The Book Nook - E06 - Tehanu Part 1

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping Season 1, we couldn't be more ready to defend our Black Queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:00:59] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:17] Welcome to Book Nook, where the Lorehounds are your guides to the archipelago of Earthsea. I'm David. I'm John. And I'm Marilyn. And this is part one of our coverage of the fourth book of the Earthsea series, Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin.

[00:01:42] In this podcast, we'll be discussing chapters one through six. We will start off with some spoiler-free conversation about our thoughts on the book in general.

[00:01:51] Following a quick break, we will move into a deeper discussion about major themes presented, as well as discussing the main plot points, followed by listener feedback. And while we enjoy discussing the book amongst ourselves, we do want to hear from you.

[00:02:05] Send us an email to book at the lorehounds dot com or visit our web page at the lorehounds dot com slash contact. And there you can use the contact form or you can even leave us a voicemail.

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[00:02:38] Stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes about everything else we're doing and our affiliates Properly Howard, Movie Reviews and Alicia over on the Woolshift Dust feed. Also consider subscribing to our Patreon for as little as three bucks a month.

[00:02:53] You can get ad free episodes and much, much more. Patreon is a great way to support us because ad revenues are fickle. David, Marilyn, we're back after a little bit of a break. We need some time to mull over the first three books.

[00:03:10] Not as much time as Le Guin took. Thankfully, we also needed some time to cover three shows simultaneously. So but what a joy it is to be back on the Isle of Gaunt. It is. Yes. With our goats by the hearth of Ogion.

[00:03:25] And just just ready to just ready to chat. Yes. Yes, indeed. So yeah, well, I was gonna I was gonna pitch it to you. We should probably recap what we've done so far in the coverage of the series and then what our plans are going forward.

[00:03:42] Yeah, so we've covered the first three books, as I just alluded to the Wizard of Earthsea, the Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. We're going 28 years in the publishing future now to go to Tehanu, which is the fourth book that was never meant to be.

[00:03:57] Right. Le Guin decided to revisit the series later and now we're revisiting it with her revisiting this world. You can check out all the podcasts for the first three books on our website. And I think we've committed now to covering Tales from Earthsea and the Other Wind.

[00:04:14] So we are going forward through the series as we go. Tehanu is probably going to be three podcasts because it's such a meaty work. Yes. And then we will be we'll discuss what we're going to do for the other two. We'll have fun. Yeah, that's good.

[00:04:28] All right. General impressions. Who should go first? I'm first on the list, but I don't want to introduce myself. David. Yeah, I'm giving it to you. OK. I will say that I, I am slow. This is a slow start for me for this book.

[00:04:55] There are I've seen a number of comments on our discord and some feedback emails and your reaction, John. And certainly Marilyn's. Everybody's like, oh, my gosh, this is so great and wonderful.

[00:05:07] Whatever. And I am just not feeling the same old magic that I felt from the first three. Not that anything's wrong with that, but I'm just sort of comparing my experience where reading Earthsea.

[00:05:23] And plus, you know, I've got a nostalgia with those three books and I have less connection to the Tehanu book, which I remember reading in the 90s and not it not grabbing me.

[00:05:37] But then I could certainly say that I was looking to return to that world, especially when I first read those and the feelings that I got from from it. So I thought, oh, well, you know, some same old magic.

[00:05:51] And obviously, Ursula K. Le Guin had moved on into her feelings and her thoughts about a lot of things.

[00:05:56] And so it changed up her writing. But then reading it now and trying to have as an open perspective as I can and having aged and become a parent and live my life, you know, having different sort of what I'm bringing to the work myself is being very different.

[00:06:14] That spark that I got from the first three books is still not really there. Not that it's a problem, I'm just not getting the same magical zazz that I do. There are two places in, I think one in chapter four and one in chapter five.

[00:06:35] I think when Ged shows up on the dragon, there's some stuff. And in chapter five, when Tanar starts to feel something again, there's kind of a, I get a zazz in the writing.

[00:06:51] And for me, I was just looking for in reflection of these first six chapters, I was looking for those really elegant ways that she would turn a phrase or describe the ocean or Ged flying as a pilgrim falcon over the sea and all these different things.

[00:07:10] And a lot of that was missing for me in this. And I didn't see a lot of that faceted writing that I really enjoyed in the first one. So maybe that's just it, that she's just writing with a different style and that is her purview.

[00:07:24] She's the author, right? That's what it is. And I've always heard her voice speaking through some of the storylines and talking, sharing some insights or perspectives on the world. And I can definitely hear it in this one. And she's making some very pointed references to our primary world.

[00:07:48] I think about gender and about men and women and how we've placed them in the world. I don't even think that she was thinking even in terms of non-binary at that time.

[00:08:00] So there's even more there, but at least from where she was at that point, which is interesting. And I'm not saying a pro or for that.

[00:08:12] I'm just saying I just don't feel like the way that she wrote the first three and constructed the first three, I'm seeing that. It's the first six chapters and I'm still kind of waiting for the book to start.

[00:08:22] I know that that's not the similar experience that other people have had. So I'm really interested to hear what I might be missing or what I'm not sort of gluing into because I know people are like, well, this book, oh, it's amazing. Oh, whatever.

[00:08:36] And I'm like, OK, where is it? I want that. So Marilyn, tell him what he's missing. Well, you know, I feel this is the best book I've ever read, which delves honestly into the issues of gender and power. OK. And it is still recognizably an Earthsea.

[00:08:54] When I'm picking up what you're saying there was it's a lot more about ideas and concepts than it is about action. And the kind of action that happens is not the traditional action. And Le Guin talks about this in the afterwards.

[00:09:14] She says, by the time I wrote this book, I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath.

[00:09:19] And the point of view of the people who are not included, the ones who can't do magic, the ones who don't have shining staffs or swords, women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless, ordinary people, my people.

[00:09:34] I didn't want to change Earthsea, but I needed to see what Earthsea looked like to us. So I think that's a. I didn't have I don't have that perspective when I'm reading it. I'm reading it as the fourth book of the trilogy. Mm hmm. Right.

[00:09:52] Not that she's spinning the camera around and giving us a point of view from other people. So if you just pick up the book and you start reading and you're like, OK, what's going to happen next in the exciting world of Earthsea?

[00:10:02] Right. You're in for a change of point of view here. Yeah. Well, you'll get it. You'll definitely get it. Mm hmm. But it is the early section is sort of a meanwhile back at the ranch. Yeah. Yeah. You know, getting out there, saving the world and so forth.

[00:10:21] Well, it wasn't just on the islands that they visited that magic was disappearing and bad things were happening. And, you know, there was a hole in the world and all the life was being sucked out of it.

[00:10:32] We're seeing that same effect, but not from the point of view of heroes going around trying to fix it. We're seeing what it looks like for people, as I say, at the ranch.

[00:10:46] And I'm not using the word mundane in a negative sense, but in a mundane in the sense of we're not riding around on the back of dragons here. Right. We're just walking down the road. I mean, somebody did. Not yet.

[00:10:57] Already. Right. I don't know what you're talking about. Right. Right. Yeah. And she talks about the tradition. As John observed, this is roughly 20 years later. I found it interesting to note that this book came out the same year as Robert Bly's Iron John.

[00:11:19] And the first book in The Wheel of Time series. And I have a lot of stuff to say about gender representation in there and how it reflects these particular texts. You started reading Wheel of Time if I'm not mistaken.

[00:11:31] I have. I finished the first book. I'm starting on the second one. Okay. Well, that's the next Book Nook project. Right. We know that now. Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:11:42] Unless you really don't like it, Marilyn, I got to say, because I know there were some iffy moments for you in there. Well, you know, I could have made some edits and observations and whatnot. But that wasn't what I was reading it for, fortunately.

[00:11:56] Does it help you to know that his wife was his editor? I don't think it makes any difference one way or the other, really. I just mean. Maybe less critical, you think? I think that she let him keep more things in. That's what I think. That's certainly possible.

[00:12:11] Just because she didn't want him to kill his darlings, you know? Right. Right. Exactly. Out of love. Out of love. All out of love. Is it loving to not help your partner deliver the best possible writing? Oh, I'm sure. First of all, she's a legendary editor.

[00:12:25] She edited a ton of huge science fiction and fantasy series before him. I think that people just like to joke because his books will meander for a long time. And they're like, she just didn't want to hurt him. Well, that could be the case.

[00:12:39] I mean, I did think that, you know, the adventures of two of the main characters going from town to town to town to town and going through exactly the same routine, you know, finding the inn, signing up to play that night, having their dinner, sleeping in the barn.

[00:12:55] Some horrible monster comes and scares them away and they move on as fast as they can to the next town. You know, rinse repeat five times. You know, you could have given it to us once.

