City of Illusions
Encyclopedia
City of Illusions is a 1967
post-apocalyptic
science fiction
novel
by Ursula K. Le Guin
, set on Earth in the distant future in her Hainish Cycle. City of Illusions is significant because it lays the foundation for the Hainish cycle, a fictional world in which the majority of Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fiction novels take place.
, in the year 4370 A.D., twelve hundred years after an enemy named the Shing
has broken the power of the League of All Worlds and occupied Earth. The indigenous people
of Earth have been reduced in numbers and widely separated, living in highly independent rural commune
s or nomadic tribal societies. The Shing exercise control over these through various strategies of indirect divide and rule
, plus by means of mental control and telepathic
deception using a type of Mindspeech known as mind-lying.
Prior to the opening scene, the main character, who is a descendant of the protagonists in Planet of Exile, has been involved in a ship crash, and since the Shing do not believe in killing, has had his memory erased and been abandoned in the forest; this leaves his mind as a blank slate or tabula rasa
. As the story begins he must develop a new self identity ex nihilo
.
. He is naked except for a gold ring on one finger, has no memory except of motor skills at a level equivalent to that of a one-year-old and has bizarre, amber, cat-like eyes. The villagers choose to welcome and nurture him, naming him Falk (Yellow). They teach him to speak, educate him about the Earth, and teach him from a book they consider holy, which is Le Guin's "long-translated" version of the Tao Te Ching
. Also they teach him about the nature of the never-seen Shing.
and meets a young man, Orry, who came with him in the ship. At this point it becomes clear that Estrel is a human collaborator working for the Shing, and that she had been sent to retrieve him from the wilds of so-called Continent 1.
The Shing tell Falk that
Falk however believes that the Shing are non-human liars and that their true intent is to determine for their own purposes, the location of his home-planet.
device Falk had left for himself (an instruction, through young Orry, to read the beginning of the book he travels with, his translation of the Tao Te Ching
), the Falk personality is revived. After some instability Falk's and Ramarren's minds come to coexist. By comparing the knowledge given to them before and after Ramarren's reemergence, the joint minds are able to detect the essential dishonesty of the Shing's rule and the fact that the alien conquerors can lie telepathically. It was this power that had enabled the not very numerous Shing: "exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star", to overthrow the League of All Worlds twelve centuries before.
The Werelians' mental powers are significantly greater than those of their human ancestors. The Shing are inhibited by a cultural dread of killing or being killed and would have no effective defense against any expedition that came forewarned. Still ignorant of the survival of the Falk persona, the Shing hope to send Ramarren back to Werel to present their version of Earth as a happy garden planet prospering under their benign guidance and in no need of outside help. Falk/Ramarren, now fully aware of the brutalized and misruled reality, pretends to accept this, postponing the return journey.
Eventually, while on a pleasure trip to view another part of the Earth, the Shing he is with takes telepathic control of Ramarren but is then overcome by Falk, operating as a separate person. Now controlling the Shing, he makes his escape, manipulating his prisoner to show him where to find the ship that would take him home, and how to program it. (He discovers here that the Shing use a totally alien system of mathematics, quite different from the Cetian mathematics used by all human worlds.) Falk/Ramarren finally leaves for his planet, with Orry and the captive Shing who he has used. He can go back home and organize the liberation of the Earth, but this means cutting himself off from his friends there.
While City of Illusions concludes at this point, Falk/Ramarren's mission apparently succeeds in bringing freedom to the home world of Terra. In The Left Hand of Darkness
, Genly Ai comes from Earth and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something dreadful but now past. He also knows of the Werelians, now called Alterrans. The fate of the Shing is not mentioned, either there or in any later book.
Estrel: A female agent of the Shing tasked with bringing Falk to Es Toch and convincing him of the beneficial nature of their rule. She wears a necklace of apparent religious significance, but which is in fact a communication device. Estrel eventually suffers an emotional break-down, leading her to turn against the Shing and suffer an unknown fate at their hands.
Falk: A middle aged man who is the protagonist of the story; he appears to suffer from amnesia
. As Ramarren he was navigator of the Werel expedition to Earth.
Har Orry: A youth raised and largely brain-washed by the Shing. Other than Falk he is the only known survivor of the Werel expedition. Like Estrel he is used by the Shing to convince Falk of their benign purposes.
Ken Kenyek: A Shing mindhandler, who together with fellow Lords Abundibot and Kradgy, attempts to deceive and manipulate Falk.
