Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore: Musings

The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. Le Guin, won the National Book Award for Children's Books. The book is the third in a series. (See here for my post on the second book.)

In the first book, Ged comes of age. In the second book, Tenar comes of age, in a manner determined largely by the actions of Ged. In this, the third book, Arren comes of age, also influenced by Ged. (Ged is also influenced by Tenar and Arren, but he had already achieved at least the beginning of adulthood in the first book.)

I shall give away more of the plot of this book than I usually do when discussing a book.

Le Guin has usually been concerned with non-human organisms, with the living community, although her books are mostly about people. Shore is no exception:

He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following it came soon into the shadow of the trees.

The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could believe at last that the Grove never moved; they were like immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet these, the most ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches that had died. They were not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with bright crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.

The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of all the years. Ferns and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind of tree but the one, which had no name in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea.  Under the branches the air smelled earthy and fresh, and had a taste in the mouth like live spring water.

In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an enormous tree, Ged met the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and seldom or never came forth from it. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore, New York: Bantam Books, 1972, p. 10.

As well as illustrating Le Guin's concern for the living community, this passage introduces the Master mages of Roke, and their various magical abilities. (Ged is the Archmage, by this time.) The Master Patterner, in all three of the books, does not perform any magic. (Other mages, and mages in training, including Ged, do perform magical acts in the books.) The Master Patterner observes nature, and the deep patterns that underly existence in Earthsea -- the equilibrium of the world. He, and Ged, have decided that there is a serious problem with the way things are. (For a quotation on equilibrium, from this book, see here.)

Early in the book, Arren, a teenage boy from a noble family, comes to Roke Island, where the Master Mages live, as a messenger from his father, himself with some magical ability and training. The father wants to know what is wrong with the performance of magic -- why do the spells, the actions, seem to have lost their meaning. In a conference with the nine Master Mages, Ged decides that, in the first place, Arren has not come to Roke at this time by chance. In the second place, Ged decides that, if Arren is willing, he will take him on a journey, mostly in Ged's boat, the Lookfar, to find the source of the problem with the equilibrium. That problem, Ged is certain, is caused by a man.

Eventually, they do find the cause of the problem, and that cause is a man, a man with powerful magical abilities, and a man who fears death greatly, so greatly that he has developed spells that allow him to return to life, even after being killed. The existence of such spells acts as a tremendous attraction for the mages, and others with magical ability, of Earthsea. All those with magical ability are, at times, able to enter into the spirit world, and it is there that they somehow feel the existence of the possibility of escaping death. This possibility attracts most of them. But it has its cost. They are made aware that, in order to escape death, they must give up their magical ability, and their secret names. (Their secret names are kept secret because knowledge of such a name would make it possible for a person with magical power to control, kill, or injure, by use of the secret name.) Many of the people of Earthsea who have magical ability give it up, and give up their secret names. Ged will not. He sees death as a necessary consequence of life. Giving up the secret name, and the ability to perform magic, does not hold off death. The promises of Cob, the man who fears death so much, are false. Only Cob can come back from death. (Cob is a use-name, not a secret name. Cob, too, has given up his secret name, the name given to every child in Earthsea.)

One of the finest things about this book is the dragons. Le Guin's dragons are intelligent, long-lived, and dangerous. Ged and Arren are guided to Selidor, the westernmost of the islands of Earthsea, by a dragon, Orm Embar. The dragon does so because dragons, too, partly live in the spirit world, and their equilibrium, too, has been damaged.

On Selidor, Ged sees Cob. Orm Embar gives his life to kill Cob, and Ged takes Arren with him into the Dry Land, the spirit world of the dead, to follow Cob. After a long journey in the Dry Land, they come to a Dry River. That River, although it has no water, comes out of a hole in the rocks, into a dry stream bed. Ged exerts all his power of magic, and closes the hole, thus blocking Cob's access back to the world of the living.

Ged and Arren manage to walk all the way across the Dry Land, to the other side, and re-enter the world of the living. There Ged has no magical power, and not much life. A great dragon carries Ged and Arren back to the centers of power of Earthsea, Roke and Havnor, and then carries Ged, now no longer a mage, back to his original home on the island of Gont. (Several years after the publication of Shore, Le Guin wrote Tehanu, which is about Ged and Tenar on Gont. I have posted on that book here.)

