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Le Guin has other ways to reveal life’s mystery. So the mysterious, the mystical connection to life’s purpose, if you will, is shown only indirectly. And Ged must spend his life, and in a later book even his magic, in learning to hunt the wisdom in silence. He is a flawed hero, whom we relate to well.īut in this subtle way, we the reader are shown (not told) that old Ogion was right. There he attends classes, learns magic, but grows no wiser, clashing with a classmate, and raising the dead, which magic causes the death of the Archmage and leads to lots more adventure.

He cannot abide this silent wizard who seems to be teaching him nothing, and finally goes to wizard school. Of course, Ged, being young, is too impatient. Nothing happened.” For this is Le Guin’s genius, to posit that one can learn wisdom only through silence, and that wizardry should be wisdom first. They wandered…they entered no mysterious domain. “Ged had thought…he would enter at once into the mystery and mastery of power… But it was not so at all. And then Le Guin begins to work her own brand of magic: He soon apprentices to an old wizard, Ogion. Its hero is the boy, Ged, a goatherd who reveals a talent for wizardry. What I admire most about Ursula Le Guin’s “A Wizard of Earthsea,” is her ability to handle the mysteries of life and death.