Parth: A young human women of the Forest People, who helps re-educate Falk and becomes his lover.
Prince of Kansas: A man who, without force, leads a sophisticated enclave of approximately 200 people living in the wilderness. He is in possession of luxuries such as a great library, domesticated dog
s (otherwise extinct in this era), and a complex patterning frame that he uses to foretell Falk's future.
Zove: A father-figure of a family of Forest People whose teaching-by-paradox methods closely resemble those of the sage Laozi
.
format. It was reissued along with Rocannon's World
and Planet of Exile
in a 1978 omnibus volume titled Three Hainish Novels, and again in 1996 with the same novels in Worlds of Exile and Illusion.
In terms of its place in the development of the canon of science fiction, it has been noted that City of Illusions combines the sensibility of traditional British Science Fiction, images from American genre
Science Fiction and anthropological
ideas.
Susan Wood, regarding the initial Hainish trilogy as a whole, notes that "innovative and entertaining fictions develop on the solid conceptual basis of human values affirmed" She goes on to point out that philosophical speculation is the most important element of the novel. Dena C. Bain points out that City of Illusions, like Le Guin's novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed
, is permeated with a "Taoist mythos."
One science fiction scholar points out that City of Illusions, along with Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile exhibits Le Guin's struggle as an emerging writer to arrive at a plausible, uniquely memorable and straightforward locale for her stories.
The author herself makes several comments about City of Illusions in her introduction to the 1978 hardback edition. Le Guin was excited to use her own translation of the Tao Te Ching. She was also interested in using physical and mental forests in the novel, and in imagining a less populated world, while still holding some type of civilization as a worthwhile, lofty ideal. Specifically she regrets the improbable and flawed depiction of the villains, the Shing, as not convincingly evil.
Correspondingly, themes of illusion and ambiguity are central to the novel. The story is as much a post industrial-collapse science fiction tale as it is a mystery
tale. It starts with a man with no memory, and with eyes whose appearance suggests he is not human, raising questions as to his true nature: is he human or alien, and is he a tool or a victim of the alien enemy, the Shing. The Shing's nature itself eventually comes into question through his journey. The theme of illusion and ambiguity is present throughout the book - both in terms of behavior (the main female character is initially a friend, then a betrayer and ultimately may be both) and even physical environment (the city Es Toch is a shimmering facade of visual deceptions).
Douglas Barbour points out that light/dark imagery is in an important and common thread that runs through Le Guin's initial Hainish trilogy, tying in closely with Taoism
in the Tao-te ching, a book that has special meaning to the main character. Specifically in City of Illusions the main character's story begins and ends in darkness, and among many other similar images, the city of Es Toch is described as a place of awful darkness and bright lights.
Although Le Guin based the location of the city Es Toch on the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
, James W. Bittner points out that the city of Es Toch, like many of Le Guin's imaginary landscapes, is both an image and a symbol with underlying psychological value and meaning, in this case an underlying chasm. Susan Wood furthers this notion pointing out the city is "built across a chasm in the ground, a hollow place."
Charlotte Spivack points out that City of Illusions includes Le Guin's focus on the concept of contrasts, in particular the need for reconciliation of opposites, a concept related to Taoism, that must take place in Falk's divided mind.
One notable theme of City of Illusions is that of isolation and separation, with the story focusing heavily on one character who does not connect well with other characters.
A minor theme of exploring an oppressive male-dominated culture is present, represented by the misogynistic
Bee-Keepers.
It has been suggested that the novel also explores theme of anarchism
in the original village and its neighbors, which display communal living.
device, computer, toy, or mystical implement is vague. Scholars have noted that it is a foreshadowing device and used to attain a coexistence of the past, present and future, a notable aspect of Taoism.
It has been suggested that the book The Old Canon, the book of the Way, the Tao Te Ching, has talisman
ic properties in the narrative. As a mere object it is an inspiring book; Falk is given a luxurious copy by Zove before he sets out on his travels. After Falk loses this copy, the Prince of Kansas gives him a replacement from his vast library. At the end of the story, Orry reads a line from the book to help Ramarren reunify his split mind with the mind of Falk.
1967 in literature
The year 1967 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Influential science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions published.*Cecil Day-Lewis is selected as the new Poet Laureate of the UK.-New books:...
post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
, set on Earth in the distant future in her Hainish Cycle. City of Illusions is significant because it lays the foundation for the Hainish cycle, a fictional world in which the majority of Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fiction novels take place.
