Wizard of Earthsea - Characters you like/hate? Why?

[Nick, Founder (In Absentia)]

Vetch is personally my favorite character. He is the strongest of character and morals, in my opinion, plus I always consider his final stance at the end one of the bravest in the book. Instead of allowing the shadow possessed Ged to return to Earthsea he is ready to sink them into the Open Sea. Couple this with his sacrificing his own true name as a sign of trust to Ged and he rocks.

[Angie]

I also like liked Vetch the best. I thought it was so great to think that someone would stay someone's friend after 2 years of never speaking to them, and knowing that something as horrible as the shadow was following them. I loved how when the shadow and Ged were righting that Vetch tried to jump in to save his friend knowing he could possibly die or be possessed by the shadow himself. My least favorite character was the girl (i forgot her name) that tries to persuade him to use the stone in the castle to learn the name of the shadow. I didn't like her quick exit. I kinda wish she had more of role in the book.

[Arctic]

Add me to the Vetch fanbase as well. I would love to have a friend like that.

Least would be the sniveling Jasper, for obvious reasons.

[J-Lynn Van Pelt]

Vetch, hands down.

Least would be sniveling Ged for obvious reasons. I kept waiting for him to grow up.

[Peregrine]

My favourite "character," if you will, was the sea. I love how the sea, and the Open Ocean, set the tone for story action, how the sea surrounds everything, and intrudes into people's lives will they, won't they - the sinking of Soléa, Ged journeying on the sea for the first time, many instances in this book show the sea colouring, and sometimes affecting, the story.

[Richard]

Well, its been a long time since this group read the book, but I'm covering it in preparation for the upcoming The Tombs of Atuan.

I don't really have a least favorite character — the book felt mostly shallow and bloodless to me and I didn't feel much intensity towards anything.

However, the Jasper character was the one I was enjoying the most. Part of my disappointment was that he made no later appearance, so whether my hopes for him are fulfilled will have to wait for the later novels.

But villains give an author a chance to show they can go beyond the stereotyped tropes of their genre. If LeGuin is good, Jasper will have matured into a more complex character, with understandable motivations and depth. Why was he so supercilious? J.K. Rowling did a pretty good job explaining that Snape was caustic because he saw Harry in the mold of his smug parents; Rowling also did a decent job at presenting the pathos of Voldemort's childhood.

Meanwhile, the vaunted Tolkien never permitted any ambiguity in his evil, thus leaving his series emotionally juvenile.

More recently, as much as I disliked where Philip Pullman ended up with His Dark Materials, he masterfully allowed us to see both the charismatic and repellent sides of Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel. And Guy Gavriel Kay painted his villains with such nuance in Tigana that I was left wondering why I felt so much affection for the bad guy.

Jasper is the only character LeGuin put in her book that was left with room to grow. I didn't much like the young Jasper, but I can hope he turns into a Severus Snape, and not into a trivial Saruman.

[Rachel]

Richard wrote: Meanwhile, the vaunted Tolkien never permitted any ambiguity in his evil, thus leaving his series emotionally juvenile.

I have to disagree with that assessment--is there no ambiguity in Gollum? in Boromir? in the Steward of Gondor? It's true that the Great Evils--Sauron, Saruman--are more purely evil. But they are not human. Who's to say that other beings and races must share the human race's ambiguity?

[Richard]

Rachel Starr wrote: "I have to disagree with that assessment--is there no ambiguity in Gollum? in Boromir? in the Steward of Gondor?"

First, I said he had no ambiguity in his evil. I'll give you Gollum — one character that spent most of his time on the 'evil' side of the ledger sheet whose character we saw with any complexity.

And most of his good characters were adequate imperfect and showed very good depth of character, although the worst we ever saw Gandalf was when he grew angry.

Rachel Starr wrote: "Who's to say that other beings and races must share the human race's ambiguity? "

Tolkien's had the say, and he declared that Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits all were basically akin to one another in their moral capacities. As were Wizards -- Saruman was a wizard just as was Gandalf, and jumped before we met him into the fundamentally evil camp.

