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 10: The Dragons’ Run
Length: 10 pages, 69 paragraphs
Setting: The Dragons’ Run
Characters introduced: None
There is something unusually cinematic to the first stretch of this chapter. I would not say that Le Guin, at this point in her career anyway, was a writer overly influenced by television and film.
Some modern writers have an internal camera that moves with the sensibility of a filmmaker. This can be used to great effect, but it also sometimes hinders a narrative. As I say, it’s not something I think Le Guin has done very often, but here she does it quite beautifully.
We have our lonesome sailors drifting in the fog. The older of the pair spies something off in the distance that we can’t see. Then, along with Arren, our eyes are drawn to the play of wings high above the sea. The music swells, the lighting changes and we get the sparkle of scales.
We are seeing dragons on the big screen in marvelous flight about the Dragons’ Run. Dragons are one of the wonders of Earthsea and something that Arren has wanted to see since early in our time with him.
They are wonderful and terrible, and our awe turns to dread when the dragons in the sky prove to be flying mad. The camera cowers with Arren at the presence of dragons near the boat, things take a turn for the minor key.
At last we are invited to pan around the wounded and dying dragon, and we are reminded that Earthsea is in the grip of an apocalypse.
Aside from this, Ged ends the chapter by revealing to us the thing that has been foreshadowed since we first met Arren. The goatherd from Gont intends to put a crown on Arren and make him king in Havnor.
But the hard work is still ahead.
Until next time!
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