The Book Nook - E09 - Tehanu Part 3

[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.

[00:00:36] 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.

[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.

[00:01:00] 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 hardened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:28] Welcome to Book Nook, where the Lorehounds, your guides to the archipelago of Earthsea. I'm David. I'm John. And I'm Marilyn. And this is part three of our coverage of the fourth book of the Earthsea series, Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin.

[00:01:43] In this podcast, we're going to be discussing chapters 11 through 14, the conclusion of the book. We will start off with some spoiler-free conversation about our thoughts on the section in general. Following a quick break, we will move into a deeper conversation about the plot and major themes presented.

[00:02:00] While we enjoy discussing the book amongst ourselves, we also want to hear from you. Send us an email to book at the lorehounds.com or visit us at our website. And there you can either use the contact form or leave us a voicemail.

[00:02:16] And that website is the lorehounds.com. And we also have a Discord server. We'll put a link in the show notes below. And we've got a channel set up there just to talk about all the Earthsea books and all the topics and things that we're covering,

[00:02:33] and all the other shows that we're covering and all the other projects. So join us over there. It's a great community. We have lots of fun. And as David said, a dedicated channel just for Earthsea conversations, but I'm sure you'll enjoy all the others as well.

[00:02:46] So check out the link in the show notes below. For ad-free versions of this and all of our other podcasts, please check us out at patreon.com.

[00:02:53] Celeste, the lorehounds, will share more about our Patreon as well as scheduling notes for us and our affiliates at the end of the podcast. Also, if you have a moment, we would love it if you would share your thoughts with us about the podcast.

[00:03:05] Ratings and reviews are what help others find the podcast. And we're grateful for any reviews because they help us make better podcasts too. All right, gang. Here we are at the end of our three-part coverage of Te Anu. Who knew? I think we could have probably intuited.

[00:03:23] I was just listening today on a podcast, to a podcast about free will versus determinism. And I think deterministically speaking, it was always inevitable that we were going to cover this one book with this much coverage.

[00:03:40] Well, Marilyn sat you down in person and said, we're going to do this in three parts. We're going to do it in three. Don't argue with me. That said, before we get into –

[00:03:49] What I said was, you realize we're going to have to take three chunks to do this. Yes. I think they were good chunks though. I'm actually really glad that we did it this way.

[00:03:59] So thank you, Marilyn, for your suggestion because it feels very natural to divide it this way. It did. The internal breaks were good. That said, I think that's a good segue, John, because you were not able to join us for part two.

[00:04:12] No, I was goat herding in the mountains actually. Yes. You're taking a trip around the island on the king's ship. Right.

[00:04:21] So do you have any thoughts or reactions to that section you'd like to touch on now or any thoughts that came out from the podcast since you, I believe, have listened to it? You two did an excellent job on part two.

[00:04:35] I don't want to belabor it because I think that you two hit all the things that I would have said.

[00:04:41] I will say I don't know if I'll be able to quite fully divide part two and part three in my head right now because I read them together, but I vaguely know where they end.

[00:04:52] I'm sure Marilyn's recap will help me figure out what I'm about to talk about tonight. Right. As far as I'm concerned, we can talk about all of it. Yes, it's true. That's true. We can just be like a wrap up. Yeah.

[00:05:05] That said, let's touch base really quick on our coverage that we've done in the past and sort of what we've got in front of us. John, do you want to walk us through where the folks can find the different segments and the different books and stuff?

[00:05:24] We've covered A Wizard of Earthsea, I think, in two parts, The Tombs of Atuan, I think, in one part, Farthest Shore in two parts. And here we are on our third part of Tejanu.

[00:05:36] We will also be doing Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind sometime in the new year, early in the new year. But for now, you can get all of the main books of this series covered on our feed.

[00:05:49] So head to the lorehounds.com, just search Earthsea and you should be fine.

[00:05:53] Something we teased earlier too was a book written by Professor John Plotz, who wrote sort of an interesting personal reaction to Earthsea and to Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as analyzing a bit of the books.

[00:06:15] And I've been in touch with him by email and we're going to be coordinating with him to interview him and have a conversation with him about his book and his thoughts on Ursula K. Le Guin and all that she's done for this genre.

[00:06:30] We kind of put pause on it because we wanted to finish Tejanu, because in his book he talks about Tejanu and we didn't want to spoil ourselves. Plus it got busy, summer, blah, blah, blah.

[00:06:41] So we're going to bring that back online and that'll happen sometime in the next few months when we get schedules coordinated. So keep your ears out for that. I want to add to that that I don't think that this book is very spoilable on a plot point.

[00:07:01] I think this book is much more about the ride than the destination. Interesting. This is very much a characterization book. Roll into your hot takes then on this, on your initial takes. I mean, I really love this book. This was by far my favorite of the series.

[00:07:18] I think that it is much more of the kind of book that I pick up just on my own. You know, The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings, things that let you journey with the characters.

[00:07:30] And even if you're not going far in distance, you are going a very great distance internally. And that's what we saw these characters do in this book.

[00:07:42] I won't spoil where they go even though, like I said, I don't think that the plot really is as central to this as the characterization and as the character arcs. But I think that Le Guin really perfected her character building, her character development in this book.

[00:08:02] And it was so great to hear a different voice. I mentioned that I did the last couple of books on audiobook and they switched from Robert Ingalls to, I don't remember the name of the narrator of this one, but it's a woman.

[00:08:14] And hearing that voice come through, I think really emphasized that Le Guin is feeling, I think to herself based on what you were saying in the last podcast about her writings about Tejano.

[00:08:27] But also it comes through that she's feeling like she's shedding a lot of the shackles on her own voice in this book. And I really appreciated that. I was blown away by how great this book was without a lot of plot.

[00:08:44] And I'm really looking forward to talking about it with you all. I will say right up here too, these are our spoiler free thoughts and we'll take a break and then we'll get into spoilers after.

[00:08:59] So just in case you didn't catch that, we won't say anything if you just wanted to hear our general reactions, if you haven't read it all.

[00:09:06] I'm actually going to exercise a little bit of prerogative here and go next with my takes because I want to, I guess, be argued with a little bit.

[00:09:17] And I don't want to leave it on a negative note because I want to end our conversation on a higher note. I feel really kind of not inspired or a little bit let down by the ending of this book.

[00:09:35] And there was a big tonal shift, I guess in the denouement of it all or the climax of it all at the end. And it doesn't go until like right just till the end when we get a really big thing happening and a big resolution all very quickly.

[00:09:58] And some questions are answered but left even more ambiguous. And for me, it seemed very, and this happened, then this happened, this happened, and then this person said this and then done.

[00:10:14] And I'm like, wait a minute, where did, there's no mechanics here. There's no explanation. There's no realization. It's ended by, there's a sort of an external set of circumstance that occurs to resolve it very quickly. And it really left me dissatisfied.

[00:10:37] Up until then in the last part for our part two, I was really engaged and interested and wow, this is great. And where are we going? And the first part, I think chapters 11, 12, I think it's really just chapter 14 where she just wraps it all up.

[00:10:58] And I was left bewildered. So I guess I'm, this is not my favorite in terms of enjoyment factor. I'm glad I read it and I'm glad I've taken it on board sort of the nutrition that she's offering here in terms of gender and identity and these questions.

[00:11:18] And it's made me think a lot about that and myself and then reflecting on my own past and my own journey around identity and questions of this nature. But from a storytelling standpoint in that entertainment value, like I said, it left me very bewildered.

[00:11:42] And I really don't know how to, I'm feeling kind of critical about it too.

[00:11:47] So I'm open to having this conversation when we get into the spoiler full, spoiler free on the other side of the break when we talk spoilers where we can grapple with this a little bit more. You know, I think this might be a preference thing.

[00:12:04] And, and I will say that around chapter 12, I was thinking to myself, we have not left the Shire plot wise, right? We are just still very much in setup mode. It feels like it does. It goes and goes and goes. Yeah. And then it wraps up very quickly.

[00:12:19] You're correct. I love books like that. I read Vonnegut. That's like my favorite, like comfort read and, and Discworld is the same way too, I think. Where like everything is very much about the journey. And then at the very end they're like, all right, let's wrap it up.

[00:12:34] And that's fine with me. And, and it's more fine with me in this story in general, I think because of how deemphasized the plot is for this. I think that it's just not the same kind of story as the first three and that's okay with me.

[00:12:48] But I can see where if you're, if you want more of the first story. It's certainly not that. And I think, I think it's fine that it's not the first three because that's not her. But at the same time, yeah.

[00:13:01] From a story mechanical standpoint and from a, I'm not trying to, I'm not saying an entertainment value in a, in a cheap way because to be entertained is to be engaged and interested. And it's a type of fuel for me to be engaged in the story.

[00:13:21] So, but yeah, I totally agree. This is a very, very different and it's supposed to be a different book. Marilyn, I'm sorry I stepped on you there. No, no, that's fine. Please, what's your take? I have, I have some writings from her that address this very issue.

[00:13:33] Okay, good, good. So when we get there, I have some things to say and explain. I have very much avoided all of the contextual information and the historical information because I really wanted to come in.

[00:13:46] If, if previous listeners remember, I read this when I was in my twenties and I had a strong reaction to it.

[00:13:54] And so I wanted to come back to it as, as who I am now with that history and go, okay, tell me now what you were trying to tell me then. And, and so I don't want to, I didn't want to read any of the, the contextualizing information.

[00:14:08] So, so that I was dealing with myself in the moment as I'm reading the book. Sure. Can I, can I just before I lose this thought, just bring something in. Of course.

[00:14:20] When I was reading this, I realized that I think that the first three Earthsea books are very clearly written by a younger person because they are all about the adventure and the, the glory that you can get to and the, the impressive things that you can do and the feats.

[00:14:41] And then you get to this book and really what this is, is how do I learn to be comfortable in the ordinary? And what is the power of the ordinary? And that's beautiful to me.

[00:14:53] And as someone who's turning 30 this year, I long to be ordinary, but also fulfilled. And I, I think that that's a really beautiful way to evolve this series. We're done adventuring. We did our twenties. We're moving on.

[00:15:12] And as a person of 54 years of age, outing ourselves here, I am very much in a, in a, a very non-adventurous life right now. I've, I've done my adventuring and I have adventured and I feel satisfied with my adventures.

[00:15:34] And so I'm very much into tending the, you know, mending the fences, you know, working on our house, making sure that our, our daughter has a fun, healthy, safe environment that she can grow up in and, and, you know, begin to challenge the world and on her terms.

[00:15:53] So I'm all about that. And chapter 14, I just didn't understand it in some ways. So, but I am with you, John, on that regard of like, ah, yes, this is normal life. I'm showing the britches and I'm mending the fences.

[00:16:09] I'm like, oh yeah, I could see myself all over this book. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I've been binging Dr. Who lately, so I'm going to bring in a quote here from the ninth doctor that I always liked. I believe it's, that's an ordinary person.

[00:16:24] That's the most important thing in creation. You know, it's people want very spectacular stories out of their fantasy, but there's also a beauty in day in the life fantasy.

[00:16:40] And I think that this is kind of in between because you have a lot of conflict, but you also, and, and you're going through this great journey internally for all of these characters. But really the goal is to settle into normalcy.

