Solitude

Ursula K. Le Guin

★★★★★

The people of Eleven-Soro live alone, isolated as much as possible. Women and children live in loose villages called “aunt-rings.” Men live as hermits. And no adult sets foot in another’s house.

Le Guin describes “Solitude” as a story about introverts.

An Ekumen observer, unable to get the adults to tell her anything, raises her children in one of the aunt-rings so they can learn how the culture functions and explain it to her. What she didn’t count on was that her daughter would want to stay, and not return with her to a noisy, overwhelming, crowded society that she barely remembers. (Too many people. She wants to stay where she can be a person and occasionally see another person.) The researcher sees this as a tragedy. Her daughter sees it as the only way she can stand living.

As someone who likes quiet and doing my own thing, and isn’t too fond of crowds, my sympathies are with the daughter. There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness, after all. Though Sorovian culture (such as it is) certainly goes a lot farther than I’d want to live in.

Through this story, Le Guin seems to be attempting to figure out what the bare minimum for human connection is…and what it would mean for those who try to limit themselves to it.

Avoid Magic

In a recent column at Reactor, Kristen Patterson describes it as the complete breakdown of human connection. She’s more viscerally repulsed by the way Sorovians live, and zeroes in on why the culture is so disconnected: They’ve attempted to remove every last remnant of obligation or control from human relationships. And while they’ve succeeded in removing power dynamics in most cases, they’ve also removed the mutual obligation that makes communities actually function.

“Solitude” is included in The Birthday of the World (And Other Stories). It’s among the better stories in the collection, and one that sticks with you.