Deplorable Word word itself, and had vowed that none of them, nor their descendants, would seek to discover it. Jadis said she had "learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it". The book does not say what that price was, or give further details on the Deplorable Word. Lewis does not explicitly link the Deplorable Word to any specific weapon of mass destruction, but he alludes to the power of humanity to destroy life. Writing in 1955 in the midst of the Cold War, Lewis has the lion Aslan say to the central characters from the
The Word for World Is Forest at interpreting dreams are seen as gods amongst the Athsheans. In the internal chronology of the Hainish universe, the events of "The Word for World is Forest" occur after "The Dispossessed", in which both the ansible and the League of Worlds are unrealised dreams. However, the novel is located prior to "Rocannon's World", in which Terran mindspeech is seen as a distinct possibility. A date of 2368 CE has been suggested by reviewers, although Le Guin provides no direct statement of the date. "The Word for World is Forest" begins from the point of view of Captain Davidson, who is