book explicitly presents and the anti-feminist undertones. For example, the book says that women created the society on Anarres. However, female characters seem secondary to the male protagonist, who seems to be a traditional male hero; Lefanu asserts that this subversion weakens any feminist message that Le Guin was trying to convey. Prison abolition Odo, the founder of Anarresti society, wrote her most influential works during a nine-year imprisonment. Anarres itself has no prisons. Its post-carceral nature becomes apparent in chapter two, when a group of Annaresti schoolchildren learn about prisons in their history lesson. The teacher describes prisons "with the reluctance of a decent adult forced to explain an obscenity to children. Yes, he said, a prison was a place where a State put people who disobeyed its Laws." Fascinated by this "perversity," the schoolchildren construct their own prison and detain one of their own inside. They are ultimately horrified by the experience. Figurative imprisonment is an important theme in the novel too. In both the Urrasti and Anarresti parts of the novel, “time after time the question of who is being locked out or in, which side of the wall one is on, is the focus of the narrative.” Mark Tunik emphasises that the wall is the dominant metaphor for social constraints in The Dispossessed. While on Urras, Shevek hits "the wall of charm, courtesy, indifference." He later notes that he let a "wall be built around him" that kept him from seeing the poor people on Urras. He had been co-opted, with walls of smiles of the rich, and he didn't know how to break them down. Shevek at one point speculates that the people on Urras are not truly free, precisely because they have so many walls built between people and are so possessive. He says, "You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes – the wall, the wall!" ‘ It is not just the state of mind of those inside the prisons that concerns Shevek, he also notes the effect on those outside the walls. Steve Grossi says, "by building a physical wall to keep the bad in, we construct a mental wall keeping ourselves, our thoughts, and our empathy out, to the collective detriment of all." Shevek himself later says, "those