Le Guin's Fantastic Environment

Program Area

This activity is suitable for any language classroom setting in Grade 9, as part of units on fantasy, environment in literature, or defining the individual. It can also form part of the E.S.L./D. curriculum.
In Senior classes, this activity may be part of a unit on speculative fiction, or genre studies.

Learning Outcomes

Teaching, learning and evaluation will focus on the student’s ability to:

• Identify the environmental themes of the works;
  
• Construct a working model of an environmental narrative;
  
• Investigate the author’s conception of Fantasy and its presentation in her work;
  
• Distinguish between environmentally destructive and benign attitudes;
  
• Propose and defend positions regarding the value of the major characters to their environment.
  

Classroom Development

This activity approaches environmental themes without fettering students to the doom and gloom of contemporary problems. Through fantasy, students can explore the issues behind the problems that surround them. Teachers are advised to avoid desensitizing students by over-stimulating them with facts pertaining to the degradation of their environment, and hopefully this activity will help to stimulate the creative apprehension of problems and solutions within the ‘safe’ realm of fantasy.

1. Introduce students to Le Guin through a brief sketch of her ideas and works. Perhaps write a challenging quote from the information provided below, such as, “Why are Americans afraid of Dragons?” to spark students’ analytic skills.
   
2. Students brainstorm in small groups, share their preexisting knowledge regarding fantasy, and possibly how environmental issues can be or are dealt with in works of fantasy. An attempt should be made to have students develop a definition of fantasy, and help them to realize that fantasy is not an escape from ‘reality’ but, rather, a literary genre in which a writer can model real life problems with full control over the context, characters, and environment.
   
3. After students have a preliminary definition of fantasy, and some conception (from their brainstorming) of how to interact with fantasy from a social and environmental perspectives, provide them with the text “Word of Unbinding.” This text provides two levels of conflict, social and environmental, which illustrate how the choices that we make as individuals are globally significant, and also contrasts the corporate and civic personas through the protagonist (Festin) and antagonist (Voll).
   
4. Have students read the story and discuss it in small groups after making an entry in their reading log in response to the text. Questions such as “Festin can be seen as a steward of the environment. What about Voll? Describe Festin’s role and contrast it with Voll’s role in the story” (found elsewhere in this guide) can serve to guide group discussion or serve as a mini assignment. The questions surrounding of the role fantasy in our world are addressed by Le Guin in her non-fictional pieces “Dreams Must Explain Themselves” and “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.” Have students read either or both of these works, and have them consider some of the questions outlined below.
   
5. Have each group, working with large sheets of newsprint, design and execute a textual and graphical representation of its definition of fantasy, and/or their understanding of the role of fantasy in society. Provide 20-30 min to work, and 3-5 min for each group’s explanation.
   
6. Students should write a response for their journals, if they are kept, based on the most stimulating presentation. Alternatively, give students a quiz on the text and subtext.
   
7. If you want to give students a summative assignment which really taxes their imagination, give them the following question: “The Word of Unbinding” can be read as an ‘environmental myth.’ In a page or two, discuss the meaning of this statement. You may discuss this with anyone, use your notes, or do any other research, but your answer must be in your own words.
   

Background Information

The following is a miscellany of general information that you may find useful.
Biographical Information: Ursula K. Le Guin

• Born Oct./29/1929, Berkeley, CA
  
• Father: noted anthropologist
  
• Mother: writer, ethnologist, children’s book author
  
• “An intellectual born and bred”
  
• early exposure to magic and folklore
  
• respect for cultural diversity & humanity
  
• exposure to vices and virtues of academia
  
• education: Radcliffe, Columbia and a Fulbright scholarship in Paris
• lives in Oregon

Writing

Le Guin sees her work:

• as inhabiting a space from which it can bring together many moods and ideas;
  
• as an alternative to “technocratic, capitalistic, male-dominated ideas of West (versus much of American sci-fi of the period);
  
• under many influences: Taoism, Jungian psychology, anarchism, ecology, human liberation;
  
• as striving for a vision of human’s potential for unity and balance in the individual, society, and perhaps galaxy;
  
• as relying on oppositions to mainstream: language vs technology, children’s lit. versus adult lit., characterization of the ‘other’ (person, gender, race, species) versus alien cultures.

Le Guin Quotes:

• Jungian mind symbols (archetypes)... the witch, the dragon, the hero, the night journey, the helpful animal, the hidden treasure... we all know them, we recognize them... because if Jung is right, they represent profound and essential modes of thought.
  
• Le Guin in 1989, in “Dancing at the Edge of the World” states, ...I’m trying to unlearn these lessons, along with other lesson I was taught by my society, particularly lessons concerning the mind, work, works and being of women. I am a slow “unlearner...”
  
