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CHAPTER 1 A BAD THING
his widow
The whole first paragraph doesn't even give her an identity of her own, just her relations to others.
Also does a great job of conveying the narrow minded, judgmental perspective of the locals.
but that didn’t count for much, since Ogion visited all sorts of nobodies.
Mages define importance differently
“I’ve generally lived near tombstones,” she said to her daughter.
That's an understatement!
I used to live in a silent house, alone, she thought. I will do so again.
“They’ve been camped in the river meadows all the month.
Tehanu from migrants
Not working, any of ’em. Filching and begging and living off the woman.
Stereotypical reactions to migrants, like the Rroma
“I’d say maybe she fell, but if she’d been awake she’d have tried to save herself. They beat her and thought they’d killed her, I guess, and wanted to hide what they’d done to her, so they—”
Making up the worst possible story
The witch Ivy came in from the kitchen, scowling at the sight of Goha.
Jealousy
She spoke in her own language. “I served them and I left them,” she said. “I will not let them have you.”
child stared at her or at nothing, trying to breathe, and trying again to breathe, and trying again to breathe.
Such simple language, but so very evocative
CHAPTER 2 GOING TO THE FALCON’S NEST
IT WAS MORE THAN A year later,
Beautiful, simple transition. Plus, it gets us away from widowhood
Ogion, when he wanted her, had quicker and finer messengers: an eagle calling, or only his own voice saying her name quietly—Will you come?
a child whom he looked at once and quickly looked away from served him milk, bread, cheese, and green onions,
rolled the child up in a blanket on it. “Now,” she said, “you’re a cocoon. In the morning you’ll be a butterfly and hatch out.”
Very charming and maternal. And also thematic.
If the child had had a name, she did not know it or would not say it. Goha called her Therru.
Ogion was my father, the way I’m your mother now. He looked after me and tried to teach me what I needed to know. He stayed with me when he’d rather have been wandering by himself.
That's a bit what parenthood is like
“Now you know, you remember when we talked about names,
This whole passage is a great summary of names in Earthsea
he didn’t know, you see, whether she was a woman who could change herself into a dragon, or a dragon who could change itself into a woman.
dragon and human were all one. They were all one people, one race, winged, and speaking the True Language. “They were beautiful, and strong, and wise, and free. “But in time nothing can be without becoming.
the dragons, always fewer and wilder, scattered by their endless, mindless greed and anger,
What Lark had said about gangs and thieves was not just the complaint each generation makes that things aren’t what they used to be and the world’s going to the dogs.
Women did not like to go alone in the streets and roads, nor did they like that loss of freedom.
the laws and limits of it and the dangers of breaking them, were calling themselves people of power, promising wonders of wealth and health to their followers, promising even immortality.
This is during the events of the third book, The Farthest Shore.
must be a time of ruining, the end of an age. How many hundred years since there was a king in Havnor?
Ogion’s name perhaps still held power. Or perhaps there was a power in Goha, or in the child.
“You’re red,” she said. “Like fire.”
Child's first words in the book.
an oil lamp on the table made a tiny seed of light,
Ogion said, “Come in, Tenar.”
Only at the end of chapter two do we finally see our main character's True Name.
CHAPTER 3 OGION
His face was as dark and hard as ever, but his hair was thin and white, and the dim lamp made no spark of light in his eyes.
“Lost,” Ogion said. “He’s lost. A cloud. A mist over the lands. He went into the west. Carrying the branch of the rowan tree. Into the dark mist. I’ve lost my hawk.”
Again, the events of The Farthest Shore
“I am Tenar,” she whispered. The fire, catching a dry branch of pine, leaped up in a bright yellow tongue of flame.
Although she, like all women, is threatened to be overwhelmed by her many roles, she is still herself
A flock of birds was flying over, low, so many that their wings stormed and the window was darkened by their quick shadows. It seemed they circled the house once and then were gone.
Nature saying farewell to Ogion
He knew the True Language of the Making, but he had never learned any Kargish at all.
Even the True Language is not all languages
“Never one thing, for you,” he said in the hoarse whistling whisper that was all the voice he had left. “No. Always at least two things, and usually more,” she said. “But I am here.”
he spoke his name to her, so that after his death he might be truly known.
Wow
That night his neighbors sat with Ogion, and he did not send them away.
Aunty Moss was a dour creature, unmarried, like most witches,
Village witches usually saw to the homing, as they called it, of the dead, and often to the burial.
“Wait, wait,” said Gont Port, with a patting gesture, trying to calm Re Albi’s indignation, and still gazing at Tenar.
I love that in this scene, it is the wizards who have no names, only roles!
CHAPTER 4 KALESSIN
She had fled from the Powers of the desert tombs, and then she had left the powers of learning and skill offered her by her guardian, Ogion. She had turned her back on all that, gone to the other side, the other room, where the women lived, to be one of them. A wife, a farmer’s wife, a mother, a householder, undertaking the power that a woman was born to, the authority allotted her by the arrangements of mankind.
With her, Therru behaved as with everyone—blank, unanswering, docile in the way an inanimate thing, a stone, is docile.
She did not have to shut the child in an oven, or change her into a monster, or seal her in stone. That had all been done already.
Weak as woman’s magic, wicked as woman’s magic, she had heard said a hundred times. And indeed she had seen that the witchery of such women as Moss or Ivy was often weak in sense and sometimes wicked in intent or through ignorance.
its voice like the dry roar of a kiln-fire spoke: “Thesse Kalessin.”
What an image! All the dragon description is so great!
There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.
“Kalessin,” she said. Therru was staring at her. A wave of warmth, heat, seemed to flow from the child, as if she were in fever.
It begins
