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THE BIG READ • NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Lesson One
FOCUS:
Biography
Examining an author’s life can inform and expand the reader’s
understanding of a novel. Biographical criticism is the practice of analyzing
a literary work through the lens of an author’s experience. In this lesson,
explore the author’s life to understand the novel more fully.
Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, spent her childhood in California,
mainly in Berkeley, where her anthropologist father (A. L. Kroeber) was a
professor, but also in the Napa Valley, where her family owned a ranch. As
a child she heard Native American myths as bedtime stories, and later read
fairy tales, folktales, and fantasy stories with avidity. Such a background
may explain, in part, Le Guin’s approach to literature: She is a world-
builder. Just as an anthropologist reports on an indigenous people in as
much detail as possible, so a science fiction or fantasy author will build up
an elaborate picture of an alien culture and its inhabitants.
As a writer, Le Guin has chosen to lead a private and quietly ordered life.
A Wizard of Earthsea stresses that the ideal mage should practice a similar
modesty, self-discipline, and mental fortitude.
Discussion Activities
Listen to The Big Read Audio Guide. Have students take notes as they listen. Ask them to present the three most important points they learned from the Audio Guide. Distribute the following essays from the Reader’s Guide: “Introduction to the Novel” and “Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929).” Divide the class into two groups, and assign one essay to each group. After reading the essays, discuss the ways knowledge of Le Guin’s biography might help us understand this novel.
Writing Exercise
Read the opening paragraph of A Wizard of Earthsea aloud to your students. Ask your students to write a one-page paper on the following related topics: Why does Le Guin tell us that the hero of her book will eventually become an archmage and a dragonlord? What might she gain by thus undercutting a certain amount of suspense?
Homework
Read Chapter 1, which introduces the young Ged—here called Duny. Come to class with two themes that you believe will develop throughout the novel.
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Lesson Two
FOCUS:
The Fantasy Tradition
A work of art is always part of a tradition and to understand any particular
novel one should bear in mind the genre in which it is written. A Wizard of
Earthsea is a fantasy, that is, a story in which impossible things happen. It is
consequently part of a long tradition—think of myths, fairy tales, animal
fables, Arabian Nights entertainments, medieval romances, and tales of the
supernatural. Such stories often supply us with visions of heroic endeavor
and greatness of heart. They restore a sense of wonder to our lives. But they
also give us perspective on the way we are actually living. In this sense,
fantasies are like thought experiments, creative ways of reflecting on human
experience—imaginary places with real people in them. Through the use
of what J. R. R. Tolkien called a “secondary world,” we come to better
understand our own. While a fantasy isn’t “real,” it can still be true.
Addressing a group of booksellers in 2007, Ursula K. Le Guin stressed that
“fantasy is a literature particularly useful for examining the real difference
between good and evil.... Imagination is the instrument of ethics.” This is
one reason why the classic fantasies nearly always include quests, ordeals,
temptations, battles, and sacrifice. These can be exciting in themselves, but
they also represent the arduous search for psychological or spiritual integrity.
Plan to focus this class on discussing the nature and character of fantasy.
Discussion Activities
Distribute “The Fantasy Tradition,” the timeline, and “Suggested Reading” from the Reader’s Guide. Ask the students to read them in class. Start a discussion by raising some of the following closely related questions: 1) What are some characteristics of fantasy? 2) How does fantasy differ from realistic mainstream fiction? 3) What can fantasy do that realistic fiction cannot? 4) In what way can things be “true” without being “real”?
Writing Exercise
Ask your students to write a one-page essay on a favorite work of fantasy, emphasizing what they liked about it. The timeline and “Suggested Readings” mention many titles that may help students in choosing a book for their essay. If any students have never read a work of fantasy, ask them to write about another book, its genre, and why it appealed to them.
Homework
Read Chapter 2. In this chapter Duny—now called Ged—has become the apprentice to the mage Ogion the Silent. Pay close attention to Ogion’s character. What is he trying to teach Ged? Then read Handout One: Naming, Magic, and the Balance of Nature. How might Handout One make you see Ged differently?
