A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea (original title: A Wizard of Earthsea) is a novel of the fantasy genre, written by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin and published for the first time by the Parnassus publishing house in 1968. It is considered a classic work of children's and fantastic literature, in which it was very influential. The plot is set in the fictional Earthsea archipelago, and centers on a young wizard named Ged, who was born on the island of Gont. Since he was little, he shows signs of possessing great power, and that is why he attends a magic school, where his conflictive nature makes him fight with one of his fellow students. During a magical duel, Ged's spell becomes independent and unleashes a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel, at this point, follows Ged's journey to free himself from said shadow.

This work is often considered a bildungsroman, that is, an apprenticeship novel, as it explores how Ged learns to deal with power and accept death. In addition, it presents Taoist themes, such as the fundamental balance in the Earthsea universe, which magicians must maintain, or the idea that language and words (names) have the power to affect the material world and upset this balance. The plot structure follows the traditional epic, although critics have also mentioned that it subverts the genre in many ways, such as making the protagonist dark-skinned, in contrast to the typical white heroes.

A Wizard of Earthsea received positive reviews, initially as a children's play and later as general audience literature. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Award in 1969 and was one of the last books to receive the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. Margaret Atwood called it one of the "sources" of fantasy literature. Le Guin later wrote five books within of the «Earthsea Cycle», along with this work: The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), In the Other Wind (2001) and Tales from Earthsea (2001). George Slusser described this saga as "a work of lofty style and imagination", and Amanda Craig called A Wizard of Earthsea "the most exciting, wise and beautiful children's novel in history".

The novel A Wizard of Earthsea has been compared to other epic fantasy works such as the saga of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Some modern authors have attributed to A Wizard of Earthsea the introduction of the concept of the "school of wizardry" that would later be popularized with the Harry Potter book series.

Context

Ursula K. Le Guin in 2008.

Early drafts for the setting of Earthsea are found in two short stories by Le Guin, "The Rule of Names", 1964 and "The Word of Unbinding". », 1964), published in the magazine Fantastic and later present in the compilation The Twelve Mansions of the Wind (1975). This narrative universe was also the setting for a story that Le Guin wrote in 1965 or 1966, which he never published. older", which gave her complete freedom in the treatment of fantastic themes. The writer had no previous experience with the genre of literature for young people, which was fashionable at the end of the 1960s. his stories, he began working on A Wizard of Earthsea. He stated that his book was partly a response to the stereotypical image of old and wise wizards, and an attempt to answer how they came to be like that. Later, he also mentioned that he chose the fantasy genre as the medium and subject of the story. of learning to address an adolescent audience.

The stories, published in 1964, introduced the world of Earthsea and its major concepts, such as Le Guin's treatment of magic. "The Power of Names" also featured Yevaud for the first time, a dragon that makes a brief appearance in A Wizard of Earthsea. The portrayal of Earthsea was influenced by Native American legends and the Norse mythology. His knowledge of myths and legends, as well as his interest in anthropology, enabled him to create "whole cultures" for the islands of Earthsea, according to scholar Donna White. The influence of Norse culture in particular is It can be seen in the Kargs, who are blond and blue-eyed, and who worship two gods who are brothers. The influence of Taoist philosophy is seen in the idea of cosmic balance in the Earthsea universe.

Book

Settings

Earthsea is an archipelago, a group of islands that the god or hero Segoy raised from the ocean. The world is inhabited by dragons and humans, and many of them are sorcerers or wizards. In addition, it has a very delicate balance, which most of its inhabitants know, but which is often broken in the original trilogy of the saga. Society Terramar is pre-industrial and many cultures coexist in the archipelago. Most of the characters are from the Hardic people, who have dark skin and inhabit most of the islands. Some to the east are inhabited by the Kargs, who have white skin and who view the Hardic as evil warlocks. The Kargs, on the other hand, are perceived by the Hardics as barbarians. Dragons live in the westernmost regions of the archipelago.

