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 6: Hunted
Length: 14 pages, 78 paragraphs
Setting: The Ninety Isles, Osskil, several islands of the Archipelago
Characters introduced: Skiorh
We are over halfway through A Wizard of Earthsea now, and it is only just now dawning on me that in a book where names are treated as a sacred and powerful thing the vast majority of characters we meet do not have names.
Even some of the recurring characters are hidden behind proper nouns or epithets. I think there is more to this than Le Guin sorting our characters into “character” and “scenery,” but I have not arrived at a proper theory for just exactly what’s going on. In the next chapter we’ll see a neat trick come to fruition that benefits from this sparse use of naming.
I love the weather in this chapter. Le Guin brings the Roke-wind to life with the prose during the storm gaining intensity until the captain “roars out ragefully.” I’d normally consider that an odious dialogue tag, and my memory suggests that Le Guin’s prose is a bit more reserved in later installments, but sparsely used, tags like that have heft.
Ged’s lonely trek with the Skiorh-gebbeth reminds me of a few passages. It reminds me of the hobbits’ encounter with the barrow-wight in the Lord of the Rings, and it also brings to mind the bed linen apparition in M.R. James’ ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.’ It’s an effective bit of horror, and I’ll admit I’d all but forgotten this part of the book until my reread last month.
I wish I could read this book for the first time again because I have no idea how effective the gebbeth’s use of Ged’s true name is. Reading it with a mostly complete experience of Earthsea, that line is a stunner every time.
“Ged stopped. All around stretched empty hills in the late, dusk light. Sparse snow whirled a little falling. ‘Skiorh!’ he said, and the other halted, and turned. There was no face under the peaked hood.
Before Ged could speak spell or summon power, the gebbeth spoke, saying in its hoarse voice, ‘Ged!'”
Until next time!
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