FF Thursday October 27

On Thursday's class,we continued to discuss A Wizard of Earthsea, this time reviewing the second part of the book we read. We opened up the class by looking at two situations, the Court of the Terrenon and Ged's interaction with the old man and woman and used them to express how Ged has changed since the beginning of the book. As a group we agreed that Ged's experience with the Shadow has changed his motivations and humbled his desires. Which is ultimately what saves him from being enslaved by the stone and helps him to understand the old man and woman through newfound patience and shows he has learned compassion for others when he makes the spring of water for them.

Next we again looked over females in relation to story and how they interact with Ged by comparing the two females, Serret and Yarrow. We determined that while serret takes a more active role in the story in terms of her trying to tempt Ged twice, her role of power is viewed as a bad thing here. Once again making a similar parallel to the White Witch of Narnia, that power in the hands of a female is evil or that women are more tempted or swayed to evil if they have power. Whereas we determined that Yarrow while prominent as Vetch’s sister doesn’t take as active a role. While the lone caring female figure in the book, her characterization is that of a naïve girl who doesn’t really now much and doesn’t really have much effect on Ged besides being a source of comfort.

The group then moved onto the group presentation of Earthsea and the essay and questions they chose. They chose the Essay by W. A. Senior the “Cultural Anthropology and Rituals of Exchange in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Earthsea””. In their summarization of the essay they determined that Earthsea has a unique way of using gifts as a way to form bonds and that gifts are essential ties between people and cultures. The establish that both the giver and receiver play roles that are essential to relationships and this is seen through Ged’s use of using his powers to help others in exchange for things such as food or shelter. They also went on to describe how the other three books continue this idea of creating bonds through gift giving and the idea of at the end of the last book coming full circle.

They then went on to ask questions to the group about how Ged has changed and similar comparisons to the heroes of other stories we have read. They also asked the group how the shadow and Ged symbolize light and dark and we determined that while the shadow represents darkness and the knowledge of the scary unknown it is essential to have to maintain a balance in the world. And that Ged was able to achieve true balance and selfhood by accepting the shadow as him because both sides are needed.

Michelle Kim's Notes for October 27
In class today, we talked about the second part in "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin. For the past two weeks, we talked about Ged's journey and his hunt for the dark shadow that seeks to kill him. One of the in class writing was what role the old couples had in the book and how they helped him out in his journey. We discussed that the old couples knows of his maturity and his sorrows that he went through. They give him a ring and also gave him more passion as a maternal and paternal figure, rather than his real parents that were not there for support. They also gave him the idea of friendship, for example Vetch and the old couples, and also help him to renew his relations with others. Yarrow, Vetch's sister, helps Ged out and approaches Ged as a friend rather than a stranger. The second writing was about the power of the stone that Ged encounters in the Court of Terrenon. Ged wakes up after his last encounter with the Shadow at the Court of Terrenon, where he also wakes up to a beautiful young lady who ends up being the same witch from Gont. She leads Ged to a stone that speaks and could tell Ged anything he wishes because the true master of the stone was him. In the discussion as a class, we talked about the roles of Yarrow and Serret and what they did to help out Ged in the story. Yarrow comes in later on page 156 and she helps to recover joy and happiness that was lost. Yarrow is the motherly and sisterly figure towards the end of the book. Serret, who comes in towards the middle of the book in chapter 7 page 109, helps him to recover the sorrow and heals those sorrows. As the discussion begins for the book "A Wizard of Earthsea", we begin with a biography of Ursula K. Le Guin. She was born in Berkley, California, the "A Wizard of Earthsea" was first of the series in the fantasy world, Earthsea, and the book won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. We discussed the article "Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea: Rescuing the Damaged Child" from the website, New York Review of Science Fiction. The author of this article is Sandra J. Lindow, written in 1997, and she discusses how wizardly celibacy is a "genre tradition". In the discussion for the book, we talk about the reasoning behind the title "Earthsea", the importance of naming in the book, significance of each character, the dragon that Ged encounters and his maturity, dry land and oversea, and Ged's encounter with the shadow.