Plot

The novel tells the story of a boy named Duny, nicknamed Gavilán, born on the island of Gont. Discovering that she has great innate power, her aunt, a witch, teaches her what little magic she knows. that they can resist the invasion. Hearing this, the powerful wizard Ogion takes him as an apprentice and gives him his "true name", Ged. Ogion tries to teach him about balance, the concept that magic can upset the order natural part of the world if used inappropriately. In an attempt to impress a girl, Ged takes the teacher's spellbook from him and unaware of what he was doing, summons a strange shadow, which has to be cast out by Ogion. Seeing his student's eagerness to learn and his impatience with the master's methods, Ogion asks him if he would rather go to the renowned magic school of Roke. Although Ged loves the wizard, he decides to go to said school.

At school, Ged meets Jasper, and they immediately hit it off. Also, they are both friends with an older student, named Vetch, but Ged generally keeps his distance from his classmates. The young man's abilities draw admiration from teachers and students. While learning from him, he finds a small creature called an otak, whom he names Hoeg, and keeps as a pet.During a festival, Jasper acts contemptuous towards Ged, which arouses his natural pride. Sparrowhawk challenges him to a magic duel and casts a powerful spell to summon the spirit of a legendary deceased woman. The spell goes haywire and summons a shadow, which attacks him, scarring his face. Archmage Nemmerle drives away the shadow, but dies.

Ged spends many months in recovery before he can resume his studies. The new archmage, Gensher of Way, describes the shadow as an evil power that intends to use Sparrowhawk to cause evil. He also warns him that the creature has no name. Ged graduates and receives his wizard's staff, he then settles in the Ninety Isles, to offer protection to the villagers against the dragons that had taken over the Isle of Pendor, but discovers that he is still haunted by the shadow. Knowing that he cannot deal with both threats at once, he decides to go to Pendor and stakes his life on guessing the dragon's true name. When he discovers that he was right, the dragon offers to tell him the shadow's true name, but Ged makes him promise that he and his offspring will never threaten the archipelago again.

Pursued by the shadow, Ged flees to Osskil, having heard about the court of the Terrenon. There he is attacked by the shadow and escapes to the nearby castle. Serret, the lady of the castle, the same girl he wanted to impress for a long time, she shows him the Terrenon stone, and asks Ged to tell her about it, since she could give him unlimited knowledge and power. As the wizard recognizes that the stone houses one of the Old Powers (ancient, powerful, and evil beings), he rejects it. He flees and is chased by the servants of the stone, but transforms into a hawk and manages to escape. Also, he loses the otak from him.

Ged returns to Gont, with Ogion. Unlike Gensher, the master thinks that all creatures have a name and advises him to face the shadow. This wizard was right; when Sparrowhawk goes in search of the shadow, she runs away from him, who chases her in a small boat until she gets lost in a fog where the boat runs aground on a reef. Ged recovers with the help of an elderly couple who have been abandoned on a small island since they were children. The woman gives Ged half a bracelet as a gift. The wizard repairs his boat and resumes the pursuit of the creature to the east. On the island of Iffish, he meets his friend Vetch, who insists on accompanying him.The two travel east, past the known islands, until they find Shadow. Giving him her own name, Ged embraces her and melts into her, joyfully telling Vetch that he is whole and whole.

Illustrations

The first edition, published in 1968, was illustrated by Ruth Robbins. The cover is illustrated in color and inside the book there is a map of the Terramar archipelago. Additionally, each chapter has a black and white illustration of Robbins, similar to a woodcut. These images represent themes from each chapter; for example, the first one shows the island of Gont, while the one in the chapter "The Dragon of Pendor" shows a dragon in full flight. There is also an illustration of Ged sailing his Faraway boat in the tenth chapter, "The Open Sea", in which Ged and Vetch travel east from Iffish to confront the shadow.

There are also other illustrated editions of the work, published several years after its first publication. For example, in 2018 a collection of the Earthsea saga illustrated by Charles Vess was published in a single volume, with more than sixty images. In 2015 another illustrated edition had already come out, this time by Folio Society, and with drawings by by David Lupton. In addition, the artist Augusta Akerman made a series of works based on A Wizard of Earthsea.

