Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - A Wizard of Earthsea, Part 1

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

The first half of our discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin's introductory fantasy novel.  We discuss her subversive use of race, non-violence, protective magic and the not-so-good gender roles of Earthsea.Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail]/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Welcome, everybody, to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the politics hiding in our genre fiction. My name is Darius, my pronouns are he and him, and with me I have my co-host, Ketho. I am Ketho, as you just heard. My pronouns are also he, him. And I am incredibly excited today, because this will be our first jump into probably what will be one of the most common people we will talk about on this podcast, Miss Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the two best authors of the 20th century. Yeah. We know who the other one is. It's fine.

yeah i mean we know who the other one is it's fine um but today we're talking about our our our lovely uh ursula leguin who does grace the banner photo of our of our pro of our twitter profile because i couldn't think of anything better and she's great um yeah this will be the first this could be the first of many many episodes about um about leguin and today we are covering the first book in her earthsea cycle uh conveniently named wizard of earthsea uh this is don't double check here what order or when it was written this came out in 1968 I believe yes this book

was released in 1968 and as we're going to discuss has a lot of stuff in it that is incredibly outstanding for the time it was written in very subversive, very shocking. Not shocking necessarily, but you know what I mean. It's very

not what you'd expect for a fantasy novel written in the 60s. And it also does have a number of things we'll talk about which definitely sort of accurately portray the attitudes of the era. Which we'll also discuss discuss Le Guin later said she regretted doing. And to be fair, from what I know of the future of the series, she attempts to

reconcile in some way. Definitely. She definitely later tries to grapple with the way she constructed the world. I'm just glad she didn't go back and retcon it or something. Yeah, I give her credit for that. She didn't go back and say, okay, that was all wrong. What she did instead was, I'm going to keep the world building the same, but I'm going to try to explain. She actually can't pull the whole JK Rowling.

I never said Hermione was white. Maybe she was black because Ged is kind of, you know, he's black. Yeah. Again, yeah. So we can start right there. So we're not going to do a full plot rundown, but we'll sort of go through the plot talking about the themes and stuff we want to talk about.

And I think the first thing we should touch on is race in Earthsea. Earthsea, if you've read it, you you know it's an archipelago it's all islands and oceans and stuff which i think in specific parts you're supposed to get a very directly sort of mediterranean feel about a lot of the islands i think specifically like the inner sea and you know sort of like you know like the central islands i think are very supposed to be very mediterranean they're described as being warmer um when you get to the edges you definitely get more of the like icy island cold island mountainous and rough islands you know like you're going out to the hebrides or something oh yeah yeah like especially in like the further north you go. Yes.

So the first thing I want to talk about is race. The main character of the story, Ged, also known as Sparrowhawk, is described as having, I believe, like bronze. It's described alternately like throughout as either bronze or copper. Yeah, his skin is described as either being bronze or copper. His hair is dark, I believe. I think he also has dark eyes, if I remember correctly. Yes. And so that is like the first subversive element of this story. Wait, or isn't his hair – hold on.

I actually don't remember. I should have remembered that part. I'm going to – I promise we just read this guys okay um um okay it's just his hair just is darkish in all the pictures i'm seeing right now okay i mean it's dark you might have been wrong and it might have been like a reddish but i'm just all the various depictions have it going somewhere from kind of dark reddish brown all the way to black depending on the photo picture it's in i don't have the text in front of me because i do audiobooks because as we both know i'm illiterate and can't read so i only do

audiobooks um so that's the first subversive element of the story is that Ged is darker skinned and he's the hero. He's the protagonist. He's the hero. And as you brought up before the recording, Ketho, that influenced the cover art on basically all the editions of this book. Yeah. So even Le Guin talks about this in her afterward. I don't know when the afterward was added as far as which edition, but my edition has an afterward that was added somewhat like 40, almost 50 years after the book was published. She mentions that her favorite cover is the original cover, the very first cover as drawn by Ruth Robbins,

where it has the profile of Ged with intentionally copper skin. It's intentionally depicted there. To my knowledge, no other cover of the book depicts Ged. A lot of them have the hawk. Yes. The sparrow hawk.

The newest edition has the hawk. I can't give the publishing industry the benefit of the doubt because it's the publishing industry. We're not here to do that. We're not here to do that at all. So the inclination is to believe that it's because it doesn't sell as well. They literally didn't want to put a dark-skinned person on the cover of their book, which is particularly unsurprising. person on the cover of their book which is particularly unsurprising um like around the time it was written but it's amazing that was like the one of the first the first edition printed had

him yeah and that later on they were in like you know later on they were like oh no never mind we can't especially given that like so in college i was a creative writing minor i had a lot of classes that touched on the publication process and professors who talked about it, writing fantasy, science fiction. One of my professors was deeply into like young adult fantasy. And she was like the control that authors have over the covers that get selected, et cetera, is incredibly small. It's so little,

unless you're, unless you're a high powered author, like, like Brandon Sanderson now gets a lot of control over what goes on the cover of his books. You can tell by my, my copy of Mistborn, he did not get a pick over that cover.

