Newton's Sleep Analysis

Guilt of leaving your people can wreak havoc on society. In Newton's Sleep by Ursula K. Le Guin, a group of people flee earth in a space ship , leaving behind a majority of the people on earth to die. Once in space, the people start to see things that they had left behind and ultimately go mad. We as humans have an obligation to each other to help those who are struggling along in life. When a society leaves its own behind, they will feel a large amount of guilt, which they will not be able to handle.
Earth is falling into famine and chaos, due to exhaustion of materials, and natural disasters, causing a earth that is, according to passenger Esther, "… all dead..."( Le Guin 312).
In times of hard ship people stay together, even when
This shows that their minds cannot take what is happening to them, the guilt they are feeling is on such a deep sub conscious level that they are seeing these projections, like ghosts, but cannot make rational scenes of it, and just start excepting it. Morton goes on to describe these figures as looking as though they are living in famine, like those they left behind on earth. Laxness, a man that is seeing these figures with Morton, even goes on in the conversation to say, "What I think it is, is our guilt." (Le Guin 331). Laxness straight out says that he thinks it is guilt, this is a man who was approved to be on this ship for high intellectuals. After leaving this conversation Ike goes to an elevator feeling " The elevator was full, but he was the only one in it." ( Le Guin 331). Ike is finally starting to feel the guilt, all of the others on the ship have seen the figures and accepted them as reality, " To deny what I and the people with me see, that would be just insane." ( Le Guin
Who do we think we are?" ( Le Guin 336). He then goes to see his daughter in the hospital, but finds that she is not there. A little black girl had come to take her, but there are no black people on the ship. His daughter left a note saying " I am Going up in the mountains for a while..." ( Le Guin 336). Ike's ultimate realization is when he climbs the mountain to meet his daughter on top of this mountain, the climbing of the mountain was Ike's long journey, to realization. It ends with Ike saying that they can come down off the mountain, symbolizing that everyone had finally realized the guilt, and the start of everyone on spes working towards a solution to fix what they had