[00:16:55] That's the goal of all of these characters. And I, I really kind of love that. It's, it's beautiful.

[00:17:02] And I think it's also the goal of the author to put forward the normalcy, if you will, even as she is also putting forward the problems that normal people deal with that cannot necessarily be solved with the traditional heroics, if you will. Right.

[00:17:28] I was 35 when I first read this and it helped me through some really tough stuff. And it frustrated me at the same time. One of the things I said in my general reactions is I find the outcome both satisfying and frustrating in a way.

[00:17:46] So I think my frustration, I see it in the line. I think my frustration might not be the same as your frustration, David. Okay. But there is a reason for that. And she's quite honest and open about it.

[00:17:57] So when we get there, we'll get there and we'll talk about that. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it because it just felt very compressed in a way. Sure. And I don't, yeah. So, so some, some illumination around that would be great.

[00:18:12] Well, otherwise what did you think beyond, beyond that? Right. We've been stepping on you for the last 10 minutes. So Marilyn, please let us know what you think.

[00:18:21] Well, as, as one of our listeners said in, in discord channel, the clues are all there, but you have to know how to look for them and see them. And then the denouement is something that you've been suspecting all along.

[00:18:36] And so when it happens, you are satisfied in that sense. You don't feel like it's out of the left field. You do understand what's happening, but they're very subtle clues. I did not get any of them. My first read through.

[00:18:50] So I too was completely surprised by what happens in chapter 14 and exhilarated and a little frustrated, which again, I'll talk about when I get there. So yeah, we're reading, we're talking about the end of act two plus act three. I think act two ends when spring comes.

[00:19:12] Can't remember exactly which chapter that is, but those who have read it will know. This book contains some of the best conversations about gender and power I have ever read. And I think I've said that for all three of our podcasts about it.

[00:19:27] And it was, it was revolutionary. It was saying the things that I sensed, but could not put into words because it finds a path between two extremes. And I've already read some of her comments about that in previous episodes. You can go back and listen to that.

[00:19:47] The lines that I love, nothing is ever wasted and better late than never. And those both comment one of my favorite parts of the book. And we finally understand the mystery of Therru and her power and who and what she is. So those are my observations.

[00:20:07] A part of the question is answered, but then there's so much that's left not answered. And that also frustrated me. Exactly. Because there's no, I'm like, wait, what? Huh? Yes. Yes. And yeah, there were clues that were being established all the way through.

[00:20:34] And I certainly had a sense of what was going to happen. And then it's like, yeah, but what do you mean? What do you mean this is the last chapter? I mean, come on. Yep. There's no mechanical basis for this. There's nothing explained. And it just was frustrating.

[00:20:53] Yeah, very frustrating. But that also forces you to focus on the drama of the character development, right? Because if a bunch of crazy things started happening, that's the book. And because she only gives you a taste of it, the book is about the characters. Fair enough.

[00:21:08] Yeah, yeah, that's true. I absolutely cannot argue with that. And I guess the preceding events to the resolution are so wild. And so like what is going on here? This is craziness. And then it's over. Then click, it's over. It's a big tonal shift as well.

[00:21:36] And so I think conversation, walking the woods and fixing the spit rail fences and bringing in the sheep and having these conversations while you're spinning yarn, all great. And then radical tonal shift and immediate resolution. And then giant questions. It's so compressed and there's no elasticity in it.

[00:22:04] There's no space, there's no room to grow. And so because it was such a shock for me, it's hard for me to relate to the whole 13 previous chapters because I'm lost in this bewilderment of chapter 14. Is that on purpose? I think the growth happened in the previous 13 chapters.

[00:22:28] But we had to be looking for it. We had to be watching it. But I'm taken out of all of that because now I'm just left with my giant WTF. Sure, sure, sure. It requires trust.

[00:22:40] And if ever you go back and reread it, I think you'll probably see it in a different light. Possibly. Because all of a sudden you'll see all these little...

[00:22:51] I've tried to include as many clues as I could in the things that I read in the previous two episodes that we did. You're laughing at us as we're stumbling. Not laughing. I would never laugh. No, no, no. Of course not. I would never laugh at us.

[00:23:07] Taking joy in watching us feel our way through that. Well, how many times did I say put a pin in that? You did. Or to be continued or pay attention to this. But it's not as though your brain has not been completely clogged with how many other universes.

[00:23:23] It's subtle. It's definitely subtle. She's not going to stand up and get on a soapbox and rant and rave and throw things. And it's interesting, John, that your enjoyment of this book in terms of level of enjoyment is my enjoyment of the first three books. Right?

[00:23:41] So we've both enjoyed something, but yet you don't like cake. Why is this becoming a meme now? Because it's fun. It feeds the parasocial relationship that we have with our listeners. So we got to have those little inside jokes.

[00:24:01] I think John has the advantage of having studied with Carol Gilligan. I'll just put that out there. I will say after I learned a lot from Carol Gilligan, I read for like a year afterwards.

[00:24:15] I could only read anything or watch anything or consume any media thinking of it in terms of patriarchy. That was the only way I could do it.

[00:24:24] And I still very often use that as one of the lenses, but I could only use that lens for like a year afterwards because it cut right to my core. And I really loved studying that stuff. And this book really reminded me of a lot of that.

[00:24:43] And it's a big ask. It's a big ask, particularly for men to read, I think. And I think for me now, I can see myself so much more in this book in my normal daily life.

[00:25:00] But I think for me, one of the things that I've wanted for myself for my life is to have had an adventurous life. And I feel like I got that.

[00:25:10] And so that's why the first three books, I think, probably spoke to me at that point when I first read them was a life of adventure.

[00:25:20] And grappling with things and struggling with myself and struggling with the world and going out and trying to make an impact, have a mark, that kind of stuff. And so those three books also sit very deep in my nostalgia.

[00:25:39] Well, as someone who's going to be turning 68 in a half a year, I can say that my biggest adventure of my life started when I was 64, 65. There you go. So it's cyclical. And what you consider to be an adventure will change throughout the course of your life. Indeed.

[00:26:01] And I think that's another thing that she's pointing out here, that adventure and courage and heroism manifest all over the place in many different ways and forms. And this is one particular place and form where this happens.

[00:26:20] The very beginning of the book, Lark asks Tenar when she has taken on the unbelievable task of healing and raising this horribly abused child. Lark says, why do we do what we do?

[00:26:37] And you could answer it in a lot of ways, but one of the ways I would say is it's an act of heroism. It's just not the kind of heroism that we're accustomed to seeing.

[00:26:48] And I'm reminded of the scene in Star Wars on Dagobah where Luke is struggling to use the force to raise his X-wing out of the swamp. And Yoda's like, dude, size doesn't matter. An object is an object, right? So an adventure is an adventure.

[00:27:09] The scale of the adventure, whether it's scrubbing a pot or getting your kid to school on time or living a life outside of your home country in various places. It's conversely, there's another slide sideways. You know, pain is pain. Like how are we going to scale our pain?

[00:27:36] Adventure, these things are, we can look at the external circumstances, but then sort of in our internal sense, well, how do we compare these? And the answer is for me, I don't. Right. I don't believe in the Pain Olympics.

[00:27:52] A situation which would be simple for one person could be terrifying for me. Yeah. Because of our different life experiences. And conversely, something that I can do without any particular kerfuffle could be terrifying for somebody else.

[00:28:11] I'm watching our daughter as she's developing and she's a deep feeling person. And so certain things, but she also has this great baseline of a very positive, happy person. She does. Yeah. I saw that when we were there. Yeah.

[00:28:29] But when something does happen and does strike some emotional chords for her, you know, myself or my wife or somebody else, we're like, you know, what's the big deal? That's not a big deal. But for her, it's a big deal. Exactly. And it reveals her emotions very much.

[00:28:49] Those big feelings for her are deeper than somebody else. So it's like I always have to check myself and go, oh, wait a minute. Her emotional sensory apparatus, she's a very empathetic person too. And so the impact is much bigger. Where I'm 54, I'm not dead to the world.

[00:29:12] We develop a sensitivity. We thicken ourselves, I guess, in a way. Well, but you also have that many more years of life experience to give it a context. Yeah, absolutely. And perspective. Exactly. She doesn't have that kind of perspective yet.

[00:29:26] And as a fellow empath, I understand the kinds of things she's going through. And she's lucky to have parents who recognize that, yes, for her it is a big deal.

[00:29:35] And part of her growing up is going to be learning how to allow those big feelings without them overwhelming her. Right. And to recognize it not as a weakness, but as a strength. So how does this relate to GED?

[00:29:50] Well, it's not dissimilar from some of the things that Tenar says to Therru. Right. If you think about it.

[00:29:58] I was really struck by something that one of you or both of you said on the last podcast, which was the battle of this book is basically the battle for Therru. The battle to bring – to heal her, to bring her into a functional personhood.

[00:30:15] And that really framed the rest of the book for me. So I appreciated that. Man, this Lorehounds podcast, they do a great job on there. But yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

[00:30:27] And I think that if you frame it like that, there's a ton of action in this whole thing. There's the promise of he'll never touch you. There's the – I don't remember where it cuts off.

[00:30:38] But there's a promise that he'll never touch you and will she be able to fulfill that promise? And there's just a lot of back and forth on will Therru heal. And I think that that really is how you enjoy this book the most. I think that's interesting.

[00:30:54] Someday when I'm able to come back around and read this again, keeping these thoughts in mind, because I did read it going, okay, when's the action? When are we going to get to it?

[00:31:07] But if – re-centering it from that point of view, because I was able to sort of re-center to – I'm kind of blanking the name of the main character. Tanar? Tanar. Thank you. Goodness me. I was able to re-center on Tanar and get myself there.

[00:31:33] But then I think if you come all the way around and put the lens, the point of view lens on – Therru. Therru, then it's got to be a wholly different story.

[00:31:46] But I think you can't do that unless you've – can you do that without having read it once already? No, no. You cannot. You cannot do that. Do you know what you reminded me of when you said I kept waiting for the action to happen?

[00:31:58] Way, way back in the first book. Okay. When Ged is following Ogien across the mountain back to his home and he says, when am I going to start learning? When are the lessons going to start? And Ogien says, they've already begun. That's right. There you go.

[00:32:16] Well, I think that that's enough spoiler-free talk. We're getting very dangerously close to the spoiler territory with all that we're talking about. We've set some good context for it. Absolutely. So if you haven't read the book, we'll see you when you do.

[00:32:28] If you have read the book or you just want to be spoiled, then we'll see you after the break. And we're back. All right. So we've got this lovely synopsis by Marilyn. So would you like to take it away, Marilyn? I will happily read it, yes.

[00:32:56] Previously, the former archmage of Earthsea, Ged, was flown on the dragging Kelesen to his home island of Gaunt, where he was met by Tenar of the Ring.

[00:33:07] Ged has lost his magic through defeating an evil wizard who promised an end to death by draining all magic and life from the world. Tenar, now a widowed farm wife on Gaunt, has adopted a horribly abused child, naming her Therru.

[00:33:22] They all meet at the house of Ged's former master. But Ged flees messengers from the king and takes his shame at losing his magic to tend goats near Tenar's farm.