In Mistborn, which was, I'm pretty sure his first series that got published or it was, or his like, or his right, his additions of the Wheel of Time or whatever. Mistborn I think was like sort of his first, like real, his own creative thing that got published. Yeah. He didn't have control over what went on the cover i guarantee you by like the most recent editions of like you know the stormlight archive or whatever one he's on right now he probably got to pick oh yeah and and by the end and by towards like i'm sure like the middle of her career um the peak high point of her career i'm sure leguin had some control as well um i'm sure i think for the most part her earlier stuff she wanted to distance herself from

anyways um yeah so it's like she probably didn't really want to care about what they put on their editions of rocannon's world so so getting back to it what we're talking about is the race again because we said dark-skinned protagonist right off the bat in the first chapter his little mountain village is attacked by raiders from a nearby kingdom the kingdom that's not sort of ruled by the general governing structure of the of the part of the earth sea that he's in um which is um the from kargod kargod raiders, Kargod Raiders. The Kargod Raiders, their whole description is they're very warlike, they're very militaristic, they're brutal, they're vicious.

They show up on people's islands and kill and enslave and destroy. That's their whole thing. That's how they're described. And then they are specifically described as being white skin with blonde hair and she goes out of her way to talk to like the other characters in the story find them ugly and that they are brutal and like so the brutal and ugly and that is the only some of the only explicitly white characters are the most barbaric in the entire story and throughout this entire cycle.

Yeah, I can, right here it's, they are a savage people, white skin, yellow haired and fierce, liking the sight of blood and the smell of burning towns. Which, true. Pretty, pretty aggressive. But I mean, this is very intentional on her part as a reversal of the classic, like, you know, you have a white hero and the dark skinned folk are portrayed as like the bad guys. Yeah. And she specifically went out of her way. And that's what the beauty of it. She went out of her way to invert that trope. That was her goal was to invert that fantasy trope of white guy fighting against hordes of you know nameless

dark-skinned people like that was she she didn't like it she like hated that trope and she was going out of her way to subvert it um when all the people from ged's island from Gaunt all kind of look like him. When he gets to the mage's college or the wizard's school on Roke, he obviously sees a sort of a variety of skin tones, but his best friend is a wizard named Vetch, who is just, is black. Like Vetch is described as having incredibly dark skin and dark eyes. Like his best friend is, you know, is black, which she, again, I think was a specific choice on her part.

Yeah. And she's like, she says in her afterward, a great many white readers in 1967 were not ready to accept a brown skin hero, but they weren't expecting one. I didn't make an issue of it. And you have to be well into the book before you realize that ged like most of the characters isn't white um and because she doesn't draw a ton of attention to it as she shouldn't need to um and because it in a you know in a perfect world it wouldn't mean as much it wouldn't matter means as much it wouldn't matter as much but in this case she's just quietly slipping under the radar and it became you know like this is this is considered a classic

even back when it was written it's like this one awards it was famous it's never been out of print and it's like for the time it's completely out of, you know, out of left field for what was considered normal. Definitely again. Yeah. Cause we have to remind everyone, this was released in 1968. This is in America in the late sixties. She definitely, she also continues this trend in her. This also happens in her first just to to mention it, in her first book of the Hainish cycle in Planet of Exile in 66.

The enemies that they end up fighting, the Galt, I think their name is, are also explicitly described as being white skinned fair-haired, I think. So this definitely was a theme in her early work, was to be directly undermining the sort of racial expectations of American readers. Yeah, and it makes sense given the time period for someone as generally socially forward-thinking. Someone as incredibly based. Yeah, to notice in the 1960s, of um because and i don't know if if you got around to reading this um but i do have it in front of me as well and i might bring up a couple

things about it um she has a couple short stories that preceded this story they were sort of like let's see they were sort of setting the groundwork for the world of Earthsea. Yeah. It was proto Earthsea, mostly dealing with like the way magic works, which we'll get into a little bit later. They're still described as, you know, dark skin, like whatever little hints are given towards their race.

Yeah. Because it's, it does stay away from it for the most part. Well, even in the book, she did. It's not like she goes out of her way to deeply describe someone's skin color, right?

It's just that it is a thing that she does mention when describing somebody. And it's, to a modern, again, to a modern reader, you just read it and you're like, okay, cool. That's what that guy looks like. And to be be fair for a lot of people back in 1968 they might have just blazed right by it because she doesn't draw too much attention to it and she is um if i to make a specific note about leguin's writing style i find her to be like both sparse and detailed in her writing. Yeah.

There's a lot of times where she doesn't give you nearly as much detail as you would expect about something. And I hate to put it this way, but she very comes across to me in modern slang as a very like vibes based author. We're like, you're reading your book and it's not so much that she's giving you every detail of the scene that you're, it's that you are getting the feeling of what is going on. You are getting the emotion and the impact of what is happening. You're not getting granular details about things. Most of the time,

obviously she's explained in detail things that are important and like her writing is varied but i think she falls much more on like the hemingway end of the spectrum where she's not gonna she's not gonna use more words than she has to um does that make sense like she's she's definitely going for like her chapters are short. Her books are short. Yeah. Yeah. Especially compared to like fantasy novels at the time. Like when you think of honestly, when we say fantasy novels at the time, we're talking about Tolkien. The only other famous fantasy author at the time. So like comparing this to say Lord of the Rings, where each individual book might be a time and a half this size um oh god yeah each of the six books yes um Lord of the Rings is actually six books I'm gonna