[00:13:05] And then something along the lines of, you know, three times this happened to them. It's crazy that it just keeps happening. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? And eventually I figured out what he was trying to do with that.

[00:13:15] You know, he was trying to give us a hint that there was a reason why they kept getting found so quickly. But it was pretty, I don't know. I didn't get it anyway, so maybe I'm dense. But anyway, what David was saying about the writing itself.

[00:13:29] Again, she has something to say about this in that wonderful essay, Earthsea Revision. The tradition I was writing in was a great one, a strong one. The beauty of your tradition is that it carries you. It flies and you ride it.

[00:13:44] Indeed, it's hard not to let it carry you. It's older and bigger and wiser than you are. It frames your thinking and puts winged words in your mouth. If you refuse to ride, you have to stumble along on your own two feet.

[00:13:58] If you try to speak your own wisdom, you lose that wonderful fluency. You feel like a foreigner in your own country, amazed and troubled by the things around you. The things you see, not sure of the way. Not able to speak with authority.

[00:14:14] It is difficult for a woman to speak or write with authority unless she remains within a traditional role. Since authority is still granted and withheld by the institutions and traditions of men. A woman as queen or prime minister may, for a time, fill a man's role.

[00:14:31] That changes nothing. Authority is male. It is a fact. My fantasy dutifully reported the fact. But is that all that fantasy does? Report facts? So I suspect that may be part of what you were seeing. She talked a lot about how difficult this book was for her.

[00:14:52] And how she literally had to write it out of doors. And that she really didn't understand where it was going. So she's breaking boundaries here. She's taking an ancient form and saying, yeah, okay, let's take this form. And let's look at it from underneath.

[00:15:14] She actually uses that from upside down. Which is unfortunate that it should be quote unquote upside down. But at that time, that's what it was. I think it's one of those things because having known some of that, I guess, going into reading this book.

[00:15:32] Having that understanding that there's a perspective shift happening here. That she's trying to do something. She's trying to break something out of something. Change something. Alter it. Whereas the first three books were rooted in a tradition. I can't pronounce the word. The Bildungsroman. Yes, that's the one.

[00:15:58] Those books were very much rooted in that. And her writing skill within that was extraordinary. The way that she could turn a phrase. The way that she could write a really short sentence and you would have this entire world point of view and perspective.

[00:16:20] You could smell the salt air and feel the wind on your face in 20 words or less. Whereas if she's trying to, where she's altering, she's turning the wheel in a really big way here.

[00:16:33] Then having, if I know that going in, then I can shift my perspective to be with her in that. As opposed to trying to come to her with a perspective of, hey, where's my get and where's my look far and why isn't all this great? Stuff happening.

[00:16:53] If I can set that aside and knowing that this is an entirely different style of work for her. Okay, granted. And part of it, I think, is because we're not as familiar generally with the territory that she's describing.

[00:17:11] Because it's the territory of a widow working on a farm, taking care of a horribly abused child. Those are not the stuff of fantasy. Right, we should try to be careful not to spoil too much on this front side. We got this. Well, that's true.

[00:17:28] Chapter two is being spoiled. Sorry, everyone. Apologies. Just an outline of it. It's no details. Yeah. Another thing she commented on was that, quote, some readers who identified with Ged as a male power figure thought I'd betrayed and degraded him in some sort. A feminist spasm of revenge.

[00:17:51] So far as I know, I had no spasms and didn't betray Ged. Quite the opposite, I think. In Tehano, he can become finally fully a man. And I guess I can't read the rest of this just now, but we'll have to come back to it.

[00:18:09] Although there is one sentence here. Is the magic in fact dying out of her as it seemed was happening in the third book?

[00:18:15] I don't think that's the case, but certainly there's a great change taking place in the world only just beginning to be visible and not yet comprehensible. And it wasn't even comprehensible to her entirely with this first book. And another comment she has.

[00:18:33] It's not surprising that Tehano was labeled feminist. But the word is used so variously that it's worse than useless. If you see feminism as vindictive prejudice against men, the label lets you dismiss the book unread.

[00:18:47] If you see feminism as a belief in superior properties unique to women and expect the book to confirm that belief, you'll find it equivocal.

[00:18:58] And I also want to present a concept which I'll be referring to throughout discussion, which may not be familiar anymore, but it was very central in discussions of gender in the 1990s and on. Essentialism versus constructionism. You may recognize this from Carol Gilligan's lectures, John.

[00:19:19] This is two ways of looking at the concept of gender. Essentialism says that gender is based upon your essential biology. It is the essence of you. That is what gender is. Constructionism says gender is a thing which is created, it's constructed by societies.

[00:19:40] And so you may believe that because of your biology, you have certain abilities and traits and characteristics and it's biological. Or in constructionism, you believe I have these traits because this is what my society told me that my gender is and does. Right.

[00:20:04] Carol Gilligan talks a lot about initiation and how society will initiate you into your gender. They will basically give you a crash course on it when you get certain thresholds of age. And the idea that gender is always being performed. It's not an actual tangible thing.

[00:20:21] You can't find it anywhere. And I'll say that when we see in book two, Tenar really got an initiation pretty officially. She sure did. And it's interesting to see if we'll revisit some of those ideas in this book.

[00:20:41] And finally, I'll just say that Le Guin's working title for this book was Better Late Than Never. We definitely will, I guess when we get to the other side of the spoiler break, there are clear passages where she is outlining gender conversations. Yes.

[00:20:59] About men and women in the world and especially men of power and the things that interest them and don't interest them. So, yeah, I mean, it's clear that she is taking a different tack with this book and definitely starting it off in a different way. For sure.

[00:21:20] Well, it's time for me to give my thoughts. Yes. And I loved it. I loved it more than the first three books. Wow. I thought. So the first three books, I liked them.

[00:21:33] There were times where the dating, the dated nature of a lot of the language and the style did take me out of it sometimes. It did feel like I am, at some points I'm like, am I reading this for school? It's that kind of feeling. Really?

[00:21:50] Whereas this, I felt this was very modern. This was very character focused, which is the kind of writing I like. And this was a breath of fresh air. And this was a breath of fresh air in this world, honestly.

[00:22:05] And I wonder if part of that is that I was listening to the audio books for the last book and this book and it switched from Robert Ingalls to a female narrator. Let me pull up her name quick. Interesting. It is, drum roll please, Jenny Sterlin.

[00:22:29] And she's doing a fantastic job really portraying the main character who I can't name. Yet. Right, right. But it just feels like, I think that's why it's less of a jarring transition for me is that the voice changed. The actual voice that's reading me the story changed.

[00:22:49] I feel like I'm being, I'm looking at this world through a different set of eyes. Wow. Wow. Did you read the first three or did you listen for all three? I read the first one.

[00:23:00] I read half of the second one and then I did audio for the rest. Half of the, okay, interesting. Interesting. Because for me, and I have to call out my own nostalgia, right? Because I have deep nostalgia for these books.

[00:23:16] But reading, reading her words as written, as opposed to having them spoken. And I haven't listened to any of the audio books.

[00:23:25] For me, that's some of the magic of her writing is that she's an intricate jeweler with words and she's creating these incredibly ornate pieces yet they're so simple. They're incredibly difficult to craft. Simplicity is hard, right? To get that kind of simplicity in writing and written words.

[00:23:48] And some of her sentence structures and descriptions of things are so intricate but so simple that they're, that's one of the things that enamors me. It's like Vonnegut and Pratchett in that kind of way, right? They can really cut to the core of something in a sentence. Yeah.

[00:24:06] And that for me is one of the things that I love, love, love about the first three books. Where in this book, yeah, very, these are longer descriptions, slower pacing. It's broader in a sense. There isn't a density.

[00:24:26] It's not like a neutron star that's like super dense here. This is pastoral and open and you can- Sure, sure. She takes chapters. I mean, Tehanu is two to three times the length of one of the first three books, I think. I don't know what the actual- Yeah.

[00:24:46] I think part of it is that this character who is the narrator has never slowed down to think about herself in her entire life and this is the first time she gets to do that.

[00:24:58] She's just had a change in identity that again, I cannot reveal until after the spoiler section. Yes. And that is what causes, it's sort of an inflection point in her life that mirrors Le Guin. That mirrors Le Guin deciding to reflect on what she's done and said. Okay.

[00:25:16] And that's super interesting to me. I also think that honestly, Marilyn I will credit with giving me an open mind going into this book because since we started this series, Marilyn's been saying Tehanu is a reimagining of it and it's a reflection of it.

