Things: A Story

The Wind's Twelve Quarters #short

by Ursula K. Le Guin

The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "Things" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction

27 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Svan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personally, I liked this story. It certainly wasn't one of her best works, but - for a story once titled 'The End' - I found it very refreshing and hopeful.

Notice how 'the End' never comes. People talk about the end. They act as if it's inevitable and it's coming for them all, and they weep and rage about it. But as the story progresses the characters aren't starving because of that ambiguous end. The animals didn't die from the end. The people didn't disappear (wherever they disappeared to) because of the end. People assumed the end was coming and gave up hope, gave up on life, and that created the empty houses and the lack of food and goods and all of those things we associate with the end of the world. In contrast, the only two people who didn't give up - Lif and the widow - have a lot more moments that seem almost normal. They eat dinner. They play with the baby. The widow cooks, Lif works with his bricks. They held on to Things and to life and didn't stop everything to wait for the End to come. And in the end, whether the End comes or not, they found some kind of surreal, dreamlike hope (but hope nonetheless).

Maybe I'm interpreting it too simply. But I read this and now I know that the night before the end of the world I will still be eating dinner and going on walks like I always do.

[Hayat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what this story is supposed to be about, but It left me feeling confused and disorientated. I still don't know why the MC was building a causeway across the ocean and how?, who was the woman and the child and what kind of world is this? It was very surreal.



I've had a quick look at Le Guin's brief introduction of this story gain and things look a little less murky but not by much.

'Damon Knight, editor mirabilis, first published this story in a volume of Orbit, under the title "The End". I don't remember how we arrived at it, but I suspect he thought that "Things" sounded too much like something you see on the television at one A. M., with purple tentacles. But I have gone back to it because - at least after reading the psychomyth-it putts the right emphasis. Things you use; things you possess, and are possessed by; things you build with - bricks, words. You build houses with them, and towns, and causeway. but the buildings fall, the causeways cannot go all the way. There is an abyss, a gap, a last step to be taken'.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and sweet

The perfect little story for a Sunday afternoon and a great way to ease you back into reading.

She certainly has an amazing way with words. Onto the next...

[Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good "the world is ending, what will we do?" story, and while this one was a bit more lucid and dreamlike than my favorite one of this category (Ray Bradbury's The Last Night of the World), I loved the overall atmosphere Le Guin laid out on the page.

[Marion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author keeps writing a story that makes me want more. I guess I can dream up any ending I wish. More, please.

[Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters: A Story. Lif, a builder's world is ending. Ragers are destroying everything and the people of the village have run away ... everyone treats this as the end of the world. He starts throwing bricks into the ocean. And this story challenges us to decide what things are important, which ones to let go of, which ones can be used to build others and which ones really matter. An interesting story that will make you think.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a third of the way through this end-of-the-world scenario, I solved the mystery. And yet, I was incorrect, because Le Guin is not about writing mysteries, but exploring the meanings of our world. The ostensible tale here is the last days of a people—let’s say the Easter islanders—who’ve run out of resources and so slip into despair as the last days come. But not everyone chooses to rage against the end or weep endlessly and instead tries to first float, then build, to achieve some other resolution. Is the ending, therefore, a happy ever after one? Le Guin doesn’t care. Her point is with her point-of-view in that you shouldn’t ever stop, you don’t give up, and you keep reaching for that goal.

[Vazyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things is a breeze of a story that I accidentally stumbled into recently. It starts slow and remains slow, a story where not a lot happens except for the one thing that's revisited from a new light again and again. The storytelling is sublime and the rating is for the writing, not the story itself. It's a story of hope and resilience in trying times, and though there are swaths of paragraphs where it meanders around the same old same old, Things is still a simple, great story. It is poignant in a way that good, little stories are. The ending is quite strange and came a little too fast for all the build-up to it. Wish Lif and the Widow had more time together in the story, but that's just me. Overall, a memorable story. 3.5/5

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a solid little short story. I found it interesting how the whole town ranted and raved about 'the end' coming, but it never seemed to come. Lif's response to this situation can symbolize the futility of escape without leaving your comfort zone, your possessions, and materials.

[kazerniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

can’t really see the point, it’s supposed to be a “psychomyth” as le Guin calls it, but I just don’t get what she was trying to explore or express with this. It’s just a surreal short story, without a beginning or end, just a bunch of dreamlike middle

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Océane Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end.
I mean, knowing the end is coming, do you really just give up? The people in this town did, except for the protagonist. It makes sense for him to. We all here know we are going to die, sooner or later, yet we still try to live life "right". Is this right? Who is to say. That's your own opinion! It seemed to work out for him in the end!