I'm gonna be pedantic about that I mean to be fair didn't initially he wanted to release it as one ginormous freaking tome yeah then and and and uh and uh unwin the publisher was like that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard yeah it's like not only is that financially really irresponsible we're also not going to print that yeah also we could make way more money by making this separate yeah um so yeah but again when we're saying other fantasy authors at the time to compare her to even though we're not going to say his name over and over again, because there are other authors, but like Return of the King came out in 1955. So like a little more than a decade before Le Guin was writing these. And so when we're talking about the tropes she's writing against, a lot of them were tropes that sort of originated with Tolkien or were

popularized by him is what she's writing against. Yeah. Again, the whole... We'll get into that when we talk about Tolkien, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this race thing is very obviously essentially an underwriting of that, where you have the Numenoreans in that who are fair-skinned people, and then you have the wild men.

The Easterlings. The Easterlings and the men of like uh shoot you have dunland yeah and and who are the ones to the south like the haradrim the haradrim yeah are they're all dark-skinned um yeah and so just, yeah, again, this was a very specific thing on her part to be not race focused, but to be descriptive in a way that you notice it if you're paying attention. And, you know, speaking of Hemingway, she, I don't even remember the context of the quote, but I remember her one time in like an interview. She's like, can we admit that just finally that hemingway was wrong and an ass okay that's one thing that i don't think comes through in her novels but you definitely get in interviews or things with the gwynn she was spicy oh yeah she that's why i love her afterwards like i love the afterword in this book and i really love the intro to Left Handed Darkness.

Yeah, she, if you take her, like, the parts where she feels she's allowed to voice her opinion. Yeah. She is spicy. an eight-year-old woman standing up in front of some of the most important publishers of the time amazon is there everyone is there and saying capitalism should be gotten rid of just to all these people again for anyone who doesn't know and i don't think this is the episode for it but we will i think that episode will probably have to happen whenever we eventually get to the dispossessed we can do a whole segment about le guin's personal politics um but for anyone who doesn't know she was more or less an anarchist um she she variously described herself as being one and not being one depending on i think when you asked her um

but she's sort of claimed by anarchists for her beliefs and furthermore and this is something i think we'll we'll get into next when we're referencing some of the themes in this book. She was also a pacifist. Yes. For much of her, I think pretty much for all of her life, she was a pacifist. So you'll see that's again, you're going to see those themes as we get in here, which I think can lead us into the next. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. you're going to see those themes as we get in here which i think can lead us into the next oh sorry go ahead well yeah uh and um speaking of some of her more biting stuff something that i'll i'll be bringing up once we get to these more specific points i have her copy of the dao de jing of her

translation or reimagining i guess of the dao de jing her her perspectives on things like pacifism and that sort of thing a lot of times come from she's not she wasn't a daoist she openly was like i'm not a practicing like religious daoist um but she sure took a lot of ideas from yes so she but she was just heavily inspired by lao tzu specifically and what a lot of people call the philosophical Tao, even though that has some weird implications, we won't get into now. It's sort of – it's Le Guin's version of I'm spiritual but not religious. Yeah. I mean she gets into that in like her intro to The Left Hand and where she's like, I speak of gods. I am an atheist. It's like i speak of gods i am an atheist

it's like but i'm also a liar and you're like okay what's this mean don't worry about it that's why i'm sorry i love her i love when things are written from her perspective she's like i said she's wonderful everyone should like read interviews with her um okay i'm gonna do it we're gonna get we're gonna do one more quote from her because every time we bring up her quotes i have to bring up her quote about jk rowling oh i was about to i was literally about to look that up because i was like this would be a perfect time this is has absolutely nothing to do with the current um current episode that we're that we're talking about right now i just like the quote um which one was it talking about right now. It does a little bit. I just like the quote.

Which one was it? It was that... It does a little bit because she's been asked in the past whether or not... For those who don't know, this book contains a school for magic children. I think the quote is, when she was asked about Rowling's world and stuff, Le Guin said, quote, is it see when she was asked about rowling's the world and stuff uh leguin said quote it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a quote school novel good fair for its age group but stylistically ordinary imaginatively derivative and ethically rather mean-spirited which yes hit the nail on the head with that one.

I hope all of our listeners figure out right now, I don't plan on ever covering Rowling, the Harry Potter series. I feel like there is rife opportunity to find the politics that people do not notice in books that are very hard. Okay, you're okay. Fine, we'll cover it at some point when I feel like tearing some books. You're okay. Fine.

We'll cover it at some point when I feel like tearing, when you feel like torturing yourself by tearing somebody apart. Whereas this episode, we're just going to say a whole bunch of really nice things about it. Yes. Well, and one questionable thing, but that we'll get back to that. Well, so I think the next thing we'd talk about, because you did mention her sort of Taoist influences. One of the first ones you see is here in the first chapter when his when gets villages attacked. Get at this point, I started to learn magic.

