The wisdom of intergenerational relationships in Ursula Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices and Powers)

Abstract

Abstract Ursula Le Guin’s novels included in Annals of the Western Shore, published between the years 2004 and 2007, have as protagonists three young characters who, among uprising, rebellion and unfair states, have to find their place in Le Guin’s the Western Shore world. The three protagonists share a gift – the gift of remembering and telling stories – which is transmitted to two of them through an older man from the community where they live. Once the main characters come together at the end of the third novel of the saga, they realise that the only way in which a free and prosperous state can be achieved is through knowledge and the sharing of the stories of both ancestors and new writers. The series, thus, problematizes the concept of wisdom associated with a binary stereotypical image of old age as either attached to loss and decrepitude or to wisdom, particularly in the fantastic mode. In this article, and following Le Guin’s belief in the intrinsic interconnectivity of all things, “organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object and force – [that] shape and are shaped by each other” (Senior 1996: 104), we aim to explore the value of intergenerational relationships in building a fairer and more prosperous society in Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore. Whereas the young characters and protagonists in each of the three novels need the guidance of older members of their communities to come to terms with their “gifts”, the coming of age of these young protagonists will also question the unfair and destructive beliefs behind the social organisation of the regimes in which they grew up and became adults.