Aliens and Acceptance

In class we discussed the word, ‘alien’. We decided that the word meant strange, different, and unfamiliar. I looked up the word on dictionary.com  (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alien) and the definitions that really popped out at me were: a foreigner, a person who has been estranged or excluded, a creature from outer space; extraterrestrial, and unlike one's own; strange; not belonging to one. Personally, when something is unfamiliar to me, I try to familiarize it to my own personal experiences to make my understanding of it better. Throughout The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly tried to familiarize the Gethenians, especially with the gender roles. Genly used “he” a lot more than “she” in the book and tried to give them specific genders, even though he truly couldn’t. However, in chapter 18, he finally realized that Estraven is both a man and a woman. Page 248:

“And I saw it again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see him: that he was a woman as well as a man.  Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last acceptance of him as he was. Until then I rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted me, was the only Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as human being: who had liked me personally and given me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give in. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who as a woman, a woman who was a man. ”

Not only did Genly finally accept Estraven and his people for what their truly are and he also finally gave Estraven his trust and friendship. Genly had a journey with Estraven on the Ice, but he had one with himself.  He learned to be open and accept things that are different.  Acceptance can be hard to do, specifically when it’s something that is out of realm of understanding. Genly taught us an important lesson about acceptance of things that we may feel that are 'out of the norm'. Be open to different things because who knows, you may actually end up falling in love with it.