47 pages • 1 hour read
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Lathe Of Heaven
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This guide contains references to a nuclear holocaust, military attacks involving great destruction, and human suffering caused by violence, starvation, drug use, and sexual harassment.
The narrator describes a jellyfish floating peacefully in the ocean, blending perfectly with its environment. The section asks what the jellyfish will do when it is cast out of the water and onto a sunny beach.
The scene shifts to a description of a man, George Orr, who is trapped in the rubble of a destroyed building, dying of radiation sickness. Soon, a first responder treats the same man for a drug overdose, explaining that he must attend Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment (VTT) for his substance use disorder. The medic complains about all the health crises occurring in Portland, Oregon, which is overpopulated and facing food scarcity. The chapter closes with Mannie, George’s building manager, saying, “Ain’t it great to be alive” (5).
Chapter 2 Summary
George arrives at the office of Dr. William Haber, which is on the 53rd floor of a high-rise office building. Portland is a bleak, overcrowded metropolitan area. Nearby Mount Hood no longer has its perpetual coating of snow due to the greenhouse effect, or global warming.
Haber is a dream-specialist psychiatrist. He guesses that George’s troubling dreams are the reason he takes powerful drugs. Haber tells George that George cannot decide simply to avoid dreaming, saying that the body must have “[…] its allotment of dreaming sleep” (9). George explains that his dreams come true, changing things. When he was a teenager, George’s aunt sexually harassed him. One night, George dreamed she died in a car accident, and he woke the next morning to find that his aunt had not only died in a car wreck but also never lived with his family. Haber begins to think that George may have a significant mental-health disorder.
Haber explains how the brain works, the different levels of sleep, and the “d-state,” in which the deepest dreams occur. He introduces George to his Dream Machine, the Augmentor [sic], and explains that it quickly induces d-state sleep. Haber puts George into a hypnotic trance, telling George to dream of a horse. During the d-state, George dreams of a horse that looks like Haber. Looking at an EEG screen, Haber studies the waves of George’s brain and deems them quite normal. When he wakes George, George says he dreamed about a horse. He points to the large photo of Tammany Hall, a Triple Crown winning horse, whose image is on Haber’s wall. George says that the image on the wall when he arrived was of Mount Hood. Haber insists the picture has always been of the horse. Haber does seem to remember the image of Mount Hood.
Haber plans to keep treating George, giving him a prescription for a drug that will allow him to sleep with only mild dreams to prevent altering reality.
Chapter 3 Summary
The next afternoon, George rides the unpleasant subway to Haber’s office, thinking of the issues plaguing the world: Global warming has flooded much of the east coast of the US, and there are issues with overpopulation, healthcare, hunger, and organized crime. Portland struggles with overpopulation, and the climate is rainy and miserable. In the Middle East, an ongoing war grows.
When Haber welcomes George into his office, George feels that he in insincere. Haber pretends to care about his patients, but George thinks that Haber believes only in himself and in being liked. George tries to discuss the international military situation, and Haber dismisses it as irrelevant. Haber starts the process of hypnotizing and putting George to sleep. When George wakes, Haber asks what he dreamed. George says he dreamed about Mount Hood and sees that the photo of Mount Hood has returned to Haber’s wall. Haber says they are making progress, describing how the Augmentor will help him cure George. He tells George he must quit trying to suppress his dreams. Haber refuses George the dream-suppressing medication. Haber also refuses to tell George what happens during hypnosis. George mentions that he always wanted a cabin on the coastline. Haber again puts George to sleep. When George wakes, he realizes he has stopped the persistent Portland rain, and the sun is shining.
George broods over his encounter with Haber and the miserable conditions of the world as he rides home. George realizes that Haber has intentionally used George’s dreams to change things. Therefore, George’s mental health is fine, which leads George to question Haber’s motives.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In the first three chapters, George is established as the protagonist, holding the power to change the world through his dreams. However, in every other respect, George is an ordinary “everyman”: He is tormented by his gift, as he has developed a substance use disorder specifically to keep his powerful dreams at bay. While George suspects that his dreams have the ability to change the world around him, he is disbelieving enough to visit a psychiatrist, Dr. William Haber. Unfortunately for George, Haber not only recognizes his power but also aims to wield it, with George as his object, thus capturing the theme of The Will to Power. George and Haber represent two opposite approaches to power: George would rather not have it at all, and Haber seeks to possess it, no matter the consequences to anyone else. Indeed, Haber lies to George and views him as little more than a tool through which to build his ideal world. As such, George is a moral center within the text that eschews totalitarian power, while Haber represents humanity’s selfishness and obsession with power.
The bleak setting of the novel, in both Portland and the greater world, speaks to the theme of The Powerlessness of the Individual. George is one individual who, despite suspecting that he has the power to change things through dreaming, does not believe that he alone can change the dire circumstances of the world. He contemplates war, famine, climate, and overpopulation, but he does not attempt to use magical means to alter any of these circumstances. To George, the world has reached a state of disharmony through a series of decisions that cannot be easily undone. His hesitance to use his dreams to change the circumstances around him does not demonstrate apathy, but rather, an acceptance playoff the intricacy and often contradictory state of society. Further, the physical transformation of Portland—from constant rain to sunny skies—as a result of Haber’s interference with George’s dreams shows that this kind of world-altering power might begin innocently while foreshadowing greater changes, and thus greater consequences, to come.
Haber’s secrecy surrounding his plans also paints him as a shadowy, untrustworthy character who, through a rash eagerness to change the world to meet his own needs, will likely invite The Law of Unintended Consequences. In the text, every change made means that other circumstances are altered too, often to drastic ends. For example, when George was a child and dreamed that his aunt would die in a car wreck, she not only went on to die in a car wreck but also never lived with George’s family. So, while one specific detail does indeed change as intended, it occurs within a larger group of changes that George has no control over.
Notably, at the beginning of Chapter 3, Le Guin quotes the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang-Tzu, who describes the nature of acquiring wisdom, writing that “[…] those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven” (26). This quote, which inspired the book’s title, serves as a warning for Haber as he begins to alter the world. Moreover, George’s awareness of Haber’s dangerous plan poses the question of whether or not he will actively seek to stop Haber. Haber, despite having infinite power through George’s dreams, does not possess George’s wisdom; Haber does now grasp The Powerlessness of the Individual as he seeks top-down power over society. The contradiction between Haber’s near-limitless power and his lack of wisdom eventually leads to his destruction on the metaphorical lathe of the godlike power he sought to control.
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By Ursula K. Le Guin
