An Introduction to A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of twenty-one novels. With such an eclectic collection of works, she is one of the few authors in America to achieve such recognition with high quality content across the board in all that she has written. She has received several honors and awards for her writings such as a nine Hugo Awards, a National Book Award, six Nebula Awards, etc. Her work comprises mostly of science fiction, fantasy, and children’s fantasy. Her novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, has sold millions of copies and has been awarded a Lewis Carol Shelf Award.

A Wizard of Earthsea is an introspective, immersive fantasy novel. The story takes place more internally than externally, making it majorly character driven with a lot less conflict. The story follows a young wizard, Ged (also known as Sparrowhawk), who from the get go we are told has great power within him. His aunt is a witch and is the first to discover that he harbors a magical gift. This excites her and she teaches him what little magic that she knows. When there is attack on the village, Sparrowhawk defeats the enemy tribe using his magic, leaving him weak. A powerful wizard named Ogion saves him and rewards him with his true name—Ged. Ogion takes Ged on as an apprentice, but things are going too slow for Ged, and he is not learning at the rate that he wishes. Ogion tries teaching Ged about a balance of powers, or “equilibrium,” and that magic can be very dangerous if it offsets this equilibrium by being wrongly used. Growing impatient, Ged is given the choice by Ogion to either stay with him or go to a school for wizards on the island of Roke. Ged grows both in skill and pride at the school, befriending a student named Vetch, as well as a nemesis named Jasper, who continuously provokes Ged. Driven by his pride, Ged challenges Jasper to a magical duel, and accidentally releases a shadow when a spell goes awry. This encounter leaves Ged injured and the Archmage dead after using all of his power to save him. Ged has to spend months healing before he can return to school. The new Archmage of the school tells Ged that this shadow is a very dangerous creature that has no name, so Ged leaves the school to protect a village (Pendor) from dragons that threaten the island. While in Pendor, Ged is haunted by the shadow. Because he feels threatened, he seeks out the dragons in order to defeat them so he may be relieved of his duties at Pendor and can flee further from the shadow. Ged defeats the dragons, but the most powerful one toys with Ged and offers to tell him the true name of the shadow so that he can defeat it. Weary that this might be trickery, Ged declines the offer, but makes the dragon promise that they will never threaten or harm the village. When the dragon accepts, Ged flees and begins a journey that is driven by fear as he hides from the shadow. This leads him to Osskil, where he encounters the shadow and is attacked and nearly killed by it. Serret, a woman of the Court of Terrenon, saves Ged and then attempts to convince him to speak to the stone that resides in the court. She claims she has done this for herself and by doing this, it can offer him power and knowledge beyond his wildest dreams. Ged sees that the stone is dangerous and contains ancient, dangerous powers that threaten the equilibrium of magic, and refuses. Ged narrowly escapes the court of Terrenon and the stone by changing into a falcon and flies back to Gont, where he meets Ogion. Ogion has to change Ged out of his hawk form, warning him to not change again as this destroys his “true being.” Ogion tells Ged that all creatures have a name and that he must hunt the shadow and seek it out in order to end this, whether that be good, bad, or potentially ending in his own demise. Ged seeks out the shadow and it begins to flee from him, proving Ogion right. In pursuit of the shadow, it wrecks his boat on a small deserted island, where he recoups with the help of an elderly, deranged couple. Ged fixes his boat and sails to the island of Iffish where his old school friend, Vetch, resides. Vetch joins Ged in his pursuit of the shadow, where they finally come face to face for their journey to end. Ged confronts the shadow by calling it by its true name, which is his own—Ged. By doing this, Ged merges into one being with the shadow, which forms his true being.

At first read, this novel seems to be just a simple coming of age story set in a fantastical realm, but what Le Guin is actually portraying has a much more significant and beautiful meaning. This novel was published in 1968, placing it a good bit ahead of the Harry Potter era and making it almost the benchmark for exploring the idea of a wizardly world. With influence from Taoism, it is obvious that there is a theme of a fundamental balance of the universe, which in A Wizard of Earthsea the wizards must learn to have control over their own power as to not offset the universe as a whole. The lines become blurry in this novel, as good and evil are not as clear to us and the focus shifts from the black and white, cut and dry, good and evil, to that of the balance between the two and how the they are interlocked. In children’s books, typically the idea is that they hold a clear moral, a difference between “right” and “wrong.” What Le Guin achieves in this novel is explaining that the lines between good and evil are less important than that of the “light” and the “dark.” Instead, evil does not appear as “something diametrically opposed to good, but as inextricably involved with it” (The Child and the Shadow).

In an article also written by Le Guin, The Child and the Shadow, Le Guin recounts the tale of a man who sees a beautiful girl across the way and tells his shadow to go into the house. The shadow goes into the house and does not come back to him until he is middle-aged. The shadow claims to have done so, but he is lying. The shadow becomes the master and when they meet a princess, the shadow tricks her into thinking the shadow is the master. She believes him, they marry, and when the man tries to convince the woman the shadow is lying, she has him killed. Le Guin explains in length the meaning of this, which in turn has much significance and a direct correlation on her work in A Wizard of Earthsea.

