"The Day Before the Revolution" is a science fictionshort story by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. First published in Galaxy in August 1974, it was anthologized in Le Guin's 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters and in several subsequent collections. Set in the fictional Hainish universe created by Le Guin, the story has strong connections to her novel The Dispossessed (also published in 1974), and is sometimes referred to as a prologue to the longer work, though it was written later.
"The Day Before the Revolution" follows Odo, an aging anarchist revolutionary, who lives in a commune founded on her teachings. Over the course of a day, she relives memories of her life as an activist while she learns of a revolution in a neighboring country and gets caught up in plans for a "general strike" the next day. The strike is implied to be the beginning of the revolution that leads to the establishment of the idealized anarchist society based on Odo's teachings that is depicted in The Dispossessed.[1]
The experience of death, grief and sexuality in older age are major themes explored in the short story,[2] which uses vivid imagery to depict the experience of aging. In a foreword to the story in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Le Guin refers to Odo as "one of the ones who walked away from Omelas", a reference to another of her stories in the same volume. Odo is described as exemplifying the ideal of that story: someone who "cannot enjoy a prosperity dependent on the suffering of others".[3]
"The Day Before the Revolution" won the Nebula and Locus awards for best short story in 1975, and was also nominated for a Hugo Award. It had a positive critical reception, with particular praise for its characterization of Odo: a review in Extrapolation called the story a "brilliant character sketch of a proud, strong woman hobbled by old age".[4] Multiple scholars commented that it represented a tonal and thematic shift in Le Guin's writing away from "romantic quests" and toward works infused with feminism.
Background and setting
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic "libertarianism" of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid).
"The Day Before the Revolution" takes place in the fictional Hainish universe, created by Le Guin. In the alternate history of this universe, human beings did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems possibly a million years before the setting of the stories.[6] "The Day Before the Revolution" is set on the fictional planet of Urras, which possesses a habitable moon, Anarres.[7] It depicts the last day in the life[8] of Laia Asieo Odo,[5] a revolutionary figure, shortly before the revolution she helped inspire sweeps through her society.[3] Written soon after The Dispossessed (1974), "The Day Before the Revolution" is described as a prologue to that novel.[9] That novel is set in the same planetary system: the idealized anarchist society depicted in it is based on Odo's teachings,[1] and is a stateless, scientific, and largely anti-authoritarian society.[10] Odo's theory is put into practice after the revolution she inspired, with the colonization of the moon Anarres and the establishment of a society without private property ownership.[11] In The Dispossessed, she is usually referred to as the historical figure "Odo", but in this story, told from her point of view, she is called Laia.[5] In her preface to "The Day Before the Revolution", Le Guin described the philosophy of Odo as anarchism, and dedicated the story to anarchist theorist Paul Goodman.[10]
Plot summary
The protagonist Laia is introduced dreaming of her younger self and her lover at a political meeting. Awake, she is shown to be an elderly woman, who has had a major stroke. Her husband is long dead, her days as a political prisoner are in the past and her major anarchist treatises were written many years ago. She lives in the nation of A-Io in an "Odonian House", a building or commune in which her anarchist principles are followed. Laia goes through her daily routine, attempting to dictate letters to her secretary and eat meals she does not want. She recognizes that some of the status and honor she is accorded by her fellow anarchists is not in keeping with her principles or theirs. Her routine is interspersed with recollections of her life as a revolutionary, including the death of one of her parents in an insurrection. She discusses with her housemates a revolt in the nation of Thu, and the secession of a province there; they express surprise that a revolution occurred there first. She is visited by a group of foreign students, and feeling trapped by her obligations she decides to go on a walk afterwards. She sneaks out of the house and ventures into the city, but feels exhausted before she walks far and is found by a housemate. Back in the house, she is asked to speak the next day at a "general strike", but says she will not be there, and struggles up the stairs toward her room.
