Talk:The Farthest Shore

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I'm new to Wikipedia. I thought I'd have a go at filling in some of the gaps here. I'm willing to do the other 'missing' books of Earthsea but I'll wait to see how this one stands up first. It's probabably too long, for a start -- Daran

Does this title allude to The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes? If so, that could be mentioned.

I have no idea -- Daran

It doesn't. The Farthest Shore was published 13 years earlier than Hughes' book. Ausir 20:40, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Edited the last paragraph to remove an egregiously personal opinion. I'm not quite sure how the analysis overall fits with the objective/impartial policy of Wikipedia. I just used the article in The Tombs of Atuan as a model. -- Daran

I'd agree that this is too long; we don't need so much plot summary, and I'm not thrilled with our offering "analyses" of literary works--that's very hard to be NPOV about. Also, this needs a spelling/proofreading check, but I don't want to spend a lot of time doing fiddly fixes on things that we may remove altogether. I'm tempted to return later in the week, cut this way down, and attempt to connect it to the later Earthsea books. (And I think I'd better look at the page on The Tombs of Atuan as well. (For the person who asked, no, there's no connection to the Hughes book.) Vicki Rosenzweig 12:58, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

OK I've trimmed it down and 'connected it' to Tehanu.

According to What Wiki is not "But critical analysis of art is welcome, if grounded in direct observations." There are significant objective differences between the trilogy and the later books, which a bare synopsis would not reveal. -- [[User:Daran|Daran]

Vicki, thanks for your help with this.

I've reverted your change to the 'Tombs of Atuan' reference. I presume you were trying to distinguish between the book title and the eponymous geographical location. Does this really need to be distinguished? Also, the phrase 'The place of the Tombs of Atuan' could be construed as referring to the above-ground location, which a mage of Ged's power should be fairly safe entering. It was his entry into the tombs themselves which was foolhardy.

I agree my original wording in the last sentence was inadequate. However your amendment was incongruous. The purpose of the sentence was to justify the claim about Ged's increasing maturity and caution. If you do not agree that this is an objective fact about the character worthy of inclusion in the article, then the whole section should come out. -- Daran

I do think we need to distinguish geography from book title, somehow.

In general yes, but the wording here is unambiguous. In future we might create an article about Atuan, (as well as other major islands) and link to that here instead. But until we do, I think it better to link to something which has some useful information.

Ged was increasingly mature, but I don't think the difference in his quests between the first and third books is good evidence of that--at least, we'd need to explain that in A Wizard of Earthsea he caused as well as fixing the problem, whereas in The Farthest Shore he dealt with a problem that he hadn't created. Maturity, in this sense, is that he has a better idea of what is needful ("the first lesson on Roke, and the last, is 'do only what is needful'"). I'm not at all convinced that he was more cautious--he was doing what he had to, but he knew that he was placing himself, and the Heir of Morred, at risk in order to save something larger. Courage, yes, but not caution.

I deliberately didn't refer to his quest in A Wizard of Earthsea, because, as you said, everything he did on it was needful. But the quest, (Which really started with his departure for Pendor from Low Torning) is only half the book. He did, indirectly, create the problem in The Farthest Shore during his earlier encounter with Cob, and he admits his behaviour then was motivated by pride and arrogance. I take your point about him not being more cautious.

In case it's not obvious, I would be happy to discuss Earthsea with you at length, here or elsewhere. Vicki Rosenzweig 13:21, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC) (vr [at] redbird [dot] org if the conversation stops being wikipedia-relevant but you want to continue it for its own sake).

I might do that, but we're still on topic for now. -- Daran 13:58, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Studio Ghibli Movie

Should this be included in the discussion of the book? They're basing it on this one, after all.