[00:33:34] One of Therru's abusers comes looking for her, and Tenar is cursed by the wizard Aspen for trying to report this to the lord of Realbi.

[00:33:42] Fleeing the curse and the abuser, Tenar and Therru are rescued by King Lebanon, who takes them into his ship to return them to Tenar's farm. So that's the previous two chapters, and now we have... Can I just say... Oh, do.

[00:34:00] I love King Aragorn, I mean Lebanon, you know, kneeling to Tenar. Really excellent stuff. Yes. You know, trying to kneel to Tenar. She goes, yeah, you're not going to kneel to me, I'm not going to kneel to you. That's not what we do here, buddy. Right.

[00:34:15] Buddy boy. I feel like she could have said buddy boy, it would have felt very natural. Nobody kneels in Numenor. Or at any rate, in Tenar's mind, plenty of people kneel in Earthsea.

[00:34:25] I got to make a couple of my jokes from the last segment because I was up here for it. Absolutely. You absolutely do. Anytime you want, just interject. So, section one, Tenar and Therru are welcomed back to the village and the farm.

[00:34:38] The sorcerer Beach brings word that the king is establishing new local councils to deal with ruffians and so-called sturdy beggars. He compliments Tenar on Therru's growth and suggests that she be apprenticed to a witch.

[00:34:53] Tenar asks their local witch Ivy if she will take Therru on, but the witch replies that she is too frightened of Therru's power. Game knows game. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, I mean, a lot of clues. This is one of them.

[00:35:13] Therru is, it's Therru the roof, her power. And Ivy is not having it. I'm wondering, honestly, even at the end, I'm not sure exactly what Ogion wanted Tenar to do with Therru. Teach her, but teach her what exactly? Because, I mean, Tenar struggles with this too.

[00:35:38] Do I teach her mending and sewing and whatnot? Or do I teach her magic, which I barely know myself? That's a big conflict. And I still don't know the answer by the end of this book.

[00:35:52] Yeah. I mean, teach her all that you can teach her, perhaps, about being human. Mm-hmm. I mean, she realizes, Tenar does, that the best thing to teach her at this point is the stories of Earthsea. So you think Ogion knew from the start this is a half-dragon person?

[00:36:15] Oh, spoiler! Well, we're into it now. We're into it now. Okay, all righty. We're good. We can discuss it as a whole. So you think he knew at the beginning? He was seeing something as his life was slipping away. And that's why he said, all changed.

[00:36:34] He knew the story of the woman of Keme. He told the story about... Tenar told the story to Therru about him going to this woman's house and knocking on the door and opening the door and seeing a dragon there.

[00:36:51] And putting up protection to himself and calling out dragon. And then the next thing you know, he sees an old woman. And the woman says, and he says to her, but you're a dragon. And she says, well, it's not that simple.

[00:37:06] And so we're pointed to the song that Tenar taught Therru. And then she's subsequently, Therru is constantly chanting or singing whatever about far away on the other wind my people are dancing.

[00:37:23] So this then just begs this question of... One of the questions of did Therru know what she is, was becoming? What sense of herself did she have for herself? Oh, I think she did.

[00:37:42] I mean, I think that the Daniel in the end clearly points to that because she sees her beloved mother and father being entrapped by this spell. The first thing she does is she runs to the edge of the cliff where she's told never to run.

[00:37:56] But she runs carefully and she calls out the west. And she calls the eldest, the one who raised the islands of diversity, the one who brought Ged back because she'd heard his name or his, her name. Le Guin points out that we don't know Kelesin's gender.

[00:38:16] But Tenar heard that name in Therru's dream and picked up on that and realized, had some enough self-knowledge to realize those are my people.

[00:38:27] But Therru is acting like a human child and responding to the threat of violence and past assault as a human person would, especially a young human.

[00:38:47] So there's, well, her identity, well not her identity, but her nature was being teased at and hinted at and the tracks were being laid for it. I'm just left at the end then, okay, suddenly this is a, an awakened alive person who's aware of their nature.

[00:39:11] But all along the point of view that we had in her responses to situations and circumstances was that of a normal human being who's going to be afraid of her abusers.

[00:39:23] And it was going to hide or, you know, play with little bone figures or, you know, play games around the farm and, and, you know, run around and that kind of stuff. So to me, it's, I'm utterly confused as to her reveal. And we're just into it now.

[00:39:42] Sure. No, I think she responds to her life as an abused child because that's what she is. She's a both end and we're very uncomfortable with both ends.

[00:39:54] Tanara is completely uncertain of it, but the way she responds as an abused child is to do her best to conform to what her foster mother wants. And to behave in a way that is not going to invite more abuse.

[00:40:13] It's just what you do, but she's constantly watching and thinking and processing. There's one quote here. I mean, eventually Tanara realizes that she had, that Therru has power. I mean, Ivy tells her that. I think she's an idiot for walking around holding a whirlwind by the hand.

[00:40:35] As John said, you know, game knows game or like knows like. So she's telling Therru when, when she says to her, you have strength Therru and strength that is ignorant is dangerous. And Therru's response is like the ones who wouldn't learn, Therru said, the wild ones.

[00:40:55] Tanara did not know what she meant and looked her question. The ones that stayed in the West, Therru said. Ah, the dragons in the song of the woman of Keme. Yes, exactly. So which will we start with?

[00:41:11] How the islands were raised from the sea or how King Mored drove back the black ships. The islands, Therru whispered. Darl had rather hoped she would choose the dead deed of the young king for she saw the man in his face as Mored's.

[00:41:26] But the child's choice was the right one. So just right there, it's all there in a sense. She's been taking everything in as you do. When you are hypervigilant, which is a pretty common phenomenon for, especially for children who have been abused. She's always listening.

[00:41:46] She's always taking in anything that can help her understand her own situation is an important piece. And she's always fascinated by dragons from the very beginning. Remember when Tanara is brushing her hair and the sparks are flying and she's just so attracted to that.

[00:42:04] And that's really when you, at least I'll say when I was like, okay, here's a giant flashing arrow pointing at something to come. This means something. I don't know what. Which is perfectly understandable. So do we have anything else on this first section?

[00:42:31] No, I'm just really stuck in at the end. I think there's some great middle sections here. There's some conversations that Gad and Tanara have. We'll get there. Yes, we will. Yeah, I'm good with this section.

[00:42:45] Yeah. I just wanted to comment on the term sturdy beggars, both as an historian and as someone who is contemporarily concerned with what that label is often applied to.

[00:42:55] Sturdy beggars was a medieval term that was applied certainly by the Elizabethan era to people who were whole of body, but did not have work. And they were viewed as being obstinate that they would not work.

[00:43:13] And so if you were labeled a sturdy beggar, that meant you were chased from town to town. Again, leaving your own town was dangerous enough. We've talked about that before, people who leave their community and go out alone.

[00:43:24] They had to leave and go out alone in many cases because there was no work for them in their own village. And so that term sturdy beggars is a very judgmental term. And I found it interesting that she chose to use that.

[00:43:39] I'm sure she knew the history of it and that she did that with intention.

[00:43:42] But there's so many examples of things going on and there's a lot of scenes of the local, quote unquote, constabulary seeking out malfeasance and throwing the local Lord Hanno, who is in the pocket of the pirates and vice versa, into jail and how he's so.

[00:44:03] Pocket of the pirates? I think an instigator, a leader of the pirates. Definitely. For sure. When we talked a lot about justice in the last episode, in the last podcast and about how justice is embodied by a person or by institution.

[00:44:25] And we can see here Lebanon being the avatar of justice and the thing that all the people in all the islands can look to for a face of justice or a sensibility of justice.

[00:44:43] But then we see the establishment of institutions, of bailiffs and of courts and of the apparatus of bringing those, you know, of accusation to trial, to verdict, to punishment.

[00:45:02] And interesting that later, I think it's probably in the next couple of sections, but we see wrongdoers not summarily judged and dealt with, but put into a process and into a system. Right.

[00:45:23] And then we see Lebanon as the avatar of justice, but he is setting up the institutions of justice. Yes. And expecting it to be spread throughout the islands, recognizing that it cannot be just one person or, you know, central court or whatever. Right.

[00:45:45] That it has to come for each community and to deal with themselves. Coming back to Therru for a minute, I just wanted to remind you that she almost didn't talk when they first found her. She was like a wild thing. Speech was slow to come to her.

[00:46:04] So, again, not even completely comprehending what had happened to her except that it hurt. And then learning how to speak in a way that, you know, people around her would comprehend. It's very difficult to say who you are if you don't have any words to express it.

[00:46:29] So we should put a pin in the question of her origin and how she. Sure. Because I'm completely clueless about all that whole, the whole story, her whole, her old back story and how she got to where she was.

[00:46:46] So anyway, let's deal with that sort of at the end. All questions may not be answered. Fair enough. That's fine. But we can we can draw some lines around those unknown unknowns, right? We can start to identify so that there are known unknowns. So there we go.

[00:47:01] I'm guessing something's going to be answered in the other wind when there was a whole line about, oh, my people on the other wind or whatever. Actually, we might even get some answers in Tales from Earthsea. You never know. Shall we move on? Yeah, let's do it.

[00:47:20] On a night of hard frost, Tanar starts to teach Therru the songs that are sung throughout all the isles of Earthsea as the seasons turn. As she's getting ready for bed, Tanar hears the voices of a group of men, including Therru's abusers, trying to break into her house.

[00:47:38] At first, she panics, then runs with a butcher's knife to the door and flings it open just in time to distract them from Ged, who stabs him with a pitchfork at which the others run away.

[00:47:50] Next morning, folk from the village and farm come to congratulate Ged, who had just come down from the mountain after his summer alone dealing with his grief. That evening, Ged and Tanar are finally able to fully express their love for one another after 25 years. Through the ensuing...

[00:48:08] Oh, sorry. Sorry. I was going to sing a song. Ged and Tanar sitting in a tree. J-I-S-S... Now you can go on. Okay. Through the ensuing winter, they and Therru become a family. How lovely. That was a nice ending to that.

[00:48:27] I really liked Ged coming in with a pitchfork, but also, you know, he has this kind of badass moment. And then he goes, but if I were a wizard, those guys would have been knocked on their asses.

[00:48:40] And that stinks. You know, he's really mourning the loss of his power there, even after a triumph.

[00:48:48] I thought there was a really funny quip here. Tanar was like, if he was dead, we could have buried him. And Ged says something like, well, I tried. You can't say I didn't try. Yes.

[00:49:02] And that whole thing of burying really took me back to the tombs of Atuan. Oh, interesting. And standing in the hallway once they kind of... I think it's at the end of the chapter, after the attack, assault, whatever, and all of that, they're standing in a hallway.

[00:49:26] And it was a very clear callback to them being in the tombs of Atuan. Right.

[00:49:34] But then this whole question of burying a body in the tombs and the darkness and the way that the Aspen spell is still binding her a little bit, as if the old ones still had power over Tanar's arha, over arha, the little arha inside her.

[00:49:57] So there's a lot of thematic elements that made me think back to Atuan. And I think one of you brought up, I think Marilyn, you brought up dementia patients, Alzheimer's patients, of how when you... I think you brought that up in the last podcast.