Post

The book was first published by Berkeley's Parnassus Press in 1968, a year before The Left Hand of Darkness, a work that marked a great change in the author's work A Wizard of Earthsea, for its part, was Le Guin's first attempt at writing for children. He had previously written other novels and short stories before this date. In addition, it was his first foray into the fantastic genre, since his previous work was science fiction. In addition, it was the first text with which he managed to attract the attention of critics and was considered his best known work, as part of the Terramar series. It was also published in numerous editions, including the Folio Society (2015) and the work's 50th anniversary edition., with the entire Terramar saga in one volume (2018). In addition, it was translated into numerous languages. It was translated into Spanish and published for the first time by the Minotauro publishing house in 1986. This publication also had the intention of promoting the gender equality in its catalogue.

Originally Le Guin had wanted A Wizard of Earthsea to be a novel without a sequel, but decided to write a sequel after reflecting on the loose ends left in the book, and so published The Tombs of Atuan in 1971. The Farthest Shore, the third volume, appeared after other considerations, and was published the following year. The Tombs of Atuan relates how Ged tried to unite the ring of Erreth Akbé, whose half was buried in the tombs of Atuan, in the Kargian lands, from where he had to steal it. There he meets the young priestess Tenar, on whom the book focuses. the young Prince Arren. These three books are considered "the original trilogy"; in each, Ged attempts to redress an imbalance in the world. He is followed by Tehanu (1990), Tales from Earthsea (2001) and En el otro viento (2001), which are called "the second trilogy".

Reception

As a children's novel

Initial recognition of the book was among critics of children's literature. A Wizard of Earthsea received a more positive reception in the UK when it was published there in 1971, which, according to White, reflects the great admiration of English critics for children's fantasy works. In her collection Fantasy for Children (1975), British critic Naomi Lewis described the book this way: "[No is] the easiest book to casually flip through, but readers who do take the plunge will find themselves in one of the fantasy works of our time." Similarly, Margaret Esmonde mentioned in 1981 that "Le Guin [...] has enriched children's literature with what will be its best fantasy". Writer and journalist Amanda Craig stated in a review written for The Guardian that it is "the most exciting children's novel, wise and beautiful of history, [written] in prose as smooth and clean as a ship's sail".

Eleanor Cameron, speaking at a gathering of children's booksellers, praised the novel's world-building: "It's as if [Le Guin] herself had lived in the archipelago." Writer David Mitchell called Ged an "excellent creation" and opined that he was a closer magician than those who appeared in other works of the fantastic genre at the time. According to him, characters like Gandalf "are variants of the Merlin archetype, a Caucasian academic aristocrat among wizards" with little room to grow, while Ged develops as a character throughout his story. Mitchell also praised the other characters, they seem to have "a coherently thought inner life" despite being mere passing presences. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction stated in 1995 that the Earthsea books are considered the best science fiction books for children in the world. the period after World War II.

As a fantasy novel

A magician from Terramar was compared to The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis.

Commenters noted that the Earthsea novels generally received less attention from critics because they were considered children's books. Le Guin herself was against this treatment of children's literature, calling it a "pigsty of adult chauvinism". In 1976, academic George Slusser criticized "the stupid classification that designated the original series as 'literature child'". Barbara Bucknall stated that "Le Guin did not write for children when he made these fantasy works, nor did he write for adults. She was writing for "older kids." But in fact, her work can be read, like J. R. R. Tolkien's, at the age of ten and into adulthood. These stories are ageless because they speak to issues we face at any age."

As time passed, A Wizard of Earthsea began to receive more attention from the general public. Academic Tom Shippey was one of the first to treat this novel as serious literature and assumed in his analysis of the work that was at the level of C. S. Lewis or Fiodor Dostoyevsky, among other authors. Margaret Atwood stated that it is "a fantasy book for adults" and commented that this work could be classified as fiction for young adults or fantasy, but since it touches on topics like "life and mortality and who we are as human beings", it can be read and enjoyed by anyone over the age of twelve. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction shared this point of view, stating that the audience for the series goes beyond the young adults for whom it was written. In addition, he considered it a "stark but vivid" book and that the series was more reflective than The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

