Talk:A Wizard of Earthsea

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Harry Potter is not and should not be the frame of reference for all children's fantasy! Needs a mild rewrite -- Tarquin

Done. -- Henriette

Nice job :-) -- Tarquin

Does "The Worst Witch" have anything to do with Le Guin? If not, that ref should be on a Harry Potter page, not here. Vicki Rosenzweig

No it doesn't. But neither does HP have anything to do with LeGuin. It's merely another "school for wizards" book for kids. -- Tarquin

IIRC, it wasn't the tongue of dragons that was used to give things their 'true' name, but an older language. The tongue of dragons was merely the closest actual spoken language on Earthsea. But I don't have the books, and it has been a while since I read them, so I may be making this up. -- Kimiko

Not so. The 'True speach' is inate to dragons. Le Guin explains this fully in 'A Description of Earthsea' which is part of 'Tales From Earthsea'. -- Daran

Also, the concept of a thing's 'true' name having power over it is fairly common in Fantasy stories AFAIK. In the SF novel Snowcrash (sorry, forgot the author) explained it from as coming from ancient Sumerian mythology or something. -- Kimiko 22:06 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

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"While saving his village from pirates, he discovers that he has the inborn aptitude to practice magic"

Actually he discovers his magical powers accidentally while herding goats. Don't recall the details of the pirate scene, but the paragraph in question certainly needs a rewrite. -- Lee M

Contents 1 Shadow 2 My Point of View 3 Trivia Removal 4 Vandalism

[edit] Shadow

Recently, this:

In the end, Ged confronts the shadow that hunts him, and defeats it by realizing that it is his own shadow. He calls the shadow by name, that which was thought to be nameless; he calls it "Ged". In doing so, he reconciles both sides of himself and takes responsibility for his past mistakes, which until then, he had run from.

was replaced by this:

In the end, Ged confronts the shadow that hunts him, and defeats it by realizing that it is the shadow of his own death. He calls the shadow by name, that which was thought to be nameless; he calls it "Ged". In doing so, he reconciles both sides of himself and takes responsibility for his past mistakes as well as his own mortality, which until then, he had run from.

I really don't think it is an improvement. But perhaps "shadow" should be linked to the Jungian concepts, or something?--Niels Ø 20:36, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't happy with that edit, either. I don't think UKL is talking about mortality at all -- except maybe, remotely, as one single aspect of the Shadow; it certainly isn't central. And, anyway, as we find out in the last books, that land whence it comes isn't really death at all, but only some inadequate substitute for limbo. Linking to Shadow (psychology) would be super-duper, IMHO. –Hajor 01:49, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My Point of View

It was a great book and really shows extrodinary topics in the Fantasy world. It is a great book and I recomend it to everyone.Ursala K. Le Guin did a great job writing this book and I am looking foward to more. You should definetly read it. ==

[edit] Trivia Removal

Deleted "The author is famous for her science fiction and fantasy works; over her career she has received about an award a year,[1] among them a total of ten of the most prestigious of them all, the Hugo and Nebula awards."

While probably true, this has nothing to do with the book itself. If anything, it should go in the Le Guin article. Clarityfiend 20:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Someone adopted a semi-creative form of vandalism for this page (replacing all B's with "Chunky" and all d's with "sex"). If I could easily fix it, I would, but I don't remember how to revert a page. Samer 12:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)