[00:25:31] And it's trying to say something new about the same world. And that made me go in expecting that and not expecting a repeat of the trilogy. Right, right. So anyway, I really liked it. To my main point, I really liked it. The upshot is-

[00:25:49] Like I said, it's more character focused I think than the first three. I think the first three are focused on big ideas. This one goes in for a character study and that's the kind of writing I like.

[00:25:58] I mean, I like both but I like when it's more focused on the characters. I think that, like I said, it really mirrors Le Guin herself. It brings back the hits but it doesn't linger on them too much. Right?

[00:26:12] It's sort of like when The Office brought back Michael Scott for the finale. You know? He had two lines. You don't need him to have a lot. Let's focus on the new characters. Have you run far ahead, John, or are you just up to six?

[00:26:25] I think I went through chapter eight and then I stopped myself so that I could just, you know. And then when I was outlining this, I had to remember where six ended and that was hard. But I think I did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah.

[00:26:38] I mean, I really didn't want to stop. I just wanted to make sure I was pure for this section. All right. Well, I'm interested to read Beyond. I haven't read Beyond Six so I'm like, okay, let's go. All right. Let me shift my perspective here.

[00:26:54] Let me move myself into another frame of reference. Well, speaking of shifting perspectives, I think it's time we take a quick break and when we get back, we will get into spoilers. And we're back. All right.

[00:27:19] I'm going to give a quick synopsis and then we will discuss the chapters. I broke it up into two things, but I think I'm just going to read it all at once because it's not all that many events that happen in these first six chapters.

[00:27:32] At the time of the Farthest Shore, a woman named Goha recently lost her husband Flint on the island of Gaunt. She takes in a young girl who has been severely burned and gives her the name Therru. Learning that Ogion is sick, Goha takes Therru to see him.

[00:27:50] There he calls Goha Tenna and tells her to teach Therru. Goha takes Ogion to the farthest path to die, but not before he reveals his true name to be Ihal.

[00:28:03] The wizards arrive too late to learn his name and are reluctant to believe Tenar when she gives it to them. Tenar then settles in Ogion's house. Making a life for herself in Ogion's house, Tenar begins to get Therru to open up.

[00:28:19] After telling her dragons don't come to Gaunt, a dragon comes to Gaunt, bearing Ged on its back. Ged is initially unconscious but eventually comes to. When he begins recovering, he reveals he can no longer use his magic.

[00:28:33] Well, again, not a lot happens, but then when I read it, it does sound like a lot. Yeah, I mean, it's really chapter... I mean, it's until chapter four and five where things start to pick up, right? That's when I started. I guess chapter three, but Ogion's passing.

[00:28:58] Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting pacing. And I'm not saying negative, it's just a different kind of pacing. It doesn't feel like we're building the same way. We're building a familiar narrative structure.

[00:29:13] Yeah, I mean, the inciting event I see as happening before the beginning of the book even, which is Goha loses her husband Flint and becomes Flint's widow.

[00:29:26] She calls herself Flint's widow a lot rather than by her own name, which is setting us up for the image she has of herself. As accessory to man rather than her own individuality. Right.

[00:29:40] And at the same time, she is all of the selves that she ever has been. And that's one really beautiful section in the book.

[00:29:50] I don't have that one right in front of me, so I can't quote it word for word, but basically saying the child Arha did not have to die or be sacrificed. And that was not how it worked. That she is still there.

[00:30:03] She thinks in Kargish and she will be of great help to Tenar as things go along. And then she is Tenar. She was called Tenar by Ged and by Ogin.

[00:30:16] And then she makes her enormous decision to leave the world of mages and magic and move to the woman's side of the house, as Le Guin puts it. She chooses not to exercise the power of men, but to live a woman's life.

[00:30:41] And she is very successful at it. I mean, she lived with women all her life, but in a very, very different context. And so she learns the skills and the powers that are granted to women.

[00:30:56] And in doing that, she wins a place in her village, even though let us never forget this. She is of a different visual. She is a white-skinned woman in a brown-skinned culture. Right. And Le Guin doesn't remind us of that very often.

[00:31:11] But when she does, it is very pointed in that one line about the men looking at her and thinking, oh, well, Flint was pretty successful after all. She's a good woman. She does what she's supposed to do.

[00:31:23] She breeds and she bakes and she cleans and probably mucks out the stalls if they have cows and so forth. And then that question, I wonder what she looks like underneath. It was a white woman, white all the way through. Right.

[00:31:41] Which to my mind is just an absolutely chilling line. I can't overemphasize the effect that that has. And just in that one line, she is revealing the woman's experience of what has been called the male gaze. Yeah, right. Right. And it's painfully familiar to any woman, I think.

[00:32:06] Right. And you even have her veracity questioned when wizards come and they go, well, you give you his name? That's not that's not a thing. Oh, it's just shame he died without a name. She's like, his name is I Hall, like shouting from the back. Yeah.

[00:32:24] Do I have to repeat it to you? Did you not hear me the first time? And then she says, this is a bad time when names can be spoken and completely forgotten because she has been completely disrespected. Auntie Moss, even worse, of course.

[00:32:42] You know, the young mage from the big house takes one look at her and sees an old widow and that's all he sees and is not even listening to her.

[00:32:53] At least the wizard from the village had some recollection of her when she first came and then left Ogie and moved to the other side of the island and to the other side of the house, as it were.

[00:33:06] So he's a little less offensive, but not not a whole lot.

[00:33:11] When we get another to stay on this topic is this chilling encounter on the road when they're walking to Ogie on and she has to sort of puff up kind of like a porcupine and display some quills and make some rattle sounds to to scare these guys off.

[00:33:32] But if she hadn't been quick witted in that way, you know what might have happened for them on the roadside is a chilling thought. And, you know, as I was reading that passage, I was thinking, okay, like, okay, get out of this scene.

[00:33:54] Like, you know, she, Le Guin really had me nervous for a second that she, you know, that something might something awful might happen here. And I realized the dynamics have changed, particularly in recent years.

[00:34:06] But I think she is thinking of a time when a man wouldn't think twice of walking alone on a country road and a woman could never afford not to think about it. Right. I mean, I think it depends where you live now. Right?

[00:34:21] I think, you know, to some degree in some areas you do have to even as a man think about exactly going to walk.

[00:34:27] But most I think most areas in America, which is the area I'm most familiar in, you know, it's it's mostly women who fear walking alone at night. And so, again, Le Guin is enacting the don't tell show.

[00:34:45] And for any people who have had that kind of experience, the message just zings right into your gut. Right. You even have, I mean, Ogian is truly a hero. I mean, he perceives it all. Yes. Yes. And he goes to Tanar, teacher not broke.

[00:35:06] And the way he says that, it's just I again, I did the audio book, but I felt the italics in the pronunciation in the enunciation of the narrator.

[00:35:18] And really like Ogian, I think Ogian has started to question the wisdom of the Council of Wizards, you know, in his old age. Not not to say that he didn't already because even at the beginning, he's like, Ged, I could teach you better here. Right.

[00:35:34] But if you need to go to Roke, then you go to Roke. And even here he goes, you know, she's not going to be able to do anything at Roke. Roke's not the place for her, but you can teach her to be great.

[00:35:44] I think he's a solitary and by taking himself out of the usual spaces and places, he is able to see things with new eyes. It's interesting because we talked about this in Silmarillion stories with Morgoth being cast out.

[00:36:05] I recently watched a movie called The Witch where here's, you know, a family being cast out.

[00:36:12] And there's it was in a couple of other it's been in a couple of other things too that we've recently talked about or watched about this idea that when you're outside of your community,

[00:36:23] you're sort of lost in this wilderness and you don't have the things to keep you sane or to keep you fed or to keep you safe. And you're dangerous.

[00:36:33] And then yeah, then on the flip side, yeah, you are a danger to the society that to the body as a whole. But yet here is Ogion who is outside of this in a way, but yet that he doesn't suffer that same.

[00:36:48] You know, there's not that same negativity for his life of solitude. Well, two things. First of all, that image of the solitary person in the wilderness being dangerous is largely a Western Christian construct. Okay.

[00:37:06] Unless you have the authority of the church behind you to be a solitary, you will be viewed with suspicion. Okay. Because the wilderness is dangerous and that's where, you know, Gawain in the Green Knight, that's where the Green Knight lives out in these risky wild places.

[00:37:22] It's not quote unquote civilized. Where morality is in question. Exactly. Where there is nothing at risk. There's nothing keeping your worst nature in check. Exactly. Right? Because we're with the Western, sorry, just to take. Sure.

[00:37:37] If we're sort of going with an original sin concept here, you need something to keep you in check. If you don't have a boundary, if you don't have a sociological structure, a gendered structure, then whatever that is that is wicked within you will run wild.

