The Earthsea Series by Ursula K. Le Guin

First published: 1990: A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968; The Tombs of Atuan, 1971; The Farthest Shore, 1972; Tehanu, 1990

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Coming-of-age, gender roles, education, friendship, nature, and death

Time of work: The legendary past

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: The imaginary world of Earthsea

Principal Characters:

• Ged, (
• Duny, ,
• Sparrowhawk, ,
• Hawk, ), a young mage (wizard) who becomes Earthsea’s greatest before losing his power
• Ogion, head wizard of Re Albi, a wise and patient man who gives Ged his name and becomes his first teacher
• Nemmerle, Archmage and Warder of the school for wizards on Roke
• Jasper, a proud young nobleman who is studying sorcery on Roke
• Estarrio (Vetch), a young student of magic who befriends Ged
• Yevaud, an ancient dragon who menaces the fishing town of Low Torning, where Ged is wizard
• Tenar, (
• Arha, ,
• Goha, ), high priestess of Atuan who, with Ged, restores the lost Rune of Peace
• Manan, a eunuch who looks after Arha in the houses of the priestesses
• Kossil, a power-mad priestess of the Kargish God-king, who serves the warrior gods
• Thar, another priestess of the God-king, but one who treats Arha fairly
• Arren (Lebannen), son of the prince of Enlad, who enlists Ged’s aid when magic begins to fail in Earthsea; he is eventually revealed as the restored king and reigns under his true name, Lebannen
• Cob, a magician whose fear of death leads him to violate the boundary between life and death
• Orm Embar, a great dragon who helps to heal Ged after one of his encounters with Cob
• Kalessin (Segoy), an ancient and wise dragon from the island of Selidor who befriends Ged and later Tenar; later revealed as Segoy, maker of language
• Tehanu (Therru), a badly abused little girl, burned and left for dead, whom Tenar adopts
• Aunty Moss, a village witch and healer who befriends Tenar and Therru
• Aspen, evil wizard of Re Albi, who hates and fears both Tenar and Therru
• Hake, Therru’s father, who kills her mother and tries to kill Therru
• Handy, Hake’s accomplice, who, after abusing Therru, goes for help but later terrorizes her again

The Story

Each of the first three novels of the Earthsea series focuses on a different character: Ged in the first, Tenar in the second, Arren in the third. The fourth novel unites the destinies of the three characters with that of a crippled little girl, questioning some of the assumptions about authority implicit in the first three books and examining the uses of power from the perspective of Earthsea’s women.

A Wizard of Earthsea introduces the hero of the series as a motherless child named Duny, who lives in a village on the rustic island of Gont. Raising an enchanted mist to rescue his village from an attack by Viking-like raiders from the Kargad Lands, the wizard overextends his power and falls into a trance, from which he is awakened by Ogion, Mage (chief wizard) of Re Albi, who later gives Duny his secret, true name, Ged. (Like the American Indians, inhabitants of Earthsea do not reveal their true names lightly, since to do so is to give another power over oneself.) Ogion then brings Ged, whose “use-name” is Sparrowhawk, to Re Albi to begin his training as a mage. Frustrated by Ogion’s inaction and desiring to impress the daughter of Re Albi’s lord, Ged attempts to summon a spirit of the dead and encounters instead a terrifying shadow.

Ogion regretfully offers Ged a choice: Either remain with him on Re Albi and accept his way, or go to the school for wizards on Roke. Choosing to depart, Ged is received kindly at Roke and is befriended by a young student named Vetch. He makes rapid progress in learning his art until, taunted both by his own pride and by a wealthy young prince named Jasper, he engages in a forbidden duel of sorcery, using the spell he had first attempted in Ogion’s house to summon from the land of the dead a beautiful young woman, Elfarran, whose story is told in ancient legends. In so doing, he releases a terrifying, nameless dark beast which attacks him, leaving him horribly wounded. This shadow then flees into the world. The Archmage Nemmerle, greatest of Roke’s wizards, rescues Ged from death, but gives his own life to do so.

After a slow healing that leaves him scarred in mind and body, Ged completes his training and accepts a lowly position as mage for the fishing town of Low Torning. Here he again violates the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead by attempting to save the life of a friend’s dying son. He encounters again the shadow beast, which has been awaiting him at the boundary between the worlds. Knowing that he must leave Low Torning for both his friends’ safety and his own, he first binds to the island of Pendor the ancient dragon Yevaud, who has threatened the town. Fleeing, he is pursued by the shadow to the Court of the Terrenon, where he is tempted to ally himself with the powers of darkness, but rejects the trap and escapes in the form of a hawk. He returns to Ogion, who restores him to his proper form. The novel’s turning point occurs when Ged decides to hunt the shadow rather than run from it.

