History Literature / TheLeftHandOfDarkness

* BrotherSisterIncest: Along with some other sexual taboos, sibling incest is much less stigmatized on Gethen — siblings are forbidden from becoming life partners, but can remain lovers until they have a single child together. Getheren fell foul of this restriction: his sibling committed suicide rather than be separated from him after their child was born, leading to Getheren exile.

* BrotherSisterIncest: Along with some other sexual taboos, sibling incest is much less stigmatized on Gethen — siblings are forbidden from becoming life partners, but can remain lovers until they have a single child together. Estraven fell foul of this restriction: his sibling committed suicide rather than be separated from him after their child was born, leading to Estraven's exile.

* EnigmaticMinion: Genly's view of Estraven is pretty close to this for most of the book.

* [[FireForgedFriends Ice Trek Forged Friends]]: Genly and Estraven.

* GenderNeutralWriting:
** Much pain to anyone not a Gethenian. Sooner or later they all decide to use "he" or "she" for convenience, though it leads to traps - Genly's feminine "landlady", whom he couldn't resist to think of as a woman, was a father several times and a mother not once.
** On the other hand, Gethenians have no proper word for man/woman, and of course, ItIsDehumanizing, so outsiders attempting to make themselves understood must use the words that refer to the male and female forms of kemmer (the only alternative being words for male and female animals). In other words, they can only make the sex/gender distinctions humans routinely use by thinking of them as animals in permanent heat. This creates a few difficulties for Genly.

* SuddenlyEthnicity: It can take a while to register that Genly is black, but it is called out with, when Genly is questioned on Ekumenians:

Gethenians are yellow-brown or red-brown, generally,

%%* LoveMartyr: Estraven's poor ex, Ashe.

* SelectiveObliviousness: Genly, normally a conscientious and careful Envoy, hits this badly when he enters Orgoreyn. [[spoiler:His first day in a police state ends with him and the entire inn put under brutal arrest, but within days of being recovered and put in the hands of the politicians, he's able to convince himself that Orgoreyn is the enlightened nation he's been looking for. Still, all the time he's there his instinct keeps telling him something is off.]]

* BloodForMortar: An Earthman notices all the bridges in Karhide have keystones set with pinkish mortar. Turns out they believe an arch will fall without a bloodbond. They used to mix the mortar with human blood and bones, but these days, animal substitutes are used.

* TheGulag: Orgoreyn runs several of them, called Voluntary Farms. Gulag -- "[[ReassignedToAntarctica send them to Siberia!]]" -- the planet [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Winter]] -- [[IncrediblyLamePun get it]]? Wink, wink?

* MathematiciansAnswer: Some of the drawbacks of Handdaran foretelling. Apparently, this is the ''point''.

* MulticulturalAlienPlanet: Gethen presents two main countries, Orgoreyn and Karhide, both have different language, different religion, different customs and foods and different form of government, Karhide is a monarchy with elements of feudalism, while Orgoreyn is a PoliceState, there are more lands, like the Antarctic continent of Perunter, but the protagonist and main narrator did not visit them.

* OhMyGods: Oh My Meshe: Yomeshta tend to use expletives involving their prophet, Meshe.
* PerfectPacifistPeople: Sort of. Gethenians do kill each other by murders or clan feuds, but have never had a war. Like in the MedievalStasis example, it's discussed if it's the harsh weather, or the lack of male-female -- the most primal kind of "us versus them" -- distinction. [[spoiler:Later short stories reveal that the war will happen.]]

* TheRepublic: Orgoreyn, which is a PoliceState.

* ShownTheirWork: Le Guin's interest in Taoism fairly clearly colours the descriptions of Gethenian religion, at least as far as Handdara is concerned: it is less clear what the breakaway Yomeshta group (dominant in Orgoreyn, and increasingly in Karhide) corresponds to, but at least it's a founder religion like Islam or Buddhism.

* {{Telepathy}}: The peoples of the Ekumen have learnt to use this (which makes them TelepathicSpacemen to the Gethenians). The Gethenians have not, though it's clear they are capable of learning (as are humans, such as Genly).

* LanguageOfTruth: Mindspeak. Supposedly it cannot be used to "say" a conscious lie, and Genly explains it was even banned for decades

** Genly has some interesting musings on this trope once he ends up in Orgoreyn. When the person he asks about "sarf", a word he had heard a few times before, is oddly evasive about the topic, he figures out it's a secret police -- and that he probably wouldn't have figured it out if he came from Hain or Chiffewar, worlds with a lot less of a cultural history of violence than Earth.