How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #4
To go under a river: there's a strange thing to do, a really weird idea.
To cross a river, ford it, wade it, swim it, use boat, ferry, bridge, airplane, to go upriver, to go downriver in the ceaseless renewal and beginning of current: all that makes sense. But in going under a river, something is involved which is, in the central meaning of the word, perverse. There are roads in the mind and outside it the mere elaborateness of which shows plainly that, to have got into this, a wrong turning must have been taken way back. (3.73)
This is talking about the future, but if you think about it, it's also applicable to today. By displacing this image into the future, Le Guin gives us a glimpse of how absurd everyday life really is. It is kind of weird that we take tunnels under bodies of water, right?
Quote #5
At one time indeed most of downtown Portland had consisted of places to park automobiles. At first these had mostly been plains of asphalt punctuated by paybooths or parking meters, but as the population went up, so had they. Indeed the automatic-elevator parking structure had been invented in Portland, long long ago; and before the private car strangled in its own exhaust, ramp-style parking buildings had gone up to fifteen and twenty stories. (4.1)
Okay, so it wasn't invented in Portland, but this description of what happens with cars is creepily accurate. Why do you think Ursula Le Guin believed this would happen? How do you feel knowing that it has?
Quote #6
All the floors had a curious slant, a skewness, due to the basic helical-ramp construction of the building; in the offices of Forman, Esserbeck, Goodhue and Rutti, one was never entirely convinced that one was standing quite upright. (4.1)
The converted parking structures are an apt symbol for the uncertainty of George's Portland. Technology literally made these people unstable, but the image works on a metaphorical level as well. No one is very certain about the future, and the world in this novel seems to be very precarious; life changes dramatically minute by minute sometimes.