• Those who refuse to listen to dragons are probably doomed to spend their lives acting out the nightmares of politicians.
  
• We like to think that we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.
  
• For no matter whether we understand the how, the why or even the what, we have to act, and our acts retain, in the very depths of the abyss, their unfathomable moral value.
  
• Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic
  
• What is the role of gender and society in fantasy?
  
• Why are Americans afraid of Dragons?

What is Fantasy?
What are the roots of fantasy?

• philosophy - Plato’s Republic The way things are/should be
  
• mythology - Celtic other world - Rex Quondam Rex Futurus
  
• social/religious doctrine -Utopia
  
• folk tales
  
• satire - Johnathan Swift, Alexander Pope, H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapleton.
  

What is fantasy today?

• Replacement for mythology?
  
• Explorations of new ways of thinking?
  
• Explanations of how things might be?
  

Timing

Timing is flexible depending on the abilities of the students. Students may be capable of extended jig-sawing on multiple topics or may require extra time for explication of the texts by the teacher.
Assign a single period to cover the introduction and “The Word of Unbinding.” Another period should be set aside for addressing questions on the role of fantasy in our world, provided that the students have read texts before class.

Resources

Le Guin, Ursula K. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves” and “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. Toronto: Bantam,1975.
Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Word of Unbinding,” and “The Rule of Names” The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. Toronto: Bantam,1975.
What is the relevance of fantasy to life: Le Guin, “Dreams must Explain Themselves;” D. Wagner, “Hills Far Away;” M. Moorcock, “Wizardry and Wild Romance.” Check with the Merril Collection if necessary.
The Merril Collection. “Recommended Fantasy for Young Adults.” A four page list of works compiled by the staff of the Merril Collection at the Toronto Public Library. Grade level recommendations are included. Contact the library for a copy at (416) 393-7748.

Cross-disciplinary Links

The art class can make use of the vivid descriptions of the various states into which the wizard Festin transforms himself. Possibilities exist for the production of HyperText stacks based on Le Guin’s ideas, or an exploration of themes from one of these texts.

Student Guide

Introduction

You are going to look at a short story that looks like a fantasy story. It is, but it is also something more. It also talks about important social and cultural issues.
Le Guin’s stories always play with the idea of how appearances can trick you. It is not unusual for a story to be doing one thing on the surface and another beneath it. The same is true for people. Sometimes the surface and the subsurface are similar, and sometimes they are different. You will have to figure out the relation between the two levels of this story yourself.
Some of you will go for this activity because it is “Environmental” while others will be attracted to the genre of “Fantasy.” The rest of you can take this as a test of patience.
The goal of this activity is a little more practical than you might think. It is intended to help you build the skills necessary to look at a text and identify its themes, and be able to discuss them and work with them. To do this you will have to figure out a couple of things.
First, you will have to be able to tell the difference between environmentally destructive and benign attitudes. Then try to understand and support your ideas about who the main characters are and why they do what they do. Finally, you should figure out the relationship between the major characters and their environments.

Procedure

There are a couple of stages on this journey.

1. Brainstorm in small groups to pull out your own knowledge about fantasy. Develop a definition of fantasy, remembering that fantasy is not just an escape from ‘reality,’ but something more. What is that something?
   
2. Once you have discovered your own knowledge, you need some background information so you can understand where the author is coming from. You can get this from your teacher, or from the articles: “Dreams Must Explain Themselves” and “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.” The articles are a little tough, so go for them if you like a challenge. For this reason, your teacher may give you these articles later on in the activity. The author, Ursula K. Le Guin, has some weird ideas about reality and fantasy, so when you hear or read something that you feel is unusual, write it down, or get your teacher to have a short discussion about it. Better yet, bug a friend about it.
   
3. Now read the story the “Word of Unbinding.” Figure out who is fighting who (protagonist and antagonist). This is a social level of the story. Try to describe everything that is happening between the good guy (protagonist) and the bad one.
   
4. After you are finished, you can take this one step further. Instead of seeing two people in the story, imagine that there were only two sets of ideas presented in the story. What would the good idea be, and what would the bad one be? If you have a reading log or response journal, you should be answering these questions there. There may be a test at the end.
   
5. Get a sheet of newsprint, and make an illustration which shows what you think fantasy is and what you think fantasy’s role in society is. The goal is to “just do it!” There is no correct answer, but there are complete and thoughtful responses. Do what you think matches your character.
   
6. Your teacher may choose to give you the quiz, or let you write about your analysis of fantasy in your writing folder. Perhaps you can negotiate for the option that suits your talents and interests.