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 8: Hawks
Length: 20 pages, 154 paragraphs
Setting: Re Albi
Characters introduced: None
One of the men who raped and tried to kill Therru returns in this chapter. Much is made of birds and dragons and the right thing to teach Therru.
To tell you the truth, this is one of those places where I’m not quite sure I’m keeping up with Le Guin. I see how the story is being told, but I don’t know that I understand what Le Guin is trying to say.
I don’t think this is a fault in Le Guin’s writing (or even a fault in my reading), I just don’t think I’m quite far enough along to see things properly from Tenar’s and Le Guin’s vantage point.
I will spoil a bit more than usual as I’ve finished my reread, and I think this is the point to start talking about how the book ends and what conclusions it might be drawing.
We get the idea from Ogion’s story and from Fan’s namesake decoration that dragons and humans are two sides of the same coin. We learn in the last chapter of the book that this is, to some degree, true. Therru is a little girl, and she is also a dragon. She has always been both because, perhaps, everybody has always been both.
Tenar is compared to a dragon. Moss talks about reputation being a woman’s treasure, and Tenar compares it to a dragons hoard.
I think where Le Guin is going, and this is mostly but not exclusively in relation to women in the text, is that dragons are those who chose to live wild and live as themselves. They are seen as dangerous and powerful because they are not bond to the lives of humans, and humans who choose to go their own way like Moss and Tenar and Therru and even Ged, are also seen as dangerous and wild and powerful. And that perception is itself dangerous.
As I write this, I am reminded of Le Guin’s words on story as a bag that carries many ideas, and I think I have been mistaking Tehanu for an arrow rather than a bag. There are many ideas here, and one of them is certainly that people, especially women, who live outside of society’s expectations for them, whether for good or ill, are seen as dangerous and people jealous of that freedom will seek to punish them.
I still feel I’m in over my head a bit here but getting closer to the ideas at play. Things get dire next chapter.
Until next time.
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