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 4: Irian
Length: 5 pages
Setting: Roke
Of course Dragonfly is a dragon. Of course Thorion is undone on Roke Knoll as the school at Roke is remade and unmade, a parallel to Early and its founding.
In The Farthest Shore Le Guin showed us a rising tide of unbalance that corrupted all it touched filling Earthsea from the outside in. Some of the masters of Roke were convinced that it would always be above the high tide mark. In “Dragonfly” we see that only Roke Knoll and the Imminent Grove have that privilege, and we see that those who least doubted their superiority were most susceptible to that corruption.
The illustrated Earthsea collection does not place “A Description of Earthsea” with Tales from Earthsea in which it was published, but I will include it here. We’ll finish this volume tomorrow then it’s on to The Other Wind, and we’ll be perilously close to the end.
Until next time.
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