The typical Le Guin hero is a visitor to a world other than his own; sometimes he is a professional anthropologist; sometimes the role is forced on him; in all cases he is a creature of divided allegiance. As a student of an alien society, he has responsibilities to his own culture and to the culture he visits; he must sympathize with and participate deeply in both, for it is by the experience and analysis of their differences that he hopes to arrive at a deeper understanding of the nature and possibilities of mind and of social organization. In his role of scientist, the anthropologist expects cultural division and has been trained to explore it; but as an individual, he finds that his personal attachments exist to an important degree independent of and at times in conflict with his social duty, so that, almost inevitably in Le Guin's work, he finds that he has difficulty reconciling his public, political obligations with the bonds he has developed as a private individual. Though the cultural division often serves to exacerbate his dilemma, Le Guin's hero, as a moral individual rather than as a scientist, often confronts a universal human problem of—in bald terms—how to harmonize love and public duty. The two divisions the anthropologist hero faces are not completely separate, however; different societies demand and deserve different sacrifices. Therefore, the inquiry into what the individual owes society leads naturally into a study of the nature and possibilities of different political structures.
The political axis of Le Guin's work exists at right angles, if you will, to the powerful vision of unity that recent criticism has been exploring, and an accurate perception of her whole achievement requires us to engage both dimensions. While the recent popularity of her work derives in part, one expects, from the vision of unity, it also probably owes much to her exploration of political issues that have developed a particular urgency over the last ten years: to her attempt, increasingly precise and detailed, to use SF for studying problems that arose from the United States' use of military power in Vietnam and from the experience of an alienating and technologically bloated economic system. (pp. 237-38)
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