The Power of Language and Acceptance in “A Wizard of Earthsea”
Discussing "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin
Today I’m going to try something a little different. Usually I put my book review and discussion in two different articles. I’m going to combine them in one here, a short review first, and then the discussion (with spoilers) below. Let me know if you prefer this format or two separate articles!
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ /5 stars, fantasy, magic
Title: A Wizard of Earthsea
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Pages: 272
Published: 1968
Genre: fantasy, YA
Themes: light and dark, power, mortality
Description: Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world.
This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
Want to read the book:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/4c0bgpy
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/24230/9780547722023
Prefer to listen to the discussion?
Check out my YouTube Video.
A Quick Spoiler-Free Review
The origins of fantasy and some of the first to (subversively) feature non-white protagonists. A gentle dream to read, and refreshingly devoid of war—rather a tale of man vs. self.
Told in fairy tale style, it does lack some of the breadth something like Game of Thrones offers in dense tomes. Instead, it moves through the protagonist's life from childhood, to wizard school, to adulthood in only a few brushstrokes. However, that doesn’t mean it lacks depth.
A Wizard of Earthsea came about when Le Guin was asked to write something for young adults. In an interview, she talks about her difficulty in approaching this request. YA wasn’t a genre yet at the time, and she also considered how young adults aren’t some unique population—they’re trying to make sense of the world they’re about to come of age in. She decided to pursue a story that focused on the origins of the “great wizard” archetype. How do they become great wizards? Where do they come from?
That’s exactly what Earthsea is, and our protagonist isn’t some happy-go-lucky wand wielder. He’s a kid with a desire for power, with jealousy, and insecurities, and in this story we get to see him grow into something more, overcoming these challenges. He is also (subversively because of the time period, sadly) a person of color, something that was at the time, and still is, whitewashed from the cover art of the books.
This isn’t just a young adult read, in my opinion. If you love a well-built fantasy world and a story of man vs. self, you won’t want to miss reading this classic.
Discussion
There’s a reason Ursula K. Le Guin is legendary. Already a beloved writer of both science fiction and fantasy, when asked to create something for young adults, she created an enduring classic for the young and old alike.
This is a story about power, but not the kind of power being held by a king (or wizard) to control and dominate others. This is a story about the power inside each and every one of us. It’s a story about how that power can be twisted or dark within us and how to face it and become stronger.
Our protagonist, Ged, a young boy on the island of Gont realizes he has some magic in him. In this magical world, there are some that have magical souls, but many don’t know how to control it well (a theme I’ll come back to later). But when Ged uses his rudimentary magic to save his island from foreign invaders, his power is noticed by the great mage, Ogion, who agrees to take him in as a mentee. But this mentorship doesn’t go well. Ogion wants to teach him the wisdom of magic, but Ged only wants power.
“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. To light a candle is to cast a shadow….”
After Ged attempts some dark magic from a book and scorches the floors, Ogion offers him a choice to go the magic school on the island of Roke and Ged seizes the chance. He quickly excels, seeking ever more power and forming an enemy. In a vengeful effort to prove he is stronger than his rival, he opens a kind of rift that summons a shadow. The effort to close this rift nearly kills Ged, and he is left weakened and disgraced. The shadow that came through that rift is what will continue to chase him throughout the book until he finally faces it. It attempts to absorb his power and ultimately to absorb him in entirety.
After he earns his robes, later than his peers now because of the damage done to him from the opening of the rift, he knows he will have to defeat this darkness. But how is still a mystery.
The rest of the book is his journey throughout the land of Earthsea where the shadow chases him and his attempts to defeat it. He defeats a dragon (simply by knowing its true name), sails on ships, and escapes a seductive princess trying to control him. He even finds love. Finally, with his closest friend, he journeys to the edge of the world, where no one alive knows what is there, and faces his shadow.
Darkness and Light
The first theme to tackle is pretty straightforward, written all over the pages: light and darkness. As sure as the sun rises and sets, human conceptualization of light and dark exists in fantasy, but I love this books use of it. She doesn’t explicitly talk about light or darkness inside us, although that’s essentially what Ged faces. She doesn’t present light and dark simply as good and evil either. She talks of light as the free flowing energy of life—the sunlight is good because it is the existence of life. Without it there is darkness, non-existence. But there is a balance. Life is, but must end. Without light there is simply non-existence—darkness. Both are a necessary part of the fabric of the universe.
“Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our need, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is.”
Her description of the entanglement of starlight and time, it’s gorgeous really. Physics before its time. Light is the power by which we live. By which we mark the passing of living. And it’s the core of her magic system too.
This concept of balance is persistent through the novel, and it’s what our wise mentor, Ogion, tries to teach Ged from the very beginning. There’s a scene where he says that you don’t simply make food appear, you take food from another place in time and may wind up starving your future self. I love this. This is a harder magic system; the exchange of matter always has consequences. This sense of balance is what Ged has to learn, the hard way, as we humans often do.
Ged’s jealousy in school is part of the darkness inside him, and that which pushes him to open the rift in the first place, to prove his power. This darkness chases him, and for a while, all he can seem to do is run from it. But in the end he will have to face it, and the answer will lie again in balance, the presence of both light and dark
Language and Power
“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.”
Okay, so before we get to breaking down the ending and how he faces that darkness, I can’t help but talk about what, I believe, is a bit of a hidden theme in the book. (Not that hidden, but it certainly could be missed in all the talk of light and dark).
The power of language.
In Earthsea, using magic involves understanding the ‘true name’ of things. A whole year of Ged’s wizard education involves retreating to a citadel to quietly read old texts to research these true names. Ged defeats a dragon simply because he knows its true name and therefore has power over it. Now, what a ‘true name’ actually is doesn’t get clearly described in the book; it’s a bit mystical. It’s hinted to be a bit of a metaphysical thing, and one could also interpret it as the idea that there’s one ‘true’ original language. A language of the universe. This is a entire fascinating debate in itself, the idea that Latin is the root language once held dominance. Some people think mathematics or physics is the true language of existence.
Magic systems are often built on words and incantations, but something like Harry Potter rarely touches on the idea of where the language came from. But Earthsea suggests that these words exist, and are part of the structure of the universe and to speak something's true name is to be able to control it, shift it, change it, or destroy it.
I have this notion that there’s something subversive in here. In the beginning of the book, the island where Ged lives, it presents as if the common people in this world are probably somewhat illiterate. Those that have magic can’t control it well, because they lack the language. There’s this undertone that language is power.
The words we choose to use have deep meaning.
Ged stops a battle of physical human strength and violence simply by speaking the right words. Understanding language and deeply knowing what things are through language is what is powerful. If you know what a thing is, you can face it, you can understand it, you can dominate it.
Mortality
The ending is mysterious, really. Le Guin is asking us to interpret it on our own. It says that “Ged neither lost nor won”, which is a powerful ending in a time when fantasy was defined by war, great heroes, and battles won or lost.
What happens ultimately isn’t any kind of battle. It’s acceptance.
Ged welcomes the shadow back to him. I believe the shadow was his own death, but by naming it with his own name, he became whole. The thing Ged had to learn the true name of was his own mortality.
Acceptance of mortality (back to that balance of the universe) is essential to “being whole”. But she goes on to say that, “he cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life is therefore lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, pain, hatred, or the dark.” How does acceptance of death keep us from evil? It keeps us from living in fear. People commit the most horrible acts in the fear of death, I think. In the fear of losing power over themselves and others.
Darkness isn’t evil. But mortality (associated with darkness) appears evil because it means the end of our power. I think this is another idea that often comes up in fantasy; those that seek to avoid their death become twisted and evil, such as Voldemort splitting his soul into horcruxes.
Acceptance of darkness is acceptance of mortality. It’s acceptance of the balance of the universe.
Acceptance is a beautiful message for Le Guin to give young adults. It’s such a powerful message, it actually hurts a little. I think all people need more acceptance in their hearts, but adolescence especially is such a tough time. And nowadays, it’s harder than ever before.
Young adults are searching so furiously for their place in the world, their understanding of self and life. Most of the time, that search is wrought with changes, experiments, seeking power, status, knowledge, safety, understanding, sometimes even greed or corruption. But Le Guin wants them to know, when you face your mortality, the darkness that is before you, in you, and after you—you can feel whole. When you accept your true name, your true essence, you realize it’s what you already are and always have been.
