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 11: The Western Mountains
Length: 10 pages, 114 paragraphs
Setting: Atuan beyond the Tombs
Characters introduced: None
I haven’t much to say on this chapter. Le Guin continues the story on past where some might end it because the story is not about the Tombs and escaping them, it is about Tenar asserting herself as a free person with her own wants and needs.
Tenar and Ged’s journey shows us a bit about the people of the Inner Lands and especially the rules and thinking of wizards, though much of it grows quite naturally from what we saw in A Wizard of Earthsea. We also learn that Tenar does not seem to crave the grand life Ged believes awaits her in Havnor.
Tenar, it seems, instinctively longs for something simpler than being dolled up and placed on a pedestal in Havnor. She’s been dolled up and placed in a pedestal at the Place of the Tombs most of her life thus far. A change in the rules, customs, and costumes isn’t the same thing as really being free.
I am finding as I get toward the end of the books, I have less to say, not more. A lot of the work of unriddling the way the story is told happens early on, and it seems redundant to drag that out. Still, one more chapter to go in The Tombs of Atuan, and then we’ll sail to The Farthest Shore.
Until next time.
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