[00:37:57] Oh sure, relationship really helped Adam there in the Garden of Eden. Well, and that's why witches like Auntie Moss are viewed with such huge suspicion because they live alone and are often known for being sexual without any kind of coupling or. Right, without procreation and yeah.

[00:38:15] But Ogion comes from the Eastern tradition. Right. Of the wandering sage. Where you can be an aesthetic. You can be an aesthetic, you can wander alone freely, you can observe, you can come be a part.

[00:38:27] But if you remember from the very first book, when Ged and Ogion are walking from Ogion's house down to the harbor and they come to the gates of the city, the guards in their armor with their swords and their spears kneel down to Ogion. I forgot that.

[00:38:45] Because they recognize him as the one who stopped the earthquake. Right, right. So it is a very different flavor there. Right. Interesting. Cool. Well, I'm very excited to see where it goes with this because Ogion's gone and that was tragic.

[00:39:04] And I think it's time for Ged to take his place, right? I think he's gonna move into the house and be the solitary right now. I would love that because it would be so symmetrical of this kid who- Right, but that's symmetry, right? That's mirroring.

[00:39:21] It would be this kid who resisted staying on this little place and then he's finally there and he's just gonna be alone forever. But just remember, practically the last thing Ogion said before he died was, all changed. Yeah. It's all changed. Right. So keep that in mind.

[00:39:41] So can we dovetail that then into the conversation that Tanar has with Auntie Moss? And there's this, almost this point where Auntie Moss is getting agitated and sort of, you know, she's talking some stuff. It was a really hard passage for me.

[00:40:01] I couldn't read it in a single setting and I was kind of distracted. But there was something going on there with Auntie Moss and she was going through and back. She was going through something and then coming back to something.

[00:40:15] And then at some point Tanar has this, well I guess that's after she gets a feeling of hope after Ged has come back. But what was that conversation that Auntie Moss was going through herself? Was it the loss of power? There were a couple conversations.

[00:40:31] Where they're splitting reeds. Okay, that's what I thought. That's exactly what I thought. The conversation had started about what's, you know, I think Tanar actually says what's wrong with men. Very cautiously. And Auntie Moss says, well they're like a walnut.

[00:40:52] They're all full of that man meat inside the shell of the walnut. But if you crack it, that's it. Or another image she uses is man's power is like a tall pine tree. And it's tall and it stands there in all its glory.

[00:41:11] But it can be knocked over in a wind or fire or whatever. Whereas women's power, and this is where she starts getting very mystical. Women's power is like a blackberry bush, like a bramble. It's just a little power.

[00:41:27] But it stays and it spreads and it can take over your garden. And its roots are strong enough to keep the earth from eroding. And you can't ever entirely eradicate a bramble. Anybody who's ever gardened and found wild rose in their garden will tell you.

[00:41:47] The best you can hope for is you uproot each one as it comes up. And so she then goes into that mystical, I have roots that go deep. I go deeper than the mountains.

[00:41:59] And who will ask what is a woman's power or a woman of power and so on and so on. It's almost like she went into a trance state for a minute. Yeah, yeah. And she ends with the question, who will ask the dark its name?

[00:42:14] And Tanar says, I will. I have lived long enough in the dark. Yeah. And Le Guin has a comment about that whole conversation. She says, an awful lot of women really love Auntie Moss's mystical description of a woman's power. That is very essentialist.

[00:42:33] What I was saying before, you know, for Auntie Moss, the essence of woman, there is an essence of woman and she's steeped in it. And it has nothing to do with, you know, what the male dominant structure has done to her. Although that gets somewhat examined later on.

[00:42:53] Whereas for Tanar, she's just not into that. And Le Guin says that she was kind of surprised that so many women were all over Auntie Moss and her statement and completely ignored Tanar's statement. Which was a very potent statement. I will ask the name of the dark.

[00:43:13] That's powerful. It's a different kind of power. Right. And it's fitting that Tanar would ask that because she was eaten, right? She wasn't eaten. Supposedly. Yeah, she was the priestess. Mm-hmm. And a little later on, there's an observation within Tanar's ruminating and thinking about this.

[00:43:38] As she got to know Auntie Moss better, she realized that a lot of her mumbling and cant and so forth is simply because nobody ever sat down and taught her anything. Distinctions. How to think sequentially and how to raise a point.

[00:43:55] And so, a lot of her perceived power depend upon obscurity and being mysterious. Right. And a lot of the village people who would come to her for charms or whatever wouldn't expect her to say, well, let's see now.

[00:44:08] I can examine your situation and I see that you're having a hard time with, you know. That's not what they wanted. They wanted that other kind of magic. Right. That was perceived to be located in women as opposed to the mages and the wizards and so forth.

[00:44:25] But then there's a performative aspect to that too. Of course there is.

[00:44:28] Because when I walk into a medical professional's office and somebody is wearing a lab coat and has a stethoscope around their shoulders, I am initiated into responding to them what they say, the authority of what they say. Right. You know, by culture.

[00:44:48] Whereas if I go into the local village magic user and it's a witch and she's got herbs and things hanging from them, it's dark and smoky in there and I want to love potion or I want to find my goat or what have you.

[00:45:04] I need to have that mysticism or that otherness to it because otherwise it doesn't make sense. Right. Even though in Earthsea it is a world of magic. It's all the way deep down to its roots, all the way up. It's a magical place.

[00:45:23] You still want that performative aspect of the village witch is kind of out there a little bit. And if she's not a little bit out there, then I'm not sure that I understand the cultural archetype. Is she powerful enough? Right. I mean, let's face it.

[00:45:39] Problem solving is something that farmers and herders and shopkeepers and all the other people are gifted at. If they have a problem they can't handle, maybe they might go to an older farmer for suggestions or advice or whatever. But ultimately, it's outside their knowledge and their skill set.

[00:45:59] So they're going to go to somebody who they perceive to have a different kind of knowledge than they do. Whether it's a white lab coat or a dark den full of awful smells and herbs hanging from the ceiling. Right.

[00:46:13] So later this conversation, I mean sticking with the gender issue stuff, this whole idea of women's work versus men's work. Later when she's talking to Ged, she says, will you be about the house? She asked him across the distance. There is a sleep.

[00:46:29] I want to walk a little. Yes, go on, he said. I can't say the word. Exigencies. Thank you. Sometimes I get tongue tied. That ruled a woman. That someone must not be far from a sleeping child.

[00:46:45] That one's freedom meant another's unfreedom unless some ever unchanging moving balance were reached. So in my particular experience as a father, I have had to, not had to, I don't want to say it that way.

[00:47:04] Within our family dynamic and some of the decisions that we made as a family was that I would for a period of time take on a large degree of the childcare. And then I was sort of the flex parent, if you will.

[00:47:20] While my spouse, who's a woman, had sort of the main job, right? That had the good salary and the benefits and stuff.

[00:47:29] And so I can say for a short period of time, I could experience that of, boy, I don't have freedom while I have this child as my dependent who, you know, whose life and existence depends on me. And my whole world and daily structure is around them.

[00:47:53] My time is not mine. It is theirs. Now our child is eight and it's a different thing altogether. And, you know, they can do so much more, but yet still, you know, there is this, that is my world. That is our world as a family is dependent on.

[00:48:12] And we live in obviously in a different time, but this line of that someone must not be far from a sleeping child, that one's freedom meant another's unfreedom. That really hit me pretty hard.

[00:48:25] Not hard in a bad way, but it was like, wow, that was a powerful statement. It was an aha moment. And remember, Ogion observed the same thing within half an hour of her arriving with Therru. He says, never one thing for you.

[00:48:42] Because he wants to be able to spend all of her time with Ogion. Therru needs attention.

[00:48:48] So she manages to work it out with Auntie Moss and, you know, the other women who are around that they will take Therru for the day and care for her so that she can devote all of her time and attention to her dying friend. Right.

[00:49:05] And he spots it and he names it, which is another thing that makes him unusual. Interesting. Do you think it's the fact that he and Ged split the, quote, women's work that made him more conscious of these things? I do. I do.

[00:49:26] And there's that wonderful observation later on. When Ged does return. These guys that look like bachelors. And he's hanging around the house and they're eating a meal. And without any comment or whatever, he gets up, he picks up the dishes and he carries them over to the sink.

[00:49:42] And this is interesting to Tanar. No man that she knows would ever have done this. In fact, and I love that line, she thought it would be a shame if his dignity hung by a dishcloth. Yeah. So there's a classic Ursula K. Le Guin sentence right there.

[00:50:01] Yeah, right. Kind of a dig, right? I mean, not a dig at Ged, but a dig at manhood unguant. Right. Which is these people think that their dignity is threatened if they pick up a dishcloth.