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS • THE BIG READ
The central character in a work of literature is called the protagonist.
The protagonist usually initiates the main action of the story and
often overcomes a flaw such as weakness or ignorance to achieve a new
understanding by the work’s end. A protagonist who acts with great honor
or courage may be called a hero. An antihero is a protagonist lacking
these qualities. Instead of being dignified, brave, idealistic, or purposeful,
the antihero may be cowardly, self-interested, or weak. The protagonist’s
journey is enriched by encounters with characters who hold differing
beliefs. One such character type, a foil, has traits that contrast with the
protagonist’s and highlight important features of the main character’s
personality. The most important foil, the antagonist, opposes
the protagonist, barring or complicating his or her success.
Ged’s interaction with other characters—Ogion, the Doorkeeper, the
Archmage, Jasper, Vetch, the Shadow, and the little otak Hoeg—reveal
his virtues and weaknesses. In the turmoil of adolescence, he must make
ethical decisions that affect himself and others. Some characters draw Ged
toward strength and nobility, while others spur him to less than virtuous
actions. Does Jasper cause the young Ged’s undoing, or do the weaknesses
of pride and youth overcome our hero, as he challenges his classmate to
a sorcerer’s duel? The answer to this question depends on what we decide
about the character and intentions of these young, brash men.
Discussion Activities
Ask your students to consider the following questions: Who is the protagonist in this novel? Why does Jasper become Ged’s enemy? Why does Vetch become his friend? Does the school setting create a backdrop that will bring out certain personality traits in these young people? If so, what traits are likely to emerge due to the school setting? Does the school setting further encourage the antagonism between Jasper and Ged? If so, how?
Writing Exercise
Ursula K. Le Guin has written that the Earthsea trilogy is “in one aspect, about the artist. The artist as magician. The Trickster. Prospero. That is the only truly allegorical aspect it has of which I am conscious.... Wizardry is artistry. The trilogy is then, in this sense, about art, the creative experience, the creative process.” Write a one-page essay describing the powers and specialties of one of the Roke wizards. Explain how this wizard may or may not speak to Le Guin’s attempt to describe “the creative experience, the creative process.” Does this wizard reflect an aspect of an artist’s life or practice?
Homework
Read Chapters 5 and 6. Did the dragon react to Ged as you might expect? What do we learn about Ged when he does not give in to the dragon’s offers?
Lesson Four
FOCUS:
Characters
THE BIG READ • NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Lesson Five
FOCUS:
Figurative Language
Writers use figurative language such as imagery, similes, and metaphors
to help the reader visualize and experience events and emotions in a story.
Imagery—a word or phrase that refers to sensory experience (sight, sound,
smell, touch, or taste)—helps create a physical experience for the reader and
adds immediacy to literary language.
Some figurative language asks us to stretch our imaginations, finding
the likeness in seemingly unrelated things. Simile is a comparison of two
things that initially seem quite different but are shown to have significant
resemblance. Similes employ connective words, usually “like,” “as,” “than,”
or a verb such as “resembles.” A metaphor is a statement that one thing is
something else that, in a literal sense, it is not. By asserting that a thing is
something else, a metaphor creates a close association that underscores an
important similarity between these two things.
Discussion Activities
Le Guin uses simile to describe Ged’s control over the dragon: “When he spoke the dragon’s name if was as if he held the huge being on a fine, thin leash, tightening it on his throat.” She also uses metaphor as a descriptive tool: “When he raised it again and looked, the wizard was gone, and the sail of the boat was a white fleck on the waves eastward …” Though Le Guin occasionally uses figurative language, her writing tends to be plain, strong, and direct, without obvious flourish. Consider the very first sentence of the novel: “The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.” She gives music and richness to her prose through the rhythm of her sentences and occasionally through the use of alliteration and assonance. For example, even the stolid Vetch sometimes rises to prose-poetry: “‘The Princess Elfarran was only a woman,’ said Vetch, ‘and for her sake all Enlad was laid waste, and the Hero- Mage of Havnor died, and the island Soléa sank beneath the sea.” Ask the class to select some particularly distinctive sentences from the novel and explain what makes them so striking.
