Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like in real life, that's how things work. People mostly accept the brutality of the society they find themselves in, because its normal. Its just in most books people want to focus on the drama. [Mild Spoilers] The fifth season starts with everyone kind of accepting, the characters are chewed up, and they do try to rebel in the end. So its not like there is no rebelling at all.

Generally i liked the fifth season, but i think people think its a bit deeper than it actually is. I find le guin to be a bit more nuanced and leave you thinking a bit more. The fifth season felt a bit more: evil people are obviously evil. The other side is i think jemisin has better developed characters than le guin. A lot of le guin (much like a lot of older scifi) feel very much like idea books where character development & plotting came second.

If you like those two authors, i would really reccomend Octavia Butler, who i think is a bit similar but better than both (lets see if i start a flamewar ;)

No flamewar here, I quite agree! I really enjoyed The Fifth Season (if "enjoy" is a word that can be applied to something so dark), but it did have flaws (I used "visceral" and "imaginative" in my above comment because I think those are her strengths: I really felt immersed in her descriptive writing).

Meanwhile Octavia Butler is absolutely one of my favorite authors regardless of genre. Her work stuck with me for quite a while, as has le Guin's (specifically, Left Hand of Darkness, I've actually had trouble getting into some of her other works, though I mean to try again). Butler to me is a visionary alongside my other favorites in the sci fi canon.

In general I can understand the quote

> I feel like in real life, that's how things work. People mostly accept the brutality of the society they find themselves in, because its normal.

For something like modern day police brutality, sure, most people aren't active advocates.

However, I think that really understates the level of brutality in The Fifth Season. The main characters are the oppressed people, like Jewish people during the Holocaust or Black people under Southern-slavery levels of oppressed. Yet there appears to be absolutely 0 mention of resistance fighters or an underground railroad. There appears to be 0 active resistance anywhere, even beyond the main characters. No protests, no riots, no terrorist attacks, no one even suggesting that maybe outright eugenics and genocide is a bad idea and then getting disappeared. It doesn't have to be the main characters getting involved, just a rumor that someone somewhere is doing something. If someone punched me in the face, I wouldn't let them get away with it and then punch myself a couple extra times for good measure.

I think what you're seeing there is Jemisin actively foregrounding and exploring a difficult fact, which is that people who were abused are more likely to turn around and be abusers.

Often times books turn abuse into the catalyst for a noble struggle and cathartic improvement, when in fact that often isn't the case. There's large swathes of human history where oppressive regimes were powerful enough to quickly and brutually suppress rebellions. When violence and abuse are normalized in a culture, it can take a long time and a lot of failed struggles to truly unwind the violence.

I think Jemisin is actively trying to explore that mentality, which is pretty brave because it does make the characters off putting. As the reader you want so badly for them to rise out of the muck and take on a noble struggle, but they're caught up in the cycle of violence.

I say this with respect for your viewpoint, I think you're being very fair about expressing your response, and I completely see where you're coming from.

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