8
votes
Accepted
How did one become a Wizard in A Wizard of Earthsea?
In the essay ‘A Description of Earthsea’, included in Tales of Earthsea, Le Guin writes:
Among the Hardic-speaking people of the Archipelago, the ability to do magic is an inborn talent, like the ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Why was Ogion troubled by the name of the ship that Ged took to Roke?
The passage you quote comes only two pages after Ged's first encounter with terrifying magic:
As he read it, puzzling out the runes and symbols one by one, a horror came over him. His eyes were ...
- 71.1k
5
votes
Accepted
What does the raven say to Ged when he first enters the school at Roke?
The raven's words are never explicitly translated, but they are referenced later.
In Chapter 6, "Hunted", of the same book A Wizard of Earthsea:
Hope and mistrust struggled in Ged’s mind as ...
- 71.1k
5
votes
Are wizard and mage used interchangeably in Le Guin's Earthsea series?
The section "A Description of Earthsea" at the end of Tales from Earthsea (2001) is explicit about the hierarchy:
Witchery was restricted to women. All magic practiced by women was called “...
- 44k
5
votes
Accepted
Why could Dragons lie in Old Speech?
A Wizard of Earthsea has a third-person narrator who is "omniscient" in the sense that the narration dips into the thoughts of multiple characters. But the narration is also limited in the sense that ...
- 53.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Why were Ogion's teaching methods so different than the teaching methods in Roke?
The difference between Ogion’s mode of teaching and that of the School of Wizardry on Roke is a dramatization of the themes of A Wizard of Earthsea. There is a sense in which Ogion stands at the end ...
- 53.5k
4
votes
Why could Dragons lie in Old Speech?
The Old Speech is not like other languages in the world of Earthsea. In "A Description of Earthsea", the last chapter of Tales from Earthsea (2001), Ursula Le Guin also calls it the True ...
- 44k
2
votes
How did one become a Wizard in A Wizard of Earthsea?
Gareth Rees's answer covers the most important points, i.e. how to become the sort of wizard that the school of Roke approved of. The last novel in the Earthsea cycle, The Other Wind, mentions that ...
- 44k
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