A brief survey of Earthsea and Ursula K. Le Guin

I first read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin when I was nine years old. I had already been reading Fantasy novels regularly at that age, ranging from T.A. Barron’s Merlin Saga to Piers Anthony’s Xanth books to Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword, but something awoke within me when I first took the journey with Sparrowhawk from Gont to Roke, and all the way to the far-off Pendor where the Archmage contends with his first dragon. At unexpected times, that waking is still occurring. Too young to fully understand the depth of nuance belying the simplicity of the language and Le Guin’s penchant for world-shaking themes, Earthsea became a literary home as much as Middle-Earth or the Forgotten Realms. 

In many ways, Earthsea in is everything I write.

Beyond my personal affection for this series, Le Guin’s tales cannot be overstated on their literary merits. Earthsea, in all its subtle might and pointed humanity, offers a depth of understanding setting it apart from its contemporaries and descendants in its articulation of emotional substance that sticks with the reader long after they have closed The Other Wind, the final novel in this six-book masterpiece. Themes such as acceptance of the self, having the courage to confront uncomfortable truths, and making peace with ourselves through the acceptance of our vulnerabilities not only offer cornerstones that bolster these excellent works, but seed a moral and ethical framework that readers may take with them into their daily lives. 

(Please note that in this survey we will not be examining the stories in the fifth Earthsea entry, Tales of Earthsea, due to the nature of it containing multiple short stories that deserve their own focus and attention.)

Starting with the classic A Wizard of Earthsea, Le Guin introduces us to one of her three prime character, Ged, who will later become the Archmage Sparrowhawk of Roke as well as a main hero of the first three novels. Initially portrayed by Le Guin as a sympathetic character, his layered depiction in his coming-of-age journey not one of a sympathetic, morally perfect character, but of a person at odds with coming to age within their power, their identity, and where they fit in the world. An inspiring Taoist, Le Guin eschews from the typical sword and sorcery trappings of the genre that were the hallmarks of Tolkien and Howard, and instead places her protagonist on a journey where the villain is his own shadow, brought forth from the realm of death known as “The Dry Lands” during a forbidden enchantment where Ged seeks power to demonstrate his superiority over another.

That shadow loosed, Ged at first flees from it before ultimately setting out to reclaim a part of himself that psychoanalysts like Carl Jung believe, like Le Guin, we must make peace with if we are to come to terms with who we are, not the illusion of grandeur and pomp many of us are taught to value more than our authentic selves. For all Ged’s power, including his ability to discern the names of things (an important skill needed for a wizard or witch to obtain power in Earthsea), it is not until our future Archmage learns to accept the mistakes of both his hubris and doubt that the shadow represents that he finally obtains actual, meaningful power beyond the mastery of magic. The Earthsea stories ask us to assess ourselves, turning from the illusions we might place on what we perceive to be our “greatness” and find an actualized, healthy being within that respectful of the world, the people in it, but most of who we are at our soul’s purest.

That assessment often requires a confrontation against the inauthentic “truths” we tell ourselves, and in Earthsea, Le Guin makes clear distinction to what this confrontation entails: we must address how the world confines us through the roles and the identities it would place on us, and to do so, we have to take into account what we will accept in the process of finding who we are outside of those socially-defined bounds. This concept is especially important to the series’ second novel, The Tombs of Atuan, which stars Le Guin’s next primary character, Tenar of the Nameless Ones. Trapped by tradition and the expectations of being the high priestess of a chthonic cult, Tenar wanders through a meaningless existence where her wants, needs, and identity are erased for the sake of a system that isolates her and other women because of the magical power born unto them, which is seen as a force that must be diminished and demeaned for the sake of her primal deities. Again, the Taoist in Le Guin provides remedy to this imbalance, where wizardry is held high while women’s magic is often relegated to “witchcraft”, “cultish superstition”, or worse. A prominent feminist in the genre, Le Guin does not sugarcoat Tenar’s journey, often confronting her character and reader with the double-edged choices women, even in fantasy, must make for their own survival and personal progress. Nevertheless, Tenar chooses to embrace who she wishes to be, finding her authenticity created by the agency of her own self-determination, independent the social “truths” she has been raised never to question by the time she flees with Ged to the west.

