Reading the story of the Ansarac, I easily imagine that Usurla kroeber has been influenced by her parents’ experience with Ishi. The inspiration of creating that sort of “antrhopological science fiction” projected in the future directly derives from the differences that her parents noted in the ways of living of Ishi’s tribe. When Ursula mentions ” he was a little bored and lonely among the uninterested tourists,and when he found me a willing listener (surely not the first or last, but currently the only one) he took pleasure in telling me about his people, as we sat with a tall glass of iced U in the long, soft evenings…” ( on the first and second pages of the extract). I cannot help but think of the relationship between Ishi and Dr Kroeber. The same bond that linked Ishi and the doctor, seems to link the Ansarac and the narrator. Dr Kroeber discovered a world that was totally foreign to him when he befriended Ishi and learned about his culture. I do believe that Usurla writes about the Ansarac to also reflect on cultural diversity all over the world.

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The Ansarac made a whole different place for the forgeniers(outsiders) to learn about their culture without having them to have a say in annything that involved their culture. In Ansarac, all members became genderless but in Ishi, mean and women were very different, they both had different language. Women’s were not allowed to talk to other men outside their culture. In Ishi, everyone else died except Ishi, the last decendent of the Yahi. He survived the attacks from the settlers by hiding in many different places especially the mountains. The settlers came and destroyed everything but in Ansarac, they didn’t let that happen to their culture, they made sure that the outsiders wouldn’t influence or destroy their culture by keeping the outsiders on the distance. In Ishi, we saw hat when Ishi was found and stayed at the museum, he wasn’t much in contact with the outside world because they wanted to make sure that they can preserve that culture shomehow and the they succeeded on doing that even though Ishi died. Now, we have the books, recordings, other material that we can look but not the actual person to learn or hear it from.

I usually am not a big fan of fantasy and to be honest when I first read the story about Ansarac I was a little bit confused and uniterested. Once we talked about it in class I realized the importance of what LeGuin was writing about. The Ansarac found it very imoprtant to maintain their way of life by restricting visitors to one spot where they can see some of the culture without actually affecting that culture in a way that would change it or lead to its demise. This reminded me of Ishi’s people once hidden away in the mountains to protect their lives from invading settlers and the improtance of maintaining a culture by not allowing people in to change it or destroy it. I also found it very interesting that she included a treck up a mounatin in the story, where the families disperse and leave no trace behind kind of like what the Yahi had tried to do but unfortunately it did not work out for them. The influences the story of Ishi has on Leguin’s story is very clear to see. The importance of preserving a way of life, of preserving diversity and of protection from outside influence were all themes in both stories.