A Wizard of Earthsea
A Wizard of Earthsea is a book that was composed for various eras. The text reads like a bedtime tale with a strong emphasis on inner turmoil and personal reflection rather than on an epic quest or battle. Students who enjoy contemporary issues might be surprised to read the story and find that it contains a fiction that is much more somber than they had expected. A Wizard of Earthsea is still regarded as one of the greatest books in literature because it transcends the time it was written by being a timeless narrative. The central theme of the novel is about the magical world filled with dragons, wizards as well as evil spirits that want to consume the weak people in the society.
Ged's Journey and Lessons
The novel talks about Ged's protagonist's life journey entangled with supernatural powers as he does what he can to trounce the evil shadow that wants to engulf him in the process. Throughout the story, Ged's becomes acquitted with several valuable lessons regarding the good and evil philosophy of his personal life (Douglas, Lynette, and Deirdre 7). When Ged was at his youth stage of life, he grew full of pride of the powers he possessed despite being juvenile in the ways of the wizards and because of this, he was reluctant to let go the evil shadow that was consuming him. These incidents compelled Ged to acquit himself with the important lessons regarding the suitable ways of using his magical powers. From this period henceforth, Ged became wise and mature and eventually developed the utmost wizard of his era.
The Roke School of Wizards
As a young person in the school of wizards in Roke, he continued to possess and instill the pride character in him making it a way of life. Despite Ged having supernatural powers within him, Jaspers one of his rival constantly spurn him and never acknowledge Ged as being superior. In several occasions, Ged praises himself with a lot of pride, and in one moment he says I could have done better in an envy way to infuriate Jasper (Le 64) and to show to Jasper how powerful he has become. Ged even swore to himself to outshine Jasper his rival not in a mere illusion-match but in a contest to test the powers each of them possesses. According to Ged, the only way to attest him in a world full of rivalry is to humiliate Jasper. Though green in the in the art of wizardry, regarding human life, the hatred he developed towards his rivals forced him to call upon the spirit of the death to assist challenge, Jasper. Ded summons Elfrarran from the land of the dead of Enlad, but in the process Ged inferred with the balance of darkness and light and instead, the evil shadow emerged that attacked him instead of Jasper.
The Significance of the Roke School
Besides the cautious phrases and word choices to transform the negative perception of magic in the Earthsea, a charm is not a dark arcane knowledge which privately owned or studied by some outcast genius. Magic in the novel appears as high art; a public education availed to anyone talented from every corner of the earth. For this reason, The Roke School was a place where young boys who demonstrate promise in the art of sorcery is taken to from the Land of Earthsea are taught on the highest and fine arts of magic. In the institution, these boys develop proficient skills in various types of sorcery, learning the naming nomenclatures and do and don't as well as the reason for it. After the long process and practice, if the mind, hand as well as the spirit keeps the same pace of learning, then these boys could now be called wizards and allowed to receive the staff supernatural powers. The novel recorded that true wizards are only made in Roke which demonstrate the significance of this institution in inculcating the knowledge of wizardry among the people (Le 11-13).
The Art of Magic
Le Guin, the author of A Wizard of Earthsea, broadens the scale of magic arts and endows it with the current modern connotation. The Wizardry school resembles the current institutions of higher learning such as Universities and Colleges which focuses on specialized courses to ensure the graduates from those institutions have acquired the required knowledge and skills. For example, from Master Chanter, the young boys learn "the Deeds of heroes as well as the Lays of wisdom, which commences with the oldest of all the songs, the creation of Ea." The art of weather and wind was taught by Master Windkey (Le 44). Master Hands teaches and instructs the jugglery and sleight which shows how the lesser magic of art is changing with time. The Masters of Herbal which teaches the ways together with the properties of things growing naturally on the earth. The teachings of magical arts advances from one stage and another and its true from the novel that Master of Namer and Changer are ones who have the real powers not only to change the world but control it as well. The teachings of these subjects are sometimes complicated which forces these young boys who had shown the potential of learning magical arts to endure tedious work. These stages are similar to the process students in modern learning institutions have to pass through to acquire the competence, skills and the knowledge required in the modern world faced with stiff competition and dynamisms (Le 46- 55).
The Balance of Nature
The equilibrium in the novel is undeterminable at all; however, through the natural forces cutting through the labyrinths as the plot develops, its omnipresence is felt symbolically in the allegory of imminent Grove (Li 168). Furthermore, the ancient dragons depicted in the novel shows the natural scenes of the primeval world in a more inclusive way. Additionally, the plot of the novel presents Earthsea as pastoral and an idyllic world in which human being progress and civilization are still in synchronization and harmony with the surrounding natural ecosystem of the world. The quixotic narrative of the free life in the jungle echoes recent scholars' nostalgia for the non-culpable life they may have missed perpetually.
A Heroic Narrative with Ant-Heroic Elements
Finally, the narrative and the subject matter of the novel more peculiar. The Earthsea trilogy is within the epic tradition of Virgil and Homer. The conqueror, Ged, is forced to embark on sea journey full of trials and errors, victorious over the dragons, regaining the already lost treasures, moved into Hades to save the world from its misfortunes. The novel trilogy is a typical example of heroic narrative in every sense of the current world. However, this trilogy is more superior from other heroic legends due o its underlying ant-heroic supernatural spirits that sabotage the anthropocentric philosophy of foundation the quantity of the modern romance literature writings.
Work Cited
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Douglas, Lynette, and Deirdre Byrne. "Womanspace: the underground and the labyrinth in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea narratives: original research." Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies 35.1 (2014): 1-8.
Le, Guin U. K. A Wizard of Earthsea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2012. Print.
Li, Qian. "Taoism as ethics, science as background: On the left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin." International Journal of English and Literature 7.11 (2016): 167-171.