[00:50:13] And when you see someone, a family member, a loved one go through that, they often regress to their earliest memories, to their foundation. That's right. As a coping mechanism, and that's the things that stay with them the strongest.

[00:50:27] Tanar lived many years with this being her whole life, like being fully indoctrinated into this cult before she started questioning it. And then Ged comes along and makes her really question it. So I think that that's perfectly reasonable.

[00:50:41] And I think it's really interesting to see her revert to the priestess of Atuan, rather than use something that Ogion taught her. And it saves her from Aspen's curse the first time. She cannot think in Hardik, but she can think in Kargish. And that's what rescues her.

[00:50:59] Arha rescues her. And it's interesting to note, we keep thinking of Tanar as being an old widow. How old do you suppose she is? 40 in this world. Yeah, 42. Really? She's 42. Wow, that was a good guess. No, not 42. She was 17 when they left the tombs and it's 25 years ago.

[00:51:22] So how old's Ged? Well, he's about 52. I mean, Douglas Adams didn't even write any of his novels before she wrote. Yeah, but the section that you referenced there a minute ago, Jon. Punished. That's what he said. Punish the child. She's bad. She must be punished.

[00:51:43] Punished me for taking her, for being... She struggled to speak. I don't want punishment. It should not have happened. I wish you killed him. I did my best, Ged said. After a good while, she laughed rather shakily. You certainly did.

[00:52:02] Think how easy it would have been, he said, looking into the coals again when I was a wizard. I could have set a binding spell on them up there on the road before they knew it.

[00:52:11] I could have marched them right down to Valmuth like a flock of sheep. Or last night here. Think of the fireworks I could have set off. They'd have never known what hit them. They still don't, she said. He glanced at her.

[00:52:26] There was in his eye the faintest, irrepressible gleam of triumph. No, he said, they don't. Useful with a pitchfork, she murmured. He yawned enormously. That's the first time I think, forget, to realize that you don't have to be Archmage to be heroic. Right. Right.

[00:52:54] And what struck me there was that he seriously wounded this guy and there was all this sort of consternation around it. Where how many people has, I mean, has he killed anyone before? That's a good question. He certainly, I mean, used some heavy magic at times.

[00:53:23] And so for him to now be non-magical and to face life and death without any of his trappings as a mage, I was taken aback from his point of view. Like, oh, whoa, this is weird. You know, like I almost killed this guy.

[00:53:47] And so he's just very normal in this moment and he's still dealing with that normality. Yeah. It's an interesting question. My instinct is to say, no, I don't think he ever killed anybody. I don't think that's in keeping with maintaining balance and equilibrium.

[00:54:07] I think in as a boy on the island of Gaunt when he brought in the fog with the Kargish raiders, I'm sure some of them died as a result of falling off the cliff or whatever. Oh yeah. But that's more of an indirect thing.

[00:54:26] And as just a kid, he was just sort of reacting. Exactly. Whereas I don't think in either of the three books he actually left any bodies in his path.

[00:54:43] No, he bound them up and told one of them he couldn't speak until he had a good word to say. The Spider-Man method, right? We web him up, we leave him there. Yeah.

[00:54:56] So that's really interesting because as Archmage, he could have dropped atomic scale weaponry on whole towns and cities if he had wanted to. That's right. But that would have been outside the balance. That would not have been equilibrium.

[00:55:11] And sooner or later his fellow mages would have come calling. And that's something that he talks about too in this section. He says that the mages are traveling from aisle to aisle and T'Nar says, oh dear, maybe they're looking for the Archmage again.

[00:55:26] And he said, no, I think they're looking for misuse of the art magic. And this is when she tries to say to him, well then they should look at the House of Realbe. Right. But she can't get it out. Yeah, right. She's still under a spell.

[00:55:41] And then she's, what was I? Oh, I'm getting forgetful. What was I trying to tell them? Oh yeah, I have to tell them that the moth is getting into the apple trees. Right.

[00:55:48] So that is a clue to us readers that Aspen's spell is still active, even from a distance. Which is kind of chilling to think about.

[00:56:00] Just thinking about T'Nar here for a second, too, something that I think is really interesting is that in my head I can count four distinct phases of her life. Which is really interesting. The different lives that she, radically different lives that she led from one season to another.

[00:56:26] Now whether they follow the Northern European spring, summer, winter, fall patterning, I don't know. But certainly she has seasons of being the child before she was eaten, being the priestess, then being T'Nar. What's her, Goa I think is? Gohar. Gohar. Oh it is.

[00:56:52] See, I was thinking of it in like a British accent because of the audio book. I thought it was Gohar, but they were saying it Goha. Gohar. Oh man. And then now with Hawk, right? And her life as a parent with Hawk.

[00:57:09] So four very radically distinct lives that she's led. And for me, this is where something I can see myself in this book in ways where I've had radically, I've led a lot of different lives that I'm not connected to in a continuity way.

[00:57:32] I mean the continuity is me, but I've lived in very different places and done very different things. I don't have a single career. I didn't study a single subject in college and then go do that job and then retire and blah, blah, blah. Right?

[00:57:48] That's not at all my life. And so I can see that. And so as you're trying to wrap up your life and sort of your last act, not to be thinking about mortality that much, but just going, okay, well this is going to be the last stage.

[00:58:04] That you're trying to put it all into perspective and to understand it and tie some of it together.

[00:58:10] And so the conversations that they have as they're doing the work of the farm are fascinating because you really do have perspective at this stage to be able to look at much bigger questions and think about what different things have meant or mean or how the world is the way the world is.

[00:58:31] Sure, sure. Winter is the time for conversation and for stories. Touching back a minute on Ged's role when Tanar is being threatened. This is from Ursa Le Guin's essay, Earthsea Revisioned. But what is Tanar's freedom? A very contingent thing. She lives alone.

[00:58:58] One night men surround her house, meaning to rape her and take her child from her. Victimized, she panics. She rushes from door to door to window. At last, fear turns to rage and seizing a knife, she flings the door wide open.

[00:59:12] But it is Ged playing the man's role to the hilt who actually stabs one of the assailants. He has been gendered into violence just as much as they have. And she has been gendered into response. Neither acts with genuine freedom, but they do act. Yeah.

[00:59:31] Back to those scripts, right? We fall back on our scripts when we're in a panic, when we're in a high-stress situation. I think that's right. Did Ged even mean to stab him? It sounded more like he just had the pitchfork out and the guy ran into him.

[00:59:45] The guy ran right onto it, seemingly. But he was there and he had the pitchfork. And Tanar talks about this mystery as she sees it of Ged being someone who had the capacity to listen and to be in the right place at the right time. Right.

[01:00:06] That comes before his massive capacity for the power and art of magic, which he has now lost. So he still has that other capacity, but nobody recognizes it as anything in particular because all they can see is the magic, the power, until he loses it.

[01:00:24] I was just going to say, I think this whole scene of these guys coming around is really chilling in that world where assailants are able to slip through any system of justice or response around domestic violence and these kinds of things where these are horrific actions

[01:00:58] and thoughts that are being taken on, yet there's no accountability, there's no justice. And for whatever reason, they just keep coming and they just keep having power over you. And it's just so terrifying in the sense of not having agency.

[01:01:16] And finally, in desperation, she's just like, to hell with it, acting out of this primal fear. It's terrorizing to know that there are people who have dealt with this multiple times in their lives where they can't get away from an abuser for as much as they try.

[01:01:40] The systems are not there for them to protect them and to punish the wicked and uphold the good. Well, and Tanar has a very insightful realization as she's talking with the neighbors the next day

[01:01:58] and she kind of settles down and in reviewing it with other people, gaining perspective on it. And it's a wonderful expression so that it was not something that kept happening, but it was something that had happened, which is the classic method of coping with PTSD.

[01:02:20] And she follows that up with the realization of she was doing this for one night. Eru had to do this with her entire life, which really puts it in perspective for me. And then Lark has an interesting observation about all this.

[01:02:40] Fear, she said, what are we so afraid of? Why do we let them tell us we're afraid? What is it they're afraid of? She picked up the stocking she'd been darning, turned it in her hands, was silent a while.

[01:02:51] Finally, she said, what are they afraid of us for? Tanar spun and did not answer. But then later Ged does answer it by saying, if your power is founded upon the powerlessness of others, then you live in fear. Let's unpack that a little bit more.

[01:03:16] So yes, if you're powerless and you know that you are under the power of somebody else. Excuse me, I misquoted it. Okay. Tanar has been reflecting upon the fact that the only place a woman has power

[01:03:33] because she's a woman is with her children and in her house and so forth. But the doors are shut and locked and Ged says, because you're valuable. And Tanar says, oh yes, we're precious. So long as we're powerless. I remember when I first learned that, Kossel threatened me,

[01:03:51] me, the one priestess of the tombs. And I realized that I was helpless. I had to honor that she had the power from the God-King, the man. Oh, it made me angry and frightened me. Larkin and I talked about this once.

[01:04:06] She said, why are men afraid of women? If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear, Ged said. Yes, but women seem to fear their own strength to be afraid of themselves. Are they ever taught to trust themselves? Ged asked.

[01:04:26] And as he spoke, Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tanar's met. No, she said, trust is not what we're taught. She watched the child stack the wood in the box. If power were trust, she said. I like that word.

[01:04:45] If there weren't all these arrangements, one above the other, kings and masters and majors and owners, it all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom would lie in trust, not force. Right. And I think we were talking about a similar parallel topic

[01:05:05] when we just recorded our reactions, our review for the Marvels movie. Where there's a different style of ending and we won't spoil that ending, but rather than a particular kind of trauma or a particular kind of loss or a particular kind of defeat of overcoming,

[01:05:27] there is a binding and a healing and bringing together as opposed to a violent end. But what I find fascinating about this is Ged himself having the realization of it. Yes. If your strength is only the other's weakness, then you live in fear.

[01:05:49] Because what happens when they're strong? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it ties in beautifully with Captain Marvel when she says, I've been fighting with one hand behind my back all my life. What happens when I'm finally set free? Right. And this, according to Le Guin in this story,

[01:06:06] is the subtext of why men are afraid of women or a dominating structure is afraid of those who are subordinate, realizing that they don't have to be. And not to get too contemporary about it, but there is certainly that in around some of the racial politics

[01:06:26] that we're experiencing in America right now. There is a reaction to the fear of what if these people who've been being, we've been managing and controlling suddenly are equal and have as much resources, we're going to, they're going to come after us. And we're going to lose.

[01:06:45] So it's a fear-based reaction. Absolutely. So we've got to keep doubling down. John, you're awfully quiet over there. Have we lost you, John? I was muted. Okay. Gosh darn it. That might have something to do with it. Okay. Well, now that I'm back.

[01:07:07] I was just enjoying the podcast from my favorite Osi podcasters. I feel right back at home after episode two. I'm waiting to hear from one of my favorite podcasters. I mean, it's great. I mean, even this idea of Theroux being a target

[01:07:30] of these grown men who want to feel like they are powerful, I think plays into what you're saying is needing to make others feel inferior to make yourself feel powerful. And Theroux is clearly probably one of the most powerful beings we've met in this world, right? Yeah.