[00:50:12] Whereas John and I have probably changed more diapers than our fathers ever saw. Oh yeah. Your father, John, but I can certainly say I don't think my father, you know, he might have been around it. Might not change some, but certainly not a lot. Not like we did.

[00:50:27] And not to say we're any great thing. We're just saying that things have shifted. We're normal. We're normal. Right? So think about O'Hian's dying words all changed. And think about Ursula K. Le Guin writing in the late 80s.

[00:50:45] The second wave ideas are just beginning to percolate out into the wider- Yeah, 90s. Yeah, because it really hits in the 90s, doesn't it? It really does.

[00:50:56] As I said, with all of those books coming out and people really starting to come to grips with, okay, what have we got here? And, you know, a lot of silly stuff got said in the process, but you kind of have to work it through.

[00:51:09] We're talking 30 years later now. So it's no wonder that it took her a while to figure out, all right, what is this great change in Earthsea? It has to do with magic initially. What is it going to be? And that's what John was mentioning.

[00:51:30] That's when Tanar begins to get excited. You know, and think about what is the change? She has the dream of flying in the light. And there's a sense of it, which is wonderful.

[00:51:45] But then you have to bring it down to Earth and realize it and make it real. And that's where the hard work begins.

[00:51:54] And then to do even harder work, which is to take on a child who is not of your kin, not yours or your kin, and who has suffered some serious trauma. Right.

[00:52:11] I think the trauma is the biggest part of it is she gets through in a state of physical damage for sure, but emotional damage, I think, even more. Yes, definitely. This lack of trust for any adult.

[00:52:23] I mean, clearly whoever did this to her was someone she was close to. This was someone she knew. This was not someone who was a stranger.

[00:52:31] Well, and there's a description of it in Chapter 6, isn't it, about how she was used and left in the fire, but they didn't have the courtesy to kill her? They didn't finish the job. Yeah, which is like, yeah, that was just an interesting way that she phrased that.

[00:52:47] I really stumbled over that. In the very first chapter, when we first, Lark brings the child to Tanar and hopes that Tanar can do some miracle or that she learned some magic from the priestesses.

[00:53:02] Again, turning desperate with a problem you can't solve to some other source that maybe has knowledge that you don't. And that's the first time we get the phrase, why do we do what we do? And it pops up a number of times throughout the book.

[00:53:19] And I think it's interesting to keep that in mind and see at what points do these things come up. When you're faced with an unthinkable situation, and you still have to think about it. There was never enough time, but there was always the next thing to do.

[00:53:42] And again, that's perhaps more of a practical boots on the ground approach to life. It's like, all right, well, we can think about the possibility of some mystical form of healing, but the kid's in pain and we've got a feeder.

[00:53:57] And oh, by the way, I have to take care of my sheep and the actual practical day to day.

[00:54:04] And how do you bring a child out of severe trauma and teach her to trust adults when the people who were supposed to protect her were the ones that damaged her so horribly. Right, did the opposite.

[00:54:20] I love the threshold moment where Tanar realizes that Tharu is beginning to heal when she says, what if I plant a peach? Right, she decides to grow something that will happen, that will bear fruit in the future. That is such a big step for her.

[00:54:40] And that's what I mean is, David, I know you're saying that the language might not be as pithy as the first three, but I think the character beats are so jam packed. Sure. I think I.

[00:54:52] Using a peach as the symbol of this recovery from trauma I thought was beautiful and had the kind of density that we expect from Le Guin.

[00:55:01] I think I almost have to go back and reread one through six with a different framework to pick this stuff up because I'm going, okay, where is the, where's the zazz? Right, where is it? This is a different, all has changed. Yes, it's a different kind of zazz.

[00:55:19] But remember at the end of that first chapter, when she's first looking at this little girl struggling to breathe and she says to her in Kargish, I served them and I left them. I will not let them have you.

[00:55:34] So she does have knowledge of evil at a level that nobody else on Gaunt has with a few exceptions, possibly like wizards or other people. And that can become her strength. That can become her power, if you will. Right.

[00:55:56] It's not a power that is going to confront dragons or your store, plug the hole that some bad magician left in the world. Right, right. It's a power that can heal a child who has been grievously hurt. Right, right.

[00:56:13] And I think when we go to an Eastern, some of the points of view that we find in what we call Eastern, in Eastern religion and mythology doesn't matter how big or small the circumstance is, it's still the same. Exactly.

[00:56:36] And of course we get a flavor of this in Star Wars with Yoda pulling the X-Wing up out of the swamp, right? And he's telling Luke, it doesn't matter how big it is. It's still, you're just focusing your mind.

[00:56:50] Or when Ged is taking the longest journey of his life from the bed to the doorstep or wherever it was. Right. It's like in that moment, that is the biggest journey that he did.

[00:57:05] It didn't matter that he went to the undying lands or to the dry lands and came back, flew on the back of a dragon, getting up out of that bed and walking across the room.

[00:57:15] In that moment, those steps, were they any bigger or any smaller than anything else that he has done? What is it to compare those? And they're also the first steps of a very long journey and a challenging one.

[00:57:35] I wanted to be sure that we talked about that amazingly poignant and wonderful scene in which, I don't remember, I think this is Tanar's narrative voice. But she's wondering if she should be concerned about the fascination that Auntie Moss seems to have for Therru and the reverse.

[00:58:00] And then she goes into this narrative about, come into my house, dearie, and I'll show you something wonderful. And in the old fairy tales, it was the Wicked Witch who popped her into the oven or turned her into a stone or whatever.

[00:58:18] And instead, Auntie Moss is saying, come into the house and I'll show you something wonderful. And it's a new set of chickens or it's a beautiful flower in the meadow.

[00:58:31] And she ends that paragraph with saying, Auntie Moss didn't need to put her burner in the oven or turn her to stone or whatever. That had already been done to her.

[00:58:46] And every fairy tale you've ever read about children in the woods and the Wicked Witch, suddenly that is turned on its head. And a reality is shown that again, few people want to look at or have seen. So I'm curious what their... this is an open question.

[00:59:09] I certainly don't look... I'm not looking for an answer on this podcast because we're only at chapter six. But what is Tenar being... what's the arc that Le Guin has for her?

[00:59:23] Because she's suddenly showing fascination with Ged and putting their staves next to each other in the doorstep. All very sweet things that children do. But then when children lock in on something, what is it that they're seeing? What is it they're resonating with?

[00:59:42] What is it that they're responding to? What is captivating their interest? And she's not putting that stuff in this story for no reason. Right. Well, little hints when she first sees Ged and sees his scars and says to Tenar, was he burned?

[01:00:01] And the specific answer was no, but she understood what burned meant to Ferru. Right. Oh, yeah, hard. Yes, he was burned. And the thing with the sticks and whatever in the end of that section is, was a hero being born? Yes. Which is interesting.

[01:00:21] First of all, I think that this is the prequel to Harry Potter. She's going to found Hogwarts. On a serious note, I think that Le Guin is sort of revisiting her own role in patriarchy as a writer in the 1960s and 70s.

[01:00:42] And as Tenar looks back on her priestesshood and her journey through the tombs with Ged, I think Le Guin is thinking, Was I unknowingly and unwillingly serving patriarchy with the way I was writing about women in that era?

[01:01:03] With the way I was writing about the world in that era? And am I now going to tell a different tale and sort of let my voice free, just like Tenar is now? In Earthsea Revision, she has a wonderful comment on that.

[01:01:17] She said when the book first came out, people would say different things about it and how it was bringing up these issues of patriarchy and so forth. Vonda McIntyre, who was a friend of hers, called it doing penance. And Le Guin's response is unredeemably secular.

[01:01:44] I would say that it was remedial civic action. She wasn't repentant for anything because she likes her books, but she is recognizing that they need some revising, some clearing up. Yeah, and I'm not asking Tenar or Le Guin to repent.

[01:02:00] It's more like, I think that what I'm saying is Tenar is finding her true self for the first time. And Le Guin finally feels like she can sing as herself here.

[01:02:12] Whereas she was, not that she wasn't herself back then, but I think that she recognizes that parts of herself were implanted by a system of oppression. The term she used was irredeemably secular. I would say it's affirmative action. That's what I couldn't remember.

[01:02:29] I want to talk about that a little bit more though, because if we're, we have to allow for process though, don't we?

[01:02:39] We can say that previous, you know, oh, well, those assumptions were not good and they did harm and we need to, we're trying to move on from them.

[01:02:50] And it gets sticky in terms of somebody who, you know, Le Guin isn't accused of abusing other people or using her power. You know, I can think of, you know. No, no, no.

[01:03:05] We think of actors or I'm thinking of a particular comedian right now who was, you know, America's dad. Turns out he wasn't a really great guy. How do we place their art now in retrospectively?

