George Orr is the most forgettable character I know. I was expecting invisibility, super-strength, flying, lightning fast changes into spandex and capes, but not banality. My expectations for a main character in a sci-fi / postmodern novel have been upended, and in their place is left normalcy. Our first physical description of him is ordinary, even boring: “haircut conservative shoulder-length, beard short. Light hair and eyes, a short, slight, fair man, slightly undernourished, good health, twenty-eight to thirty-two. Unaggressive, placid, milquetoast, repressed conventional” (7). Le Guin has decidedly chosen the most mild-natured man in Portland, or even the world to be suddenly thrust into the spotlight. I can’t help but wonder: why Orr?
Not only is he average–but the Le Guin goes out of her way to say just how average he his. Habor even justifies Orr’s averageness by confirming it with psychological test results: “Creative/destructive, on the Ramirez scale–same thing. Both, neither. Either, or. Where there’s an opposed pair, a polarity, you’re in the middle; where there’s a scale, you’re at the balance point” (137). Why would a man so average and mundane be caught in the middle of these dream experiments? Maybe his name has more to do with him being caught in one reality or another. One dream or another. One experiment or another.
At one point, Orr wonders,”What kind of man am I?[…]I haven’t any strength, I haven’t any character, I’m a born tool” ( 74). He seems to want to take a stand against Habor, but can’t dream the right dream, convince the right attorney, or be in the right reality. However, there are a few moments of assertiveness in Orr’s overwhelmingly banal personality. For example, after the curious incident with aliens, Orr insists that Habor call the HEW Minister and explain the miscommunication. It is at this moment that Habor wonders, “Why had this gift been given to a fool, a passive nothing of a man? Why was Orr so sure and so right, while the strong, active, positive man was powerless, forced to try to use, even to obey, the weak tool?” (124). Additionally, when Heather goes to the cabin to learn why Orr missed their lunch date, she acknowledges that “He is the strongest person she had ever known, because he would not be moved away from the center” (96). Since Heather is described as Orr’s antithesis, one can’t help but mark this unusual role reversal.
Even though Orr may be forgettable and mundane, I can’t help but think that this was Le Guin’s point. Haven’t all of the superhuman strengths been chronicled and the stereotypes of science fiction been established? So where does the postmodern novel turn to create a main character? The yawning averageness.
Lastly, I am not sure what to make of this, but there were all of these unusual references to Orr being similar to different types of animals: a monkey, an insect, a goose, a dead elephant, etc. What is a reader to make of these?