In his 1980 history of fantasy, Brian Attebery called the Earthsea trilogy "the most challenging and richest American fantasy to date". Slusser described this cycle of novels as "a work of lofty style and imagination"., and a product of "genuine epic vision". In 1974, critic Robert Scholes compared the work favorably to that of the author of the Narnia saga: "Where C. S. Lewis established a set of specifically Christian values, the works of Ursula K. Le Guin works not only with a theology but with an ecology, a cosmology, a reverence for the universe as a self-regulating structure". In addition, he mentioned that the three Earthsea novels were in themselves a sufficient legacy. In 2014, David Pringle called it "a beautiful story: poetic, exciting and profound". For his part, the broadcaster and friend of Ursula K. Le Guin David Naimon commented on the Earthsea saga:

That was my experience when I read them as a child Tales of Terramar. Magic was normal in that place. The magicians populated the earth and the dragons flew through the sky. Even so, the more I moved away from "the reality", the closer I felt the real. Ursula K. Le Guin, in the background, is not a narrative writer per seBut of imagination. And for her, the imagination is not only for free time and it is already, something of leisure, but the faculty that makes us what we are.

A Wizard of Earthsea was also studied by literary critics for the construction of his fantastic world, which is accompanied by maps drawn in the work. Thanks to this element, readers can take dimension of the space traveled by Ged throughout his travels.

Awards

A Wizard of Earthsea won, earning its author several awards. For example, the Boston Globe–Horn Award in 1969 and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979; it was one of the last books to receive this award. She received Poland's Zlota Sepulka Award in 1984. In 2000, Le Guin received the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for Young Adult Literature. This award cited six of his works, including the first four volumes of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Place of the Beginning. A survey of 1987 prepared by the magazine Locus put A Wizard of Earthsea in third place of The Best Fantastic Novels of All Time, while in 2014 David Pringle placed it in the place 39 on his list of the best hundred modern fantasy genre novels.

Influence

The work is considered highly influential in the fantasy genre. Margaret Atwood called A Wizard of Earthsea one of the "sources" of fantasy literature. It was also compared to great works of high fantasy, such as The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The idea that words (names) have power is also present in Hayao Miyazaki's film The Spirited Away (2001); critics have suggested that this idea arose from the Earthsea saga. Novelist David Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas, mentioned that A Wizard of Earthsea had a strong influence on him and that he felt the desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula K. Le Guin".

Some modern authors report that A wizard from Earthsea introduced the idea of the «school of magic», which would later become famous with the Harry Potter saga, and that has popularized the commonplace wizard boy, also present in the work of J. K. Rowling. Critics also commented that the basic premise of Le Guin's book, that a talented boy goes to a school to learn wizardry and then has a enemy with whom he develops a connection, is also present in Harry Potter. that Lord Voldemort left Harry Potter. On this similarity, Le Guin stated that she did not think the British author "robbed her", but that when Rowling's books received praise for her originality, she "could have been more considerate of her predecessors. My disbelief was that critics found her first book wonderfully original by her. She has many virtues, but originality is not one of them. That hurt."

In addition, A Wizard of Earthsea influenced Patrick Rothfuss's works The Name of the Wind and A Wise Man's Fear, which have certain similarities to Le Guin's novel. For example, in Rothfuss's world, wizards, who are called arcanists, learn the true names of things, and his book, like the author's, contains maps of their world. In 2008, Le Guin read The name of the wind and he liked it; Rothfuss mentioned that he is a fan of the writer and recommended on his website A Wizard of Earthsea, along with the other two books in the trilogy.

Themes

Maturation process

While literary criticism related the end of the A magician from Terramar with the archetypes of Carl Jung, Ursula K. Le Guin had not read the Swiss psychologist at the time of writing this novel.

A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence and coming of age, and along with the two works in the original Earthsea trilogy, is part of the dynamic portrayal that makes Le Guin of growing up. The three novels follow Ged from his youth to his old age, and each one also follows the growth of a different character. The novel is listed as a bildungsroman or novel of learning. Academic Mike Cadden stated that the book is a compelling narrative "for a reader as young and possibly stubborn as Ged, and therefore empathetic to him". throughout the plot of this novel.

