The Open SeaNow, I can’t finish this chapter or this book without talking about it’s biggest message: self-determination.
But to get to that, let’s talk about the shadow: what is it, actually? My first answer would be that since it is the result of trying to resurrect an ancient, very dead woman, it is the death spirit left to haunt Ged and warn the world of how trying to bring back dead people is not only impossible but very bad. That’s what happens when you tamper with magic. Upon second glance, though, it’s more personal than that. The shadow isn’t the ghost of the woman he tried to bring back; she faded away almost immediately. It doesn’t seem to be strictly related to a life-death message, either; it just comes from that dry land between life and death. It is very particular to him and his mistake. I say it’s actually the symbol of Ged’s arrogance, pride, and hate that led him to make this mistake that unleashed a huge evil into the world. Furthermore, as he grows older and this shadow chases him, it’s also an embodiment of his shameful past. I’m not sure whether this is obvious or not, but moreover it is an analogy for the demons, flaws, fears, or problems all humans have. Take your pick— essays could be written about the shadow as mental illness, PTSD, grief, regret, trauma in general, etc. So, what does this mean in the context of the story? The turning point is when Ged chooses to face his fear, and chase it instead of it chasing him. Thus, we clear message is it’s better to face your inner demons than run from them. The climax, or resolution, is where things really get interesting, though. Ged calls the shadow by it’s true name, therefore controlling it. He calls it by his own name. (WHAM! Isn’t that so cool?? It’s a great resolution, I love it) He and the shadow merge, and Ged is free and the book ends. So, what does this mean? Two things. First of all, Ged only becomes free and “whole” when he and the shadow become one. In the end, all this agony is only lifted when they are no longer separate from each other. Following the allegory, LeGuin is saying that we are not complete and free until we accept those things we fear, the inner demons. We can’t just ignore them; those mistakes, the past, is part of us. Secondly, and lastly, the key here is that Ged accepted it, not the shadow— Ged met it on his own terms, and was the one to master it. He made that choice. Following the allegory, the simple message of the book, of Ged’s whole journey, is that we get to decide. Most humans won’t get to fight dragons or travel a magical Archipelago or face their inner demons as outer shadow demons, but we all have them. Our past, our regrets; our future, our fear; our problems and flaws. But, like Ged, we can meet them on our terms, we get to choose who we are.
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IffishShort Summary: Ged buys an actual sturdy boat, and helps the villagers of remote West Hand, telling them news and stories and healing small wounds, that sort of thing. Then he’s off, still chasing his shadow east, and stops at Vemish, where the locals tell him they saw a shadowy man that looked just like him cross the isle three days ago. So he leaves again, and this time stops at Iffish where! he meets his old friend! VETCH IS BACK!! Ged goes to Vetch’s house, meets his buddy’s siblings, and has just enough time to soak in the steady, calm atmosphere of that home before Vetch tells Ged he is going with him to chase the shadow. The two pack, say their goodbyes, and are off to get that shadow.
Sparrowhawk and Vetch’s sister and brother, Yarrow and Murre, have a very interesting conversation in this chapter. I’ve been wanting to discuss language in this book for ages because it is a big theme, and there’s some things Ged says that is the perfect quote to start this discussion: “In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it. But usually when you see a wizard name or call upon some thing, some object to appear, that is not the same, he calls upon no power greater than himself, and what appears is an illusion only. To summon a thing that is not there at all, to call it by speaking its true name, that is a great mastery, not lightly used.” (191) “All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.” (193) “For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.” (194) My point is that language is more important than we realize, and I love how Earthsea illustrates that in a fantastical way with true names. Something about the power held in true names in Earthsea speaks to me about the power held in language and naming things in our world. Sure, we can’t literally control someone when we call their name, but I do think language is so much more important than we realize. I mean, if we don’t have a word for something, does it really exist? Sure, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if we don’t have a name for rose, it’s just a flower. If we don’t have the word for flower, it’s just a plant. It makes me think about 1984, as well, and how one part of that dystopia was words being removed from the dictionary, instead of added. Imagine: one year, the word kindness exists in the dictionary, and in human consciousness. The next year, it is gone. People would still be kind to one another, but without that word to articulate what that is, we couldn’t communicate it as a value anymore. Language is communication, and communication is connection, and without connection we aren’t that one word spoken slowly. We break apart. The Hawk’s FlightShort Summary: Ged wakes up in the tower in a plushy bed and fancy clothes, and soon meets the inhabitants, namely the lord and lady of Terennon. Ged and the woman, who it later turns out is the witchy girl from Gont, talk a lot, and Ged feels sad in this lonely tower, sheltering from the shadow. One day the woman, Serret, leads him to the basement, to a very ominous, evil, powerful stone. It turns out the reason he ended up in this random place in the north is because she and her weird husband want the power of this stone, but neither of them are strong enough to control it so they want Ged to. He almost gives in because it could help with the shadow, but integrity wins out and upon this knowledge he turns into a falcon and busts out of there. Driven by anger and fear, Sparrowhawk true to his name literally flies all the way from Osskill back to Ogion’s cottage in Gont. Ogion helps Ged turn back into a human, since being an animal that long messes with a mage’s mind, and then the two have a long, wise chat in the cozy cabin.
