Review: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin

Reading the afterword of this book cemented a realization that I had already made a while ago: I love to read Ursula K. LeGuin, but I mostly love reading her non-fiction essays/thoughts about writing more than her actual fiction. (Check out my review of The Disposessed here.) That afterword, where she explains what she was thinking when she wrote the book and discusses the ideas behind it, was much more interesting to me than the actual book. I respect what she was trying to do with this book and I found myself enjoying small sections of her writing, but overall the distant tone in which this book was written kind of hindered from engaging with all these great ideas in a meaningful way. 

In a coming of age story like this that was supposed to be about the main character understanding himself it really would have helped to get to know his thoughts first-hand, but LeGuin never really tells us what he's thinking. Instead, she tells us the names of all kinds of Islands and towns and cities and places that he never goes to or cares about. There's very little connection to the places he does go to. 

That's not to say there was nothing to enjoy here. There were a few stand out sections for me. 

- The first chapter works really, really well as a short story - the beginning of a great Wizard's journey. 

- There was a very brief section where Ged started to make friends with a boatbuilder and I got super excited but then that brief part of the story was over and he moved on. 

- And then around 3/4 of the way through Ged visited his friend from school, Vetch, and that section in the little house with Vetch's siblings was like a little ray of sunshine. There was dialogue! He was interacting with and making connections with these people. Of course this, too, didn't last long and we were forced to slog through his endless chase after the uninteresting and not very scary shadow creature. 

These sections are good, and they kept me from giving up on the book, but if only the rest of the book had been written in this way, with these kinds of connections, it would have been an amazing book. 

I mentioned that I enjoy U. K. LeGuin's ideas and her nonfiction writings, including the afterword to this novel, so I'd like to talk about some of these ideas here, because I do think they're worth exploring. She says in the afterword that she was trying to very subtly do some different things with this book and some of these do come through clearly for me and I appreciate the effort and the worthiness of the goal. 

First of all, the hero in this story - just like pretty much every else around him except two bad guys - is a person of colour. Ged, along with various other characters are described clearly as Black, copper-toned, etc, etc so that it's very hard to deny the fact that they are people of colour. It says a lot about the publishing industry and culture in which she was writing that Ged was consistently portrayed as White in the covers for years, edition after edition, and she mentions this in her afterword. So I do appreciate this very purposeful decision on her part. 

She also mentions briefly something about women, and how at the time when she wrote it women either didn't exist in fantasy or were shown as damsels in distress or something. She says that her story stayed perfectly conventional in this aspect. There are no female students on the Island of Roke where the Great Wizards go to learn their arts. The magic of people like Ged's aunt is always described as lesser magic and they are described as using it in an ignorant way for unworthy day to day pursuits. There's one powerful female character shown in the book, but she's evil. And LeGuin acknowledges that she didn't try to do anything different or new here, she stuck to the script. I do think that the elements were there in her world-building that she could have used to go against those stereotypical depictions, for example the power of that girl who spoke to Ged of other types of magic the Wizards on Roke ignored or the fact that, while they were outwardly scoffed at those witches in the villages did actual better the lives of the people around them, but LeGuin chose not to follow through on the potential that was there. 

She also mentions something in the afterword that actually was a little bit subtle: the absence of war or soldiers or militarism in the book. It was an adventure story focused on one character's journey to find himself, so the story didn't need it, but let's be honest the unnecessary gore and violence that fills other coming of age stories forces us to admit that she did do something different here. (I will note, though, that I found Ged's unquestioned killing of all those dragons kind of sad, especially since he ended up only needing to threaten their father with his name and that solved the entire problem so why kill those small dragons at all in the first place?!)

This is not some battle-filled quest to overcome some physical evil. It was supposed to be Ged's quest to understand himself and face that shadow he had unleashed on the world and such. Basically, to come to terms with the dark, shadowy aspects of himself. LeGuin was trying to do something different and break away from the confines of the genre, but also to break away from the  expectations and ways of thinking of her own society. She was a thinker (which is why I really do enjoy reading the essays on her website and would recommend them) and she was trying to do something very purposeful with her fiction. She was trying to explore a different way. To present and represent different ways of thinking. 

You can see it very clearly in the magic system in this book. It focuses on names. Knowing the name of something literally gives the Wizards power over it. The people in her world place a huge importance on the true names of things and, because a true name holds such power, they hide their true name and only share it with the people they trust the most. There's also a lot said about balance and equilibrium in the book and how the Wizards, when they do something with their magic, need to be careful not to upset this balance and need to understand its consequences. She put a lot of thought and effort into trying to portray and represent different ways of thinking, but in a way I don't think she was really able to break out of the ways of thinking of her own society, because despite all this stuff about names and balance and despite Ged purposefully being written as a non-White character I still see a lot of the Western individualism in his story. 

I don't think any other culture could have produced a character who so easily casts off his old name - the one his parents gave him - and goes on his adventure and casts off all thought and memory of his family. He's not trying to run from them. He doesn't have a very troubled past he's trying to forget. He just literally never thinks of them again. He thinks of his first Wizard master Ogion fondly several times, and realizes how much he learned and could have learned from Ogion, but nowhere in his whole adventure does he think of, remember, or wonder about his family. Not only is this extremely weird (and literally impossible) in any non-Western culture, it also doesn't really fit with the whole "names are important" magic system. If names are important, then the name that he carried for his entire childhood should be important too, shouldn't it? If names and words are so important then surely the names and words he grew up with should probably cross his mind at some point in his life and he should wonder how his father or brothers or some kid he played with is doing, right? He should remember something someone told him at some point in the first 13 years of his life and think about whether it was true or not? Surely, in this quest that was ultimately about coming to terms with himself, his experiences in the formative years of his life would be important? 

Overall, this classic fantasy tale made me think, which is great, and I do respect a lot of the things LeGuin was trying to do with the story, but I think she could have achieved that goal much more effectively if she had had a little more balance between the distant and close perspectives and allowed us to see and hear and feel the world and Ged's struggle through his own senses. I really don't know what rating to give this book so I'll just settle for a 3. Do I recommend it? Probably only to other fantasy authors, to be honest. It definitely got me thinking about how to effectively get a point across, and what's the best balance between showing and telling and all that and it made me really want to dive back into my own writing.