[01:03:20] So we're not talking sort of at that level, but at the level of somebody we're moving on, we've got to have space and grace to allow movement to happen. I don't think that there's any culpability on Le Guin's part at all.

[01:03:37] What I'm trying to say is I think a metaphor would be apt here. If she's an artist painting something, she's got her palette of 10 colors, seven are from her own mind, three are from patriarchy, from society implanted onto her, you know, without her choice. Yeah, exactly.

[01:03:56] She's now coming back. As we all inherit. Right, right, right, right. We all inherit. Exactly. Yeah. She's now coming back 18 years later and saying I'm done with those three colors. Let me paint with what's from me. Mm-hmm. And perhaps she finds some new colors along the way. Right.

[01:04:11] Yes. And if this book is then her, just like Tanar discovering herself, she's discovering herself. Right, right. But what is her true self? We don't know what is our true selves, essentialism. Exactly, because we're multiple selves. Right. And she makes this point over and over and over. Mm-hmm.

[01:04:28] And in that comment about deciding not to fly on her tradition anymore, but getting off and walking, she's still bringing herself along, but it's harder. Right. It's a lot harder because the phrases and the concepts are not just there in the zeitgeist. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right.

[01:04:51] She has to really examine herself and her own experience. And let's not forget that Tanar chose to leave the masculine power. Mm-hmm. She chose to stop studying with Ogion. Right. She wanted to choose the woman's side of the house.

[01:05:12] And Le Guin describes it as she quit grad school. And so did Le Guin. As a partner who's working on their PhD, I can certainly appreciate the desire sometimes to just quit. Right. But this is the point. Le Guin did exactly the same thing. Mm-hmm.

[01:05:29] She was working on her PhD, but she quit grad school to marry, to become a wife and a mother, and to raise children. Right. So this is exactly what Tanar has done. Mm, interesting.

[01:05:42] And within the woman's sphere, she has found a new kind of power because she wasn't interested in the other kind. So when I was reading those parts about that too, I was in my mind, just thinking, well,

[01:05:59] gosh, it would be nice if you were a priestess that was isolated from all physical contact. And you were taken and installed into this thing, and you had to do all this really foreign rituals, and you didn't have a normal childhood upbringing.

[01:06:23] Gosh, it sure would be nice just to have a quote unquote normal life for a period of time. Yeah. And just settle into yourself, into the essential parts of your physiology, bearing children and doing some of those things, or herding goats or whatever it might be.

[01:06:42] Just at some point to live a quote unquote unheroic existence. A normative life. A normative life. When trauma becomes too much for us, our brains often resort to scripts, and scripts are prescribed by society. Right. Society in our world has been a patriarchy for thousands of years.

[01:07:06] And I think in Earthsea, it's safe to say it's pretty patriarchal as well. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. So Tenar had this intense trauma where she had to be basically reborn with Ged, discovering her true name and freeing her from the tombs.

[01:07:21] And it's easier in the short term to settle into the scripts even if it may cause you more trauma down the line. Interesting. And that's why there's a book by Carol Gilligan I think I mentioned in the last podcast, Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

[01:07:36] That's why, is because it is much easier to tune out, to turn off and get into one of the scripts than it is to feel grief or anger or pain. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what Tenar did. Interesting.

[01:07:50] And I think this is true, and this is part of what we see, but there's a deeper message as well that it's not like she saw it as an either or. Mm-hmm. It's not like she saw it as she had to do it. She wanted it.

[01:08:11] She wanted to be- A woman of power. In a particular frame. Right. She did not want to be an oddity in this world of masculist power and someone who would be fighting and so forth.

[01:08:26] I mean, she still had her struggles on the woman's side of the house because she was white, she was a foreigner, she talked funny, all those kinds of things. But those things proved to be surmountable and she received the approval of her community

[01:08:41] and with it gained a kind of freedom that she'd never had before. Mm-hmm. And there were a lot of feminists who were very cross with Ursa Le Guin for doing it this way. They wanted Tenar to take on the wizardly. Right.

[01:08:54] They wanted her to become the first woman wizard and to do it. And that's not the point, to my mind, and I think to Le Guin's mind, of changing the scripts. The point is not flipping them. That's just a female occupying a male role. Exactly.

[01:09:13] That's the wheel of time. And there's going to be some fabulous conversations about this in the next section of the book. Some of the best that I've ever read. Right. You don't want to flip the script, you want to burn the script, right?

[01:09:28] You want to allow people to write their own script. That's it, John. You want to have the freedom to make your own choices and craft your own life. Mm-hmm. Which is hard. It's incredibly hard. It's very difficult, but it's very rewarding. Making non-traditional choices.

[01:09:52] I think podcasting is non-traditional or is it traditional now? Are you kidding? Do you know how many memes there are about, oh, what do you do on a date? Oh, I'm a podcaster. Bye. Bye. I don't tell people in my real life that I have a podcast.

[01:10:07] I know. I avoid it too because they all think we're Joe Rogan. Right, right. Or, oh, why aren't you covering this show? Yeah. Or that show. I really like this show. I think this is a great show. You should cover it. Mm, okay. Yeah.

[01:10:23] Look, I love covering as much as we can cover, but we've got to save it for the heavy hitters. Yeah. We also labor within a particular system of a particular reality that podcasting, just being a free love podcaster doesn't necessarily accommodate the lifestyles we need to maintain.

[01:10:46] Yep, yep. So David, you had a couple of miscellaneous things on your list that some of these I'm wanting to know more about what you wanted to say about them. Okay, call me out. Call me up. Invite you in. Yes, invite me in.

[01:11:00] There's a yeah, like that's even better, right? What's one of them that you- Well, let's remind listeners of the callback to book one. Okay. So it was just in a quick line.

[01:11:13] I don't know if I could call up the reference when, or it's actually just sort of Tanar thinking, I guess, and just sort of this inner monologue stuff that, you know,

[01:11:26] and she's talking about no one had come down from the mansion of Lord Re Albi was less surprising. Lords of that house had never been on good terms with Ogion. Women of the house had been, so the village tales went, adept of dark arts.

[01:11:43] One had married a northern lord, they said, who buried her alive under a stone. So that's a Saret who Ged had met in the fields when he was Ogion's protege or apprentice. And then he meets her again on the island of Oskil at the court of Terranon.

[01:12:08] And that's who he tries to flee the old ones with. That's his first encounter with the old ones. It was just a nice, I put a note in there just because I was like, oh, I know that. Yeah. That was a good catch.

[01:12:25] Bit of world building, you know, just the weaving of the world that she's doing here. And it will come back again, which is why I wanted to be sure I highlighted it. Okay. That's good to know. Yes. Good to know. And of course we haven't talked about dragons.

[01:12:43] We have not. We haven't talked about dragons. And that wonderful moment when Kelesen actually lands on the ledge with Ged on his back. And Tanar is there and she's, of course, quite taken aback.

[01:13:05] And the line is something to the effect of men were not supposed to look dragons in the eye. But what was that to her? A woman.

[01:13:15] And so we have a woman looking a dragon in the eye and speaking to a dragon because she had enough of the old speech from her lessons with Ogion to be able to do that in a simple fashion. And Kelesen is impressed, I think.

[01:13:35] It made me think of Ioan saying, I am no man. Right. When she strikes the blow against the, what was the stupid thing called? The Witch King. The Witch King. The Witch King of Angmar. I've got so many mythologies.

[01:13:55] How many worlds can you have in your head at one time? I'll tell you who's got a lot of worlds in their heads and that's Alicia. That woman has a command of her worlds, I tell you.

[01:14:07] And do you remember from Earthsea the other time that we've seen a woman who can presumably look a dragon in the eye? I do not.

[01:14:17] Going all the way back to the first book when Ged is visiting his friend and his friend's sister has an unusual ornament on her wrist. Oh, this is deep cut. So this is the boat maker? No, it's his fellow mage. Oh, Vetch. Vetch and his sister Yarrow.

[01:14:40] Right, who there was definitely some tension there between Ged and Yarrow. She has a dragon as a bracelet. Oh, didn't she have a- A little mini dragon. That's right. Like a basilisk? Or was it- I don't think she called it a basilisk. She called it a dragon. Okay.

[01:15:02] Was it on that island that they had some sort of small lizard or something? They had small dragons on that island and the women would wear them as charms. And Ged had never seen anything like this before and commented on it.

[01:15:13] And Le Guin said that remembering that woman wearing the dragon on her wrist was a very important seed for her beginning to think about how women might interact with dragons.

[01:15:27] Particularly a woman who had once been a priestess and a woman who knew some of the language of the old speech. Who was not afraid of the powers of dark because she had lived with them for so long. Boy, well I think I'm- I don't know.

