Ursula Le Guin is the daughter of Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist, and Theodora Kroeber, a psychologist and writer. It’s easy and accurate to say that her parents’ interests inform her brilliant writing, and that cultural anthrpology and Jungian psychology are at the core of her writing. Those writings are too extensive for a single article; instead, I’ll focus on just one set of novels, the Earthsea Series.
The series opens with Wizard of Earthsea. It is a study in Jungian psychology. But the book isn’t a treatise. It’s a wonderful, well-told story of a young man, Ged, coming of age in a world where words can have the power of magic and dragons are as real as earthquakes. There is nothing didactic about this story; Le Guin’s writing is compelling and her characters are vivid: Ogion, the Mage of Silence, whose word had stilled an earthquake; Vetch, who helps Ged on a deadly quest for no reason but friendship; Murre, Vetch’s sister; Yevaud, the dragon of Pendor; and Skiorh, possessed by a gebbeth.
Earthsea doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Le Guin constructs a deep and textured history, and her characters act in ways that are consistent with that world. She manages the trick of writing a mythic tale without falling into the traps and foibles of sounding like you are trying.
The climax is straight from Carl Jung, but you don’t need to know Carl Jung from Steve Young to appreciate it.
From time to time, religious groups call for this book to be banned from school libraries, claiming it promotes witchcraft. Nonsense. This is a book every teenager should read. It speaks to self-understanding, nothing more.
And some feminists criticize Le Guin because Ged is a male character. Again, nonsense, Ged is an archetype, and his gender matters not at all.
The second book in the series is The Tombs of Atuan. Sparrowhawk, the protagonist of “Wizard of Earthsea,” the first book of the triology, is a secondary character here; important but not the focus. This is the story of Tenar, a young priestess at the Tombs of Atuan.
Earthsea has places where there are elder powers present. Readers of “Wizard of Earthsea” will have encountered one in the Terrenon. Tenar, as an infant, is given to the elder power of the Tombs. Her name is taken from her and she becomes Arha, “the eaten one.” She serves as a priestess to a nearly forgotten religion that treats the power of the Tombs as a god. But everything Tenar has been told is twice a lie; her religion is almost forgotten and the Power is anything but a god.
This is the story of how Tenar came to understand that her life, all of what she had been and most of what she believed was a lie. LeGuin makes it utterly convincing, in a spare, terse way that is stark and persuasive. Sparrowhawk plays a crucial role in all this, but he is not the protagonist. Sparrowhawk may have been the catalyst for Tenar’s changes, but like a catalyst he is mostly unchanged by the process. It is Tenar who is changed. This is Tenar’s tale.
Can you imagine how devastating it must have been for Tenar? How many of us could accept and understand that what we had been taught was evil or, worse still, utterly meaningless? Could you do as well if, say, Christianity were revealed to be an utter fraud? LeGuin makes it vivid. Any thoughtful reader is left in awe of Tenar’s strength and resilience. And in awe of LeGuin’s writing.
LeGuin’s third book in her Earthsea series is her most ambitious. Her thesis: you can only become whole by facing and accepting death, the darkest shadow. Lifted straight from Jungian psychology, this is the hardest and the important part of being whole. Sparrowhawk knows most of this truth already: remember the climax to Wizard of Earthsea. Arren, the young prince who accompanies Sparrowhawk on the epic voyages of this third book, has not yet learned this harsh lesson.
You don’t need to know anything about Carl Jung to read and enjoy this book. At one level, this is a children’s tale. But this book has many levels. Consider: the last king, Maharrion, had prophesied that there would be no king to succeed him until one appeared who had crossed the farthest shore. I’m not giving anything away by telling you that the farthest shore is physical – the western shore of the westernmost isle of Earthsea – and metaphysical – death. And readers of earlier books know that for the wizards of Earthasea, there is a low stone fence that separates the living from the dead.
There is another wizard – humiliated by a younger Sparrowhawk – who has both great power and a terror of death. And he has worked a spell that will devastate the world, by denying and avoiding death. But by denying death, he has denied life, and magic, song, joy, reason and even life are draining out of the world. That spell must be undone before it is too late. And that task falls to Sparowhawk and Arren. Prince Arren must learn to understand and accept that death is necessary. Not just in the abstract but personally. He must cross that low stonewall with no hope of returning. He must cross the final shore.
This story has dragons, despair, joy, loss, discovery and marvelous surprises. Like all of the Earthsea books, it is sparely but beautifully told. The deepest of the first three books, it is an absolute joy. And for a thoughtful, reflecting reader, it might be even more. This is a book that can change a reader’s life.
The fourth book is the most difficult. Tehanu was written a 18 years after “The Farthest Shore.” Every character in it has suffered loss and tragedy; each must somehow move on. Because we have seen two of those characters as heroic, it makes a difficult read.
Tenar was the triumphant White Lady at the end of “The Tombs of Atuan.” When “Tenahu” starts, about 25 years later, she is a widowed farm wife who has suffered the death of two persons very important to her: first her husband, and then Ogion, the Mage of Silence.
