curator of places

Almost universally in fiction -- traditional mythology and modern fantasy -- dragons are defined by two things: age and power. These two are often linked together in a sort of linear relationship, i.e. older dragons are also more powerful, either physically or magically. In Ursula Le Guin's The Farthest Shore we see this same relationship played out on a cultural level among the dragons, or at least we do at first. In how she characterizes dragons, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of man in quite a beautiful way.

When Ged and Arren make their trip down the Dragon's Run, the size of dragons they encounter becomes larger and larger, until at last they meet Orm Embar, whose sheer size makes Arren realize "how small a thing a man is." I think it is by design that we see all interactions with dragons through Arren's eyes in this book, since he can't comprehend their speech, yet it still fills him with awe and reverence. Here too we see the crucial relationship dragons have with their language. Without it, they are literally winged beasts, cannibals who cannot help but feast upon their dead -- a chilling parallel to humans; without language, what else separates us from beasts?

But this power, this incredible scale, is subverted near the end of the book. In Orm Embar we saw power and age as one, but [SPOILERS] the so-called "greatest" dragon dies like any mortal creature by the hand of one man. After Ged and Arren's quest is complete, however, we see one more dragon, the very oldest of their kind: Kalessin. This iron drake is old, so old its sides are "scored and scarred" and "the long teeth yellowed and blunt." Arren does not cower in awe or fear at Kalessin, and just looks into his eye, where he describes "the mourning of the world was deep in it." So here we see the price of age, the cornerstone of dragon culture. The relationship is not linear; they grow, become powerful, and they too wane like men, reduced to scars and blunted teeth and memories.

Dragons in Earthsea are deeply, fascinatingly human, which makes sense in world, but really helps drive home the themes of The Farthest Shore. We see a culture upheld as something vast, unknowable, and infinitely powerful reduced to cannibalism and ruin. Those believed to be its oldest and wisest sit by, the weight of their memories dragging them down. The writing is subtle and leaves much to the imagination, like much of Le Guin's work, and I won't pretend to make some grand point here. I just really appreciate how she is able to humanize something so wonderful and quintessentially fantasy without losing any of the magnificence of a dragon.

Silk! You know it, you love it, you touch it and go, "oooooh, soft."

This weird wacky worm byproduct has captivated the minds of historical juggernauts and fantasy authors alike, to the point that it is almost a trope in and of itself to have silk be the token "luxury good that means someone is rich and powerful" in a story. But this is not without good reason.

Historically, silk was the warp and weft of the social fabric for much of the world for centuries, if not millennia! For a fascinating look into how silk dominated many societies, look no further than Palmyra. Who? Oh come on, you know Palmyra -- Queen Zenobia, fancy tombs -- that Palmyra? Whatever, point is that according to Cynthia Finlayson, cultural archeologist for BYU, silk elevated "the status of women" in the kingdom to the point of "matriarchy," almost exclusively due to "the influence of the silk trade upon their lives" (Finlayson, The Women of Palmyra, 4). That alone would be incredibly unique, but their connection to silk even transcended death! Palmyran women would be buried and mummified in silks during elaborate funerary rights, which allows us such a thorough look at their lives even today, nearly 2000 years later.

It is no small wonder, then, that silk continues to fascinate and motivate societies that exist only in the annals of fantasy. In Ursula Le Guin's The Farthest Shore, magical buddies Ged and Arren visit the decrepit down of Lorbanery (side note, is it pronounced Lorbanery or Lorbanery?), a settlement and indeed whole island famed for its silks. Quite literally the lives of every person on the island seem irrevocably tied to silk, to the point of stagnation when their precious dyed fabric suddenly loses its luster. Unlike any other place we've seen in any of the Earthsea books, here we find a people utterly dominated by their work.

Unfortunately, such reliance can easily spiral into dependency. Whether it's Palmyra or Lorbanery, staking your existence on the stable trade of a most fragile fabric is inherently risky. That, then, is the appeal of silk in stories, the notion that so small a worm could topple empires.

After reading Finlayson’s “The Women of Palmyra,” it was clear that vital to the significance of Palmyra was the fact that “in these early eras, no one merchant or caravan enterprise was seemingly able to transverse the complete length of the Silk Road from East to West” (Finlayson, 2, footnote 1). Palmyra was a necessary stop on the Silk Road, where items such as silk were “sold, resold, or traded, and then moved forward along a route deemed the safest by the caravan leader” (Finlayson, 2, footnote 1). In many cases the women of Palmyra might have been responsible for adding embroidered designs to the silk to increase their value (6).

Women played central roles throughout the city, including even ruling, and “through carefully orchestrated marriages guaranteed wealth and access to trade routes through clan alliances” (4). And they created silk funerary headdresses. 