He, you know, can start to he speaks the old language, which I think the magic system will get into next. But because you mentioned the Taoistist influences i thought we should mention this first now one of the first ones is essentially non-violence which covers two categories here it's a daoist theme we want to discuss and also a subversive element of the story where she felt that too much fantasy was war and violence and blood and fighting and gore. She felt that fantasy had too much of that. I can pull out those quotes if we want it. Yeah, go ahead and pull that quote. My mind doesn't work in terms of war.

My imagination refuses to limit all the elements that make an adventure story and make it exciting. A hero whose heroism consists of killing people is uninteresting to me, and I detest the hormonal war orgies of our visual media the mechanical slaughter of endless battalions of black clad yellow tooth red-eyed demons um she mostly goes on to describe that she dislikes the presentation of war and violence in fantasy because of its dualistic nature like the fact that it creates a very us versus them dichotomy. And that's something that is very not present in her world,

in her works in general. Yeah. I dare say again, the war orgy of our media, good thing that died in the 20th century. It has never been a problem in the 21st as we are speaking, recording this just a couple of weeks removed from the 20th anniversary of 9-11 and the end of the war in Afghanistan. So this theme is nonviolence, which, so as we said, is subversive for fantasy because it isn't even referencing our own title, like our title of our podcast, like the sword and sorcery,

like kill the bad guys type thing. And it's also very sort of Taoist and it's themes that sometimes the best thing you can do. And often the best thing you can do is not do stuff. And you see it in the, in the very first time where Ged distinguishes himself as a magic user, when the, um,

blind hair, blue eyed savages are coming to his village and instead of running away and being too young to fight he summons magic to control the fog and he makes his village so foggy that it disorients the the the karg warriors in a way that then like the older men of the village can then like you know do guerrilla tactics against them to kill them and at one point they just get confused and walk off a cliff a bunch of them do it feels very roadrunner yeah it's very like wily coyote and then a couple of them like stop and like just stare into the empty void and they're like and looked out they just look down at their like that they're like, other warriors that just fell off, like fell like hundreds of feet to their death down a waterfall, essentially. So that is explored right away at the start is that like, yes, he's defending his village, but he's not doing it by like, throwing fireballs at them, right? His magic isn't like, isn't D&D magic. You know, he's not casting fireball he's not you know shooting bolts of magic that tear them apart he's literally just creating a confusing fog

that allows them to hurt themselves or be hurt by others he ged doesn't do it um one of the secondly the most prevalent type of magic you see in use throughout the world because magic is known throughout the world because magic is known throughout the world not everyone can do it but everyone knows about it more or less yeah is the most common types of thing is weather magic it's like the most common thing people are used for well there's two things weather magic and like protection charms like your local village witch or your local island sorcerer is mostly used for casting charms of protection on houses on boats on people uh like spells of growth and productivity on

livestock and farms um blessing things more or less and controlling the wind and the rain yeah that's your most common uses of magic nobody's doing the big splashy like nonsense no one's doing battle magic for more like for lack of a better phrase yeah there's there's no like full-scale wars going on at all even in the backdrop there aren't like no there's pirate raids yeah there are raids there are like little conflicts but there aren't any like oh the kingdom of x is going to war with the the people of y yeah there's no like uh to reference another book that we that we think ties in here to to reference the Aragon series. What's the actual name of the series?

The Inheritance Cycle. The Inheritance Cycle. Oh, Cycle. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I'm noticing more and more. Which you totally pulled directly from Le Guin because she calls everything a cycle. So if you read Aragon or any of the Inher, what happens in a battle? You've got all your soldiers that are doing soldier stuff.

And then with them, you have mages or magic users who are like casting spells to kill soldiers and throwing fireballs and ending people's lives with magic. And Le Guin's heroes in Earthsea don't do that. Ged doesn't do that. Mostly like there is a, there is a there is there is some killing with magic but it is not this sort of splashy like warcraft warcraft battle art that you're in almost all instances it's a it's an it's an instance of self-defense too um it's arguable

whether it's totally self-defense when he walks right into where the dragons are but it when he when he when he sails over to the island with the dragons left and goes hey how about i make you a deal where you fuck off and the dragons like the some of the young dragons attack him and so he binds their wings so they fall into the ocean and drown like sure that's offensive and the only other I can think of time where you directly see offensive magic that I can think of that sort of reminds me of inheritance magic is when they're escaping. The keep? The court of the Tyranon.

Yeah. Where the sorceress he's escaping with kills some of the servants by turning their blood to hot lead. No, the marrow in their bones. Oh, the marrow of their bones gets turned to hot lead. Which is real fucked. It's real fucked. She kills them that way, but it's just in passing.

By and large, magic is... And that was a villain, too. Yeah, and she's also, well, kind of a villain, yeah. Yeah. is a villain too yeah and she's also well kind of a villain yeah yeah by and large magic is used defensively or at least in a protective sense which is why mages are so prized and it's like because they get they seem to get free passage almost anywhere as long as they have their fancy staff people know they're a mage take them where they want to go they're useful like they're they will protect the ship that you're on if they're on it they will you know calm the seas and make your journey better things like that every island

or island chain has a sorcerer or a mage sorcerer is sort of like the step below mage and their whole they don't really work per se for the most part they hang out and then people come to them and say hey can you place a warding spell on my ship hey can you you know bless can you put a protection spell on my house stuff like that and then in return people just give them what they need to live they're given food and a house yeah it's hard to say there's very little discussion like even there's a there's a moment when ged at one point he's gotten so like this far solely on people being hospitable to him to the point where when he has to go to osco where they aren't quite as hospitable to like anyone general to like mages from roque the island that he was trained at like he has to pay them and instead it goes okay i can't pay you can i work on your ship so he literally works as