Plot introduction
City of Illusions takes place on Earth, also known as TerraTerra (Hainish cycle)
Terra or Earth plays a role in the Hainish Cycle of science fiction novels by Ursula K. Le Guin. Humans are supposed to be descendents of colonists from a planet called Hain...
, in the year 4370 A.D., twelve hundred years after an enemy named the Shing
Shing
The Shing are a fictional alien race, in the Hainish Cycle of novels and short stories of the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. They are only explicitly described in City of Illusions, but seem to be the same as the distant but threatening 'enemy' mentioned in Rocannon's World and Planet...
has broken the power of the League of All Worlds and occupied Earth. The indigenous people
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
of Earth have been reduced in numbers and widely separated, living in highly independent rural commune
Commune
Commune may refer to:In society:* Commune, a human community in which resources are shared* Commune , a township or municipality* One of the Communes of France* An Italian Comune...
s or nomadic tribal societies. The Shing exercise control over these through various strategies of indirect divide and rule
Divide and rule
In politics and sociology, divide and rule is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy...
, plus by means of mental control and telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
deception using a type of Mindspeech known as mind-lying.
Prior to the opening scene, the main character, who is a descendant of the protagonists in Planet of Exile, has been involved in a ship crash, and since the Shing do not believe in killing, has had his memory erased and been abandoned in the forest; this leaves his mind as a blank slate or tabula rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects...
. As the story begins he must develop a new self identity ex nihilo
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
.
The Man Without Memory
The story starts as a man is found by a small community (housed in one building) in a forest area in eastern North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. He is naked except for a gold ring on one finger, has no memory except of motor skills at a level equivalent to that of a one-year-old and has bizarre, amber, cat-like eyes. The villagers choose to welcome and nurture him, naming him Falk (Yellow). They teach him to speak, educate him about the Earth, and teach him from a book they consider holy, which is Le Guin's "long-translated" version of the Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing , also simply referred to as the Laozi, whose authorship has been attributed to Laozi, is a Chinese classic text...
. Also they teach him about the nature of the never-seen Shing.
The Journey
After six years, Falk is told by the leader of the community that he needs to understand his origins, and as such sets off alone for Es Toch, the city of the Shing in the mountains of western North America. He encounters many obstacles to learning the truth about himself and about the Shing, along with evidence of the barbarism of current human society. Along the way, it is sometimes suggested to him that the image he holds of the Shing is a distorted one; that they respect the idea of 'reverence for life' and are essentially benevolent and non-alien rulers. This suggestion comes from both telepathic animals who remind him for their own self-defense, and from Estrel, a young woman whom Falk meets after being captured by the Basnasska tribe in the great plains. Falk escapes this violent community with Estrel, to reach the city under her guidance.The Shing
Falk finally reaches Es Toch, where Estrel betrays him into the hands of the Shing and laughs as she does so. He is told that he is part of a crew of a starship of alien/human hybrids from a planet called WerelWerel (Alterra)
Werel is a fictional planet of the star Gamma Draconis, in the 'Ekumen' science fiction stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is one of two planets of this name in that series.-History:...
and meets a young man, Orry, who came with him in the ship. At this point it becomes clear that Estrel is a human collaborator working for the Shing, and that she had been sent to retrieve him from the wilds of so-called Continent 1.
The Shing tell Falk that
- they are in fact humans;
- the conflict between the League and an alien invader never occurred: on the contrary, the League self-destructed through civil war and exploitation;
- the "enemy" is an invention of the Shing rulers themselves to try and ensure through fear that world peace endures under their benevolent, if misunderstood, rule;
- Falk's expedition was attacked by rebels who then erased Falk's memory of his previous self;
- and the Shing, who managed to save only Orry from the rebel attack, now want to restore Falk's previous identity.
Falk however believes that the Shing are non-human liars and that their true intent is to determine for their own purposes, the location of his home-planet.
Restored Memories
Seeing no other way forward, Falk consents to have his memory erased. The mind of the original Werelian, Agad Ramarren, is restored and the Falk personality is apparently destroyed. He emerges as a new person with pre-Falk memories and vastly greater scientific knowledge. Ramarren's first name, Agad, recalls Jakob Agat, one of the chief protagonists of Planet of Exile: of whom he is a descendant. However, thanks to a memory triggering mnemonicMnemonic
A mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...
device Falk had left for himself (an instruction, through young Orry, to read the beginning of the book he travels with, his translation of the Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing , also simply referred to as the Laozi, whose authorship has been attributed to Laozi, is a Chinese classic text...
