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Book: "Embassytown"
Oct. 15th, 2011 02:43 pm It was pure luck to read this book soon after “What is Language” by McWhorter. John McWhorter discussed the differences among Western languages, Asian languages, and many African languages. He described the phenomena of travelers returning from one African country thinking that they’ve made a good start on learning the indigenous language—only to find that they can not speak it intelligently at all.
Embassytown also centers around language. In this SF novel, humans have encountered an alien race who have, let’s say, two voice boxes. Human linguists take the time to learn the individual sounds that make up the language but find that the natives can not understand them at all as we have one voice box only. Two voices from a single mind must speak in order to be understood. And the sound must come from a single mind, the linguists can not use machinery to double their voices. At the time of the novel, the human colony depends on clone Ambassadors to speak for them. The change that initiates the novel is the arrival of a new Ambassador from Breman—which is Great Britian to Embassytown’s America. All earlier Ambassadors were created on Embassytown. Breman, wanting to exert more control, has discovered a process to create and train their own Ambassador to the natives. Concurrent with this arrival, our narrator arrives to Embassytown. She is returning home, after having “escaped” this planet at the end of the known space and it is through her eyes that we will see the tumult that will occur because of the new Ambassador, the eventual collapse of the native society, and the war that results.
There are so many currents in this novel that wash against other books that I’ve read. The narrator’s husband admires the native’s language (he is a linguist) because it cannot be used to lie. He is aghast to find that some parts of the Host society is trying to learn how to lie. Although not religious—religion is almost non-existent in the novel—it is obvious that he feels like the Host are in a type of Eden that is being undermined. This reminds me some Jewish commentaries that say that God created several worlds until he got one where humans did eat from the tree of knowledge. Who wants their children to remain forever? In this case, the prophets of the novel (and Mieville uses that term) are trying to bring the lie to this race. In this case, the “lie” is metaphor. The Hosts’ language is extremely literal; they can manage simile if the simile has an equivalent in the real world. Thus, our narrator is “the girl who, in pain, ate what was given her.” She enacted that as a child so that the Hosts would have a simile meaning “making due.” There is also a pivotal scene in the novel that is so perfectly reminiscent of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller that I can’t believe that it is accidental. This is yet another beach that the novel’s water washes up on. Do you want another one? There was a recent episode of Radiolab in which a woman discusses teaching a 27-year-old man sign language. He had never learned to read or sign. He was also very literal. He could not understand that language is representative and symbolic. The description of his change and how his world before and after having language was a real-world reflection of what happens in this book as human language comes the world of the Hosts. Check out http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/
Embassytown also centers around language. In this SF novel, humans have encountered an alien race who have, let’s say, two voice boxes. Human linguists take the time to learn the individual sounds that make up the language but find that the natives can not understand them at all as we have one voice box only. Two voices from a single mind must speak in order to be understood. And the sound must come from a single mind, the linguists can not use machinery to double their voices. At the time of the novel, the human colony depends on clone Ambassadors to speak for them. The change that initiates the novel is the arrival of a new Ambassador from Breman—which is Great Britian to Embassytown’s America. All earlier Ambassadors were created on Embassytown. Breman, wanting to exert more control, has discovered a process to create and train their own Ambassador to the natives. Concurrent with this arrival, our narrator arrives to Embassytown. She is returning home, after having “escaped” this planet at the end of the known space and it is through her eyes that we will see the tumult that will occur because of the new Ambassador, the eventual collapse of the native society, and the war that results.
There are so many currents in this novel that wash against other books that I’ve read. The narrator’s husband admires the native’s language (he is a linguist) because it cannot be used to lie. He is aghast to find that some parts of the Host society is trying to learn how to lie. Although not religious—religion is almost non-existent in the novel—it is obvious that he feels like the Host are in a type of Eden that is being undermined. This reminds me some Jewish commentaries that say that God created several worlds until he got one where humans did eat from the tree of knowledge. Who wants their children to remain forever? In this case, the prophets of the novel (and Mieville uses that term) are trying to bring the lie to this race. In this case, the “lie” is metaphor. The Hosts’ language is extremely literal; they can manage simile if the simile has an equivalent in the real world. Thus, our narrator is “the girl who, in pain, ate what was given her.” She enacted that as a child so that the Hosts would have a simile meaning “making due.” There is also a pivotal scene in the novel that is so perfectly reminiscent of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller that I can’t believe that it is accidental. This is yet another beach that the novel’s water washes up on. Do you want another one? There was a recent episode of Radiolab in which a woman discusses teaching a 27-year-old man sign language. He had never learned to read or sign. He was also very literal. He could not understand that language is representative and symbolic. The description of his change and how his world before and after having language was a real-world reflection of what happens in this book as human language comes the world of the Hosts. Check out http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/