[01:15:45] Is there much more to say? I mean, I'm sure there is, but I feel like I'm- I kind of want to seed something for the next time because I don't think there's enough to talk about here with it yet, but I think it's coming.

[01:15:57] Which is just that- what's his name? Ged. You know, the guy who we've been talking about for four books. And he's been cut off from his magic source. Right. And it reminds me so much of the Wheel of Time world, people getting stilled or gentled.

[01:16:13] And how they just kind of lose the will to live because they're so used to having access to magic. To having access to this pure power. And I wonder how Le Guin will approach that compared to Robert Jordan. Yes, stay tuned.

[01:16:29] And I've been thinking about that too, John. In reading the first book, the whole gentled thing. And wow, I went straight to Iron John and Robert Bly. Yeah. Because that's a major part of his thesis.

[01:16:42] And I was fascinated to find out that those two books came out in the same year and then Fire in the Belly was the following year. Yeah, that's super interesting. It's definitely a zeitgeist. People are really grappling with this.

[01:16:55] And using the language of myth and fantasy and fairy tale to do it. But in doing it, revealing their underpinnings, their particular views. And then getting responses back from the other gender, so-called.

[01:17:20] The fact that in Iron John, the child had to steal the key from underneath his mother's pillow. And it had to be men going off alone with men. Now, I am not in any way, shape or form against men's groups. I think they're fabulous.

[01:17:37] I wish they had started sooner. But the notion that the only way to be a real man was to avoid the company of women because it was weakening. There was nothing new in that. Right.

[01:17:50] We see that exact same tired trope in the first three books of the Earthsea series. And it will become explicit in this next section of Tehanu. We also see it in the life of J.R.R. Tolkien. He's got his men's clubs.

[01:18:11] It honestly seemed like he didn't spend a lot of time at home. Well, he spent time at home but it was often time after everybody else was in bed. Right. Well, that's what I mean. Or he spent time at home having tutorials. But he worked in the garden.

[01:18:29] He and Edith had conversations. The kids were out of the house fairly early on if we're looking at the time periods when he began to write his Hobbit Lord of the Rings and so forth. But yeah, he gave more lectures than anyone else unnecessarily.

[01:18:51] Far more than were required by the college. But now we are digressing. We sure are. And what else are we going to do here? What else are we going to do? All right, well then I think it's time we head into listener feedback quickly.

[01:19:06] But first, let's take a break. And we're back. We've got one piece of feedback today. A reminder you can send feedback to book at thelorehounds.com or you can go to our website thelorehounds.com and submit a contact form entry or voicemail.

[01:19:38] Brian 8063 Loremaster and friend of the pod frequent contributor writes in and says, Hi, John, Marilyn and David. This was an amazing book. Full stop. Thank you for leading us through this journey of story. So I guess Brian finished the book.

[01:19:51] I skimmed the email and I don't think that there are any spoilers going forward. So I will read it anyway. Marilyn, you prepared us for the huge plot point about women's role in fantasy and magic.

[01:20:05] One of my favorite young adult fantasy series is The Last Apprentice by Joseph Delany. It's the story of a boy, then man who learns to be a spook, a.k.a. monster hunter who fights dark forces, including witches.

[01:20:19] Women fit the usual trope of witches being evil beings, although he tries to develop a couple of witches into more complex characters. Anyway, I love how Tejanu examines her role as a woman in this universe. What is the source of her power? Is it to be a mage?

[01:20:36] Nope. A mother and wife? Yes. Do housework? I feel shame. Men give women power. This is a good quote. But Ged and Ogian had lived there, bachelors without women everywhere. Ged had lived. It was without women. So he did the women's work and thought nothing about it.

[01:20:54] It would be a pity, she thought, if he did think about it. If he started fearing that his dignity hung by a disc cloth, which we mentioned before. So we've already kind of broken this one down. Yet she knows there is more here. She was a priestess.

[01:21:10] Therru has great potential. She should be a mage. If you haven't already, could you explore this idea of freedom as it relates to power? This seems crucial to our understanding. Thanks again, Brian8063. I've heard there's a treatise already written on this by Marilyn Arpachula, our resident scholar.

[01:21:31] Well, bullet points at any rate. So hopefully I won't go on until everybody is hoping that I will stop. Hey, listen, we're really short for an Earthsea pod. We are. You got time. We definitely are. Well, it's a lovely question and thank you for sending it in.

[01:21:48] It's also one of the most important themes for Ursula in this book. So you're definitely spot on when you're identifying it as such. I think to start off with, I'd like to talk about there's a difference between power over, power with, and empowerment.

[01:22:10] Power over is what we usually think of when we think of power. You know, the ability to dominate or control or give orders and have them obeyed. Power with is what you have when you work with other people. So it's a shared power. It's a communal power.

[01:22:28] And I think the stereotype is that women do this more often than men. I don't know if that's true. I tend to think not, but it's certainly, as I say, the stereotype is kind of out there. Empowerment is the power that you have within.

[01:22:43] And to be empowered is to recognize it and to enact it. So it seems like freedom and power would have to go together. And yet, as soon as you choose power over, you're no longer free because your power depends on someone else's weakness.

[01:23:03] And that is a quote from something that we'll be reading soon. Your success depends upon the behaviors of others, which you may coerce, but ultimately you cannot control. So there's a constant struggle and focus to maintain your power over.

[01:23:21] And to be sure that it's recognized and respected or whatever. And when I wrote that letter to Ursula, I talked about Tadar and her choices. The fact that she chose to leave the structure of mages and so forth and to choose her own life.

[01:23:41] And she responded to me, quote, what you wrote about Tanar and her choice and her vulnerability touched me very much. Some of my dearest friends and mentors, such as Vonda McIntyre, do see her choice as a way to be empowered.

[01:23:54] Vonda McIntyre do see her choice as, quote, too feminine, close quote, as a relinquishment of power or leaving the action to men. And here I'm leaving out a couple of sentences which don't happen until the next section that we're going to read. So I don't want to spoil.

[01:24:12] Ursula goes on, what I see is that the violent solution remains the man's solution. What Tanar's solution is remains mysterious or unrecognizable, as you say, close quote.

[01:24:24] So we are talking about a new approach to power, recognizing other kinds of power than the one that has been dominant for so long. And these next quotes from Ursula come from Earthsea Revisioned.

[01:24:42] When she first came to Gaunt, Tanar lived as a student with a very wise mage, Ogion. Wouldn't he have taught her the uses of power? Well, we don't know if he would or not because she refused. She quit grad school, as I pointed out, so did Ursula.

[01:24:57] She went off to be a nobody, a wife and mother, as did Ursula. And now as an aging widow, not even allowed to own her farm, she's a sub-nobody. Was this a sacrifice? If so, what for? Ged's bargain seems clearer.

[01:25:14] In the third book, he sacrifices his power, spending it to defeat a mortal enemy. He triumphs, but at the cost of his heroic persona. As Archmage, he is dead. And in Tehanna, we find him weak, ill, depressed, forced to hide from enemies.

[01:25:30] Readers who want him to be the alpha male are dismayed. They're dubious of a strength that doesn't involve contests and conquests and bossing people around. Apparently it was the bossing around that Tanar refused when she stopped studying with Ogion.

[01:25:45] Maybe Ogion, a maverick mage, would have shared his knowledge with her. Even if the wizardly hierarchy had accepted her, which seems doubtful, she evidently didn't want their kind of power. She wanted freedom. She doesn't approve of sacrifice. Quote, my soul can't live in that narrow place.

[01:26:04] This for that, tooth for tooth, death for life. There is a freedom beyond that. Beyond payment, retribution, redemption. Beyond all the bargains and the balances, there is freedom. And she didn't do any dying to get it. All her former selves are alive in her.

[01:26:22] The child Tanar, the girl priestess Arha, who still thinks in Kargish, and Goha, the former wife, mother of two children. Tanar is whole, but not single. She is not pure. The sacrificial image of dying to be reborn is not appropriate to her. Just the opposite.

[01:26:43] She has been born. She has been giving birth to her children and her new selves. She is not reborn, but reburying. The word seems strange. It takes an effort to think not of rebirth, but reburying actively in the maternal mode.

[01:27:01] To think not as the apple, but as the apple tree. And there's more, but we'll have to wait until after we've read the rest of the book. We've got plenty to go. I don't even know how many chapters are in this, but I'm assuming it's a lot. Fourteen.

[01:27:18] Okay, we don't have as many as I thought we did. Well, I hope that answered your question, Brian. So do I. Because it had a lot of juicy nuggets in there. And thank you, Marilyn, for gathering the sources as you always do. My pleasure.