But I agree: an author is free to declare that his villains are simply and basically evil, no doubts. But that is what precisely will render it juvenile.

A child might reason that an oppressor — a bully or nasty teacher — is just evil. But an adult has to understand that even as people commit evil acts, they do these for comprehensible reasons, albeit often for reasons we don't consider rational. Saruman did what he did because he was evil; Voldemort, Hitler and Stalin were evil because of what they did.

Similarly, if LeGuin returns to Jasper and never explains why he is so nasty, then she will have failed to differentiate him from a schoolyard bully seen from a child's perspective.

[Rachel]

Richard wrote: Saruman did what he did because he was evil; Voldemort, Hitler and Stalin were evil because of what they did.

Very well put :).

I think I would argue that there is depth to Saruman--he was not always evil, and in fact trained Gandalf--but you're right that it's never particularly explored.

[Richard]

Actually, I meant to say that Sauron did what he did because he was evil. I've never understood why Tolkien choose such similarity in the names Sauron and Saruman.

I agree with respect to Saruman — we are given to understand that he had been presumably as good as Gandalf before we meet him, but by then he had been 'corrupted', as if evil is a disease one can be infected with, and not the result of one's own decisions. (The fact that he presents his reasons for defecting while arguing with Gandalf show, however, that he perhaps was making a conscious choice).

Corrupting influences such as the One Ring are a common device in fantasy. The Speaking Stone plays a similar role in "Wizard of Earthsea". The girl Serret was corrupted by it (although she had been morally flawed beforehand) yet she still has some power to act when she tried to escape.

But here, again, we see LeGuin invoking the myth of pure evil when she identifies some entities in her world as fundamentally evil. The shadow Ged struggles against is supposed to be such: "You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you" (p. 72).

In fact, the way LeGuin resolves this we must conclude that the shadow is something that Ged must defeat by integrating it into himself — which certainly doesn't sound like an alien "power of unlife" evil. In fact it reminded me of nothing so much as the "Good Kirk/Bad Kirk" conflict in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within (an episode which aired in 1966, two years before LeGuin's publication date. Think she saw the show?)

[Richard]

Like my namesake I'm also reading this in preparation for The Tombs of Atuan. My reading of Ged's shadow is probably a little more simplistic and less mystical than some. Towards the conclusion of the book I was of the same opinion as Richard, that the shadow was just an aspect of Ged as in the quoted Star Trek episode. After the final confrontation however and with Vetch's insight into what had happened, I changed my mind. I now consider Ged's shadow more as a fear of death given a physical manifestation, and a very real thing which if allowed to consume Ged would allow him to be used by others and allow himself to justify cruel and dark acts. It could be said that a great many so called evil deeds were carried out by very frightened people. That is why I think that when Ged stops running from his shadow and turns to face it, it loses its power over him, and when he finally acknowledges what it is and faces his own death and truly understands it, it then holds no sway over him and can never be used against him, but allows him to love life and light fully. I think that without the Fantasy element of magic and a physical expression of this fear, the whole idea of the shadow of his death and its effects could be seen as philosophy rather than fiction.

[Richard]

Excellent interpretation.

If the "Power of unlife" came into Ged's world and was forced to use his life as a pattern in order to remain there, it makes sense that one of the elements of his life that would be most attractive to an intrinsically evil being would be fear.

I don't think that LeGuin made that linkage—certainly it wasn't explicit—but it does provide a plausible reconciliation to a troubling ambiguity.

[Marc]

Richard wrote: "the whole idea of the shadow of his death and its effects could be seen as philosophy rather than fiction."

That's what I like about fantasy, it's a perfect venue for deep philosophy without being deeply philosophical about it. I got the ideas for my novels while I was a grad student in philosophy. What bothers me is when the author brings the whole book to a screaming halt so they can put pages of monologue in the main character's mouth, hitting the reader over the head with their view of how the world works as if it was coming from the mouth of God. Needless to say, that's one thing I made sure not to do in my own writing.