A Wizard of Earthsea

I was not quite sure what to expect of A Wizard of Earthsea before I read it.  I knew that Ursula K. Le Guin was a thoughtful and deep writer, but I had only read her short stories.  I had seen the movie, but as all audiences know, movies rarely follow books closely.  I began the story and fell into the comfortable escape books always offer from the world around us.  The language was formal, deeper and poetic, different from the language that many authors have to offer these days.  It was not quite to the point of old English (I remember Chaucer being slightly more difficult to read than this), or even Shakespearean English.  It was poetic and captivating, yet not so different that it felt unnatural to read, which I believe some books by authors attempting to mimic an older language have trouble with sometimes.  It spoke of spells and balance but also of a true language that held the power and essence of an item by whatever it's true name was.  To know the name was to have power over the item, which reminded me of another series, Eragon.

     Eragon is a similar coming of age story, a Quest Adventure, of a dragon rider who possesses similar powers and must go through similar training to what Ged goes through in A Wizard of Earthsea.  He too must go through the trials of coming from a point as a lowly village boy to a very powerful man, and must also understand the balance of the powers he holds with their consequences.  Perhaps Le Guin, as well as Christopher Paolini who writes Eragon, were trying to alert the reader to the consequences of all actions, that we all hold more power than we realize.  One misspoken word from a peer could destroy the confidence of another.  Similarly, one misspoken word by a wizard could mean disastrous consequences for another.  Ged comes into himself, learning his name and growing as a person. The naming process almost reminds me of a christian baptism. He goes into the watr, naked, even of his name, and comes out newly named, ready to begin his new life with a name and almost entirely new being, a new purpose for himself.  He seemed to have been a boy born into the wrong life, a village boy who was intended for the isle of the wise, but what the story really teaches is that through our paths in life, no matter how we begin, we fall into ourselves, become our true selves, through experience and growth, through knowledge.  It is not that we begin at the wrong place, but that it leads us to our future by a different path, that we have the experience and knowledge of our beginning to help us be exactly who we are supposed to be.