), the Falk personality is revived. After some instability Falk's and Ramarren's minds come to coexist. By comparing the knowledge given to them before and after Ramarren's reemergence, the joint minds are able to detect the essential dishonesty of the Shing's rule and the fact that the alien conquerors can lie telepathically. It was this power that had enabled the not very numerous Shing: "exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star", to overthrow the League of All Worlds twelve centuries before.
The Werelians' mental powers are significantly greater than those of their human ancestors. The Shing are inhibited by a cultural dread of killing or being killed and would have no effective defense against any expedition that came forewarned. Still ignorant of the survival of the Falk persona, the Shing hope to send Ramarren back to Werel to present their version of Earth as a happy garden planet prospering under their benign guidance and in no need of outside help. Falk/Ramarren, now fully aware of the brutalized and misruled reality, pretends to accept this, postponing the return journey.
Eventually, while on a pleasure trip to view another part of the Earth, the Shing he is with takes telepathic control of Ramarren but is then overcome by Falk, operating as a separate person. Now controlling the Shing, he makes his escape, manipulating his prisoner to show him where to find the ship that would take him home, and how to program it. (He discovers here that the Shing use a totally alien system of mathematics, quite different from the Cetian mathematics used by all human worlds.) Falk/Ramarren finally leaves for his planet, with Orry and the captive Shing who he has used. He can go back home and organize the liberation of the Earth, but this means cutting himself off from his friends there.
While City of Illusions concludes at this point, Falk/Ramarren's mission apparently succeeds in bringing freedom to the home world of Terra. In The Left Hand of Darkness
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Left Hand of Darkness is a 1969 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of books by Le Guin all set in the fictional Hainish universe....
, Genly Ai comes from Earth and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something dreadful but now past. He also knows of the Werelians, now called Alterrans. The fate of the Shing is not mentioned, either there or in any later book.
Characters
All-Alonio: A solitary, yet profound man who shelters Falk and gives him a "slider," or flying machine.Estrel: A female agent of the Shing tasked with bringing Falk to Es Toch and convincing him of the beneficial nature of their rule. She wears a necklace of apparent religious significance, but which is in fact a communication device. Estrel eventually suffers an emotional break-down, leading her to turn against the Shing and suffer an unknown fate at their hands.
Falk: A middle aged man who is the protagonist of the story; he appears to suffer from amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
. As Ramarren he was navigator of the Werel expedition to Earth.
Har Orry: A youth raised and largely brain-washed by the Shing. Other than Falk he is the only known survivor of the Werel expedition. Like Estrel he is used by the Shing to convince Falk of their benign purposes.
Ken Kenyek: A Shing mindhandler, who together with fellow Lords Abundibot and Kradgy, attempts to deceive and manipulate Falk.
Parth: A young human women of the Forest People, who helps re-educate Falk and becomes his lover.
Prince of Kansas: A man who, without force, leads a sophisticated enclave of approximately 200 people living in the wilderness. He is in possession of luxuries such as a great library, domesticated dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
s (otherwise extinct in this era), and a complex patterning frame that he uses to foretell Falk's future.
Zove: A father-figure of a family of Forest People whose teaching-by-paradox methods closely resemble those of the sage Laozi
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...
.
Publication History
City of Illusions is Le Guin's first novel to appear as an independent paperback, unlike her earlier novels which appeared in the tête-bêcheDos-à-dos binding
In bookbinding, a dos-à-dos binding is a binding structure in which two separate books are bound together such that the fore edge of one is adjacent to the spine of the other, with a shared lower board between them serving as the back cover of both...
format. It was reissued along with Rocannon's World
Rocannon's World
Rocannon's World is Ursula K. Le Guin's first novel. It was published in 1966 as an Ace Double, along with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign, following the tête-bêche format. Though it is one of Le Guin's many works set in the universe of the technological Hainish Cycle, the story itself has many...
and Planet of Exile
Planet of Exile
Planet of Exile is a 1966 science-fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin in her Hainish Cycle. It was first published as an Ace Double following the tête-bêche format, bundled with Mankind Under the Leash by Thomas M. Disch.-Plot summary:...
in a 1978 omnibus volume titled Three Hainish Novels, and again in 1996 with the same novels in Worlds of Exile and Illusion.
