The Word for World is Forest

Personally, I really enjoyed reading the book The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. Because the book was so fascinating it was a fast read. At the end I almost wished there as more to read. In the first chapter of the book already some ideas that were noted, I thought, was the idea of colonization and perhaps also a little bit of consumerism.

I thought the book was closely associated with the idea of colonization because while reading to me it almost appeared as though the humans were a sort of conquistadores trying to take over this new land and when they can across inhabitants they merely cast them off as already being of lower status and the humans because they did not fit in with the image of what the humans considered to be c civilized or civilization. As the book progresses we see this idea of colonization even more as there is a war over will claim the territory.

I thought in the book that the humans constant use of things, like wood, whether they needed it or not was a reflection of our current forms of consumerism because we take and take and never really wonder or even care what the consequences are of so much consumption. And after all has been consumed in our planet it is not time to pause and reflect on what went wrong, but the solution became what else were they going to use up.

Because of the futuristic society in which they humans live, one of the questions that I had is what could come of us if we had everything we wanted? That is could we become like them, looking for other planets to mold in our image, even if that image were somehow wrong?