The Third Wave

Each parable has its significance to The Left Hand of Darkness. The Nineteenth Day shows how the Foretellers interact with society and provides context to the weight asking the Foretellers a question is. When reading the novel, the concept of the Foretellers seems like a fairy tale, where its use in the story is similar to a song in a musical—just a cheap way to pass the plot along and allow Genly to receive his answer and provide for some hope and meaning in the story. But, this idea is changed with the introduction of the story of The Nineteenth Day. The Nineteenth Day is somewhat chaotic, but in the end, it shows how important it is to ask the right questions. Genly realizes this and asks a somewhat specific question, if Gethen will join the Ekumen in five years. Genly received a favorable answer from this, and this is the rare parable pertaining to Genly. Most parables apply to Estraven, but this one is special.
This myth also tells how high Gethenians have expectations for each other, especially in kemmer. While in modern-day society, with divorce at about a fifty percent marriage rate, marriage is taken lightly and not entirely as a lifelong vow. This is contrasts with kemmer, and in Gethen, kemmer is a very serious vow two must not break. The Nineteenth Day and The Place Inside the Blizzard show how serious Gethenian culture take kemmer which provides detail on the severity of Estraven’s kemmer vows. Since Estraven broke his vow of kemmer to his brother and broke another vow of kemmer to Ashe, these parables provide context for the vows of kemmer.