Skip to main content

A Platypus of Earthsea: The Platypus Reads Part XXXIV



*Warning* Spoilers ahead if you haven't read "A Wizard of Earthsea" or "Phantasties" yet.

I've been reading the works of two master fantasists in tandem: George MacDonald's "Phantasties" and Ursula LeGuin's "A Wizard of Earthsea." LeGuin has called MacDonald the "grandfather" of all fantasy writers, so I should have suspected that she would draw from his work ages ago.* However, the link between Ged's quest to destroy his shadow and Anodos' quest to lose his shadow only just struck me this past week. The central plot of both books is the same: young man enters into a world of magic, loses his own shadow through arrogance, experiences the destruction caused by his shadow, tries to lose it, and in the end is forced to confront and accept his own death.

The question is: do both writers understand the shadow to be the same thing? LeGuin calls it the shadow of Ged's death. MacDonald seems to link Anodos' shadow to death in some way, but it is death that sets Anodos free from his shadow. Ged, on the other hand, merely has to accept his shadow as a part of himself in order to conquer it. There is another link in that both shadows represent the real or potential evil that each character has done or could do. They also rob both characters of any joy in the world and lose their potency in places of strong magical protection (ie. the Palace of the Fairy Queen, the Four Cornered Cottage, Roke, Ogion's Cottage). Whether these links mean that the two shadows have the same symbolic value is still unclear to me, but my interest is definately piqued.

*As a correction, this quote should actually be attributed to Madeleine L'Engle, not Ursula LeGuin.  That aside, the connection between the two shadows remains an interesting one.  

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Lemming said…
I'd have to comment that in Phantasties, MacDonald is probably using the Shadow (as opposed to lowercase shadow, since the change only really occurs at the door he was explicitly told not to open) as an analogy for sin. I can see the linking it to death, but only insofar as death is a result of sin.

I haven't gotten to reading Earthsea yet, so I can't comment on it.
9:11 AM
James said…
Yep, I think sin makes the best sense in the case of "Phantasties" as well.
4:30 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.
9 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more