I’m tired again today and a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s some art. HuntedShort Summary: Ged tells the villagers of his feats with the dragons, and they make a song about him! Cool! He then feels the shadow approaching and tries to go back to Roke, the only safe place he knows of. Alas, the shadow is close enough that the protective enchantments on the wizarding island sense it and keep Ged from landing by making a powerful storm. So he goes back to the port of Serd, Orrimy, where he meets a mysterious grey stranger who tells him to head north, to a Court of Terrenon in Osskill. Out of ideas, Ged does just that. On his boat on the way there, he meets a kind of shady guy (pun intended) called Skiorh who, once they land at Osskill, tells him he will show Sparrowhawk the way to Terrenon. Thus they set out on the snowy moors. All alone. With nobody in sight for miles. Big surprise, it was a trap! Skiorh has been possessed by the shadow, and a literal run over the moors ensues. The shadow almost gets him but Ged passes out inside the gates of a random tower, the only thing for miles.
So. Anxiety, fear, dread. All of them are pretty big bummers. Unfortunately, I can relate to Ged’s feelings a lot. Fortunately, I’m not actually being chased by an undefinable, horrible, shadowy ghoul, but it is still relatable. Sometimes a combination of natural anxiety, existential threats like climate change, and scary news like the recent invasion of Ukraine make me feel like Ged. It makes me wonder, like I have many times before: what place does anxiety, fear, have in my life? I sometimes have a hard time estimating the healthy amount of it. On the one hand, it’s completely rational to worry about climate change and war, and the answer is action! Why don’t more people panic about climate change?? On the other hand, constant doom is not productive, and right now, as a teenager busy with things I enjoy, like school and theater and band, there’s nothing I can really do about war or climate change. I’m going into the environmental field, so I have the years after high school to fight climate change, and I have the right to enjoy my life right now. Anyways, I basically struggle balancing a rational amount of fear and trying to enjoy my life. But Earthsea, this chapter and others, have reminded me of something: fear exists to keep you safe, not to make you unhappy. If Sparrowhawk had been a little bit more afraid of the ancient magical powers, he wouldn’t have messed with them and gotten himself into this situation in the first place. Fear keeps you from doing stupid things, and that makes me feel better. The Dragon of PendorShort(ish) Summary: Ged goes to Low Torning in the 90 Isles to become the local wizard and defend against dragon attacks, and, for a while, lives a peaceful country life. He becomes friends with a neighbor fisherman, Pechvarry. One night, Pechvarry’s son falls sick with fever, and Ged comes over to heal him; but he is too late, and, while trying to save the child, follows it’s soul into the afterlife. In doing so Ged nearly dies himself, and the shadow discovers him. The shadow comes to get him, and now Ged has to protect himself from it and the villages from the dragon. He can’t do both at once, so he makes the extremely logical decision to go and get rid of the dragons so he can focus on the shadow. So he sails to their island, Pendor, kills five of the young ones, and makes a deal with the oldest. You see, Ged has figured out the ancient dragons true name, Yevaud, and so promises to not control it if it promises not to ever hurt any humans again. Yevaud agrees, and Ged goes back and has made a legend of himself (at age 18 or so, no less). I was going to make connections between Earthsea and other fantasy books, as well as write about how fantasy and mythology/folklore are connected and how “classic” fantasy is based mostly on Northwestern European and give some examples of fantasy based on other mythology. But. I had testing this week, I’m beat. So I give you some Ged and Vetch sketches: The Loosing of the ShadowShort Summary: Ged learns more things at Roke, advancing and even learning more than he should at his age and grade. One day, on a festival night, he gets into an acrid fight with Jasper, and challenges him to a sort of wizard duel on Roke hill. Jasper challenges Ged to summon someone from the dead, so… Ged does. And nearly dies in the process, while also unleashing a mysterious but very evil shadow onto the world. Archmage Nemmerle dies trying to save Ged, and it is a very long and painful process for Sparrowhawk to heal. He is very traumatized, but, over the course of many months, gets back on his feet. It is unclear whether he can ever leave Roke again and be safe, seeing as there is a shadow thing hunting for him in the wider world, but he actually becomes a sorcerer, earns his wizard’s staff, and leaves the island! Today, something fun! I’m copying my friend Hendrix and using some characters and quotes for prompts that generate AI art. It’s a really cool website, check it out: https://www.wombo.art/ Oh, also, it has a 100 character limit, so that’s why a lot of the quotes I put in are funky. And I used the dark fantasy theme because, well, duh :)
