Entry Ten: Le Guin

"The Compass Rose"
Ursula Le Guin (1982)

"Right from the beginning we had to take the Test every quarter, of course, and some of the secretaries used to be nervous before they took it, but I never was. It was so obvious that the Test was right. If you scored under 50 it was nice to know that you were sane, but even if you scored over 50 helped. And anyway it is always best to know the truth about yourself."
that was fine too, because then you could he

The Compass Rose struck me in a very strange way, not like anything else has thus far in the semester; maybe it’s because it wasn’t until half way through it was I at all worried or otherwise unsettled. With Le Guin especially, I’m very confused that I was so comfortable reading this – really, I know what happens in this this text is god awful and terrifying – but also, there’s a hint of positivity.  That being in the fact there is a society where mental illness isn’t stigmatized in the way it is in our society.

The major reason why I chose the quote I did was because it seemed to sum up everything these people believed about mental illness; it was something to be treated, to be cured of so they could live a normal life. The narrator mentions numerous times about helping others, helping them to a point of recovery so they can continue their lives. After all, that was the point of Dr. Speakie’s test – to rule out those who were mentally “ill”, and send them somewhere that they could heal.

That leads someone to wonder what classified you as mentally ill, which is where this entire methodology meets it’s downfall.

In the case of the narrator and the community she lives in, mental illness is diagnosed by this Test. The inner details of the Test aren’t told to us, but apparently it can score you on a scale of 0-100, 0 being completely sane and 100 being utterly insane. I’m not too sure how one would make up this sort of test, but it’s given to everyone in the global population.

And slowly, people are shipped off to asylums one by one, until most of the population is housed in one of them.

What struck me most in this story was the nonchalance of the narrator and Dr. Speakie; for the majority of the text, they aren’t worried or concerned about the rising numbers of mentally unwell. The fact their president is ultimately sent to an asylum didn’t seem to phase them that much at all. Plus, the fact that a secretary ended up being president of this global nation was stunning – every other superior was ruled out to do being mentally ill.

It truly makes you wonder how anyone ran such a large society while suffering from “mental illness”.

This all speaks to society’s ideas of what mental illness is, as well as how easily it can hide from plain view. It also alludes to the idea of paranoia and how easily it spreads through social groups.

Who could be mentally unwell around you? Well… just about anyone.