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 12: Voyage
Length: 9 pages, 67 paragraphs
Setting: The sea
Characters introduced: None
Ged and Tenar leave Atuan here, and I think I was a bit mistaken in my reading of Tenar’s hesitance about Havnor. I think my knowledge of the future Tenar clouded my judgement of the present.
The Nameless Ones were still working their malign influence on Tenar, a subtler pursuit than when Ged fled the Court of the Terrenon pursued by primordial shadows. I think, though we readers should probably trust Ged, Tenar’s near murder of the wizard, her concern about how he might control her by her name, is also a moment to reinforce for the reader that Ged is above board, that his use of magic is not coercive as it might appear if you only see him summoning rabbits.
At last, Tenar names the elderly castaways from A Wizard of Earthsea. They are Ensar and Anthil, and that in itself seems like a deed, though it happens quickly. In this we also learn Tenar has been keeping things from us. She had another conversation with Thar that we never see.
Ged suggests, when Tenar requests that she be abandoned on an island for all that she did in the tombs, that maybe evil isn’t a thing you can be but a thing you can contain and pour out like water and light.
I may come back to this post tomorrow because there’s more I’d like to get into, but I’m short on time today. That remains to be seen. We sail to The Farthest Shore next. Until tomorrow!
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