LeGuin, Ursula K.: A Wizard of Earthsea
A Wizard of Earthsea
Author: Ursula K. LeGuin
Pages: 183
Final Thoughts: Disappointing in some ways, but inspiring in others. I'll read on.
Some people will be shocked that I've never happened to read LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy before now. It's been lingering on my To Read list for quite some time, and my impetus for reading it now is that it will be discussed later on in my critical text for this term, and I wanted to be familiar with the story before that chapter comes. I haven't decided yet whether I'll read all the examples they're going to talk about before I read their respective sections of the book. I suppose that's impractical, given the amount of time left in the term.
At any rate, I'm supposed to be talking about A Wizard of Earthsea.
It is prudent to remember that this book is forty years old, and as such utilizes a style and tells a type of story that we don't often see these days in new publications. Usually that's not much of a hang-up for me, but for some reason several stylistic things stuck out at me and kept drawing me out of the story.
First, I'll say that I thought the plot itself went pretty well. It would be easy to just turn it into an episodic narrative, but the element of the Shadow loosed out of pride and hubris ties things together rather well, and gives Ged a drive to move from place to place through all the islands he visits. Without the Shadow, I think I would have lost interest even during the short 183 pages of the novel.
I felt like the narrator hopped heads during scenes from time to time, and had to remind myself that it wasn't a limited third person narration. Rather, it was a close omniscient, which allows for such small switches. And it wasn't as if it switched every paragraph, but it happened often enough for me to notice. Adjusting my own expectations for the narrative voice took a long time, and never quite stuck.
The omniscient narrator contributes to the feeling that I don't really know Ged, but I know ABOUT him. Again, this is an issue of the older style and also the type of story LeGuin is telling. She's telling an historical account of a wizard, and as such tells things rather more like a grandfather telling his grandkids a story than as a limited third person following Ged specifically and getting inside his head. But I definitely noticed the more distant feeling in terms of my personal and emotional involvement with the action's outcome.
All of these things I think I could have moved past, were it not for the foretelling. I'm not talking about the speculations of the students, that the Archmage's raven-familiar had greeted Ged as "future Archmage". Those things are rumors, and may or may not be true. I'm talking about when the narrator breaks the story and says "This was many years before Ged did X, X, and X." It removed all the tension for me, all the wondering whether Ged might not actually defeat the Shadow in the end. Of course he's the hero and it's not a tragedy, so he must make it, but I want to believe that he really is in peril, and I just couldn't do that, knowing that he "came at last to Roke once more, as Archmage of all the islands of the world."
The foretelling really takes the wind out of the story's sails for me. Even now, I feel like I know what happens in the second and third books of the trilogy. I don't know the details, that's true, but I know what travels he makes and I know he lives in the end of all of it. What more do I need to read? This is the most disappointing aspect for me.
On the other hand, the intricate weaving of magic and reality, of the truths behind the world that only wizards know... these things resonate with the power of real mythic truth. The idea that names give power is an old one, and is used effectively here as far as I'm concerned.
In the end, I haven't fallen in love with Ged or with Earthsea, particularly. It is an intriguing place, and LeGuin's magical elements are fascinatingly detailed and follow their rules well, but at the moment I don't need to know what happens to Ged (I've been told, after all) and I'm not invested enough with the people of Earthsea to wish them eternally safe from harm. If I fall in love with anything about Earthsea, it will be the underpinnings of its reality rather than its people or its wizards or dragons or anything else. Earthsea distills the truths of our world. For that, I will read the second and third books. For the world itself, rather than the people in it.
Book #49