In this series, I’ll be working my way through Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea works and analyzing her prose chapter by chapter. Spoilers follow.
Chapter 3: The School for Wizards
Length: 19 pages, 87 paragraphs
Setting: Roke
Characters introduced: The Doorkeeper, Archmage Nemmerle, Jasper, Vetch, Hoeg, Master Chanter, Master Windkey, Master Herbal, Master Hand, Master Changer, Master Namer Kurremkarmerruk, Lord of O, Lady of O
As I get to this chapter, I am impressed by how infinitely re-readable I find Le Guin’s prose. There are books I love just as much if not more that I could not read twice back-to-back like this.
We really start to get into the magic and lore of Earthsea in this chapter, and I think the magic here is strongest when it’s subtlest. How does the door to the school at Roke work? What is the archmage up to? Subtle, powerful magics.
My favorite passage in this chapter is, I think, Nemmerle and Ged’s meeting.
As their eyes met, a bird sang aloud in the branches of the tree. In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves: it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.
I’m also impressed by how deftly Le Guin writes our prickly, ambitious, arrogant, self-conscious teen protagonist without making him unlikable or over-the-top. Jasper and Ged’s rivalry seems so true to me. Maybe Jasper didn’t intend to be high-handed with Ged from the start, but Ged certainly took it that way in a manner teenagers will. Jasper, for his part, may not have been intended to be rude, but he proves himself more than capable of rudeness.
I believe these characters, and the story is driven by that characterization.
Until next time.
If you’re interested, check back Monday, 2/9. I may have a bit more to say about this chapter after I’ve completed some projects for my day job and had a rest.
chasetriesagain.com 