[01:07:53] And yet she has her face burned and whatnot, which I'm a little confused as to how a dragon got her face burned. Yeah, yeah. I got deep, I got a lot of questions about the Oregon story here. I guess what I had to just accept is

[01:08:09] dragons don't work the same way in this world as other worlds, which is fine. There's just different rules about like maybe dragons aren't just fire-based. They are just magic-based and that's fine with me. Your book, your dragons. I don't mess with that, Ursula.

[01:08:29] Just as long as you don't say your circus, your monkeys. Yeah, I really like this idea of let's explore how... I'm trying to phrase this the right way. Let's explore how power dynamics shift in a world where power has been held by both genders

[01:08:50] and yet only exercised primarily by one. Well, another pithy thing that Ged has to say is all of men's power is based in shame. He's reflecting on this as he's up on the mountaintop and he finally starts to ask, why does he feel... what is he ashamed of?

[01:09:16] What did he ever do to be ashamed of it? And Tanar breaks in and says, absolutely nothing. And Ged responds and says, well, but all men's power is based in shame, which to my mind is sufficiently distressing to begin with. Yeah, that's a... There's a lot to unpack.

[01:09:40] Yeah, a lot to unpack. Yeah, that's a whole other set of conversations. And this is why I love this book so much. She's not focusing only on women. She's looking at gender as a whole, how cultures establish it, what they believe and so forth.

[01:09:59] I'm going to ask your indulgence because I want to read you my favorite part of this. I'd love it. I'll try not to click the mute button this time. When they finally come together and she says, well, which bed shall I sleep in, Ged? The child's for yours.

[01:10:16] This is so great. She's just like, all right, dude, we got to sort this thing out right now, here and now. He drew breath. He spoke low. Mine, if you will. I will. The silence held him. She could see the effort he made to break from it.

[01:10:33] If you'll be patient with me, he said. I have been patient with you for 25 years, she said. She looked at him and began to laugh. Come on, my dear, better late than never. I'm only an old woman. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is ever wasted. You taught me that.

[01:10:53] She stood up and he stood. She put out her hands and he took them. They embraced and their embrace became close. They held each other so fiercely, so dearly that they stopped knowing anything but each other. It did not matter which bed they meant to sleep in.

[01:11:12] They lay that night on the hearthstones and there she taught Ged the mystery that the wisest man could not teach him. After a while, she murmured, he was lying here, Hake, right underneath us. Ged made a small noise of protest. Now you're a man indeed, she said.

[01:11:34] Duck another man full of holes first and lane with the woman second. That's the proper order, I suppose. Hush, he murmured, turning to her, laying his head on her shoulder, taunt. I will, Ged. Poor man, there's no mercy in me, only justice. I wasn't trained to mercy.

[01:11:54] Love is the only grace I have. Oh, Ged, don't fear me. You were a man when I first saw you. It's not a weapon or a woman that can make a man or Maidry itself or any power anything but himself.

[01:12:16] I'm not into world domination, but if I were, I would love for every male masculine identified child to be able to read this very early on in their lives. Because that's not what we're taught, but it's true. Sure. I'm also called back to Ged

[01:12:42] creating himself whole by naming his shadow. Mm-hmm. Say more. And, you know, being whole, but here he is Oh, I kind of lost the thought now. What was the last line there? What was the last couple of lines?

[01:13:04] It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man or Maidry either or any power anything but himself. Yeah. So anything but himself. And his reintegration with his shadow is himself. He made himself a man, but yet he's a man. He's done things that weren't, you know,

[01:13:30] that were are expected of men, but or, you know, or accepted of men, but yet he's never done those things. Killed somebody or, you know, had intimate relations with another person. Right. This idea I'm backtracking a little bit, but there was something I wanted to say

[01:13:48] and then you guys got on a really good train, so I didn't want to interrupt. So here we are. I'm going back to shame a little bit. Anyway, my point is now that I'm here. There, you know, you mentioned Carol Gilligan. She has a husband who's a psychiatrist,

[01:14:05] James Gilligan, who actually worked in prison reform and mental health in prisons. And he did a study on violence in those prisons and he focused a lot on shame versus guilt and he talked about how shame is an anger towards other people. You're angry because you're being made

[01:14:27] to feel bad by other people. Guilt is an anger towards yourself. Guilt is I'm mad at myself for hurting other people and both are unhealthy. Both are just very unhealthy in, you know, large quantities or much quantity at all. And you need to fight that with love

[01:14:45] and it's very difficult to do that because we're trained to lean into, especially men shame women guilt. And I think that that shows up here, right? I mean, Tenar is very like, I feel so badly that I couldn't protect Theroux from being touched again by that man. Right.

[01:15:05] She doesn't get angry at the man. She gets angry at herself. And I resonate with that so much. It's interesting because I swapped the terms but exactly the same concepts. For me, guilt is about something I do. Shame is about who I am.

[01:15:19] But he's saying the same thing, just swapping the words around. So fine. That's fine with me. Yeah. And in being able to resolve shame is a tricky thing too. It's kind of a finger trap. One of those finger trap nets. Right.

[01:15:40] You know, you're trying to pull away from it but where you have to go is into it and accepting it to let it to have it dissolve and to just disappear. Because when you let go of shame or when you can be in that space, it just dissolves.

[01:16:00] It's just gone. You loosen the bonds. I'm also reminded of something I'm sure I have to have said at some point on many podcasts. This is Elaine Pagel's incredible realization. Human beings would rather feel guilty than feel helpless. And so the helplessness,

[01:16:21] instead of acknowledging it and accepting it, you flip into guilt. I should have, I could have, why didn't I? You're talking about John. Which Tanar does. Which Tanar does. Exactly. And from there you flip into anger. Yep. Right. And violence. So it's this progression.

[01:16:44] It's not always progression into the dark side. But I don't think it's a dark side or a light side. It's our tendency. And if we can't learn to accept our helplessness in situations, then the guilt's going to start flooding in and then you resent the guilt

[01:17:01] and the helplessness. So you cover that with anger. Anger is almost always a shielding emotion for other things that you're not willing to deal with. So to take a thought a little bit further afield here into this realm of culture and cultural drivers. When I lived overseas,

[01:17:23] one of the things that would happen, there was a country I lived in had a higher mortality rate than we did. And when somebody died, you never asked why. It was just, oh, I'm so sorry. And oh, and if you were any way related, when's the ceremony?

[01:17:44] When's the funeral going to happen? And where can I get money and do the thing or whatever? Here in the US, and I can't speak to other European or Western cultures, but certainly here, what's the first thing we do? Why? What did they die of?

[01:18:06] How did they die? We need the because. Because what? Was there some action we could have taken? Could we have done something about it? Or can we prevent it in the future? Or what happened? And so there's this action-oriented thing. We need to,

[01:18:26] I would rather do the wrong thing and be guilty than to be helpless. I'd rather cut a hole in the world and let all life and magic drain out of it than accept the fact that I will die. Yeah. So Le Guin discusses this a little bit more

[01:18:41] in her Earthsea Revisioned essay. She talks about, in the revision, she's discarded the axiom what's important is done by men and the corollary, what women do isn't important. And so that's changed the hero tale and a good deal may leak out. We may have lost quest, conquest,

[01:19:02] and contest as the plot. Sacrifice is the key. And the archetypes may change. There may be old men who aren't wise, witches who aren't wicked, mothers who don't devour. There may be no public triumph of good over evil for in this new world,

[01:19:20] what's good or bad, important or unimportant hasn't been decided yet, if ever. Judgment is not referred up to the wise men. History is no longer about great men. The important choices and decisions may be obscure ones not recognized or applauded by society.

[01:19:36] Perhaps it is this lack of applause of quote unquote importance that has led some reviewers to state that all the men in Tehanu are weak or wicked. There are certainly a couple of very nasty villains, but all the men? Ogion? I suppose dying is a kind of weakness,

[01:19:54] but I thought he came through it rather well. As for the young king, he rescues Sinar from a persecutor just as a hero should and is clearly going to be an innovative and excellent statesman. It is clear that Sinar's son, Spark, is a selfish lout.

[01:20:10] We'll come to that in a minute. Are all sons good then? And all wise, all generous? Sinar blames herself for Spark's weakness just like a woman. But I blame the society that spoiled the boy by giving him unearned power. After he's managed that farm a while alone,

[01:20:27] he'll probably shape up. Why do we expect more of the son than of the daughter? But as for Ged, well, he has indeed lost his job. That's something we punish men for very cruelly. And when your job is being a hero,

[01:20:44] to lose it means you must indeed be wicked and weak. In Tehanu, Ged's virtues are no longer the traditional male heroic ones. Traditional masculinists don't want heroism revised and unrewarded. They don't want to find it among housewives and elderly goat herds, and they really don't want their hero

[01:21:06] fooling around with grown women. There didn't used to be any sex in Earthsea. My working title for Tehanu was Better Late Than Never. Fair enough. I should add this letter. This is Earthsea revision, right? This is from that? It's an essay, yeah.

[01:21:25] Actually, it's a speech that she gave at a conference, and I was thrilled when she actually sent me a signed copy in response to the letter that I wrote to her all those years ago. Very cool. I love when you talk about that.

[01:21:36] I want to add they actually printed that, I guess, put it in the audio book at the very end after the book, This'll Play. Excellent. Which is very nice. It was a very nice touch to have a little bit of explanation afterward.

[01:21:52] They also printed it in the massive tome that a lot of listeners bought when they started this adventure with us. So it's a good thing because anywhere else I've tried. Should we maybe move on to the final section here? I think so. We're already running along.

[01:22:09] And we've already started tiptoeing into it a little bit. Spring arrives and brings unexpected visitors. Tanar's sailor son, Spark, and the herdsman Townsend from Ray Albi, who tells them that Aunty Moss is sick and asking for them. Dismayed by Spark's callous sense of entitlement,

[01:22:25] Tanar decides with the family to return to Ray Albi. But Townsend's message is a snare to bring them back into the curse that was laid by Aspen. Somehow, Therru escapes the curse entirely and runs to the edge of the cliff face and calls into the West.

[01:22:42] Then she spends the night with Aunty Moss calling her by her true name and reassuring her that her people will come. The next day, as Aspen is about to force Tanar and get off the cliff to certain death, the dragon Kelesen appears and destroys Aspen and his followers.

[01:22:58] Therru reunites with her parents and tells Kelesen that she cannot go back with the dragon into the West if her parents cannot come with them. Kelesen tells Tanar that they give her their child now as one day Tanar will return her child to Kelesen and flies away.

[01:23:17] The family agrees to stay in Ihal's house. Fin, as Jeanne would say. Here's a story of a lovely family. They had dragons and a lot of strange lineage here. Yeah, lots to talk about. Quickly, Segoi. So this is the dragon that raised the world?

[01:23:38] That's exactly who it is. I was like, what? Eldest. Yeah. It's the Tom Bombadil of this world, eldest. Uh, no, no, no, no. It's the Tom Bombadil of this world, Well, I don't think Tom Bombadil did any creating in Middle Earth. Ring-a-ding-dillo, it's Tom Bombadilo.