as a rower yeah big master the ship can do wind spells this is spells he doesn't need ged to do that and ged's like well i don't have money because i've never been paid in money before and then there's very little in like in terms of money exchanging hands at any point like it barely even mentions the fact that there is money until like that point yeah so like wiz uh wizards in their world and sorcerers i think to a lesser extent essentially just people just feed them when they go places they just take them places when they want to go places due to the fact that they do helpful magic like most boats are willing to take a wizard somewhere because like you said,

if the wizards on their boat, they know they won't sink in a storm or they like, they're going to get a fair wind if necessary. That like, if you go sorcerer lives on an Island, the people that are going to give them the food they need to live. Cause they know the sorcerer can like heal their sick kids or bless their goat herd to have you know to grow faster and be fatter and like have more babies like all of this magic by and large is non-destructive and in essence that's a lot of what they're taught at rogue like they're they're obviously taught more generalized just learning the words themselves like okay i think it's time let's do a quick change the subject quick then before we come back to like what they're doing with the magic let's talk quick about how it works i just want to do a little sidebar on how the magic works so

in the world of rverseas Magic works by essentially knowing the true names of things you learn things' true names and by knowing their names you can command them so if you know the true name of what an eagle is you can call it by its name in this old speech and have it come down and listen to you if you know the its name in this old speech and have it like come down and listen to you. If you know the true name of the wind,

you can command the wind to blow the right direction in your sails, right? It's, it's a, it's a name-based magic system, which was then later also stolen by the inheritance series. Well, there, there is like a caveat in there too with the way that the names work. It's like when they're, she goes really far into it even when talking about how they control things

like wind and water. It's like using, you can't use the true name of the sea because it's not like one collective thing. You have to use the true names of specific sea because it's not like one collective thing you have to use the true names of specific portions of it in specific places so in the end the further they get away from the central islands the less control they have because the less true names they know the things are different because they can't just say hey wind blowing my sail because the wind is everywhere

yeah the wind in the spot you are in is different than the wind over there and the sea you're on here is different than the sea over there because this is the sea around gaunt and that's the sea around you know korego ah and that's like the whole basis of the magic system is knowing the true names of things and so i tried to do a quick little bit of research onto that idea about sort of name magic. And this goes back basically forever. It's referenced in Egyptian mythology. It's referenced in a lot of Greek stuff. You, we've, and before we recorded talked a little bit about how like, even,

you can even reference it a little in like sort of your Plato philosophy type stuff, like the world of forms and that everything has a true form. And essentially the magic is finding the true name, which encapsulates the essence of the thing. Like people in this world have true names that you don't tell anyone. You never tell anyone your true name. Cause if somebody knows your true name, they have complete mastery over you that you can make, they can make you do whatever they want if they wished so you only give your true

name to people you trust with your entire life so this idea that the the essence of a thing exists in and of itself um has a long history and that you know legway decided to use it as sort of the basics for for her magic system the idea that like the way to control things is to know at a deep level what they are yeah i like the i really like the way she puts it in the rule of names which is one of the two short stories it's the one that i read before this um because this one i think has a lot more this one ties in directly to the book the wizard of mercy but she she says it in here and spoiler alert by the ways um if you want to go read it read it now um the character mr underhill is the one who says this and it's kind of funny because mr underhill is a dragon in disguise he says because the name is the thing and the true name is the true thing to speak the name

is to control the thing and it's um just a really succinct way to put it but um yeah so yeah I like that that's really nice it's good um and I think we can just mention briefly that in the world dragons exist of course because dragons are cool. And that the language dragons speak in is the old language of magic. So dragons speaking speak the language of magic. They're also the only ones that can lie in that speech because it is their natural speech. Whereas humans have to learn that speech to be able to control magic and control things the dragons since that is their nature to be magical

they're also the only ones that can lie in the magic speech so that's cool and that's like a thing that comes up a few times um never trust a dragon yeah you should never trust a dragon so yeah that's basically how it works and that sort of has a long history in and of itself the idea of the true name of thing and the true form of the thing they would definitely will bring this up again when we get to the third book

the farthest shore because that's like I think a big deal when you're talking about like something getting a new name by changing what it is truly. But I think that's a discussion for a later time. We can jump back to now that we sort of talk about how the magic works by knowing the names of things. We talk about what is the most important lesson on the Isle of Roke that the,

the wizards teach their students, which ties directly back to again, our Taoist themes and the nonviolence we were talking about before that one of the biggest lesson, the wizards teach the students on Roke is basically to not do stuff. The most important thing you can do with your magic is not use it as often as possible. Yeah. So at least this is the one that stood out to me as I was going through this. And the truth is that 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 and it's like that's that that ties in really directly to some of the earliest stuff in the dao de jing yes it's definitely some of the earliest stuff in the Tao Te Ching. Yes, it's definitely some of the earliest stuff in the Tao Te Ching. And it's essentially the thesis, the thesis statement of this novel. Because everything that happens, especially all the bad things that happen, happen because Ged does stuff when he shouldn't.

