"In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void"
About this Quote
Denial, for Le Guin, is not a clean refusal but an eviction that immediately invites squatters. Her sentence turns the popular fantasy of “not thinking about it” inside out: push reality away and you don’t get peace, you get occupancy. The blunt opposition of “what is” versus “what is not” carries a moral charge without preaching. It frames reality as a kind of discipline, while unreality is not freedom but possession - a word that suggests both haunting and addiction, the self no longer steering.
The syntax does the real work. “In so far as” implies degree, not absolutes; denial is incremental, everyday. Then the line accelerates into a swarm: “compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors.” Those nouns aren’t argued for, they’re stacked like symptoms, each one more involuntary than the last. “Flock” is an inspired verb: it makes the mind a landscape where anxious creatures gather the moment there’s open space, as if imagination defaults to worst-case mythology when it’s cut off from the stubborn particularity of facts.
Le Guin’s broader context matters: her fiction is a sustained critique of societies that mask power with stories - utopias that become prisons, empires that call conquest “order,” individuals who confuse comfort with truth. The subtext is political and intimate at once. Deny ecological limits, deny injustice, deny grief, deny desire: the bill comes due as paranoia, ideology, and self-deception dressed up as conviction. The “void” isn’t empty; it’s a vacancy sign.
The syntax does the real work. “In so far as” implies degree, not absolutes; denial is incremental, everyday. Then the line accelerates into a swarm: “compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors.” Those nouns aren’t argued for, they’re stacked like symptoms, each one more involuntary than the last. “Flock” is an inspired verb: it makes the mind a landscape where anxious creatures gather the moment there’s open space, as if imagination defaults to worst-case mythology when it’s cut off from the stubborn particularity of facts.
Le Guin’s broader context matters: her fiction is a sustained critique of societies that mask power with stories - utopias that become prisons, empires that call conquest “order,” individuals who confuse comfort with truth. The subtext is political and intimate at once. Deny ecological limits, deny injustice, deny grief, deny desire: the bill comes due as paranoia, ideology, and self-deception dressed up as conviction. The “void” isn’t empty; it’s a vacancy sign.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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