THE READING RHEUM: A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA (1968)

 I probably first read A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and its two sequels no later than the 1970s. Within the last ten years I re-read them all for a book-group. I confess that despite that re-read I remember little about the sequels. I emphasize this reading history to underscore the fact that even though I seem to remember liking Ursula Le Guin's ambitious, arguably anti-Tolkienian trilogy, I don't think I tended to re-read the series, as I did with similar serials by Frank Herbert and the aforementioned Tolkien.                                                                                       

 I won't chart the loose plot of the novel here. What LeGuin presents to the reader are a loose series of incidents in the life of an islander in the fantasy-world of Earthsea: Ged, who comes from humble origins but who advances, sometimes in spite of himself. to become one of the foremost wizards in the world. I'm more concerned with pinpointing the major themes and tropes found in EARTHSEA. I find these to be "anti-Tolkienian" in that LeGuin is not concerned with the major good-vs-evil conflicts characteristic of most epic fantasy, but with an exploration of interiority, of what some call "the self."                                                                                                             

The defining problem Ged faces in his youth, and in his early years mastering the skills of wizardry, is that of his own pride. His pride leads him to unleash upon himself a pursuing Shadow, a form of "second self" which provides much of EARTHSEA's narrative drive. Roughly halfway through the book, while Ged is fleeing his personal demon, he takes refuge with his teacher Ogion, who tells him:                                                                                                                          

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do. . . .”                                       

     Passages like this one demonstrate that LeGuin, in contrast to the Judeo-Christian focus found in Tolkein and Lewis, advocated the monistic approach of Taoism, at least as she understood it. This is not to say that Ged is a non-combative protagonist. EARTHSEA includes fascinating sections where the young wizard, once he's gained greater control of his own psyche, forces a powerful (and intelligent) dragon to yield to Ged's will, and overcomes the temptation of an archaic evil spirit. (To be sure, there's the suggestion of a Faustian trope, but by this time in the novel Ged, unlike Faust, has advanced beyond worldly temptation.)                                               

While I enjoyed my third reading of EARTHSEA, I concluded that I find the morality of LeGuin too arid. I noticed on this reading that although two or three of Ged's teachers seem to intuit the great mistakes he's going to make, none of them ever proffers any advice to guide him away from those errors. Had any of them done so, of course, that might have prevented Ged from bringing about the book's central conflict, which could have been a major problem for LeGuin. But I still find her actual approach overly schematic, as if she wants to put Ged under a microscope to observe the things he does. Though EARTHSEA probably has a much better literary reputation than the 1970s teleseries KUNG FU, I find that the better scripts of that program more involving that this fantasy-novel, particularly with respect to how the hero Caine is advised by his perceptors. The hero's Shaolin teachers are always seen in flashback, rendering bits of abstruse philosophy to Young Caine, which insights Modern Caine reflects upon in order to draw current conclusions about how to act in a current situation. Caine's absent teachers don't do his thinking for him, but they pass on their knowledge so that he can take advantage of it later. Ged is like one of the many islands that make up the world of Earthsea, isolated from his fellow humans even though he chooses to perform good deeds on their behalf. In both her non-fiction and her fiction, LeGuin abjures the visceral in favor of the intellectual-- which doesn't always make for the ideal re-reading experience. Incidentally, the first EARTHSEA book is definitely a candidate for a category of proposition/postulate I discussed here: one which "includes a blend of formal-didactic and informal-mythopoeic postulates."