Sparrowhawk returns from the events of “The Farthest Shore” and, despite his brave words, faces life after the loss of the power of magic that has defined him and made him the greatest archmage since Erreth-Akbe. And Tenahu herself, raped and maimed, burnt, discarded and scarred has even less trust and joy than Tenar and Sparrowhawk.
LeGuin tells that story of how these characters interact among themselves and with their few neighbors, and how they react when great danger from Sparrowhawk’s past threatens to destroy them. Unlike the first three novels, there is no magic here; or rather, the only magic is evil and is used to attack Sparrowhawk and Tenar, who are incapable of defending themselves. Only Tenahu, the mysterious and maimed one, can act. Will she? How can she?
This is as dark-toned a fantasy novel as you may find. Those who want swords and sorcery, fur jock straps or light sabers should go elsewhere. This is a minutely observed, carefully developed story of how you cope with loss, grief and helplessness. I think many of the very negative reviews here come from misplaced expectations. LeGuin had said this was the last Earthsea novel. Happily, she was wrong.
Eleven years after “Tehanu,” Leguin published Tales of Earthsea. In the collection of short stories, LeGuin develops other themes and characters from the past and present of Earthsea. The tales are evocative, resonant and at once mythological and personal in tone. The reader will have an image of a LeGuin, with a larger volume in her lap, telling you the stories that catch her eye. You will sense there are many, many more stories to be told.
While it’s not required, you won’t thoroughly understand the references to the Ring of Erreth-Akbe unless you have read the earlier books. The last short story, “Dragonfly,” may bewilder you unless you have read “Tehanu.”
At the end of the stories, there is a summary of the peoples, languages and history of Earthsea, modelled loosely on the famous Appendices to “The Lord of the Rings.” I suppose the history consists of the stories that will never be told as novels or short stories, which is really too bad. The dry narrative of Erreth-Akbe, the greatest of Earthsea’s heros, would have made a wonderful tale.
I was struck by LeGuin’s subtle touches. The small cabin that was the summer home of Otter in the first tale, when the school of wizardry at Roke was founded, becomes the temporary home of Irian in the last story, which is set immediately following “The Farthest Shore.” Roke Knoll, which always reveals things to be what they truly are, plays a role in the first and last tales, too.
In her delightful foreword, LeGuin warns us, “Authors and wizards are not always to be trusted: nobody can explain a dragon.” Perhaps, but you can always trust LeGuin to entertain and enrich a thoughtful reader. And if anyone can satisfactorily explain a dragon, it would be LeGuin.
And the final Earthsea novel, at least so far, The Other Wind, Leguin does explain dragons. This novel is special. Have you ever read a book that was so well crafted that at the end of a chapter, instead of charging into the next one, you paused and reflected on what you have read? Have you ever read a book where you were at the edge of laughter and tears on the same page? You can with this novel. Le Guin has taken the loose ends of the four earlier Earthsea novels and short stories, combined those loose ends and your favorite characters from them with some serious thinking on the life and death, and created the finest Earthsea story to date.
Alder is a “mender,” a repairer of broken pots, a mere sorcerer, one who should never see the low wall that only wizards know, the wall that separates the living from the dead. Yet the wall and the dead torment his sleep. The dead call to him, asking to be set free and, most shockingly of all, his dead wife has kissed him across the wall of stones, something unknown in the history of Earthsea. The Patterner, one of the eight great wizards of Roke, the wizard’s isle, has sent Alder to Ged. And while Ged may have lost his power of wizardry and be done with doing, his heart goes out to the tormented young man. He counsels him, finds him a temporary solution to his nightmares, and sends him to Havnor, to the King Lebannen. For Ged thinks that Alder may herald a change for Earthsea, one even greater than those Ged wrought.
Alder meets other characters in his quest. Some are old friends of the reader: Tenar, from “The Tombs of Atuan” and “Tehanu;” Tehanu herself, who is somehow the daughter of Kalessin, the eldest dragon; Lebannen, the young king from “The Farthest Shore.” Some are acquaintances from “Tales from Earthsea,” most notably Irian, now Orm Irian. Others are new but no less wonderful: the young princess of the Kargish lands and, of course, Alder himself.
Le Guin takes these characters, lets them grow and age, shows us time’s marks upon them, and brings them into Alder’s life and Alder’s quest. And as Alder’s quest grows beyond himself, to involve the living and the dead, indeed all the souls of Earthsea, so does the book’s sense of wonder. Until, like Ged, in the moment just before the climax of the story, we will smile a little because like him we like that pause, “that fearful pause, the moment before things change.”
This is a masterly work, not just because of the clever use of characters or the wonderful plotting, but also because of the depth of the thinking that lies beyond and inside the story. It’s about even more than life or death; it’s also about the things we assume and take for granted because they have always been so, without ever asking if they are truly right. Alder’s love for his dead wife has the power to change the world. What’s no less wonderful is Le Guin’s power to move the reader, to challenge and provoke us.
The Earthsea series is among the finest fantasy written. Brilliantly developed, superbly written, powerful and subtle. If you read no other Leguin, if you read no other fantasy, read this series. It’s that good.
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