[01:23:58] He enjoyed it all. He enjoyed it all. And Therru speaks fluent Old Speech. Yeah, what the hell? Because she's one of the dragon people. Right. So I guess we could just grapple with this real quickly right now. Where did she come from?

[01:24:20] How did she get with those people? You know what? Where, where, how, how does she already know Old Speech? Like it just, it flummoxes me. And I guess that's the, there you go. There's my, uh, there's my cultural imperative showing, which is I want to

[01:24:39] know why, how, where, because I need to, because, uh, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a because person. That's not something that I think is appropriate right now.

[01:24:51] So it's all about, like, we're trying to figure out, you know, what does she come from? What do we know about, what do we know about these people? And it's, it's all, it's all about opportunity kind of thing. And, and, and, and it's like,

[01:25:01] yeah, we've, we've kind of, we've kind of worked on this, but we haven't landed on just, like, you know, a bad end point or, or a, a good start point in terms of what it really looks like. And also, I mean, like, I don't think that,

[01:25:13] But we all are. I mean, that's, I watch our daughter do that, you know, having needing that because that understanding, you know, as opposed to just, nope, that's just, and I am someone who prides themselves on being able to accept a null answer as that's okay.

[01:25:37] I don't need an answer for certain things in the world. I'm fine with the fact that there are things I cannot answer. It doesn't disturb me or, you know, upset my psyche,

[01:25:48] but I see all the time this, this needing to put the world into an order and to categorize it and to understand causal relationships, at least from the cultural imperatives that we in this country are imbued with.

[01:26:08] Well, here's what Ursula would say to that again from Ursula Revision. At the end of the book, both Ged and Tanar face the defenders of the old tradition. Having renounced the heroism of that tradition, they appear to be helpless. No magic, nothing

[01:26:26] they know, nothing they have been can stand against the pure malevolence of institutionalized power. Their strength and salvation must come from the outside, the institutions and traditions. It must be a new thing. And this was the thing that frustrated me about the ending,

[01:26:44] because a lot of these experiences they're talking about are quite personal to me. And I wanted an answer. I wanted to know, okay, how do I take this into my world and do this?

[01:26:59] And the answer is a dragon? What am I supposed to do with that? What am I supposed to do with that? But the point is, Le Guin didn't know herself at that point. She didn't know who

[01:27:15] or what Tanar was at first, other than to know that she was the key to the book. Therru. And Therru, thank you, thank you. And Ogin's saying in the very beginning, all changed. Throughout this series, I kept saying, hold on to that because it's important. When all

[01:27:35] has changed, as I read earlier, a lot of the old stuff is going to fall out from the traditional hero tales. So we don't know yet what the answers are. She didn't know what the answers were.

[01:27:52] In a sense, you could say she was like a mystery author who painted herself in a corner and said, what do I do now? Oh, I know, dragon. Which is kind of cheating if you think in

[01:28:04] those terms. If you think in those terms, it's like, geez, what am I supposed to do with this? Yeah, I get that. But I think what the answer is, is you recognize the institutionalized tradition,

[01:28:17] you recognize the harm that it does, and you recognize that you need to depart from that in some fashion. It comes back to her short story, Those Who Leave Omelas, which is a powerful short story. And listeners, if you haven't read it before, do read it.

[01:28:33] It posits a perfect society, which has its perfection only because underground in one of the buildings in the prison is a child who is kept in that prison. And as long as that child is kept in that prison, they can live in utopia. And members of that community

[01:28:55] are introduced to this concept, shown the child, like maybe in their teens or something. So those who stay in Omelas are willing to have a perfect life, which is guaranteed by this endless suffering.

[01:29:09] But those who walk away from Omelas decide, no, I can't do this anymore. They don't know where they're going. They don't know what it looks like. They only know that they refuse to accept that particular burden. It sounds like walking away from the scripts you've been taught. Right.

[01:29:31] You know, walking away from the patterns you've been taught because they're easy and they fall. They're easy in the short term, I should say. And they're easy to fall into and rely on when you're feeling stressed. I think also talking about this hero's journey stuff,

[01:29:48] I think in a more traditional book, and I think if she took the same approach to this book as she did the first three, either Tenar or Tharu would have unlocked some crazy power

[01:30:00] by like the middle end of this book. And that's what would have defeated the wizards. And boy oh boy, they'd run for their lives. They would have jumped the gap. That's exactly what did happen. That's exactly what did happen. In effect, Tharu unlocks this

[01:30:18] crazy power. She calls on her supporters. She summons a dragon. Okay. All right. She summons a dragon. She doesn't get more powerful than that. She uses the force and calls the lightsaber into her hand.

[01:30:30] This is feeling very Skyrim. If you're waiting for our Skyrim coverage, it's probably out by now because this is coming out in December. But yeah, there's a lot of dragons in Skyrim and summoning dragons and whatnot.

[01:30:42] I get the deconstruction of the standard heroic model of the good guys beat the bad guys sort of thing. And I was utterly stunned at what's happening to Tenar and Ged and their powerlessness. Okay. And the dragon shows up. Okay, cool. Right? And that's Tharu and

[01:31:11] AK Taharu. Right? So that's a pulling thing. But then the dragon just goes, but you know, and there they go. They're done. And that there's a, it's not even swiftness. It's just like,

[01:31:28] it's almost the Deus Ex Machina kind of situation where, oh, call the dragon, kill the bad guys, done. End of story. Yeah. And if you say that she said like, oh, you know, well,

[01:31:38] I'm not sure what that external forces or, or, you know, how it's going to work. We're not really sure we're still dealing with that. Okay. I get all that too. And I'm just missing

[01:31:48] some I needed to step through it a little bit more. Maybe the dragon lands and takes apart, you know, maybe these are old ones in here. And the dragon takes apart the manor house of Rhea,

[01:32:03] but you know, there was just, or, or there's something more happening, but it was just, it was so blip done and what, as opposed to an illustration of a, you know, explain this

[01:32:17] to me a little bit more that yeah, it's got to have something and it's got to come and here's the institutions of power and it's being disassembled instead. It's just a breath of

[01:32:26] fire and that's it. It's over. Well, here's what she might say in response to that. The dragon Coleson in the last book is wildness seen not only as a dangerous beauty, but as

[01:32:41] dangerous anger, the fire of the dragon runs right through the book. It meets the fire of human rage, the cruel anger of the weak, which wrecks itself on the weaker in the endless circle

[01:32:54] of human violence. It meets that fire and consumes it for a wrong that cannot be repaired, must be transcended. There's no way to repair or undo what was done to the child. And so there must be a way

[01:33:07] to go on from there. It can't be a plain and easy way. It involves a leap. It involves flying. So the dragon is subversion, revolution, change, a going beyond the old order into which men were

[01:33:23] taught to own and dominate. And women were taught to collude with them, the order of oppression. It is the wildness of the spirit and of the earth uprising against misrule. And it rejects gender.

[01:33:40] Therru has nothing of feminine female remaining in her that men would want. Beauty and virginity and virtue. As for Gedin-Tenar, they're fully sexed too, but on the edge of old age when conventional gender and grants him some last flings and grants her nothing but a modest

[01:33:56] grandmotherhood. And the dragon defies gender entirely. There are male and female dragons in the earlier books, but I don't know if Gileson, the eldest is male or female or both or something else. I choose not to know. The deepest foundation of the order of oppression is gendering, which

[01:34:14] names the male normal dominant active and the female other subjective passive. To begin to imagine freedom, the myths of gender, like the myths of race have to be exploded and discarded. My fiction does that by these troubling and ugly embodiments. Oh, they say what a shame. Le Guin

[01:34:34] has politicized her delightful fantasy world. Earthsea will never be the same. I'll say it won't. The politics were there all along. The hidden politics of the hero tale, the spell you don't

[01:34:47] know you're living under until you cast it off. As Jan Marks said, the politics of fairyland are ours. Indeed. Yeah. And the politics of Star Wars have always been there and the politics of any of

[01:34:58] our IPs that we stories that we cover, they're there. They're embedded in there because we're there. So we're the ones that made the stories. Exactly. And she is now trying to make a different Right. There's a couple of things that struck me as you were reading that.

[01:35:16] One, there's some great dune tie in stuff there in terms of how we as a species, I think what one of the things that Frank Herbert was working on and trying to express was that we as a species need that wildness to continue to evolve and develop.

[01:35:38] And that when things are locked in and Foundation did this as well with the Clionic dynasty and what Selden was in the television show, right? Not talking about the books, but at least what

[01:35:50] they were grappling with more so in the show is that this kind of stasis limits us and ultimately is a ruin to us because we're not living with uncertainty and unknownness and pushing up against

[01:36:05] the boundaries of what we can do and what we can understand and how that affects us. I think Frank Herbert had some more complex things to say too about how predator prey relationships work in that and how when there's these unknowns out there,

[01:36:29] that drives us, how it drives our survival instincts in different ways. So there's that, which is an all one sort of thing over here. And then there's another set of things over here, which I also was picking up in this book in terms of

[01:36:48] Le Guin's own personal relationship with Taoism and what her philosophical thoughts were. There's definitely some rings, there were things ringing to me in there of that, but then also in terms of

[01:37:00] dualism and trying to, how do you get beyond dualism? How can you? We can't, can we? I don't know. Like, ah, it's such an intractable thing from our limited perspective, being in these bodies

[01:37:16] and being in this world of night and day, black and white kind of stuff. How do you get beyond to something even more simple or not more simple? That's not the right way to say it, but we don't even have the language to describe it. More complex.

[01:37:32] We don't have the language to describe it. It's beyond our- I know who does. That is our transgender friends and our non-binary friends, which is why they are subject to so much, I will say fearful persecution. Sure.

[01:37:48] Because they are challenging that very duality that you were talking about. Yeah. We were out today and I was driving around and there's a lot of gender expression in vehicles and then the way vehicles are operated. I thought, it doesn't ever seem to, I don't remember it being

[01:38:13] so obvious and apparent and this flexing that's going on. And I'm like, what is going on? And I was wondering- The pickup trucks are really just a whole thing. That's what I'm saying.

[01:38:26] Well, it's the ones that have repurposed their mufflers to make as much noise as they possibly can. Right. And I don't want to get into speaking more abstract about it. No, I'm not speaking abstractly. If you drive a pickup truck, you better watch it.

[01:38:46] But now you're reacting within the pattern there, John. Right. Good. Sometimes patterns are good. They may be a good jumping off point. But I was wondering why is it being so... There's something in the marketplace that the

[01:39:06] manufacturers, the people who are in the business of selling these things are responding to. And they say, we could stop selling these, but people are demanding these. We put this truck out, let's see, do they like this? Oh my God. They're like,

[01:39:22] we have sales to the roof. So we put out another one and it's blowing more sale. Why? There's a demand in the market for this. And I can't but help think that it has to do

[01:39:34] with this fact that there are as gender non-conforming people, be they within their sexuality or with their identity and physiology and all of the questioning that goes around outside of this sense of male, female base pairing, right? The sort of nuclear family thing.

