Always Coming Home Study Guide

Plot Summary

Always Coming Home marks a departure for Le Guin in its two female protagonists and its complex narrative structure. Although she routinely deals with issues of sexual equality, utopianism, and a hopeful outlook for the future, Le Guin's novel approaches these ideas through the use of sociology, anthropology, and folklore which forces her readers to explore and compare the cultures of the Kesh and Condors to their own.

Part I

After a two-page introduction on the idea of future archaeology, Le Guin launches into the single narrative thread of Always Coming Home—the life story of the Kesh woman known as Stone Telling. Her first name is North Owl and she begins by introducing the major influences in her life. These influences are her mother. Willow, her grandmother, Valiant, and her father, the Condorman, Kills. Stone.....

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