Pursuing the shadow eastward, Ged encounters an old man and woman on a desert island. They fear him, having seen no one but each other since they were abandoned on the island in childhood, but the woman shows Ged a child’s dress, obviously that of a Kargish princess, and gives him a broken half-ring. Leaving the island, he comes eventually to the home of his friend Vetch, who had, before he left Roke, revealed his true name, Estarriol, and offered Ged his help. Ged and Vetch sail the boat Lookfar on the final stage of the quest. Coming at last to open sea, they encounter the shadow. Ged turns to it, calls it by his own name, and, embracing it, takes it into himself, becoming whole at last.

Like A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan begins with a child, in this case Tenar, removed from home and given a new identity. In a ceremony that takes place in a mysterious set of underground tombs, she is stripped of her old name and given the identity of Arha, the “Eaten One,” reborn priestess of an ancient female-centered religion. Treated kindly only by the eunuch Manan, she grows to adolescence performing an endless round of rituals and sacrifices under the tutelage of two high priestesses, Kossil and Thar. They serve the Kargish God-king and the twin male warrior-gods Atwah and Wuluah, whose worship is gradually supplanting that of the nameless powers Arha represents. When three prisoners of the God-king are sent into the tombs, Arha, instructed by Kossil, orders their death by starvation but is haunted by nightmares afterward. Then Thar dies, leaving Arha to the mercy of the power-maddened Kossil.

At this point, Arha discovers that a wizard from outside the Kargad Lands has entered the labyrinth. She decides to let him live, risking Kossil’s wrath and that of the dark powers to do so. When he calls her by her old name, Tenar, she becomes confused and wavers in her service to darkness. Eventually, the wizard is revealed as Ged. Having discovered that the broken half-ring given him earlier is part of the lost ring of Erreth-Akbe, a powerful talisman from the past, he has come seeking the other half in the treasury of the tombs. When Arha leads him to the other half, he restores the broken ring, then offers her a choice: kill him and be swallowed again by the nameless forces she serves, or come with him and be free. To show his trust, he tells her his true name. Pursued by Kossil, they flee the tombs, with Ged using his powers to hold back the earthquake caused by the anger of the nameless ones. Kossil and Manan are killed in the cataclysm. Tenar chooses freedom, but having spent her entire life with no identity of her own, she must now learn how to be herself. Wearing the ring of Erreth-Akbe, she goes with Ged to his old master, Ogion, to begin her education.

In The Farthest Shore, young prince Arren comes to Roke to seek Ged’s assistance. They meet by the rowan tree in the Court of the Fountain, center of the world. Magic is failing in Earthsea; people are refusing to accept death as part of nature, instead becoming bitter and hopeless. As confusion descends upon the wizards of Roke, Ged, now Archmage and warder, takes Arren on a journey westward to discover the source of the ill. Having healed himself and Tenar, he must now heal the world.

During the quest, Arren undergoes several trials that he apparently fails. In Hort Town, where many of the inhabitants have sought escape through the drug hazia, he stands guard while Ged attempts to find out how one former wizard lost his powers, but is captured and sold on to a slaving vessel, from which Ged rescues him. When, on their sea journey westward, Ged is wounded and a madman they have taken with them drowns, Arren gives in to despair.

Ged learns that a former sorcerer, Cob, has refused to die and thus has caused a breach between the worlds which is responsible for Earthsea’s ills. Healed and symbolically reborn among the gentle raft folk, Arren and Ged pursue Cob into the land of the dead. After the dragon Orm Embar sacrifices himself to help them lay Cob’s spirit to rest, Arren admits his fears to Ged, proving himself worthy of wielding the sword he carries and of restoring the ancient kingship. Ged has spent the last of his mage’s power in the fight with Cob. Now an ordinary mortal, he accepts the assistance of the dragon Kalessin in returning Arren to the inner lands for his coronation, then rides away to an unknown destiny.

Tehanu returns to Tenar, who is now known as Goha. While Ged has been engaged in heroic action as a mage, she has studied with Ogion, left his house to marry a farmer named Flint, raised two children, and been widowed. Summoned by a friend to the home of her village’s good witch and healer, she finds there a little girl who has been abused, badly burned, and left for dead by a band of tramps which include the child’s parents. The child lives, but is badly scarred physically and completely withdrawn emotionally.

Tenar adopts her, giving her the name Therru, and brings her back home to Oak Farm. There they live quietly until Ogion calls Tenar to attend at his deathbed. Taking Therru on the journey, Tenar amuses her with stories of a time when dragons and humans were the same people, and of a woman who was also a dragon. Before reaching Ogion’s, they encounter a threatening group of men, among whom is Handy, one of those who crippled and tried to murder Therru. Tenar angrily insists on passing the men, who mistake her for a witch and Therru for her familiar and leave them both alone rather than risk trouble. Arriving at Ogion’s, Tenar listens to him as he seeks but is unable to find Ged with his thoughts and helps him outdoors to die. Just before his death, Ogion has a vision of great joy, telling Tenar that everything is changed, that she must teach Therru, who will be feared, and that she must wait, but he dies without explaining what he means. The wizard of Gont Port and the sorcerer of Re Albi come to quarrel over the body’s burial place. Tenar gives them Ogion’s true name, Aihal, and his wishes regarding burial, but they ignore her until she becomes angry.