[01:40:04] That as that is being challenged, there is a response that is coming back stronger and harder and people are flexing even more. Well, if you're going to challenge what it is to be a man or to

[01:40:14] be a woman or even man or woman, whatever that means, I'm going to be more of a man or I'm going to be more of a woman. And I'm going to really exaggerate my gender identity. And the way it

[01:40:27] shows up is in these crazy looking trucks and things. Because that is what society has said demonstrates who and what a quote unquote real man is. Again, think back to what Tanar tells Ged.

[01:40:43] It's not stabbing an enemy and lying with a woman that makes a man. It's only the man himself. Right. But advertising speaks a very powerful language. Yeah. And it's very difficult to challenge the stereotypes of your culture.

[01:41:03] Yeah. And I think depending on what time we're living in and even now, but even more so in the period I'm about to bring up, I had done a little case study once on how departing from gender norms angers the establishment. It really- Totally.

[01:41:24] Really makes everyone clutch their pearls. And- Sit there hair on fire and run around naked in the street. There was something I learned about- Sure, if that floats your boat. Right. There was something I learned about it by happenstance, which is

[01:41:42] about the original Rosa Parks. I don't know if either of you know the story of Claudette Colvin. I don't know. I know that there was somebody else that Rosa Parks was... There's a lot more construction and a lot more stuff that goes... There's a broader story

[01:42:03] to her and to other things that were happening at that time with other people. So yeah, that's the extent of it. She did not follow the solitary hero tradition who rose up full grown out of- No. Right. No. She was- Whatever. She was-

[01:42:16] She had a community in the context. She was an older woman who was a conservative dresser, who was very much in line with ideas of safe womanhood. And the original woman, the young woman I should say, who

[01:42:36] sat on the bus and wouldn't move was Claudette Colvin, who was... I have to look up the age, but I think she was 15. She was pregnant. Wow. And it was just too many steps removed of the ideal feminine person at that time

[01:42:56] that the civil rights movement actually said, no, we need to restage this event with someone more acceptable to the mainstream. Yeah. Yeah. So this young woman... And by the way, she's the one who sued and won the case. Rosa Parks

[01:43:14] didn't do that. So this is the one who actually made the legal difference. And yet Rosa Parks gets all the credit. And not to diminish what she did, Rosa Parks is an important figure and that was an important moment in American history. But just think about how-

[01:43:27] And it's a weird thing to say credit too. Sure. Right? Yeah. But the person who had really like the most genuine impact was a pregnant teenage girl who now is known by almost no one because she was too far diverging from the patriarchal standards.

[01:43:46] That's incredible, John. That's just an amazing story. And yeah, back then, a pregnant teenager would have just been told to go hide in the darkest closet. Right. But no, she didn't. She decided to sit on the bus and not move. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Who's inspired?

[01:44:04] That is heroism. That was heroism. And yet the Rosa Parks story is a traditional heroic story. Right. In many ways. I'm not saying that it isn't... That Rosa Parks... Rosa Parks is also a hero. Yes. I don't want to hear you say anything else.

[01:44:23] And this is where we get into this dangerous ground of doing pain Olympics and comparing. Right. And right now, this isn't a question necessarily of stolen valor here, but at the same time, it's...

[01:44:38] Yeah. So how do we do it with trust? How do we do it with equanimity? How do we do it without putting one over the other? Oh, she was better. Right? By recognizing that both of them came from communities. Right. And drew strength from their communities.

[01:44:55] And that if the issue wasn't as big as it was, Rosa Parks wouldn't have been able to stage it a second time, right? Because she wouldn't have been told to move. Sure. Yeah.

[01:45:06] And it reinforced that. It's not that what she did had no impact. It had a tremendous impact. But again, this is all about optics, all about how far can we push the needle of this Overton

[01:45:21] window, right? How far can we push that Overton window here? People are okay with saying this elderly woman needs to have her seat on the bus. They're not going to say the same thing in 1955 about a pregnant teenager because there's so much prejudice there.

[01:45:38] Yeah. Yeah. Optics become incredibly crucial for women, literal optics, physical appearance and presence and so forth. We had a question about that very thing, which I found really fascinating concerning. I think that's actually a pretty good place to move into feedback so that we get back onto

[01:45:58] the story and less onto random American history. Fair enough. Unless David has any more questions he wants to raise about who and what is Theroux and how did she get there? I'm just going to bracket my because need of why, how, and shouldn't have been this way and

[01:46:19] couldn't have... She told us more about that. I'm just going to accept that I have those questions and I'm going to accept that I don't have an answer in this book and that's it.

[01:46:30] Well, Le Guin says, the child who is our care, the child we have betrayed is our guide. She leads us to the dragon. She is the dragon. I like it. So there's her answer. She also admits in another place that she genuinely didn't know

[01:46:46] where the story was going to go from here. She generally didn't know. She just knew that this is what had to happen. And that I can accept as well. Let's take a quick break. When we get back, we will do listener feedback. Yay.

[01:47:11] And we're back. We've got plenty of listener feedback tonight. Marilyn, you've been all on the interwebs collecting this feedback. I think you deserve to respond to some of it since you've been reading our synopsis all night. So I'll do some reading here.

[01:47:25] This is from the Prancing Pony Podcast Facebook page, if I am reading that correctly. From Brianna. She says, working my way through Earthsea with you and the guys, Marilyn. Truthfully, Lorehounds is what brought me to Tolkien with y'all's rings of power coverage. Well, thanks for having us.

[01:47:48] And to be in so august company of the Prancing Pony's Facebook page, to have our name sung in those hallowed halls is kind of cool. I was listening to the Prancing Pony when I first read The Silmarillion. So it's full circle here.

[01:48:07] It's a good entrance in. And it just, it's great. Absolutely. From Louis slash Tsunami. I'm not sure how this was submitted, but Louis said, oh, and I've been listening to and enjoying your Lorehounds episode on Tejanu while I've

[01:48:22] been traveling this week. I started listening back when you mentioned that you were doing the Earthsea books with them. I've stayed for the Star Wars. I like their level of analysis, banter, and occasional deep dives. Well, thanks, Louis. Good times. This is fluff feedback. I mean,

[01:48:36] this is good. I could respond to this all day. If I could pause just a second, too. I was thinking about our coverage range. I was thinking about, well, if I say somebody in my family during the holidays this week,

[01:48:56] I kind of avoid saying I have a podcast or I'm part of a podcast around me because it's just such a... And there's questions. It's a whole thing. Yeah. And then people are, why aren't you watching this show? Or you should really cover

[01:49:08] that show. And I'm like, it's not what we're doing. And even though we're focused a lot on television, it feels like we're covering a lot of ground. And I'm seeing these conversations that were coming from Star Wars and then we're slipping over into the MC universe.

[01:49:25] And then we're diving down into Earthsea and then we're wrapping back around to the white load, all this sort of really unique intellectual ground, this terrain that we're walking across. It's really interesting. And to see these parallels or connectivities or having these

[01:49:46] different shows and books talk to each other as we're working them and discussing them is... Yeah. We're not just a TV reaction podcast. We're not just... Right. It's not as simple as that, even though we maybe thought it was. It's not. It is and it isn't.

[01:50:07] Right. Regardless of medium, we would like to talk about great stories and also Kaleidoscope. Yes. Yes. Yeah. You're going to say Marilyn. Well, I just... That I love David the way that you have led the charge in that interconnectivity perspective.

[01:50:25] Have I led the charge? I did not know if I was leading the charge. I feel as though it's more often than not, it's you who suddenly says, oh, this reminds me of this. Or yeah, when we talk about that,

[01:50:37] you're pulling out these themes from multiple sources and that's really cool. We love it. My brain... I cannot... I'm deterministically driven by my brain. So... Charge, led or not, yes, that is what we're doing here.

[01:50:54] Would you like to have more kudos sent to you from Fur Elise, who says, excellent podcast, Marilyn and David, with shout outs to Davie Mac. I had to listen twice. Incredible insight as well. Can't wait to start chapter 11 to the end.

[01:51:10] We got a lot of nice feedback. Oh, and more from Fur Elise actually. Those last two chapters, nine and 10 were intense, but you guys really brought it all together for me. Very insightful book Nook. Yes, Fur Elise has been around since the beginning. She's OG listener.

[01:51:26] Fur Elise listened to our demo when we were... That's right. ...workshopping it. That's right. That's right. From Danny, great podcast. I'm kind of liking that I read the whole thing a couple of months ago and

[01:51:38] some of the details are already starting to blur. Got me thinking about it all over again. Fair enough. I could see this one blurring because it's very character focused and there's not a lot of big moments. It's more focused on the intimate moments and that's great.

[01:51:54] I think it lends itself well to rereads, but I think that that's something that's going to feed in your memory a little bit. Yes. Yes. Definitely worth rereading. Now Loremasterbryan8063 writes in with a lovely email here saying, hi Marilyn, John and David. Hi Brian. Hello Brian.

[01:52:12] Thank you for a great answer to my question from last time. Very thought provoking. As I mentioned on the Discord channel, this book and discussion reveal my philosophical side. I studied philosophy and ethics in college before I moved on to history and library science. Brian does it all.

[01:52:27] Seriously. Person after my own heart. Library science. Got to love it. Oh yeah. In modern political history, I recall the famous Hillary Clinton episode in 1992 when her husband ran for president. That's a lie. She did. I'm not familiar with this whole thing. Can someone in the-

[01:52:44] She never did. Oh, it was massive. I hadn't been born yet to be clear. It was absolutely massive. And it called into question the role of the first spouse, the first wife, who was Hillary Clinton's first wife. And it was a very, very difficult question to answer.

[01:53:03] I think it was a very difficult question to answer. It called into question the role of the first spouse, be it gentleman or lady, or someday maybe non-identified as such. And there was this whole thing about, well, you get two for the price of one.

[01:53:24] Hillary's going to lead this healthcare charge and you're not just electing just Bill, but you're getting Hillary away. Oh, it drove people insane. You want to talk about bee in a bonnet, lighten your hair on fire, et cetera, et cetera. People lost their proverbial shit. Right.

[01:53:38] There is a legitimate question of should a non-elected official have power over things? Have the kind of role. But there's also like, why does it make you so mad that she's taking on a project? I mean, they all take on projects, but they're all like,

[01:53:53] there's been a boundary, right? As I think people are more okay with it being a cultural project than a policy project. Yeah. And that Hillary Clinton shift of that. What I find interesting is we are currently recording just as people are publishing memorials about Rosalind Carter. Yeah.

[01:54:12] And the thread that I keep hearing is she loved politics. Now I'm gobsmacked to hear that because I was consciously living through that whole presidency and I never once got that impression. But her approach was rather different from what we're seeing here in Hillary's and it conformed.

[01:54:34] I mean, it's not unlike what you were saying earlier, John, about the difference between the 15 year old pregnant teenager and Rosa Parks. Rosalind worked within the system, if you will. She wore a dress where Hillary wore pantsuits. She was quiet. She asked questions.

[01:54:53] She listened, but she was also profoundly influential. And Hillary Clinton was not going to do that. She wasn't going to be like that. And she was one at the forefront of pushing that forward to say, it's possible to loosen these constrictions, folks, and we will benefit from it.

[01:55:13] Right. But wow, did she get stomped? Yeah, she sure did. She sure did. And it's a shame. Do you ever watch the Drunk History episode about Woodrow Wilson's spouse? I can't recall her first name. And she when he had a stroke. We should look this up.