"The Day Before the Revolution" received positive reviews, and multiple commentators noted that it represented a landmark for Le Guin's writing. Publishers Weekly, in a review of Nebula Award Stories 10, called it Le Guin's "best short story",[22] though a review of More Women of Wonder in the same publication did not consider it one of the volume's strongest pieces.[23] A review of The Wind's Twelve Quarters in Locus listed "The Day Before the Revolution" among the weaker stories in the volume, writing that Le Guin's choice to introduce it as the "story of one of the ones who walked away from Omelas" (in reference to a different story in the same collection) heightened its "didactic element" and reduced the meaning in Odo's life.[24] Conversely, Algis Budrys, reviewing More Women of Wonder in Fantasy and Science Fiction, considered the stories to be of "uncommon excellence", and called "The Day Before the Revolution" the "best Le Guin short I have ever read".[25] A review in Galaxy described it as one of two "gems" in the same collection, and said it was "writing at its best, beautiful and deeply moving".[26] Science fiction critic George Slusser wrote that it is "harshly realistic" in its focus on death and old age.[27] Literary scholar Richard Erlich wrote that Odo represents a turning point in Le Guin's writing toward works infused with feminism.[28] Similarly, scholar Donna White wrote that Odo was Le Guin's most successful female protagonist until the publication of The Eye of the Heron in 1978.[29] White notes that the story resembles contemporary realistic fiction more than science fiction, arguing that it represents, along with The Dispossessed, part of a tonal shift in Le Guin's writing away from "romantic quests".[21]
"The Day Before the Revolution" is described as a character study to which the science fiction setting is incidental,[30][27][21] and Le Guin's characterization of her protagonist received particular praise. In a positive review of The Wind's Twelve Quarters, the Sydney Morning Herald termed the story a "brilliant piece of characterisation",[31] and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch similarly praised the depiction of Odo.[32] Literary scholar Charlotte Spivack noted that Le Guin's science fiction was notable for its subversion of stereotypes of elderly characters, and offered Odo as an example, praising Le Guin's "sensitive characterization".[9] Darren Harris-Fain called it a "moving depiction" of Odo, and stated that "The Day Before the Revolution" was among stories with thorough character development that demonstrated the literary worth of science fiction.[30] A positive review in Tor also praised the story's depiction of the "revolutionary icon as a curmudgeonly old woman".[15] Writing in Extrapolation Carl Yoke stated that Le Guin had written a "brilliant character sketch of a proud, strong woman hobbled by old age", and added that it was Le Guin's depiction of the psychological effects of aging that made the characterization strong. Yoke highlighted a passage in which Odo experiences circular and repetitious thoughts, a tendency that Le Guin mirrored in the prose describing it. Yoke concluded that Le Guin had gone beyond writing a story, and had created art.[4]
Themes
The experience of aging, death, grief and sexuality in older age are themes explored in the short story that were largely absent from The Dispossessed, which has a younger protagonist.[2] Odo's character is defined by "dynamic ambivalence" as she struggles between contradictory impulses,[3] toward "defiance and resignation, action and inertia".[33] Though she was the progenitor of the revolutionary theories her housemates now follow, she has feelings of ambivalence towards them, asking "Why the hell [do I] have to be a good Odonian?"[3][33] She derives satisfaction from "being a monument" to her movement, but also resents it,[3] as she recognizes she has already become part of history for those coming to see her.[33] All her life she has been the center of a political movement, and now she worries she has become peripheral; at the same time, she is reluctant to participate in the activities she is responsible for.[3] Her role in the period of time described in the title exemplifies the "tension of opposites" within her. Odo has worked for societal change her entire life, including writing books and spending time in prison; she is the "guiding spirit of the revolution". However, when she is asked to speak the next day by her housemates, she replies that she "won't be here tomorrow". Her reply refers to her physical condition, but has a deeper meaning, as she dies after climbing the stairs to her room, and so does not witness the revolution she was responsible for.[3]
Le Guin uses vivid imagery to convey the experience of being elderly; on waking, "looks down at her feet with loathing", and struggles with the deterioration her body has experienced as the result of a stroke.[3] Her waking periods are interspersed with recollections of her past:[3] Literary scholar Carter Hanson wrote that Odo's memory drives the narrative of the short story.[33] Focusing on Odo's old age, rather than her period as an active revolutionary, Le Guin examines a person's essential motivations besides idealism. Odo acknowledges to herself sex and vanity, and also mulls over the happiness she had and then lost.[27] Scholar Jane Donawerth wrote that Le Guin uses Odo's aging to examine her makeup as a revolutionary. Various pieces of her are undone over time, as her physical deterioration prevents her from working and her lover's death destroys her love life.[34] Close to death, Odo returns to the freedom of a child, and sees that same freedom in the daughters of the house she lives in. According to Donawerth, Le Guin suggests that for Odo's revolution to succeed, it must already have succeeded in creating "lovely, unconstrained daughters" who can see it through.[34] Donawerth also argues that Odo's outlook on her last day encapsulates endurance, more than the hope or anger she outgrew over her lifetime.[34] Hanson wrote that for those around her, Odo's own memories are "lost and subsumed" within the symbol that the adherents of Odonianism need her to be.[33]
The character Odo is described by Le Guin in her introduction to the story as "one of the ones who walked away from Omelas",[5] a reference to her short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,[3] which immediately precedes it in The Wind's Twelve Quarters.[35] Spivack wrote that she exemplifies the titular individual of the short story, who "cannot enjoy a prosperity dependent on the suffering of others".[3] David Porter analyzes "The Day Before the Revolution" among other works by Le Guin from the same period, and suggests that a theme common to them is the inevitability of societal change and its impacts on individual people.[36] Spivack analyzes Odo as an example of a dynamic elderly figure in Le Guin's writing, who shares similarities with Wold in Planet of Exile and the middle-aged Ged in The Farthest Shore. While all the characters have aged, they are not stereotypes; limited by their physical bodies, they retain the ability to affect their worlds.[37]Robin Anne Reid lists Odo as an example of "'Bossy' older women" who are effective revolutionaries because they are able to "speak unpalatable truths" without regard for consequence. Reid considers this character type a feminist subversion of the traditional trope of negatively-portrayed outspoken older women.[38]
^ abSpivack, Charlotte (Summer 1984). ""Only in Dying, Life": The Dynamics of Old Age in the Fiction of Ursula Le Guin". Modern Language Studies. 14 (3): 43, 46–49. doi:10.2307/3194540. JSTOR3194540.
^Noonan, William (March 12, 1977). "Science Fiction". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 18. Archived from the original on November 26, 2023. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
^La Rouche, Robert (March 23, 1976). "Book Reviews". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 15.
^ abcdeHanson, Carter F. (July 2013). "Memory's Offspring and Utopian Ambiguity in Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution" and The Dispossessed". Science Fiction Studies. 20 (2): 246–262. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.40.2.0246.
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