Viewing Lorbanery as a place defined by its product, silk, it reflects the idea of a factory town. Usually small towns built to house employees and their families, factory towns, and Lorbanery, possess a distinct culture born from that shared occupation. When an entire town is focused on one job, and the success of all depends on everyone working hard and collaborating, it seems like there is a greater sense of community. Additionally, there is a greater pressure to perform well and work hard. The citizens of Lorbanery accordingly emphasize that “Honest folk live here and do honest work” (137). 

I looked into the town of Bagdad, Arizona as one of the two remaining company towns in the state. It’s known for copper. I’ve never visited, but to all appearances it looks like the kind of tight-knit community you would expect. The town is owned by Freeport-McMoRan, and as a result enjoys amenities free for the public such as a golf course and gym. The town is currently thriving, but not all company towns are as lucky.

There is a reason there aren’t many company towns around anymore. Although the citizens of Lorbanery are quick to conclude that “the luck’s run out” (122), the truth is they are not alone in their situation. Factory towns often have the ever present danger of becoming ghost towns because everyone in it is tied to one industry. If progress makes the product no longer relevant, the town loses its purpose.

A lot of aspects of the Kargad Empire were fascinating, but one thing that caught me off guard as I was reading The Tombs of Atuan was the development of The Kargs. In Wizard of Earthsea, they didn’t appear much (if at all, can’t confirm) after their failed invasion of Gont, but the characteristics I got from their presence was that they were a large, fierce, and advanced people, and their home, being a fearsome empire, likely reflected this. I was surprised to find that their empire is not as well put together as I was expecting. As the priestesses and wardens of the tomb journeyed through the kingdom to find their reborn priestess, we get to see the kingdom outside of the walls, and it seems very rural and decentralized. Atuan’s largest city, I believe, Tenacbah, is “No more than a flea to a cow” when compared to Awabath, having “ten hundred houses” (Le Guin, 14). The rest of the island is populated by small towns and villages in the hill country, and further past that, the poor folk live “In lonely huts in the valleys of the hills,” who, being so poor, “kept no count of days and scarce knew how to tell the turn of time” (15), so education must not reach many in Atuan.

What we learn about the Kargish land during these chapters - which is although still on the periphery - are vital details that expand upon our knowledge of the land from The Wizard of Earthsea. Specifically, I am interested in the Place in the Kargish Empire in which there was “a couple hundred people…(with) many buildings…the guards’ barracks and many slaves’ huts, the storehouses and sheep pens and goats pens and farm buildings” (14). I am interested in this description as it relates to our understanding of the Kargs as being related to vikings. On one hand, the mention of slaves, sheep, and goats reinforce the viking qualities of the Kargs. These are people and animals that the vikings would be interested in trading, selling, and accumulating. It also alludes to the fact that the Kargs acquired these people and animals through the pillaging of other villages. There already seems to be a strong reinforcement of the Kargish aspects that are similar to those of the vikings. For example, there was no allusion to slavery amongst the Kargs in the first book as they only seemed to want to completely destroy the town with fire in the first section of The Wizard of Earthsea. On the whole, I think that The Tombs of Atuan will demonstrate more and more the links between the Kargs and vikings that Le Guin has formed. 

Like Le Guin describes with fantasy stories, one must look past the “one-sided, shadowless half-truths and conventional moralities of the collective consciousness” (62) in order to understand the symbols and archetypes represented within tarot cards.

When I took a tarot-reading class, I was really bad at separating myself from this “collective consciousness” at first. I’d look at cards like “Death” or “The Devil” and flag them as bad and scary, immediately putting on my society blinders. They were the shadow; easy to repress, to ignore, to tuck back into the deck and avoid. But as I progressed, I found that there is so much more than the surface-level reading of a card.

For example, here’s “Death” and “The Sun”:

For me, they are a pretty good example of the light and shadow we’ve been discussing with Wizard of Earthsea. “Death” obviously has some pretty negative connotations. Yet, the card has lots of symbolic similarities to “The Sun,” a generally optimistic, positive card. In both images, there is a figure holding a flag atop a white horse. Where “Death” features a skeletal knight holding a black flag, indiscriminately trampling over people (as death does), “The Sun” has a cherubic child sitting atop the same white horse, wearing the same plume in their hair, waving a lively red flag. Neither card is good or evil - they are necessarily intertwined. They show that life and vitality and beginnings, as well as death and change and endings, are a part of the same cycle.

The clearest parallels I can draw between Ten Alders village and the Shire is that they give the main characters a safe, albeit ignorant, place to grow up without becoming weighted down by the troubles of the world. I think this serves to make the main character’s blank slate of innocence believable and gives the author a good launching point to begin molding the transformation of the character through the trials and tribulations that they will face.

Innocent places like these often serve as the launching point for most heroic adventures. The hero leaves home to gain what home cannot teach or provide for them. If characters played it safe and never left home, there would be no transformation into a hero.