There are several aspects of the story, having to do with religion, that deserve emphasis. Ged, and the dragon, Orm Embar, give up a lot to restore equilibrium. There seems to be some power, although it is not specified what it is, that determines events, such as Arren coming to Roke at the proper time. A god? Perhaps. Finally, the view of death put forth in Shore is remarkable. The dead all go into the Dry Land, and are there for eternity, apparently. While there, they have no emotions, no attraction to people who were very important to them in life, and, in fact, they have no life, just a monotonous existence. But Ged believes that life, once lived, is important. But not so important that it should continue on and on. Le Guin is a Taoist. I do not know if the view of death in Shore is hers, or Taoist. But it is not the view of Christianity, which believes that death leads, at least for believers, to eternal abundant life.

A powerful book, with good character sketching, fine writing, and dealing with the most important issue humans face -- death.

Thanks for reading.

Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea: Musings

Ursula K. Le Guin is arguably the best writer of fantastic literature in English of the last half of the 20th century. (She is still alive, and, as far as I know, still writing.) She has won numerous awards, all well-deserved. She has written in a variety of literary forms, including criticism and literature for young children.

Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy was published from 1968 through 1973. The series was designed for young people, and the final volume, The Farthest Shore, won the National Book Award for Children's Books. (Nearly 20 years later, Le Guin wrote three other books about the same sub-creation, and including stories about some of the characters in the trilogy. I have read the first three books numerous times. Recently, it occurred to me that I had never blogged about them, and I decided that it was time to fill that gap.

The first book in the trilogy is A Wizard of Earthsea. The previous sentence links to the Wikipedia article on the book, which has a good summary of it, and some references to works about the book.

I wish to muse about several aspects of A Wizard of Earthsea.

The book is written in the third person. It is well written, and well organized. The setting is the many islands of Earthsea -- not all of them, just a few. There is a good map. The location of Earthsea is not given, but it seems to be a non-earth planet, mostly water, with one sun and one moon, probably much like our own moon. Le Guin's father was an important anthropologist. Her mother was a writer and also an anthropologist. The book has anthropological aspects. One of them is that there are hints that the islands are inhabited by different ethnic and racial groups, many, but not all, dark-skinned. Another is that, regardless of the location, the people engage in two ceremonies, one as the days begin to lengthen, the other on the longest day: . . . the Long Dance began. Townsfolk and Masters and students and farmers all together, men and women, danced in the warm dust and dusk down all the roads of Roke to the sea-beaches, to the beat of drums and drone of pipes and flutes. Straight out into the sea they danced, under the moon one night past full, and the music was lost in the breakers' sound. As the east grew light they came back up the beaches and the roads, the drums silent and only the flutes playing soft and shrill. So it was done on every island of the Archipelago that night: one dance, one music binding together the sea-divided lands. (p. 69)

The book is a coming-of-age novel. Ged begins his life in a poor and isolated village on Gont, one of the many islands that make up Earthsea. He learns some of his father's blacksmithing trade, but the most important thing about his life is that he has magical ability. Ogion the Silent, the local mage, takes Ged as an apprentice. Ged is not thrilled by this. Ogion doesn't often perform any magic. He is concerned about preserving the equilibrium of the world: ". . . Ged, listen to me now. Have you never thought how danger must surround power as a shadow does light? This sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that every word, every act of our Art is said and done either for good, or for evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!" (p. 35, Ogion to Ged)

Ged decides to leave Ogion, and travel to Roke, where the school for wizards is located. At first, he does well at the school, probably better than any other student. (All the students, and the Masters, are male.) But he has a problem, one that Ogion knew about, and hoped to cure -- Ged is proud. He cannot endure being looked down upon. One of the other students, Jasper, delights in looking down on Ged. Finally, Ged can endure it no longer, and declares that he will perform one of the most difficult acts of magic, and, of course, one that will endanger the equilibrium of the world. He calls, from the land of the dead, the Dry Land, a legendary woman, Elfarran, who has been dead for centuries. He succeeds, but in the process, he not only brings a dead woman from the Dry Land to the real, living world, but he allows a nameless evil being to enter it, too. That being scars Ged's face, and leaves him ill in body and mind.

The Masters repair the damage Ged has caused. Nemmerle, the Archmage, expends so much of his power that he dies in the process. When Ged returns to health, he is permanently scarred, and not as quick a student as he used to be. But he is allowed to complete his training, and the new Archmage sends him to be wizard to a group of small islands that is threatened by a dragon.