The School for WizardsShort Summary: Ged reaches Roke and soon finds a friend in an Eastern kid named Vetch, as well as an enemy in a rich boy called Jasper. He is rather quick to learn everything they teach him, and has fun in the first year or so with weather working, casting illusions, learning about herbs— the basics. He is then sent with a group of students to a lonely tower to memorize the true names of things, which, after a year, gives him a decent start in the vocabulary of magic. On his way back to the main school he collects a familiar, a little rodent-thing called an otak which I can’t help but imagine as Teto from Nausicaä. The chapter ends with a great lord visiting, whose wife Jasper impresses with an illusion and in doing so reignites the jealousy and hatred of Ged towards him. I have to wonder if JK Rowling ever read Earthsea, based on the title of this chapter :D. That’s not what I’m going to talk about today, though. I’ve had a brilliant essay idea and want to share it. Hear me out: magic in Earthsea as a metaphor for nature and/or tied deeply to nature. There’s so many instances where the two are connected! “The door that the old man closed behind him was of polished horn, through which the daylight shone dimly, and on its inner face was carved the Thousand-Leaved Tree.” “He stood in the innermost room of the House of the Wise, and it was open to the sky.” “As their eyes met, a bird sang aloud in the branches of the tree. In that moment ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves: it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.” “…he seemed as if all darkness and heaviness had been leached out of him by the slow usage of the years, leaving him white and worn as driftwood that has been a century adrift.” “ ‘He who hold the earthquake on a leash has sent you, for which be doubly welcome.’ ” “Yet in among his mumblings there were words of what the bird had sung and what the water had said falling.” “A great black bird, a raven of Osskill, came walking over the stone terrace and the grass.” “There was one grove not far away to the left that Ged could never quite see plainly… ‘That is the Immanent Grove. We can’t come there, yet…’ ” “In the hot sunlit pastures yellow flowers bloomed. ‘Sparkweed,’ said Jasper. ‘They grow where the wind dropped the ashes of burning Ilien, when Erreth-Akbe defended the Inward Isles from the Firelord.’ ” “ ‘…we stand on the slopes of Roke Knoll, whose roots go down to the center of the earth. All spells are strong here.’ ” “Pointing his finger Jasper spoke a few strange words, and where he pointed on the hillside among the green grasses a little thread of water trickled, and grew, and now a spring gushed out and the water went running down the hill.” “…he took up a bit of earth in his hand and began to sing tunelessly over it, molding it with his dark fingers and shaping it, pressing it, stroking it: and suddenly it was a small creature like a bumble-bee or furry fly…” “… he would practice with the Master Windkey at arts of wind and weather.” (49) “ ‘But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need.’ ” “ ‘A rock is a good thing, too, you know… If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we’d lead a hard life here.’ ” “ ‘He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea.’ ” “ ‘They say, Sparrowhawk, that a man favored by a wild beast is a man to whom the Old Powers of stone and spring will speak in human voice.’ ” “ ‘Our Lord Nemmerle has his raven, and songs say the Red Mage of Ark led a wild boar on a gold chain.’ ” “A white tree he made spring up from the stone floor. Its branches touched the high roof beams of the hall, and on every twig of every branch a golden apple shone, each a sun, for it was the Year-Tree. A bird flew among the branches suddenly, all white with a tail like a fall of snow, and the golden apples dimming turned to seeds, each one a drop of crystal. These falling from the tree with a sound like rain, all at once there came a sweet fragrance, while the tree, swaying, put forth leaves of rosy fire and white flowers like stars.” You see?! I mean, one could argue that most fantasy magic systems are based on a vaguely druidic, pagan tradition, but still! I think it’s a compelling argument to see nature on planet Earth, in real life, as magical, because it really is. The illusion mimicked a white tree with golden apples and fiery leaves and star flowers, but who needs an illusion when the real thing exists? Who’s to say the laurel tree blooming in my backyard is less bewitched than the spellcast apparition of one? Why shouldn’t a real bumblebee be more magical than one made out of clay?