His whole thing is he goes out and does a thing, even though he knows he shouldn't do the thing, and then has to deal with the repercussions of doing that thing. And that what he learns as he grows up is that the best thing he can do most of the time is nothing. do most of the time is nothing. And in the end, like the apotheosis of this lesson, the finale of the book is him speaking a single word, is naming his shadow, right? This whole story is him learning to be a wizard, releasing a shadow, running from the shadow, fighting the shadow, releasing a shadow, running from the shadow, fighting the shadow, eventually defeating the shadow. And the apotheosis, the end of the story,

is him standing there and saying a single word, naming the shadow, which is his name, because the shadow is his shadow. And the big thing he has to learn by the end of the book, which he doesn't figure out until the very end, because he spends most of the book trying to figure out what the shadow's name is. And it's not till the end he realizes the shadow's name is his name because the shadow is him. The shadow that he's released from the other world,

which I think we're going to, again, this is leaving off the other world until we get to the farthest shore, by and large, because they actually have to go there. And that's, the discussion for that is that. It also comes up in, like, Tehanu. Yeah, in Tehanu and later books.

And this one is just reference. He goes there once. He crosses the wall to the land of the dead and is like, oh shit, I'm in the land of the dead. I need to get the fuck out of here. That's a really heart wrenching scene too, by the ways. Like the one where he doesn't save the kid.

Yeah. Chasing, chasing the, chasing the child soul into the land of the dead to try and bring it back. Yeah. He chases. And again,

this is when he's young and impetuous before he does it. He says he knows the child is lost. He knows it, but he does it anyways because he's such good friends with the kid's father because he's because yeah, because he's such good friends with the kid's dad. He does what he should not do and attempts to chase the child's spirit into the land of the dead.

And in doing so, he himself crosses into the land of the dead. And in doing so, he himself crosses into the land of the dead and then has to struggle to get out. And then on the way out, essentially by being there, he tells the shadow where he is. And the shadow then can beeline to him from then on out.

And the only reason he gets out is because his little cat, what do you call Hoag? The Otak. Yeah. He calls it Hoag or otak like licks his hand it licks his hand and wakes him up again which another heartbreaking scene when you find out later that the ho that the hoteg essentially died fighting the shadow outside of the court of

the tyranon yeah it doesn't explicitly say that but i choose to think the reason it's bloodied is because it was fighting the shadow for him and it was and then he picks up the grass and uses it like a sword he's like yeah he picks up the grass from where the o-tag died turns into a staff and beats the shadow of some like ancient evil with it yeah again cool but none of that would have happened if he hadn't like this is one of the stories that reminds me of the movies people talk about where like none of the bad shit would have happened if you just stayed home. Like, yeah, most of this would not have happened. None of it would have happened.

Really? None of this would have happened if you had just not been such a petty bitch. When Jasper asked you an arrogant little man, arrogant little boy, you you had taken too much of your life being told you are going to be something great. You need to calm down. Which I think is another subversive element of the story. Talk about fantasy novels of the chosen one. You learn pretty early on that.

Basically everyone around get is like, yeah, this kid's going to be special. He's going to learn from the author. Like she herself is like, okay, he's going to be archmage and Dragon Lord. He's going to be a big deal.

Yeah, okay. I think we can talk about that in a minute, her like the way she goes about storytelling. But yeah, you learn off the bat he's going to be great. And the thing is he hears it too. When he gets to Roke, he reads the letter from his old master to the Archmage that says this kid's going to be bananas. And that gets to him because he's already kind of a prideful guy.

And so unlike other fantasy stories with the chosen one, then goes on, knows they're chosen and then like refuses the call and then has to be convinced to show up and be the chosen one. Get is like, yeah, I'm the, I'm the chosen one. I'm a big'm the chosen one i'm a big deal man

i'm a big deal this guy told me to told the the archmage that i am gonna be big business and then what that does is it leads him to act in a rash manner in a way that fucks up the next like 20 years of 15 years of his life for however many years this novel takes place over. I think it's, I think, I think not even that many. Yeah.

I think it's more like, it's like five. Yeah. It's somewhere between the age of like 15 and like 20 to 20, something like that. Yeah. No, I think he's 19.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause it mentions that, that he, he, he and Vetch's brother are the same age, 19. So, and when he gets, that he, he and Vetch's brother are the same age, 19.

So, and when he gets to the school, he's like 13. I think when he releases, yeah, he's, he's pretty young. He's like 13,

14. So anyway, the five to seven years of his life are ruined because he was too prideful about the fact that he was the chosen one. And the whole rest of the book is him learning to not do that to not be the chosen one to not run about flaunting your specialness to not go about like being so aggro about how good you are and this is yet this is another daoist like he only becomes the great thing by not being the great thing yeah he he spends a lot of the rest of the book after his

injury from the shadow trying not to do any magic and what even in the rest of the book when he does do stuff it ends up bad yeah because you shouldn't do stuff in this world and through le guin's philosophy that is portrayed in this novel this sort of daoist philosophy the best thing you can do is not do unless it is the only thing you can do and that again is wildly different than you're going to get in any other fantasy book of the time or since. I mean, obviously, I haven't read every fantasy book. Part of the reason we started this podcast is to force me to read a bunch of books I've never read. But there's not many other ones I personally know of where the hero's main, the way the hero becomes the hero is by not being the hero.