But what do we do once we know our authentic selves?

We do what must be done for the sake of what is right, and only that. The journeys of the two prime characters Le Guin presents in the Earthsea series take different paths that ultimately merge, and being the committed Taoist with feminism baked in, they ultimately lead us to act for the balance of things. 

In the third novel, The Farthest Shore, Ged takes the understanding gained through his adventures, victories, and mistakes to guide the boy Arren (who will become the high king of Earthsea) as they pursue the dark wizard Cob as their foe tries to bend the forces of life and death for his own selfish gains. Another coming-of-age story, Le Guin through her character presents the needed lesson when it comes to masculinity: masculine power is not found in the ability to dominate or command through authority, but in the willingness to sacrifice power for the sake of what is truly right. Ged does this by giving up all of his magical power to defeat Cob and restore balance.

Likewise, Tenar’s story continues in Tehanu. Now the widow of a farmer and having rejected the opportunity to learn magic, the former high priestess finds herself at a crossroads until she is brought a burnt child named Therru, who is later revealed to be the half-dragon, half-human “daughter” of the powerful dragon Kalessin (who both sharing in a great “essence” that once unified humans and dragons together as one peoples.) It is through the challenges of raising a wounded, scared child unaware of her powers that Le Guin makes the case for why the feminine is as important as the masculine: just as the real power of masculinity is in the willingness to give up authority and power for the sake of what is right, femininity is what binds and heals through its acceptance of the other and the willingness to take on its care. 

This is demonstrated in the deepest brushstrokes when Ged arrives in Gont after the conclusion of The Farthest Shore. Now bereft of his power, he unselfishly allows Tenar to set a path forward for him when he is no longer able do so for himself, developing a finer strength by allowing his vulnerability to be as it is instead of trying to reassert control. What is lost is lost, and by accepting that, he is healed through Tenar’s guidance so he can again discover who he is, not the idea of what he was. In turn, Tenar is empowered by her agency to take on the world, despite often being alone and an afterthought in the minds of the wizards and men who rule Earthsea by the authority and assumption that their power is total compared to others. These two halves, the masculine and feminine, merge together in a shared understanding that we have a responsibility to the world and ourselves to do what is right and needed with our authenticity, and once that balance is found, we must be willing to put down our “magic” to let ourselves be as we are.

Why does this matter? Why does our authenticity needed to be discovered and dealt with? Why do we need to find the actualized truth of who we are despite what the world will try to impress upon us? Why do we need to be vulnerable and learn to leave behind our selfish wants for greater healing and responsibility?

I have only recently finished The Other Wind, the sixth book and conclusion to the Earthsea series, and I finished it right after the birth of my son. It is appropriate to have finally finished this series at his coming, because nothing has affected me more than the realization of who I have to now be as a father, why I need to forthright and honest with the world for a sake outside my own, and why I need to be ready to be vulnerable and admit that I’m not able to do everything, but that I still can do things that are important. 

Once again, Earthsea is set to chaos by an unbalance in the forces of the world when it is discovered the dragons are attacking the lands of men and the dead are finding no peace in the Dry Lands, the previously mentioned realm of the dead. The cause of this is created by a long-standing imbalance in the powers of the world, not only between life and death, but in wizardry versus women’s magic, and also in the structures the kingdoms of Earthsea made for themselves despite going against the natural order. It is only when the characters we have come to love find the strength of their authenticity to confront this imbalance and admit to their part in its creation that they are able to restore of the way of things, allowing the dead peace and dragons to be calmed, which is exemplified by Therru’s, also called Tehanu, final achievement of transforming from her human form to commune with other dragons in their shape. Through this restoration the world is reconciled, and this reconciliation is only possible by taking the journey to discover our authenticity, its truths, and to come to terms with what we must do with it despite what we would expect or desire.

Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin is important because instead of a quest to destroy a ring, or to defeat the monster, or in the pursuit glory and vengeance, we are tasked to find the greatest prize of all: 

A chance to be whole, in all ways, both within and without.

That is a prize worth discovering for yourself, no matter who you are, where you are, and what you do.

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Fair journeys!