Writing Exercise
Having discussed Le Guin’s style and language with the students, ask them to write a paragraph in that style. Possible topics: Describe getting dressed for a party as if you were a warrior preparing for battle. Evoke the Shadow lurking in the hallways of your school. Pretend that an ant searching for food is a hero on a quest. Imagine the principal of the school making announcements on the public address system in the magisterial voice of a great wizard.
Homework
Read Chapter 7. Review the first seven chapters of the novel. Find three symbols and be prepared to describe why these symbols might be important.
THE BIG READ • NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Lesson Seven
FOCUS:
Character Development
Novels trace the development of characters who encounter a series of
challenges. Most characters contain a complex balance of virtues and vices.
Internal and external forces require characters to question themselves,
overcome fears, or reconsider dreams. The protagonist may undergo
profound change. A close study of character development maps, in each
character, the evolution of motivation, personality, and belief. The tension
between a character’s strengths and weaknesses keeps the reader guessing
about what might happen next and the protagonist’s eventual success or
failure.
In chapter six Ged reaches what may be the nadir of his story. Frightened,
afraid of any shadow, he runs away from everything. As a common
oarsman, he makes another enemy of Skiorh, encounters a mysterious
messenger who tells him to go to Osskil, and eventually finds himself in
mortal combat with the Shadow itself.
Discussion Activities
One great test of a person’s character explored in literature is how he confronts that which he fears, whether shame, weakness, a hidden stigma, or death itself. Discuss the ways fear controls Ged at various points in the novel. At other times, he overcomes his fear. What character traits allow Ged to conquer self-doubt and terror? Ask the class to reflect on fear in their own lives. Do they avoid facing those things that frighten or worry them? Or do they confront them? How, in fact, does one deal with stomach-churning fear? Remember that books are not simply aesthetic objects: they also help us to live with greater self-understanding and sympathy for others, and offer us solace and inspiration.
Writing Exercise
Ged has changed since his initial encounter with the Shadow and his brushes with death. He has been making progress in self-awareness and gradually growing wiser, more mature. Write a one-page portrait of Ged as he now is, emphasizing how he differs from his younger self and noting the steps that have led to this, among them his friendship with Pechvarry, his encounter with the dragon Yevaud, and his resistance to Serret.
Homework
Read Chapter 9. In Chapter 9, Ged finally reunites with his friend Vetch. Why has it taken so long for the two sorcerers to reunite? Why might Le Guin have chosen to wait to give us this encounter? What do you think may happen to their friendship as the novel ends?
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS • THE BIG READ
Lesson Eight
FOCUS:
The Plot Unfolds
The author crafts a plot structure to create expectations, increase suspense,
and develop characters. The pacing of events can make a novel either
predictable or riveting. Foreshadowing and flashbacks allow the author to
defy the constraints of time. Sometimes an author can confound a simple
plot by telling stories within stories. In a conventional work of fiction, the
peak of the story’s conflict—the climax—is followed by the resolution, or
denouement, in which the aftereffects of that climactic action are presented.
Ursula K. Le Guin has written: “I think it is a mistake to think of story
as simply moving forward. The rhythmic structure of narrative is both
journeylike and architectural. Great novels offer us not only a series of
events, but a place, a landscape of the imagination which we can inhabit
and return to. This may be particularly clear in the ‘secondary universe’ of
fantasy, where not only the action but the setting is avowedly invented by
the author.”
Discussion Activities
While A Wizard of Earthsea clearly focuses on what one might call the education and testing of a young wizard, the novel also manages to convey a growing sense of Earthsea itself. Over the course of the novel Ged visits many of the islands of the archipelago, encounters people of different races and social classes, and sees for himself the richness and variety of Earthsea life. Talk with the class about what lessons Ged learns from his travels. Note which places and people seem admirable, and which are more questionable. Work with the class to list the lessons Ged has learned from his travels. How does Le Guin pace the story to develop structure in an architectural way? How might the places and people encountered on Ged’s journey contribute to the rhythm and structure?
