A Wizard of Earthsea

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1968

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “The Hawk’s Flight”

Ged awakens in the Court of the Terrenon. He is well cared for despite the cold emptiness of the castle, and he becomes familiar with Serret, the lady of the castle whose name means Silver in the tongue of Osskil. Serret implies that she and Ged have met before, but Ged does not remember. Neither Serret nor her husband, Benderesk the Lord of the Terrenon, ask Ged what chased him there or about any of his past, which is odd, but no one really seems to notice. Ged’s head is fuzzy, and he struggles with making sense of what is happening to him. He suspects this is all an elaborate plan of the shadow but talks himself out of the idea since he doesn’t feel the shadow there inside the castle. He stays in the perpetually cold castle brooding over his shame over running from the shadow and wondering what the Masters would think of it all. Eventually Serret offers to show him the Terrenon, a stone that she describes as immensely old and powerful. Upon seeing the ordinary-looking stone built into the castle’s foundation, Ged is struck with a sense of ancient dread; inside the stone is an evil spirit and a power he knows is not for human use. Serret tells him the stone could name the thing that he seeks, but Ged declines to speak with it. The next day, Serret explains that her husband does not have the power to control the spirit in the stone and she does not have the skill. The stone told her of Ged, and it has been expecting him to come and become its master. She pleads with him to take control of the stone, stating that only darkness can defeat the darkness of the shadow that pursues him. She offers to rule by his side, and Ged sees Benderesk eavesdropping with a smile. Ged’s head clears, and he adamantly tells Serret that only light can defeat the dark. He understands now that Serret and her husband saved him from the shadow hoping he would succumb to the power of the stone. He would be a slave to the stone, and then they would let the shadow take him so they could control him better. Benderesk is angry Serret tried to convince Ged to rule with her, which would edge Benderesk out, so he tries to use the power the stone gives him to turn her into a hideous creature. Ged stops him, and they both flee as Benderesk summons the stone’s servants. Serret cannot see through the charm Benderesk has put on the only exit of the castle, but Ged can, and they escape. Once outside the castle, a charm also falls off of Serret, who, though still beautiful, is revealed to be the witch’s daughter who teased him and led him to read the spell that unleashed the shadow at Ogion’s house so long ago. Serret turns into a gull but is eaten by the dark flying creatures that come out of the castle. Ged turns into a falcon and flies out over the water where the creatures cannot follow because they are bound to the island.

Ged, in falcon form, eventually makes his way to Ogion’s home in Re Albi. He has been a bird too long and lost himself in the form, so Ogion has to nurse him back into his human form. The two talk, and Ogion tells Ged he must turn around and seek the shadow that has, up until this point, been seeking him. Ged recognizes Ogion as his true master and is gone in the morning.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Hunting”

Ged sets out to hunt the shadow he unleashed upon the world. Traveling by boat, he calls the shadow on open ocean. The shadow seems to realize the roles have been reversed, and it flees. Ged follows it into a storm and eventually wrecks on the beach of a tiny island, deserted but for an old man and woman who fear Ged and speak a different language. Ged assumes that they are royal children who were marooned rather than killed outright. Here, Le Guin teases the next novel in the series, hinting the story isn’t as simple as Ged first assumes. He shows the two he is not a threat and rests on their island for a couple of days, enchanting their small brackish spring to produce clear, fresh water in return for their meager hospitality.

Ged leaves the island on a much-patched boat and resumes his pursuit of the shadow. It eventually leads him to a narrow waterway between the cliffs of an unknown island. At the dead end of this fissure, Ged tries to physically fight the shadow, but is unable to touch it. After this second encounter on the open seas, Ged sails to an island where he is able to rest, refill his stores, and get a new boat.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

Ideas of power, agency, and fear are prominent in these chapters.

Ged had previously expressed fear that the shadow was trying to possess him to gain access to his powers to use them for evil. In Chapter 7, Ged realizes it is not just forces of evil that will seek to use his power for their own ends; other humans will attempt to do so as well. In the Court of the Terrenon, Ged realizes that Serret and her husband were planning to make Ged a “slave of the Stone” (141) by having him touch the Terrenon. They then planned to allow the shadow to possess Ged so they would have complete control over him and his powers. Ged is shaken by this realization that magical forces are not the only sources of evil in the world.

The idea of agency appears in multiple forms in these chapters. In the Court of the Terrenon, Ged exercises his agency and does not comply with Serret’s suggestion and the Terrenon’s magnetism when he refuses to touch the stone. Le Guin writes that “[i]t is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul” (141), an idea that will return when Ged faces the shadow. In the next chapter, Ogion tells Ged he must turn around and face the shadow of his own accord. He tells Ged that “[i]f you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you run you will meet danger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. You must choose. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter” (151). Here, he points out a truth that can be applied to far more than seeking evil shadows: Issues that go unaddressed will eventually return in some way or another. It is in this way that Ged finally vanquishes his fear of the shadow and is able to complete his quest; once he begins to pursue the shadow of his own accord, “[h]e hunted, he followed, and fear ran before him” (161).

Ideas of fear are also prominent in these chapters. Serret tells Ged that “[w]hat one does not know, one fears” (137-38). This reflects the feeling of the uncanny, and it also hearkens back to thoughts Ged had earlier in the novel; while studying at Roke, Ged feels “[t]he more he learned, the less he would have to fear, until finally in his full power as wizard he needed fear nothing at all” (64). While the fear of things one does not understand holds some truth, Ged eventually learns that even as a highly skilled wizard, there are still fearful things in the world. This is illustrated clearly in the old man and woman who Ged meets on the deserted island in Chapter 8; Ged is shocked to realize that “[they] feared Ged not because they thought him a spirit, and not because he was a wizard, but only because he was a man” (166). Ged realizes all of the old man’s memories “of other lands and other men was a child’s nightmare of blood and giants and screaming” (169) after living through what Ged assumes was an overthrow of a monarch. In this way, Ged is reminded of the material world and the ordinary fears of the people who live there while he is still absorbed in his own otherworldly quest.