Coming off reading the Crying of Lot 49, I’m of course, obsessed with names in the Lathe of Heaven, but I’m having some serious trouble cracking the name of the protagonist. George Orr (which I actually heard as JOR-JOR before the alien said it, because I was listening to an e-book the other day and it sounded like a robot) has a complicated situation regarding his name – Orr, or Haber refers to him “Mr. Either Or” is a median.
Haber goes so far as to say something to the effect as “you cancel yourself out to the point that nothing remains” – this would seem that he is completely neutralized. If we are to understand that Orr is in fact, neutralized, then it would seem the plot of the Lathe of Heaven revolves around the fact that technology/science(or pseudoscience)/associations/un-or-subconciousness (or perhaps just the misuse of such) only serves to muddle and complicate our understanding of the reality and the world, yet we, or Orr have/has little effect…being neutral and all. The other possibility is not that Orr is totally neutral, just that he is neutralized by Haber.
Either way, my difficulty in accepting Orr as “both, neither, either, or,” lies in his full name, or as it sounds Jor Jor – a doubling. How can he be neutralized when at the same time he is double? Though, to complicate things further, I suppose to double zero is still zero..? Also, as some people have posted already, there is the idea that the Orr refers to the multiple realities created by his dreams.
Haber is just as interesting. There are two main (and not necessarily intentional, just intriguing) connections I made with Haber. One – Fritz haber, inventor (I think) of synthesized ammonia pre-WWI and “father of chemical warfare.” It is in part due to Fritz Haber’s work (nobel prize winning actually) that the death tolls of WWI were unlike what anyone had ever seen (think population loss). Two haber in Spanish is an auxiliary or helping verb meaning “to have”…ironically it is not used to indicate that one has or owns/possesses something, (that is tener, as in yo tengo) but rather haber is used in conjuction (unable to operate alone) with another verb in the perfect tenses (ie I have gone to the movies). So yes, that’s a huge stretch, but I thought it was at least coincidentally funny, as that kind of fits how Dr Haber is unable to do his work without George, and that his name means “to have” but not in a to possess connotation.
Finally there are some really interesting points made about the sub/unconscious and it’s neutrality by way of its irrationality. Not irrational in an insane way, just literally without rationale. The subconscious or unconscious mind (whichever we are really dealing with here…that might be up for debate) simply flows, like George’s “shortcuts” taking the mind from peace to aliens in one easy step. There is little logic involved in dreams, which makes Haber’s scientific method all the more interesting. Dreams, at their most basic functioning level, are to help us understand reality; REM sleep is a time to recharge and put all the library cards of our day in order, in an easily recallable and logical filing system -yet the dreams themselves, the picture of the process is often as chaotic and disorderly as the imagination can imagine. Reality molds our dreams, and to think that dreams mold our reality, is subversive and wonderful.