Reception
City of Illusions, like its two preceding Hainish novels, received little critical attention when it was published. Subsequently, it has not received as much critical attention as many of Le Guin's other works.In terms of its place in the development of the canon of science fiction, it has been noted that City of Illusions combines the sensibility of traditional British Science Fiction, images from American genre
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
Science Fiction and anthropological
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
ideas.
Susan Wood, regarding the initial Hainish trilogy as a whole, notes that "innovative and entertaining fictions develop on the solid conceptual basis of human values affirmed" She goes on to point out that philosophical speculation is the most important element of the novel. Dena C. Bain points out that City of Illusions, like Le Guin's novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed
The Dispossessed
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the same fictional universe as that of The Left Hand of Darkness . The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974, both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1975, and received a nomination for...
, is permeated with a "Taoist mythos."
One science fiction scholar points out that City of Illusions, along with Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile exhibits Le Guin's struggle as an emerging writer to arrive at a plausible, uniquely memorable and straightforward locale for her stories.
The author herself makes several comments about City of Illusions in her introduction to the 1978 hardback edition. Le Guin was excited to use her own translation of the Tao Te Ching. She was also interested in using physical and mental forests in the novel, and in imagining a less populated world, while still holding some type of civilization as a worthwhile, lofty ideal. Specifically she regrets the improbable and flawed depiction of the villains, the Shing, as not convincingly evil.
Themes
Defining and questioning the truth is the central issue of City of Illusions, which holds its roots in the always-truthful "mindspeech" introduced in Planet of Exile and the Shing's ambiguous variation on it, called the "mindlie".Correspondingly, themes of illusion and ambiguity are central to the novel. The story is as much a post industrial-collapse science fiction tale as it is a mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
tale. It starts with a man with no memory, and with eyes whose appearance suggests he is not human, raising questions as to his true nature: is he human or alien, and is he a tool or a victim of the alien enemy, the Shing. The Shing's nature itself eventually comes into question through his journey. The theme of illusion and ambiguity is present throughout the book - both in terms of behavior (the main female character is initially a friend, then a betrayer and ultimately may be both) and even physical environment (the city Es Toch is a shimmering facade of visual deceptions).
Douglas Barbour points out that light/dark imagery is in an important and common thread that runs through Le Guin's initial Hainish trilogy, tying in closely with Taoism
Taoism
Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
in the Tao-te ching, a book that has special meaning to the main character. Specifically in City of Illusions the main character's story begins and ends in darkness, and among many other similar images, the city of Es Toch is described as a place of awful darkness and bright lights.
Although Le Guin based the location of the city Es Toch on the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
thumb|upright|Black Canyon of the GunnisonBlack Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a United States National Park located in western Colorado, and managed by the National Park Service...
, James W. Bittner points out that the city of Es Toch, like many of Le Guin's imaginary landscapes, is both an image and a symbol with underlying psychological value and meaning, in this case an underlying chasm. Susan Wood furthers this notion pointing out the city is "built across a chasm in the ground, a hollow place."
Charlotte Spivack points out that City of Illusions includes Le Guin's focus on the concept of contrasts, in particular the need for reconciliation of opposites, a concept related to Taoism, that must take place in Falk's divided mind.
One notable theme of City of Illusions is that of isolation and separation, with the story focusing heavily on one character who does not connect well with other characters.
A minor theme of exploring an oppressive male-dominated culture is present, represented by the misogynistic
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
Bee-Keepers.
It has been suggested that the novel also explores theme of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
in the original village and its neighbors, which display communal living.
Objects
The patterning frame, a device which Falk encounters twice, is notable. He first sees a simple one at Zove's house and then later a more complex one that belongs to the Prince of Kansas. The device uses moveable stones on crossing wires as a representation of the physical world; its use as a fortune-tellingFortune-telling
Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination...
device, computer, toy, or mystical implement is vague. Scholars have noted that it is a foreshadowing device and used to attain a coexistence of the past, present and future, a notable aspect of Taoism.
It has been suggested that the book The Old Canon, the book of the Way, the Tao Te Ching, has talisman
Talisman
Talisman have several meanings:*TalismanBooks and novels* The Talisman , a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott* The Talisman , a novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub...
ic properties in the narrative. As a mere object it is an inspiring book; Falk is given a luxurious copy by Zove before he sets out on his travels. After Falk loses this copy, the Prince of Kansas gives him a replacement from his vast library. At the end of the story, Orry reads a line from the book to help Ramarren reunify his split mind with the mind of Falk.