aware that the content of his dreams is “effective.” His role, at the onset, is passive, in the sense that, in the unconscious dream state Orr does not direct his dreams in one way or another, and thus does not actively change, through dreams, the paths of the world around him. He, in fact, attempts to suppress dreaming with drugs. Enter Dr. Haber, under whose care Orr is compulsorily placed. Once Haber figures out the gravity of the situation, he uses language, through persuasive statements uttered in the hypnotized state, to profoundly change the world around them. In a few instances, Le Guin expressively illustrates the subtlety of language and diction through example in the text. In Chapter 7, Heather Lelache hypnotizes Orr and states that he should dream that “Dr. Haber is benevolent…And you’ll dream that the Aliens aren’t out there on the Moon any longer” (109). In an eerie revelatory moment in the book, it becomes apparent that, because of Heather’s specific word choice, the Aliens were no longer on the Moon and now came to Earth. Another example of how language influences the passage of time and the realities of life, is when Dr. Haber implies in hypnosis that Orr should dream the elimination of all racial tensions. The result of such a dream is that people came in only one color- gray, which made them indistinguishable, and indicated that in the language of this world, the in-between was gray- the gray area.

Though not directly related, I am interested in the David Harvey reading, particularly in his presentation of Hassan’s “Schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism” and its juxtaposition of modernism’s concern with semantics and postmodernism’s concern with rhetoric. In analyzing the use of language as device in The Lathe of Heaven, one can see the suggestion of postmodern in the treatment of language as rhetoric. The definition of “rhetoric” in the Oxford English Dictionary is: “The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence.” If one adheres to the idea that the postmodern text relies and revels in rhetoric, it seems that the subtleties of language and the effects it has on events in The Lathe of Heaven would exemplify such a conclusion.