Writing Exercise
While A Wizard of Earthsea is dominated by male characters, women do play key roles in Ged’s development. Choose one female character and write an essay about what she represents. You might focus this essay on examining Serret or Yarrow specifically. How do the women contribute to the plot of the story? Are they present at significant moments in the story? If so, why? If not, why not?
Homework
Read Handout Three: Ged’s Coming of Age. Pick two themes to discuss in the next class. Find selections from the text that speak to the themes you have selected. For example, if your theme relates to the battle of good and evil, choose passages that illustrate that theme. Read Chapter 10 and finish the novel. Read Handout Two: The Earthsea Trilogy.
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS • THE BIG READ
Lesson Ten
FOCUS:
What Makes a Book Great?
Great stories articulate and explore the mysteries of our daily lives in the
larger context of the human struggle. The writer’s voice, style, and use of
language inform the plot, characters, and themes. By creating opportunities
to learn, imagine, and reflect, a great novel is a work of art that affects
many generations of readers, changes lives, challenges assumptions, and
breaks new ground.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels and stories depict the human condition, the
magic and the obstacles in all our lives. She has used fantasy and science
fiction to stretch our imaginations, to create works of great beauty, and
to raise what philosophy students sometimes call The Big Questions. A
Wizard of Earthsea asks us to consider the proper use of power and the
nature of the self. The Left Hand of Darkness , set on a planet where people
are both male and female, examines the intricacies of friendship and love.
The Dispossessed discusses the characteristics of an ideal society. These
novels, and many others, have established Ursula K. Le Guin as one of the
most admired and admirable writers of our time.
Discussion Activities
Ask students to make a list of the characteristics of a great book. Write these on the board. What elevates a novel to greatness? Then ask them to discuss, within groups, other books they know that include some of these characteristics. Do any of these books remind them of A Wizard of Earthsea? Is this a great novel? Some readers might still argue that a fantasy novel must be escapist entertainment and can never rise to the heights of the greatest literature. After reading A Wizard of Earthsea, do you think this is true? Would you read other works of fantasy?
Writing Exercise
Write a one-page statement of why every person should read works of fantasy. If you disagree with this statement, write a one-page as to why you disagree.
Homework
Students will complete their essays, due at the next class session.
THE BIG READ • NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS Naming, Magic, and the Balance of Nature Le Guin has stressed that A Wizard of Earthsea — indeed all her fiction—is suffused with Taoism and the principles poetically set down in Lao Tse’s Tao-Te-Ching. The Tao-Te-Ching is one of the most beloved books in the world. Tao (pronounced “dow”) means “way,” as in a path, road, or direction; Te (pronounced “duh”) refers to individual power, integrity, and spirit; Ching (pronounced “jeang”) is the Chinese word for a classic. Thus the book’s title has sometimes been rendered “The Book of the Way and its Power” or “The Way of Life” or “The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way.” Any of these various renderings, but especially the last, might be an apt one-phrase description of A Wizard of Earthsea , a classic about integrity and the way. Like Ged’s first master Ogion, the poetic and paradoxical sayings of the Tao-Te-Ching ask us to practice modesty, stillness, and spontaneity, to trust in the natural rhythms of life, to live harmoniously with our self and the universe, to go with the flow. In particular, the Tao-Te-Ching asks us to cultivate non-action (wu-wei), to recognize the value of emptiness and nothingness. The famous yin-yang symbol—made of interlocking light and dark semi-circles—represents this Taoist unity of opposites: In the dark feminine yin is a dot of white; in the white masculine yang is a dot of black. The name Earthsea is itself a kind of yin- yang word. From the very opening epigraph—“The Creation of Éa”— A Wizard of Earthsea announces that Taoist mutuality, not western duality, is fundamental to Le Guin’s imagined world: Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky. In fact, this little poem, properly read, sums up the entire novel. Things are not wholly right or wrong, black or white, and we are not required to choose between them: they are aspects of a larger whole. Apparent polarities actually need each other to be complete. As the mage Ogion says to Ged, “to hear, one must be silent.” In the Old Speech spoken by dragons—Confucius once compared Lao Tse to a dragon able to ascend into heaven—a name and the thing denoted are one. Magic itself is simply knowledge of these words and thus an understanding of the true nature of things. So to speak a spell is to intrude upon the balance of the universe. The hermit-like Ogion tries to teach Taoist quietism to his brash young apprentice, for “what I have is what you lack.” To no avail. Again, at school on Roke, the proud Ged dismisses his teacher’s caution that the use of magic requires responsibility and awareness. One can change a thing by changing its name, the Master Hand tells him, but by doing so one changes the world—and the wise man needs to weigh the consequences. Ged is nearly destroyed by temptation before he begins his long process of coming to understand his full nature and what he should be. He must, in a sense, become worthy of his true name, of what he is. In the end, the chastened Ged comes to embody what are sometimes called the Three Jewels or Treasures of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. He learns to act appropriately, not simply to master. Of course, these are virtues needed by all men and women, not just wizards of Earthsea.
HANDOUT ONE
THE BIG READ • NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS Ged’s Coming of Age A Wizard of Earthsea examines Ged’s coming of age, especially the period of anguish and ordeal that follows the release of the shadow into the world. Growing up, accepting responsibility, and recognizing one’s strengths and limitations are principal themes of nearly all young adult fiction. In many young adult novels a girl or boy undergoes a period of confusion and ordeal and emerges a new and different person, one with greater understanding of himself and others. This same process of transformation is also one that we associate with religious or social “rites of passage.” In A Wizard of Earthsea the boy called Duny at the age of 13 walks naked through the icy Ar river and crosses to where Ogion “reached out his hand and clasping the boy’s arm whispered to him his true name: Ged.” Despite this ritual, Ged has a long way to go before he understands and becomes his true self—and it is these teenaged years of arrogance, trial, defeat, and eventual self- acceptance that Le Guin chronicles. In his classic study The Rites of Passage , Arnold van Gennep postulated a three-part movement to the recognized process of coming of age: separation from the community, followed by a kind of wilderness period when one has shed one identity but not yet found another, and then a re-entry into society as a new man or woman. In the equally celebrated The Ritual Process , Victor Turner focuses on that middle or liminal period. (Liminal means threshold—the place where one is neither in nor out.) The liminal state dissolves normal barriers and boundaries, is full of ambiguity and indeterminacy—it is a no-man’s land, a limbo, a period marked by seclusion, testing, uncertainty, sexual confusion, chastening, the breakdown of social norms. This state mirrors Ged’s mental state and experiences after he releases the Shadow. The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung studied the nature of the unconscious and our need in life to achieve integration of our various selves and impulses. Archetypal figures (the Wise Old Man, the helpful animal), universal symbols (water as the unconscious), and primordial experiences (the night sea journey to the ends of the earth) pervade Jungian thought—and Le Guin’s novel. Most strikingly, Jung speculated that a person could only reach full maturity by confronting what he called the Shadow—one’s dark side, all those desires and temptations that the public self tries to hide and repress. To Jung, this dark side is as much a part of us as our light side. Psychological growth, then, implies an enlargement of consciousness, incorporation rather than rejection, both rather than one or the other. Like Taoism, Jung rejects duality for harmony. These theories of personal transformation— anthropological, mythic, and psychological—all posit what may be called a period of ritual or symbolic death. Each insists on a time of darkness, of limbo or physical abuse that mimics actual death. Many times Ged comes close to dying in A Wizard of Earthse a, each time emerging as a different, stronger self. To confront the Shadow, he sails beyond the known world to face what looks like certain death in order to re-emerge as a mature person, the man who will one day become Archmage and dragonlord.
HANDOUT THREE
