Le Guin Schrodinger's Cat

Readers that try to impose categories on fiction only create logical traps for themselves-this box for “hard science” stories, that box for “new wave” stories. Schrödinger’s Cat strips the lid off the box, and categorizers are caught inside it, or outside it.
Beginning with the first long paragraph and the line” As things appear to be coming to some sort of climax” (Norton) it appears that the narrator is in some sort of limbo and uncertainty. Two possibilities come to mind as the paragraph unfolds. One thought is that she has died and is in the process of going into the afterlife. Her association with the married couple who have “pretty well gone to pieces” (Norton) suggest the aftermath of an accident or event. The wife is described as dismembered. The husband’s pieces trotted around bouncing and cheeping like little chicks. The fact that he “had no hormones of any kind” (Norton), would indicate a loss of manhood and her insistence on trying to express ...