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language: English
country: USA
year: 1968
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
series: Earthsea, #1
dates read: 11.8.12-12.8.12, 30.10.16-3.11.16, 30.10.23-6.11.23
what is there to say about Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea that hasn’t already been said?
a talented and ambitious-eager boy named Sparrowhawk, true-named Ged, sets out from his home island on a journey across a vast archipelago to learn wizardry, accidentally unleashes a nameless shadow that threatens his life and the lives of those around him, and must find a way to defeat it. this is, on one level, an accurate description of the plot, but it is also wildly misleading.
certainly we can talk about influences — there is, of course, some Tolkien, in the interest in language; there is, for better or for worse, the influence of her father’s anthropological work; there is the Daoism; there is, unfortunately, the Jung.
(we can also talk about its impact. there is, in particular, a clear and direct line from A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan to McKillip’s Riddle-Master trilogy: McKillip’s early style is clearly heavily influenced by Le Guin, as is the way she conceptualizes magic even into her later work. the effort to draw societies and not simply a “world” is less thoroughgoing here, perhaps, than in (say) Return to Nevèrÿon, but nonetheless I think there’s also a clear throughline from Vetch’s response to Ged’s “This is how a man should live” — “Well, it’s one good way […]. There are others.” — and Lynn’s and Marks’s intensive explorations of different ways of life.)
A Wizard of Earthsea explores, on the one hand, an aspect of Jungian psychology — the Shadow — and, on the other hand, an aspect of poststructural philosophy: if the world were truly only language, what would that mean? what would that be like? how would that shape our understanding of language and, indeed, of the world? it is about power and its exercise (very like McKillip’s handling of it in The Book of Atrix Wolfe), the effects of power on the self and on the world. my impression is that Earthsea, because of its medievalist setting, is often bracketed or overlooked in discussions of Le Guin’s politics, but imo her Daoist-inflected anarchism runs through every page of A Wizard of Earthsea, though not always as straightforwardly as in (say) The Dispossessed.
the prose is gorgeous. one thing I was particularly struck by is, like, Tolkien, the very Germanic style — Le Guin avoids Latinate words as much as possible, and the result is a deceptively simple / “plain” style — spare, again like early McKillip.
I don’t know how to convince people to read it other than to just…give it to them to read. it’s truly one of the greatest works of fantasy of all time.
moods: adventurous, emotional, hopeful, inspiring, reflective