Ged appears as a proud and insecure young man in many situations: at the beginning of his apprenticeship, he thinks that Ogion is making fun of him, and later, in Roke, he thinks that Jasper does too. In both cases, he believes that others do not appreciate his ability; Le Guin's empathic narrating voice does not contradict this idea in principle. Cadden mentions that Le Guin allows young readers to connect with Ged and only gradually realize that there is a price to pay for their actions, while learning to control his magical powers. Similarly, as Ged begins his apprenticeship with Ogion, he imagines that he is going to teach him mysterious aspects of wizardry, and has illusions of him transforming into other creatures; little by little he begins to see that the important lessons of his teacher are about himself.

The passage at the end of the novel, in which Ged finally accepts the shadow as part of himself and thereby frees himself from his fear, has been described as a rite of passage. Jeanne Walker, for example, mentions that this rite of passage at the end was an analogy for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself fulfills the role of a rite of passage for a adolescent reader. Walker also states that "the whole action of A Wizard of Earthsea [...] shows how the hero slowly becomes aware of what it means to be an individual in society and in relation to Higher Powers". Many readers and critics have commented on these similarities between Ged's growing up process and the insights of Jungian psychology. Young Ged has a terrifying encounter with a shadow, which he later discovers to be the dark side of himself. After he recognizes and bonds with the shadow, he becomes a "whole" person.Le Guin claimed that she had not read Carl Jung before writing the Earthsea novels.

Le Guin stated that maturation is the main theme of the book, and in 1973 he wrote an essay where he mentions that he chose that theme, since he was addressing an adolescent audience. She commented that «maturation [...] is a process that took me many years; I finished it, if I ever will, at about thirty-one, and I have deep feelings about it. The same thing happens to many teenagers. It is his main occupation, in fact". He also said that the fantasy genre was the most appropriate to describe the process of growing up, because exploring the subconscious becomes difficult using the language of "rational everyday life". What Le Guin focuses on has to do not only with psychological development, but includes moral development as well. he sees the temptation that power represents.

In A Wizard of Earthsea two typical aspects of fantastic literature aimed at an adolescent or young audience appear: evil and death. In this way, the reader can find the contrast with life and with good, and thus learn from their reading. These contrasts would help to resolve the maturation situations typical of these stages of life and thus "achieve an integral development [of] being".

Balance and Taoism

The narrative world of Earthsea is represented as set on a delicate balance, whose inhabitants know, but which is always broken by some character in each of the works of the original trilogy. This implies a balance between the sea and the land (implicit in the name Earthsea), and between humans and nature. In addition to the physical balance, there is a greater cosmic balance, known to all, and maintained by wizards. On this aspect of Earthsea, Elizabeth Cummins commented: "The principle of balanced powers and the knowledge that every act affects oneself, society, the world and the cosmos, is both a physical and a moral principle in the fantastic world of Le Guin". The concept of balance is related to other important themes in the novel, such as growth, since as Ged understands the consequences of his actions for better or worse, he also understands how to maintain that balance. During his stay in Roke, Master Malabar explains to him:

But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

But you will not transform one thing, a pebble, a grain of sand until you know what good and evil will be. The world remains in Balance. The power of Transformation and Invocation of a magician can break that balance. It has to be guided by knowledge and serve the need. Understanding a candle is casting a shadow...

The influence of Taoism on Le Guin's prose is evident throughout the book, especially in the description of "balance." By the end of the novel, Ged seems to have understood the Taoist way of life, as he learned not to act unless absolutely necessary. He also learned that apparent opposites such as light and dark, or good and evil, they are actually interdependent. Light and dark are recurring images throughout the story. Critics have cited this recurrence as part of conservative plot ideology, something that is part of many other works of the fantasy genre.. By emphasizing balance, according to critics, Le Guin justifies the status quo, which magicians must maintain. This trend is the opposite of the author's science fiction works, where change has value.

The nature of the human being and of evil is a theme that runs through A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the novels in the series. Like other works by the author, evil appears as a confusion regarding the balance of life. Ged was born with great power within him, but her pride leads to his downfall. He attempts to prove his strength by summoning a spirit from the dead, and by doing this act contrary to the laws of nature, the shadow attacks him. Slusser suggests that although Ged casts these dangerous spells because they provoke him (first the girl from Gont and then Jasper), this taunt only exists in Ged's mind. He is not willing to look inside of himself and see the pride that drives him to do his deeds.When he accepts the shadow, he also accepts responsibility for his actions, and for accepting his mortality., he can be free. His travel companion, Algarrobo, describes this moment like this:

[...] Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

Ged had not won or lost: by naming the shadow of death with his own name he had become an entire man who would never be possessed by another power, and who would live alone by life itself, and never at the service of ruin, pain, hatred or darkness.

