Le Guin's novel has a unique narrative structure, told mostly from the first-person point of view of Genly Ai, but some chapters are told from the point of view of Estraven, and others are accounts of old documents or records of Gethenian history and religion. Her style is very well explained in her introduction, describing science fiction as a type of thought experiment, not predicting the future but metaphorically depicting aspects of of the present through a futuristic setting. The novel, also offers a deep exploration of the meaning of truth, or lack thereof, through the fictional culture, biology, and religion of the planet, Gethen. The biological androgyny of its inhabitants is linked to the ambiguity of meaning, which is explored by the Handdara religion. Meaning is not singular like the beliefs of the Yomesh, it is ambiguous like the gender of the people of Gethen. Also, the fear of war between Karhide and Orgoreyn is similar to the current state of the United States in the 1960s, with a strong connection to the Cuban missile crisis. Le Guin's novel offers a post-modern interpretation of uncertainty and ambiguity of meaning, similar to Pynchon's novel, through the culture of a futuristic foreign planet that is a reflection of the United States at the time the novel was published.
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