Three important events happen during Ged's first tenure as a wizard. One of them is that a small boy becomes sick. Ged believes that the boy is dying, but tries to save him, anyway. He does not succeed, and, for the first time, enters, in spirit, the Dry Land, the land of the dead. He almost does not return, but his small pet licks him until Ged regains consciousness. Ged realizes that he has to escape the being he released earlier, and therefore must leave the people he has served as wizard. Before he does so, Ged confronts the dragon, and, by using that animal's secret name, which gives him power over it, he guarantees that the dragon will never attack the islands he has tried to protect. So, in a year or so, Ged has encountered two of the things he studied about, but never experienced, the Dry Land and a dragon. The third important event is more of a process. Ged learns, from the fishermen of the islands, how to repair a boat, using tools and magic.

Ged flees, trying to get away from the threat of the evil being he released earlier. In his flight, he comes to another island where an Old Power, a spirit of a stone, the Terenon, holds sway. He escapes, changing himself into a falcon, and flies back to Gont, to the home of Ogion. Ogion advises Ged not to flee the shadow being, but to hunt it down. Ged does so. The being he is chasing leads Ged to ground his boat on a tiny sand island, and there are other difficulties. On the sand island, Ged finds an old couple, probably brother and sister, who do not share a common language with him. They come to trust him, and the woman gives Ged an old piece of metal, broken from something larger. This will be significant in the second book of the trilogy, but doesn't seem so to Ged at the time.

Finally, in the open sea, in a boat he has repaired, Ged meets this being. The two speak Ged's secret name, "Ged," to each other, and embrace, becoming a single entity, which seems to be mostly Ged, and, judging by the subsequent books, a good person. Probably Le Guin meant to say that, by accepting his darker self, Ged becomes a whole, mature, person, able to do what must be done in the world.

Le Guin is a Taoist. There are a couple of elements that one wouldn't expect to find in a Christian story. One of them is the resolution described in the previous paragraph. A Christian story would have such an evil being destroyed, rejected, not assimilated.

The second element is that there is no god of any kind in the book. In fact, the culture that the wizards inhabit rejects the very idea: "It is no secret. 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." (p. 185, Ged to Yarrow, a minor character.)

In spite of these religious ideas, the book is well worth reading. Thanks for reading this.

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

As I have indicated previously, the first three of the Earthsea books, by Ursula K. Le Guin, are among my favorite works of fantastic literature, and Le Guin is perhaps the finest author of fantastic literature in the English language. See here, here, and here for the Wikipedia articles on these books. The last of these three, The Farthest Shore, was published in 1972. These books, written for young people, are equally attractive to adult readers. They are notable for their portrayal of some human societies, presented sparely, but with an eye to anthropological detail. They are also coming of age books, of the young mage, Ged, the young priestess, Tenar, and the young person who is to be the young king, Arren.

I recently re-read Tehanu, published in 1990. This work is meant as a sequel to the previous three books. In this, Le Guin re-visits an adult Tenar. Ged is also a character in the book, and so, for a briefer time, are Ogion, Ged's original teacher, and Arren, now king. (Tehanu is the name of a star, visible from the island of Gont, in Earthsea, where all the action takes place.)

As the Wikipedia article on Tehanu says, Le Guin seems to have written the book partly to address gender matters. The Mages that have power in Earthsea are exclusively male, trained by males, and living with males during their training. From all indications in the three previous books, and from Tehanu, they are celibate for life. In Tehanu, Tenar complains about male insensitivity. For example, she tells her son that he should wash up his own dishes, and not expect her to have his food on the table when he wants it. For another example, the Master Windkey, one of the Master Mages, does not really understand Tenar, because she is a woman. (Ged and Arren do listen, and do treat Tenar with full respect.)

Another theme of the book is aging. Ogion dies, of old age, and Ged has lost all powers as a mage.

The last theme I wish to address is the question of dragons. Dragons are important in Earthsea. They are intelligent, beautiful, and can be terribly destructive. They also speak the original language, used to create the world and its contents. (Mages learn part of this language during their training.) In this book (and there are also hints in other parts of the Earthsea novels, and in short stories written in that setting) it appears that the dragons and humans stemmed from one and the same source. They are kin.

This is my favorite quotation from the book:
". . . She obeys me, but only because she wants to."
"It's the only justification for obedience," Ged observed. Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, New York: Bantam, 1991, p. 209 (Tenar is first speaker, ellipsis in original). (Also New York: Simon Pulse, 2001, p. 233) This is in the chapter entitled "Winter."

Thanks for reading.