The best thing he can do is not do what he thinks he should be doing which i think is directly foreshadowed at the start because the first wizard he interacts with his first master and the one who he considers his master forever is a man named ogion and ogion's whole thing is the fact that he's almost completely silent og Ogi-an almost never speaks unless it's necessary and never uses magic unless necessary. And Ged notices that on his first trip with Ogi-an across the island of Gant. He keeps going like, why am I learning anything?

Like, why am I not learning any magic? He kind of has like a karate kid thing of he's like, am I even learning anything? We're not doing anything. And Ogi-an's like's like yeah that's the point that's the point is we're not doing anything because ged knows that like you know petty sorcerers and stuff will like cast little spells they don't get rained on or like cast little spells so they don't get too hot or too cold and ogion's like getting rained on and being snowed on. And Ged's like, well, why don't you stop the rain from getting on you?

And Oguian's like, why would I? It's like, then I won't hear what the rain has to say. Yeah. He's like, then I won't know the patterns of the world. If the rain is never on me, how will I understand the rain? If I'm never cold, how will I understand the winter? Which brings us to, I'm going to pull up the quote again because i don't think that i said i didn't say that quote yet the opening quote on the recording yet which i think is the um sort of the one of the other seminal quotes of the story along

with the one you read before about knowledge leading to a narrowing path is it's a quote given at the start of the book. And then later is explained as being the opening to one of their great lays, like their creation mythos. It's like the opening to their creation mythos of their world. And the quote is only in silence, the word only in dark, the light only Only in dark, the light. Only in dying, life. Bright, the hawk's flight on an empty sky.

And you are essentially given that in small by Ogi-An in the first couple chapters. That the only way for a thing to exist is for there to be the opposite of the thing. to exist is for there to be the opposite of the thing there cannot be like ogion's example is if you light a candle you are thereby creating a shadow which is a little thing in the industry we call foreshadowing for what direct foreshadowing for what then go get then goes and does. By trying to show his power to the other boys on the mount, by lighting his own candle and burning brightly, displaying his power,

he literally creates the shadow that he then has to fight. That shadow would not exist if it were not for his brightness. And once again, it comes back to just and and because this is her interpretation of the doubt aging that makes this a lot easier to draw connections to i think but like the second one the very second page is called soul food and i'll just read the first two stanzas they're like three lines they say everybody on earth knowing that beauty is beautiful makes ugliness everybody knowing that goodness is good makes wickedness it's like i mean of course there's there's like a uh an undercurrent of values and beliefs are

culturally constructed yada yada to that but there's also the element of something creates its opposite like by necessity if you define something is, if you have the physical thing as itself, the opposite must therefore exist. You know, if the concept of beauty exists, the concept of ugliness must exist too. It's a very, very dualist worldview. Like you cannot have one without the other. And that is, like, the entire, like, thesis of this book. It is a fantasy story wrapped around the idea that, you know, these, like, sort of Taoist beliefs, you know, Taoist beliefs. beliefs you know or Taoist beliefs that's like it's a cool fantasy story but it's also very directly telling you how she feels about things yes and I feel like Le Guin more so than any other

author I've read up to this point wears herself on her sleeve in her books and I I find that really good like that's that's really refreshing i think for a fantasy sci-fi author to be so open about the fact that these reflect her views if i say so almost more directly a fantasy author yeah i i find that sci-fi books typically tend to more openly wear their politics and i and i that's why i'm really glad we did this specifically earth yeah like the heinous dispossessed is obviously on the list but it's like that one wears its politics so obviously it that's the whole point of the book like that everyone knows what the what the dispossessed is about and i think even though

we're going to talk about um a lot of sci-fi I do think that sci-fi as a genre tends to be more overtly political because that's what like dystopian novels are. That's what cyberpunk is. It's an overtly political genre or at least overtly philosophical, if not political. Yeah, because sci-fi has a lens towards, as Le Guin would put it, thought experiment. Yes. Others would put it, you know, a lens towards logical progressions. Like, it's like everything, both science fiction, fantasy, etc. Everything is always an analysis of the now. But like, science fiction wears its analysis of today on its sleeve um and fantasy more or less looks more at the past than the present a lot or in a way it's comparing the present to the past or

doing that sort of thing the fantasy by and large requires a little more like digging under to figure out what the politics are unless of course it's le guin yeah because she was primarily a science fiction author but correct and to be fair her most overtly political science fiction stuff hadn't come out yet but oh yeah she hadn't written the left hand of darkness or the dispossessed yeah no the left and the left hand of darkness was the first one from my understanding that was like, OK, trend that people that other people looked at it were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's there's some social commentary going on here. you know why the left hand of darkness is controversial for its social critiques.