The ShadowOkay, we’re going to do something a little bit different for the summary today. Let’s call it the train of thought, in which I, the conductor, take you on a railroad trip of consciousness, free association, and personal opinions chronologically through chapter 2 (also known as a big, unedited brain barf. read at your own risk) The chapter starts off with a frustrated Ged and silent Ogion in the classic ‘impatient student, wise yet underwhelming master’ situation. I think of countless other duos, like:
The two go through Gont on a hike that sounds absolutely lovely to me (give me that Ghibli nature!), but is pure boredom to Sparrowhawk. Ogion talks about some plants, and drops very existential words: “When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of you? or of myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?” Then it rains on Ogion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ygYt8Nkz8) Finally they get to Ogion’s beautiful little cottage, where Ged should be right at home because it is named Falcon’s Nest. Thus begins the winter, and I must pause to admire Ursula K LeGuin’s descriptive language. It’s rather simple, but is magical in and of itself by how powerfully it draws you into the book. I feel like I am Ged, learning the Hardic runes in that house surrounded by nothing but the sounds of snow and rain. I have no choice but to tumble in when sentences like “the mage’s long, listening silence would fill the room, and fill Ged’s mind, until sometimes it seemed he had forgotten what words sounded like…” exist. All right, eventually spring comes and Ged is sent out to gather herbs, and we get more idyllic descriptions of him roaming nature that make me jealous. Pages like these make me yearn for forests and sweet mountain slopes to explore for hours!
Anyway, soon enough Ged meets a girl in these meadows, and she’s bad news. She asks him lots of questions and leads him boast about his magic, and, curse teenage boys, he wants to impress her. So much so that he sneaks into Ogion’s big ancient magic books that totally aren’t super dangerous and stored away for a reason. Honestly, it feels like they’d have some sort of guarding mechanism, like the safety caps on tylenol, but nope. He opens them and looks for the spell to transform himself, but oopsies! Big surprise, he accidentally almost summons an evil ominous shadow thing. Luckily Ogion busts in just on time to banish it with some sparkly mage action, and then give Ged an appropriate stern lecture. Oh, we also find out the girl was the daughter of an “enchantress”, and is practically a witch herself, which makes me wonder why there are no female mages so far and why the only two women with power we have vaguely encountered are evil. Darn it Ursula, I thought you were a better feminist than that (though, then again, it was 1968, so maybe the fantasy world wasn’t ready for powerful women yet). This conflict brings on a big fork in the road for Sparrowhawk. Ogion offers to send him to Roke, the Hogwarts of Earthsea, instead of staying to study with him, and it becomes the choice between a quiet, slow life and a grander, larger track. Both lead toward knowledge, but they’re different. You can probably guess what Ged chooses, but it does make me wonder what I would have done. I do think people place too much value on fame, not only in cliche fantasy tropes but in real life; there’s so much pressure to “make something of yourself”, especially in America. You’re always expected to do better than your parents, to build a bigger, better life for yourself. But, I ask, is is not enough to simply live a quiet life? To eat, sleep, work, be content? Why do I need to want to start my own business from scratch, be a “self-made” person, when I can be content working at a mediocre job, doing a hobby I enjoy, and relaxing at home? That might sound somehow defeatist to some people, but that’s what I mean: we don’t all have to have big goals. Having said all that, I would probably also choose to go to the big school on Roke and learn with others than stay with Ogion. Thus Ogion and Ged go to Gont Port. Sparrowhawk has a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAbx5kgCJo moment when he sees the ship that will take him. This ship is, coincidentally, named Shadow, which probably isn’t foreshadowing of any kind. And so he’s off! We get some very brief yet cool descriptions of the islands they pass that make me want to write a fan fiction set in Earthsea. It also makes me get a kick out of how much Ursula K LeGuin is into culture! It’s so refreshing in fantasy to get a big variety in humans, as opposed to species. Dwarves, elves, gnomes and Orcs, etc. can be fun, but not many fantasy writers I’ve read have the creativity to differentiate between human cultures in a world. The geography lends itself well to that, too; islands are the perfect place for different human cultures to evolve, just like animal species do on islands in real life. Finally, after almost missing it due to a big storm, Sparrowhawk gets to Roke, the island of mages. Warriors in the Mist
Run little goatherd,
over tawny cliffs, through fircone wood Remember that word? The one the witch understood That bids the birds, bridles the breeze You learned it with ease Hints of magic in your hands, Laugh when the sparrowhawk lands A boyhood of wildflowers, coarse grasses and charms Hours spent tumbling through streams, past old farms You have weather tricks, fences to fix Walk Sparrowhawk, and careful not to flaunt your power too much on this isle of Gont |