Chapter 5: "The Domestication of Hunch"

So, I just finished reading chapter 5 of "The Left Hand of Darkness". I'm still a little bit confused with this whole story, but as I keep reading chapter by chapter, I'm slowly understanding it more and more.

I feel like this chapter of the novel relates to chapter 4 a lot, therefore, I'm going to refer back to that chapter just a little. Genly goes in search for the foretellers, just as Herbor did in the last chapter. Sadly, Herbor asked the "wrong" question, and in the end, he had a pretty bad outcome. Anyway, back to this chapter.. I never really understood what the whole chapter was going to be about as I read the first few pages. All I really got of it was that they were travelling somewhere, but I had no idea where they were going.

After reading about how Genly was denied by the King, I wondered where he was going to go next. On page 56, Genly told the "person" he was just greeted by that he had "come with a question for the Foretellers." I wondered what the question would be, and I hoped that he wouldn't have the same outcome as Herbor in the previous chapter. I thought it was pretty nice of the Foretellers to let Genly "dwell" with them for a few days (pg. 59). And when Genly finally got the chance to ask the Foretellers, "Will this world Gethen be a member of the Ekumen of Known Worlds, five years from now?" I wondered what type of process would have to be done in order to reach an answer. Would it be similar to The Bead Woman? As the foretellers sat in the circle, I found the "Pervert" kind of weird. On page 64, it says, "The Pervert laid his hand quickly and softly on the kemmerer's hand." What was he trying to do? Was he trying to flirt with the kemmerer or something? I don't know, but the actions of some of the characters in this novel confuse me.. I don't really get their intentions sometimes.

One thing that really interested me in this chapter was when Faxe said, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action...." (pg.71) It took awhile for me to really understand what he was saying, and I'm still not sure if I'm taking it the right way. What I think is that Faxe is trying to say that life is about just living and letting fate take its course. What makes life life is living like there's no tomorrow, living with the uncertainties and taking chances. I think he's trying to say that life is about making choices based on what YOU believe is best. If all the Gethenians took the easy way out by paying the price to see a Foreteller, that wouldn't be living a real life. Just as Faxe said, "The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next." (pg. 71) I wonder what's in store for Genly!...

Thanks for reading!