Le Guin attempts to explain how the shadow in A Wizard of Earthsea is merely a projection of the darkness within all of us, through her explanation of this tale. There is a shadow within us all and that is “an integral part of the man that cannot be denied” (The Child and the Shadow pg. 140). Throughout the entire story, Ged is attempting to run from his shadow and what Le Guin is saying is that he is actually running from himself and the evil that is within him. Someone can be inherently “good” and still have a part of themselves that is “evil” and vice versa. Ged, along with the rest of us, must find “the willingness to see and accept the consequences of an act or a failure to act” (The Child and the Shadow pg. 3). Ged has to accept that there are parts of him that he is less than proud of, parts that he has managed to repress from surfacing. These parts are the ugly parts of the personality that we repress in order to maintain this balance of right and wrong. Without accepting the shadow within yourself, you cannot be who you are truly meant to be and are doomed to walk as a lost soul. At the end of the novel, Ged “[takes] hold of his shadow, of the black self…light and darkness [meet], and joined, [are] one” (A Wizard of Earthsea pg. 212). In order to find his true being and move on in life, Ged is forced to stop fleeing from his shadow like the man in The Child and the Shadow. The shadow is “all the pain and suffering…we will meet all our lives long, and must face…and admit, and live with in order to live human lives at all” (The Child and the Shadow pg. 10). Ged meets the darkness that is within him and looks within himself to accept the guilt that comes with this. The shadow held his true name all along, Ged, making them the same and making the shadow Ged’s “dark self.” Not only is this a portrayal of the self-knowledge that we need, but that we must see ourselves with our shadow and be guided by it.

Le Guin also explores the depths of psychology and how they influence the arts, specifically how Carl Gustav Jung only sees the ego as part of the Self and that there is a deeper part within us that we are not consciously aware of. In other words, Jung believes this is the link between all of human kind, connecting us all to one another in a generally similar human psyche. The shadow stands as the guide into the unconscious Self, which holds all of the repressed tendencies such as cursing, committing crimes, etc. Le Guin claims that “a child has no real shadow, but his shadow becomes more pronounced as his ego grows in stability and range” (The Child and the Shadow pg. 143). In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged grows into his ego as he goes to school and gets older. In turn, as he learns more and is exposed to the world, his pride grows with him, which is his shadow growing stronger and darker until it is fully pronounced and released. This is when Ged must learn to control it and confront what it actually is. When Ged releases his shadow, he spirals into self-loathing, saying that it would have been “better had [he] died” and “[avoiding] those who knew him and those who did not” (A Wizard of Earthsea pg. 77). It is obvious that Ged faces his own self-blame and disgust for what he has done, killing the Archmage and releasing an unknown, powerful, dark creature into the world. The only way to conquer this is to look his shadow square in the eye and recognize it as a part of him. Ged must not see others as the problem or the monster, but to accept himself for who he is, the good, bad, and the ugly.

Le Guin also argues that there is an animal instinct within us all is the natural guide. “It is the animal within us, the primitive, the dark brother, the shadow soul, who is the guide” (The Child and the Shadow pg. 145). The animal instinct within all of us is how we know our way home because animals have a blind instinct, which helps them to be able to distinguish “right” from “wrong.” In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged has an Otak or a small animal that serves as a pet and accompanies him for most of the story. This Otak indirectly guides Ged in his journey, and when he has exhausted the animal for uses of instinct, the Otak dies as a sacrifice so that Ged can carry out his journey into his true self.

Le Guin paints an incredible and realistic picture for children of what the real world is like, in a way that she believes can only be done through the perspective of fantasy. The world and the evil within it is an overwhelming and terrifying place, but to explain this to children is a seemingly impossible task. Through the lens of fantasy, Le Guin is able to beautifully explain the meaning behind accepting ourselves for who we are and the “darkness” within us. She chooses to call this “dark” compared to “evil” because having bad tendencies within us does not make us inherently bad, it makes us human. Without the dark, there is no light. We must walk hand in hand with every part of our being, accepting every aspect of who we are in order to walk this earth a sane person. We cannot be who we are meant to be without seeing things for what they truly are. As Le Guin describes it, that is the true escapism. Escapism is not the realm of fantasy, but the purgatory of living in a world that you believe is “realistic,” but is actually just falsely painting evil as a one-size fits all, quick 3-step problem. Pointing the finger, calling everyone a monster, but yourself. This does not make the world we live in any easier, but I think what A Wizard of Earthsea has to teach us is that we will continue to struggle all of our lives. The pain will come and go, but accepting ourselves for who we truly are and recognizing the evil within us can make the world a little bit of a better place.