[01:27:32] I guess it's time for us to wrap things up here. We have a few show notes that we want to do. If we want to talk about our affiliates quickly, we have Properly Howard Movie Review. We've just announced a collaboration with them.

[01:27:48] We're going to be covering Severance with them. So they're covering season one alone, and we will cover season two with them. That feed will be linked in the show notes, as well as the Properly Howard main feed, where they're talking about remakes of movies.

[01:28:02] Did they wrap up their season? They did wrap up their season. They dropped their last one, The Sorcerer, from 1977. But I was going to say, with the Severance feed too, I think we're going to cross-post a teaser episode. And that way you can take a listen,

[01:28:20] and then hopefully jump over there and subscribe to that feed so that it's all ready to go once we start releasing the season one episodes. Right. All right. So very cool. That should be on our feed either before or after this.

[01:28:35] But just keep an eye on our feed. And make sure you subscribe to that feed because we're not going to be posting our Severance coverage on this feed. That's right. This is only going to be on the Severance feed,

[01:28:44] just because it works with ad revenue and all that jazz. Just stuff you don't need to worry about. Just subscribe to the feed. Anyway, Alicia, I'm going to be talking with her tomorrow morning about The Fall of the House of Usher,

[01:28:57] which is the new Mike Flanagan Netflix series. It's really, really good. Have you been enjoying it? It's amazing. I think it's his best work yet. I think it's his magnum opus so far. I got through episode two, and I was like,

[01:29:09] episode two is a little bit of a head scratcher. But, um, well, it's so good. It's just packed with, first of all, references all over the place, obviously. Right. Right. It's got so much metaphor. It's just beautifully written. The dialogue is amazing. The visuals are amazing.

[01:29:28] It does not rely on jump scares, which is something I always appreciate in horror. It's more about what I like about Mike Flanagan is he, he dissects a human emotion with horror as his palette, rather than doing horror for horror's sake. Interesting.

[01:29:46] He uses it as a tool to examine a human emotion. Okay. Yeah. I noticed in the episode one, there were a couple of times where I was expecting something to happen because something was happening in a background and you're like, oh my God, it's about to happen.

[01:30:01] And then it doesn't happen. All happens very quickly as it goes. But it wasn't a jump scare. I was expecting the jump scare, right? And it didn't happen. And then I'm like, oh, this is interesting. Yeah. He doesn't do jump scares much. He does it sometimes.

[01:30:15] He mostly hides things in the background though. Right. Yeah. If you're looking for something spooky, that's a really great show. It's on Netflix. You can binge it all now. And I think that'll be out sometime soon. And Alicia and Anthony on his electric Buccaloo podcast,

[01:30:28] they're going to have a conversation about George R. Martin and how he was influenced by Poe. Okay. And so they're going to get into the interesting stuff that Alicia's got a bunch of stuff cooking too. She's, they had to do,

[01:30:39] she had to make some changes to the Wolshift Dust book club. We lost a member of our community. And so she's sort of gone through that process and then now getting started again. So those are going to start rolling and Abby is going to be joining her.

[01:30:55] And Abby's a great person, been very active on the dead bird social media platform and other places. And so they're going to start doing beacon 21, 23, 23. Thank you. Two off, which is another Hugh Howie book that's going to be on the MGM plus streaming platform.

[01:31:14] I think stop making them where we have enough. We need bundles now. Take us back to cable. We've got, we've got to go the other direction. I enjoy Abby's feedback posts. Yeah, yes. I think, I think I've been listening to the one,

[01:31:30] I think it's on low key that she's been, she's been very faithful and low key. So that's been great. Yeah. So, and you know, I mean, she just come from the fandom and her and Alicia have hit it off.

[01:31:41] So that's really exciting that we get to hear some more voices. Just to add, well, Alicia and I will be talking about the fall of the house of us are here. She's also doing a broader look at it with a lot of focus on the writings of Poe,

[01:31:54] about your Alan Poe on her feed will shift us. So you can find her feed in the show notes as well, where you can get all her stuff. Does she sleep? She doesn't. She stays up till like four in the morning talking to us about star Wars. Yeah.

[01:32:08] It's crazy. It's amazing. We are very lucky to have her. So as far as us, we are kind of back cooking. It feels like where things are moving again. You're doing low key dated with Alicia and John every week. It's fine. We're doing great right now.

[01:32:23] Our two years. See, as we speak, some early stories coming back this month. It is. We also have a one shot on the creator. Right. Right on. And Alicia that's in the can. I just got to edit it now. I have to,

[01:32:37] I have to sleep between work and family life and then editing it. So, but that'll be out before long before the end of the month for sure. Mm hmm. Yeah, we've got stuff coming. The second breakfast for our patron subscribers. We have a new movie called the witch,

[01:32:54] which is a very interesting movie. I just watched it the other day. It's so good. Yeah, it was another one that's like deep in using, using horror as a way to explore all these, all these not what I expected. It was not what I was expecting.

[01:33:08] More traditional horror story just set. Actually the, the witch is very much in line with the fall of the house of Usher. The Madden. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That's true. So, we do thank you for reminding us about that.

[01:33:23] Bear McCreary noted composer and musician did the theme songs and, and music for foundation. And I got to ask him his hair routine too. It looks great. It's amazing. And he's done a lot, a bunch of video games and he's got a really perfect career.

[01:33:41] And I think he's really on a big upswing right now. He came into oxen by zoom and did a Q and a, and he, he just, you know, he's like, just push a button and he'll just talk. Wow. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Cool.

[01:33:58] I'm super excited to talk to him. I mean, I have a music background. I love to pick people's brain about it. And he's, he's a guy who's just so prolific. I can't believe he said yes. Yeah. He's so generous that way. He really is,

[01:34:11] but he enjoys what he's doing and he enjoys talking about it with people and, you know, sharing the enthusiasm of his own enthusiasm and also the enthusiasm of people we want to talk to that talking.

[01:34:22] I'm can't wait to hear him talk again about the device that they invented for the music for the opening sequence of foundation. He wanted it to be so precise that it couldn't be human instruments because it was a reflection of the prime radiant, the prime radiant, you know?

[01:34:43] So I'm looking forward to hearing about that too. Very cool. That's super cool. All right. Well, that's about it for us. We need to talk about our Patriot and Laura masters. David, can you give us some shout outs? I do. And before I do the shout outs,

[01:34:56] I just wanted to mention a couple of things. So yeah, Patreon did a big update on their systems and there's a way that you can follow us now quite easily. So you can see the kinds of posts that we've got going out.

[01:35:05] We also have a free seven day trial. So if you want to check us out and listen to stuff, you can do it that way. And we have annual memberships. So if it works for your budget, makes things easier, you know, you can subscribe that way.

[01:35:18] And subscribing to patron really is the best way since ad revenues are so fickle. Anyway, we have our top tier Patriot subscribers, also known as our lore masters. And we like to give them a shout out for every podcast. And they are some Martian Cyrus,

[01:35:34] Mark H Michael G Michelle E David W Brian P Nick W S C Peter O H Bettina W Adam S Nancy M Lavinia T Dove 71 Brian 80 63 Frederick H Sarah L Garracy Eric F Matthew M Sarah M DJ Miwa Andra B Kwang Yu Laura G Dead Eye Jedi

[01:35:58] Bob Nathan T Alex V Aaron T Subzero and Adrian. Yay. That list has gotten really long and we want to thank all of you and all of our patrion supporters. It really helps us, keeps us in the software, keeps us all on the platforms that we need,

[01:36:17] helps us take care of our co-hosts and contributors. So we really appreciate all the support and it just gives us warm fuzzies to know. You're all such nice people. And we like to talk to you. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cool. All right. Well,

[01:36:34] I think until next month, what's our Tehanu, what's the next bank of chapters? Seven through. Tehanu experts. I don't know. To be determined. To be determined. Okay. We'll tweet about it. We'll dead bird about it as you say David. Yeah. And or, and then also, yeah,

[01:36:53] we'll make mention of it in a future podcast as well. So keep listening. So, all right. Thanks Marilyn. Thanks John. Thank you gentlemen. See you later. The Lord's house podcast is produced and published by the Lord's house.

[01:37:05] You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at the Lord's house. Dot com slash contact. Get early and add free access to all Lord's house podcasts at patrion.com slash the Lord's house. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of,

[01:37:19] or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side, green or black. John, your soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting.

[01:37:44] I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really liked the show, the politics, the drama, the lore.

[01:37:58] It was made for the lore hounds. And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the dance of the dragons. And with the season pass option and supercast listeners can get early ad free

[01:38:10] access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive. Plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the lore hounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot, but probably positive takes.

[01:38:24] The Lord's house of the dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heart and conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book, fire and flood by George RR Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.