In this way, although there are many dark powers in Earthsea (such as the dragon and the stone of Earth), the true evil is not in them, not even in death, but in Ged's actions that were contrary to the balance of nature. This is in contrast to conventional Western and Christian stories, where light and dark are seen as opposing forces, and symbolize good and evil, which are always in conflict. On two occasions, Ged is tempted to challenge death and evil, but then realizes that neither can be eliminated. Therefore, he chooses not to serve evil and stops denying death.

True names

In the world of Terramar, some dragons use their real name and no one has power over them.

In Le Guin's fictional universe, to know the true name of an object or person is to have power over them. Each child is given a true name when they reach puberty, which they share only with close friends. Miscellaneous Dragons in other novels in the series, such as Orm Embar and Kalessin, live openly under their true names, and no one has power over them. In A Wizard of Earthsea, however, Ged does have power. about the dragon Yevaud. Cadden explains that this is because Yevaud still has an attachment to wealth and material possessions, and thus can be subdued by the power of his name.

Wizards influence balance using names; In this way, this topic is integrated with the description of cosmic balance. According to Cummins, this is Le Guin's way of demonstrating the power of language in shaping reality. Since language is the tool we use to communicate about the environment, she shows that it also allows humans to modify our environment, and that the power of magicians to employ them is the representation of this ability. Cummins also draws an analogy between how wizards use names to change things and the creative use of words in fiction writing. Shippey mentions that the magic of Earthsea seems to work under what he calls "the Rumpelstiltskin theory", in which names have power. This, then, would show that Le Guin emphasizes the power of words over objects, which, according to Shippey, contrasts with the ideology of other writers of the fantastic genre, such as James Frazer in The Golden Branch. Esmonde, for his part, mentions that in the first three Earthsea books saying the name implies an act of trust. In A Wizard of Earthsea, Vetch confides Ged his true name when he is in a moment of distress, giving Ged complete power over him. Said mage later offers Tenar that same gesture, so that she learns to trust.

In the fantasy genre, especially heroic fantasy, it is usual for the use of words to be of vital importance to the plot. In fact, language comes to have, in the words of the researcher Lucas Gagliardi, "a magical and performative value", especially in fantastic works where sorcery is relevant. Gagliardi classifies the fantastic works that he studies and mentions that A Magician from Earthsea belongs to the category of novels where, as in Plato's Cratylus, the words have a non-random meaning, that is, true, and where "the act naming would allow full access to things". In addition, the critic mentions that there are two types of languages on Earthsea: the true one and the "disguise-languages", which are those spoken by the rest of the population (Hardic and the kargo), which are not used to perform magic. In the true language, moreover, there are only particular things and each entity has its name, since there are no general denominations, such as hyponyms and hypernyms.

Style and structure

Use of language

A Wizard of Earthsea and the other novels of the Earthsea cycle differ markedly from the earlier works of the Hainish cycle, although Le Guin wrote them at the same time. George Slusser described the saga of Earthsea as a counterweight to the excessive pessimism of the Hainish novels. In addition, he considered that the first ones show individual actions more favorably, contrary to works such as the tale "Vaster than empires and slower". i>Encyclopedia of Science Fiction stated that this book was filled with "a severe joy". During a conversation about the style of his fantastic works, Le Guin commented that in this genre it is necessary to be clear and direct with the language, because there is no context known to the mind of the reader.

The plot seems to frequently assume that readers know the geography and history of Earthsea, a technique that allowed the author to avoid explanation: one reviewer noted that this method "gives Le Guin's world the depth mysterious of Tolkien's, but without the tedious backstories and poetry". Like the epic, the narrative shifts to Ged's future and Earthsea's past. On the other hand, Slusser described the novel's atmosphere as "strange and dreamlike" as it fluctuates between objective reality and Ged's mind; some of his opponents are real, while others are ghosts.This narrative technique, which Cadden characterizes as "free indirect speech," makes the narrating voice empathetic to the protagonists, as it does not distance the magician's thoughts from the of the reader.