She stays at Ogion’s cottage, noting that here Therru begins to thrive. With Aunty Moss, the village witch of Re Albi, she teaches the child, who displays considerable interest in dragons. Shortly after Ogion’s death, the dragon Kalessin comes to Tenar bearing Ged, who, shorn of his magic powers, has lost the will to live. Having spent his entire life as a mage, he, like many men, has no sense of himself apart from his work. As Tenar had once to learn simply to be Tenar, Ged must now begin again to learn who he is. Tenar nurses him back to bodily health, but he is unable to face the messengers of Arren (Lebannen) who want to bring him to the young king’s coronation. She helps him escape to her farm, where he tends goats on a mountainside. Tenar continues to live at Ogion’s house, developing a close relationship with Aunty Moss and speculating with her on the nature of power and the differences between men and women in a world where those differences mean subordination for one sex.

As a powerful woman in a world where women are supposed to be weak, Tenar is feared and hated by the evil sorcerer Aspen of Re Albi. When he joins forces with Handy to terrorize her, she escapes, fleeing to her farm with Therru. She is aided in her escape by Lebannen, who has sailed to Gont with the Master Windkey of Roke, trying to find a new Archmage to replace Ged and hoping to persuade Ged to attend his coronation. Tenar again becomes angry when she learns that while the wizards of Roke know that the key to their search is an unnamed woman on Gont, they refuse to believe that any woman could be that significant, in spite of the fact that Tenar herself was Ogion’s student and ward and has conversed with a dragon.

Shortly thereafter, Therru’s father and his accomplices again menace Tenar, but this time she decides to fight, aided by Ged, who had overheard the men planning their attack and followed them. He wounds one of the men, but Tenar binds the wounds and saves his life. The others flee, but are caught, and all are turned over to the king’s officers for judgment. Tenar and Ged declare their love for each other, caring for Therru and the farm together until Tenar’s son, who had been on a pirate ship, returns and claims the property, which is his by law. Receiving a message that Aunty Moss is ill, she goes willingly, accompanied by Ged and Therru.

As they return to Ogion’s cottage, however, both Tenar and Ged fall under the power of a brutal spell cast by Aspen. Therru rescues them by summoning Kalessin from the West. Kalessin is revealed as Segoy, who first raised Earthsea’s islands from the deeps and created the language of naming. He calls Therru his child and gives her a true name, Tehanu. Since she is also now Tenar’s and Ged’s, she reunites the divided halves of nature, dragon and human in one person, and she elects to fulfill her destiny by staying with them instead of going West with Kalessin. The new family decides to live at Ogion’s cottage, with its window looking westward to the place of dragons.

Context

The novels of the Earthsea series are widely regarded as Le Guin’s best work for younger readers. As she does in her adult fiction, especially The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Always Coming Home (1985), Le Guin here creates a secondary world which is richly detailed, informed by an extensive use of cultural anthropology, and internally consistent in its workings, and peoples it with clearly drawn characters of psychological complexity. The first three novels have as their locus the male world of action. The fourth, published nearly twenty years later, examines women’s place in Earthsea and reflects its author’s embracing of the women’s movement. Unlike her realistic psychological novel Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (1976) or The Beginning Place (1980), another fantasy, the first three Earthsea novels focus not only on the personal struggles of individual characters, but also on a complex network of relationships. These involve individuals, their relationships to one another, the societies within which they function, and the connections between individuals, human society, and the rest of nature. The fourth novel explores these concerns as well, but is much more rooted in the ordinary activities of daily life and the effects of violence on individuals than on heroism and adventure. It is more polemical than the first three, as it consciously explores and then rejects the unconscious sexism of the earlier work.

Because the Earthsea series is set entirely in a secondary universe rather than moving back and forth between the “real” and “imaginary” worlds, and because it concerns not merely the fates of the individual characters but also large-scale ethical questions involving the fate of the world, it may properly be called “high fantasy.” It is, however, distinct from other works that carry that designation, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series (1954-1955) and C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), in that its basis for morality and ethics is immanent in the natural world rather than transcending it. A demiurge named Segoy is responsible for having raised the islands of Earthsea from the depths of the ocean (a pattern that echoes the beliefs of some Native American tribes), but this being is rarely concerned with the daily workings of the world and does not guide its destiny, as do the forces that control Tolkien’s Middle-earth or Lewis’ Narnia. This existential framework makes the books unusually complex and rewarding.

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