That leads us directly into what I want to call the major criticism of Le Guin in this series, and specifically early on in this series. And before we even say it, Le Guin is harder on herself about it than we're going to be. She openly talks about it later and about how she regrets it. Now, what we're talking about is gender roles in this world. And it's not just in this world. It's like a lot of her earliest

stuff still has a male hero in male-dominated spaces in a male world because she was writing for what she saw as the people of the time yeah her worlds are especially her earliest works are incredibly male-centric patriarchal male-centric stories and that is it is a critique and we're going to talk about it, but I want to get out of the way the fact that she disliked it and criticized it more than we're going to, and later on said that she regretted doing it. But as Getho just said, she admits

that the reason she did it is because she was specifically trying to write towards what she thought people wanted. And she was catering her stories to what she thought was going to be popular. And then I think later on she had enough influence and I think was old enough and uncomfortable enough as a writer. She thought it fucked that nonsense and decided to change it and be less, um, male centric, but she still was, she didn't go back and again, she didn't rowling it. She didn't go back and retcon her previous work. She just was open with,

yeah, this is how it was. It's bad, but that's what I wrote. In essence, a lot of, a lot of times what she would do to make up for it too was do something like right now, just to give people a little bit of context, the story to Hanu comes out what, like 20 years after the shore. Yeah. To Hanu, which is the fourth story in the earth sea cycle um it it's 20 years uh

it is more than that it is the furthest shore came out in 73 uh tahanu came out in 1990 oh so it's less it is 17 years right and that and... Yeah, 17 years. Yeah, and that's the first story that... And she talks about it herself, at least in the documentary that I watched, but that's kind of not here nor there. But she mentions the fact, and if you

look at... I just have looked at the synopsis of the book. I haven't read the book. But she's giving context to it in the story. She's not context to it in the story she's not retconning that position she's re-representing the roles of women in earthsea as kind of like a tragedy um yeah she's essentially later on looking at what she wrote and then in universe saying, yeah, this is what women's roles were. And this is why it's bad.

Like, this is why, this is why what I portrayed in my early work was bad. And even in universe is a tragedy that that is the roles that women fulfill. Because even in earth seat, like the wizards of roke the story like the school where the story takes place for the first like third uh is male only yeah it literally says that

women are almost never allowed in the school at all and that like a Lord visiting for a feast and bringing his wife with him was like a subject of some debate and consternation among some of the staff. The fact that his wife was even allowed to accompany him into the school for a feast. It's incredibly patriarchal on every Island they go to, you know, you've got men doing the fishing and the hunting and the, you know, sniffing and women like, you know, being barefoot in the kitchen, like unless they're, unless they're real poor and like, like historically in their real poor, the really poor women have to work too. Like the real poor women are also tending flocks and doing stuff. But like, once you get into like slightly well-off people, the women just don't do anything because they're not allowed to.

They're just wives and servants. Like you occasionally have like a village, the most, and like the most agency you have from women in the story is like village witches who, you know, sort of make their own living, but they have, they have that agency solely through their magic, which they can only do low level magic because they're not allowed to learn the higher magic and not to mention whether you're talking about uh ged's uncle i mean not uncle sorry ged's aunt um see it's getting

into my head um but ged's aunt in um 10 alders yeah it like she is kind of portrayed as being a little bit conniving and then you show up later selfish and then you get to the the girl that like messes with him to try and get him to summon the spirit in the first place like way on and early in the in the story the sorceress girl yeah is conniving is evil is conniving and evil and you meet her again later and she's absolutely horrible like full-on like femme fatale yeah she she goes fatale then ends up dropping the illusion and then murders some people. Well, she drops the illusion because she fails. Yeah, she fails. Yeah, that's the only reason she drops it is because at the last moment, Ged is like –

I know you. Am I down that bad? Yeah. And he's like, oh, wait a second. This is a really terrible idea of what you're telling me to do. And then when they leave, she straight up murders some people. She's the only one. Like turning their marrow into lead.

So she's actually the only one shown murdering anyone with magic. Yeah. Shown murdering humans with magic is her, right? Yes. Ged doesn't kill anyone with magic. No people. No, he kills a couple of dragons. Yeah.

Like the dragons were also dragons are also a non-human and an extant threat to his life. Yes. And, and the lives of all the people in the nearby Island chain. He doesn't kill any humans with magic. The only one who does that is the evil sorceress. Yeah.

Who then dies for it. Yeah. Gets torn apart as a seagull. Gets torn apart as a seagull by the winged servants of the dark powers. Yeah. Again, referenced in the world, there are these dark ancient powers, which are referenced and been never directly explained. They're sort of like, you know, the powers of the old world. never directly explained. They're sort of like the powers of the old world. They're bad.

They're very bad. Very bad, folks. But we'll talk about those a lot in the next book. We'll talk about those a lot in the Tombs of Atuan, because that's like the whole book is dealing with those nameless powers, even though this

book has at least one trapped in that stone in the, in the Tyranon. And that concludes part one of our two part series on Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. I want to thank you for listening. Part two will drop in two weeks as normal. If you'd like to follow the show on Twitter,

you can follow us at the show on Twitter, you can follow us at SwordsAndSockPod, which is Swords, the letter N, S-O-C, Pod. You can follow me at Himbo underscore Anarchist. You can follow Ketho at StupidPuma69. And if you'd like to contact the show directly, you can email us at swordsandsocialismpod at protonmail.com. As always, please do the rate and review nonsense

that every podcast needs, apparently. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you in a couple weeks. Thanks.