Mythology and epic

Literary criticism compared A magician from Terramar with the epic poem Beowulf.

A Wizard of Earthsea has important elements of the epic; For example, the place that Ged occupies within the history of Earthsea is raised from the beginning of the book in the following terms: «[...] there are those who say that the greatest and surely the most traveled was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his time became Dragonlord and Archmage". The story also begins with the song "The Creation of Éa", which gives it a ritual beginning. The narrator then states that he is going to recount the youth of Ea. Ged, which provides the context for the rest of the story. Compared to the protagonists in other works by the author, Ged is on the surface a typical hero, a wizard out on a quest. Critics have likened this works with other epics, such as Beowulf. White adds that this structure is verified in the series as a whole and in each of the volumes individually.

Le Guin subverted many of the commonplaces of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. The protagonists of his stories were dark-skinned to begin with, in contrast to the light-skinned heroes; the antagonists, the Kargs, are white. This is an inversion that has been highlighted by many critics. They have also drawn attention to the different social class contexts, as a choice to subvert the Western fantasy genre. At the same time, critics questioned the treatment Le Guin plays the genre in A Wizard of Earthsea and in the original trilogy. The author, who later became famous as a feminist, chose to restrict the use of magic to males and children in this first volume of Earthsea. Early reviews viewed Ged's gender as incidental., in The Tombs of Atuan Le Guin wanted to tell a coming-of-age story from a feminine place, which was seen as still perpetuating the male model of Earthsea. Tehanu (1990), the fourth Earthsea volume published eighteen years after the third, was seen by Le Guin and critics as a feminist way of reimagining the series, in which the power and status of the main characters is reversed, and questioned. the patriarchal structure. In 1993, Le Guin stated that she could not continue with Terramar (in 1972) until she had "fought with the angels of feminist consciousness".

Several critics commented that Le Guin dissolved the boundaries of literary genres by uniting elements of epic, bildungsroman and young adult fiction. In 1975, Francis Molson opined that the series should be called "ethical fantasy", a term that represented that the plot did not always follow the lines of heroic fantasy, and would bring up moral issues, but the concept did not catch on. Children's literature critic Cordelia Sherman raised something similar in 1985.: mentioned that this novel and the rest of the saga sought to "teach children by dramatic example what it is to be a good adult".

Accommodations

An abridged and illustrated version of the first chapter appeared in the third volume of Childcraft (a collection of children's books) in 1989, published by the World Book Encyclopedia. many recorded versions of the book have been published. BBC radio produced a version narrated by Judi Dench, and the novels were adapted into six parts in 2015; they were broadcast by Radio 4 Extra. In 2011, Robert Inglis made a recorded version of the entirety of A Wizard of Earthsea.

Two audiovisual adaptations of the story were also produced. In 2004 an original miniseries called Legend of Earthsea was broadcast on the SyFy television channel. It was loosely based on A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. In an article published in Salon, Le Guin expressed rejection of the result; He claimed that by recruiting "a smug white guy" to play Ged (who in the book has brown and reddish skin), the series "bleached Earthsea", so he ignored his decision to write the story of an uncharacteristic character. white, a choice she says is central to the work. A review in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy shared this view, noting that Legend of Earthsea "did not understand the central question" in the books, since "it removed all the subtleties, nuances and beauty of the books, in addition to inserting boring cliches, painful stereotypes and an unwelcome war "epic" instead."

Studio Ghibli made an adaptation of the series in 2006, titled Tales from Earthsea. This film freely combined elements from the first, third, and fourth books to create a new story. Le Guin was displeased with the creative process of the film, since he wanted to make it because he thought that Hayao Miyazaki himself was going to produce it, but it was not the case. The author praised the images in the film, but rejected the use of violence; Furthermore, he did not feel comfortable with the representation of morality and, above all, with the idea that killing the villain can resolve the conflict, which he found unethical and contradictory to the message of his books. general polarized criticism.