[01:55:31] Let's honor her. Woodrow Wilson, who had a lot of problematic things, but his wife apparently. No, Bess was Truman. His wife, when Woodrow had a stroke. I believe it was Edith. Edith Wilson actually would hold his hand and sign the documents and keep people out

[01:55:58] from seeing him and give orders from the president. And really was the president for a little while, for a few months, I think. Goodness. Which is kind of crazy because that's 100 years ago, right? That's over 100 years ago. Right. Right.

[01:56:10] And yet people still saw women as the first lady, the second. You can't do anything. Right. What that also says to me is what kind of an incredible goldfish bowl we've now plopped the presidency into. That would have been impossible nowadays. It just would have been impossible.

[01:56:29] Hiding FDR's dependency on a wheelchair would not have happened nowadays. And you didn't even have the 25th Amendment until after JFK, where you can remove the president based on the cabinet. Right. Well, anyway, that's a lot of politics we didn't need tonight.

[01:56:50] However, Brian says, however, as you mentioned, a woman should be free to choose any path and not be judged. Just agreed. As I read the book, I wondered why Le Guin portrayed to Hanu's face as burnt. Perhaps this is one reason.

[01:57:06] Philosophy professor Sandra Lee Bartkey wrote, the face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom or experience that we so admire in men. The experience of life literally scars to Hanu. It's breaking the old trope of a young woman, a beautiful young princess.

[01:57:27] In Chapter 11, Tenar responds, people see the scars, but they see you too. And you aren't the scars. You aren't ugly. You aren't evil. You are Theroux and beautiful. You are Theroux who can work and walk and run and dance beautifully in a red dress.

[01:57:44] I would love to hear your thoughts on why Le Guin gave to Hanu a burned face. Let's let's pause there and then we'll do the wrap up. Why does she have a burnt face? Marilyn, do we have any writings on that? You're all looking at me.

[01:57:58] Yes, we are. Quite intently, please. Nothing specific, but I think it is pretty much what Brian has said here, that classic femininity means that you are beautiful. You just don't hear about the ugly princess, at least not before the 90s, let us say.

[01:58:21] And it was a marker in a way. Um, some people might say it was a hint towards her quote unquote true nature. And, you know, she's surrounded by images of fire. I have to think that, you know, with the adults that she was living with,

[01:58:46] certainly would not have been model parents under any circumstances. But my head canon is that. She was a very wild child. She was powerful. It manifested in ways that frightened them. And that's why they attacked her.

[01:59:05] If she had been a, you know, a beautiful, small, bit of a child. Maybe they wouldn't have raped her and beat her and thrust her in the fire to burn her. Um, and if you think about Aspen's response,

[01:59:21] what he says, you know, somebody should have finished quote unquote the work. And the sentence about, um, Tiff, who was one of the farmhands, um, was pretty much like everybody who figured that what you looked like was a reflection of what you were like on the inside. Right.

[01:59:41] So for all of those reasons. And spark coils in horror. Right. And, and breaks to not hard by his refusal. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't even really get to buy a spark, but anyway, well, he was mentioned in one of the quotes that I read, but, um, and, uh,

[02:00:01] Le Guin says after he's run the farm for a few years, he'll probably be fine. So it was just that he'd had, he hadn't really had true responsibility until that point. Yeah. Although, although Tenor kind of pushes back on that, right? She, she says, Oh yes, she does.

[02:00:14] She's like, I think Ged maybe says, somebody says, you know, Oh, well he'll, he'll figure out once he, that he has to do all the chores, he'll figure out how to, you know, take care of himself. She goes, no, he won't. He'll get married. Women to do it.

[02:00:29] That's what she says. Some full woman. And she's kind of, I think, talking about her younger self a little bit, right? She's kind of digging at her younger self, taking care of Flint. Yeah. Possibly.

[02:00:41] But you have to remember she's been for over a year, she's been running the farm herself. Right. So decisions that she made as Goha for, you know, those 25 years would be different from the decision she would make as Tenor now.

[02:00:58] There is something poetic too about them going back to Ogon's house. Oh yeah. And, and, and bringing that, that around. So it was just kind of like, yeah, fine. Have it. But also the injustice, the power injustice, like, dude, how do you have rights to this farm?

[02:01:15] It really did smack me in the face of like, this is unfair, you know? And she introduces it very early on. She did. Yep. There's a set up for it. And then we kind of forget about it until it's right there sitting at her table, expecting

[02:01:29] her to feed her and wash the dishes afterwards. Right. Expecting her to feed him and then wash the dishes after. And he's known nothing else. And so this is just, he's just. He's in the spell. Was he a lesser man than his father?

[02:01:41] He'd watched his father be served all of his life. And, oh, and that sentence about, you know, she asked him a question and he refuses to answer it directly. And she's reminded that Flint did exactly the same thing to supposedly keep her in her place.

[02:01:56] And she thought it was a very poor kind of power. And she interrupts his whole narrative, his whole belief in the structure by just going, okay, cool. Bye. Yeah. No recrimination, no hateful fight, nothing to go, well, fine. Screw you too. Slam the door, walk out.

[02:02:15] You know, there's nothing. She's just like, cool, farm's yours. See ya. Well, not to this day. And he's so stunned and he's so shocked that that's going to reverberate in his head for a long time because he's not going to be able to.

[02:02:25] There's no answer in his culture for what she did. He has no way to answer the question with the language that he has. Yeah. Yeah. She does do a bit of storming in bed at night with Ged, which I think she had to, you know,

[02:02:41] because, you know, she's just, now she's living in shame. Right. And she even compares it to him and says, okay, now it's my turn to be ashamed. Because my role as a mother was to bring out- Right. Guilt. A good man.

[02:02:55] And as Le Guin says, how typical that the woman blames herself. Right. Instead of blaming a society that gives her son unearned power. That doesn't teach him that with power comes responsibility. And to bring back- Wait, wait, power, responsibility? Oh my God, Spiderman. All right.

[02:03:16] So just to bring back to Carol Gilligan instead of Ben Parker a little bit. You know, she talked a lot about how, you know, you talk to parents today, you know, male parents, fathers today.

[02:03:31] And they talk about their sons and they basically tell them like, I want my son to be able to be himself, right? I want my son to be able to, you know, not follow the patriarchal norms. But then what happens is there's an initiation with peers.

[02:03:49] And it's very hard to guide the initiation through peers. It's just, that's like, that's my parental nightmare is how do I keep my kids from being broken by others outside of my eyesight? Well, perhaps says the person who's never raised children.

[02:04:14] By encouraging them to be themselves from the very beginning. Right. By valuing and preferring their choices, by pointing out to them, that was a good idea you had. I like that you like these things.

[02:04:33] By encouraging it from the beginning so that when they do start interacting with peers, they'll feel confident about being different because in some sense, I think that's what you're talking about. About standing against a cultural norm that doesn't agree with the norms and values that

[02:04:51] you have already grown in yourself. And that you as parents have been doing your best to inculcate in them. I remember somebody saying what's something the effect of, you know, they were talking about how strong willed and even willful their child was and somebody saying, good, that

[02:05:11] means that they're less likely to be led astray by other people. Right. Well, my daughter is not getting led astray by anybody. I'll tell you that much. No, from everything you said, I don't think you're going to have that problem unless something radically different happens.

[02:05:23] I have never met a more strong willed person than my three-year-old. She sure knows how to lead me around a room. She brought me, she carried me up, it was her birthday and she literally grabbed my hand

[02:05:35] and was like, we're going up and we're going up to that big slide and you're going down it with me. And so that was my day yesterday. Anyway, Brian8063's email that we've now veered from for a very long time. But we have to come back to something.

[02:05:51] David, there's one more thing. We do have to come back to something. There's so many things that we could come back to. But we got to go back to this question of Tanar and the burn and apologies for my profanity here. Sorry, thank you, Tahanu.

[02:06:05] But apologies for my, I don't like to swear for swearing sake on our podcast. So when I use it, I use it. Why the fuck not? Well, that's why. Some things require swearing, if nothing else, to help reduce your blood pressure.

[02:06:21] So I think she was fucking with the male gaze with the burn child. Right? Absolutely. And she was just like, we got to break the gaze, right? It's the external thing here. How do we disrupt it?

[02:06:38] How do we check it so that it can start to question itself and it can unwind itself? And unfortunately, she had to do it through, not unfortunately, but unfortunately for Therru. And we have to be careful because of people who have experienced the similar things, right? Right.

[02:06:58] And being mindful of that. But the fact that, yeah, how is she in this story going to disrupt the male gaze? Well, and Le Guin says that Therru had nothing that would signify female femininity to the male culture. All of those things had been taken from her.

[02:07:23] And they all wanted to avoid her or destroy her, or they didn't know how to deal with her in ways Aspen was just like, oh, right, that's Berman. Get rid of her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in order to reveal that visibly and actually marked on her body,

[02:07:40] it became the face because what's the first thing you look at when we see someone coming towards us? That's how we judge. And well, that's how you would judge. And that's how you would judge a wife in that particular- Absolutely.

[02:07:52] Northern European cultural model that she's using to tell this story from, even though these are brown skinned people or not pale skinned people. Right. You are what you look like. Right. Well, Brian concludes his email by saying, thanks for keeping up with the books, the book discussions.

[02:08:12] Your television and movie coverage is fantastic, but everyone takes it up a notch when discussing books. Never without a book. Brian, 8063. Well, thanks, Brian. I have a lot of fun talking about books. We're kicking around an idea of maybe doing a Christmas book.

[02:08:28] And I know the book Nook is definitely not going to end with Earthsea. I'm sure that we have projects. We're deciding what to cover next. I think we're between a few things, but we'll let you know. Thank you so much, Brian. Great question as always. Indeed. All right.

[02:08:44] Time for an outro, everyone. David, what are we doing? And what are our affiliates doing? What are our affiliates doing? Alicia on the Worship Dust podcast has been covering the Beacon 23 Hugh Howey adaptation that is currently playing on MGM+, which has been several other things.

[02:09:06] And I'm not sure when it finishes up. So they might have just finished the podcast with that relative to the time that we're recording this. And her and Luke are also getting back into their Dune coverage.

[02:09:19] We've got a date for March 1st for the second Villeneuve Dune film. And so they're going to try to match their coverage. They're doing a 360 big picture of Dune and all its permutations and incarnations.

[02:09:37] And then I know her and Abby were covering the Beacon 23 book on the book podcast. And then they're also going to be steaming ahead on the rest of the, I think, shift and dust in the Worship Dust series of books. So she's got a lot cooking over there.

[02:09:53] And she's got more things in the works. We're just waiting for dates and other things to resolve. For Anthony and Steve, they are covering Severance right now, season one. They're doing a season one recap.

[02:10:07] And then once we have a date for season two, the four of us are going to pile in and do a episode by episode recap. And that is going to be good fun, I think.

[02:10:19] Should be many laughs will be had, but we're just waiting for a date for season two. But you can catch up on season one now. Every Friday, those episodes are dropping and will have dropped. We also will have dropped the Star Wars holiday 1978 holiday special podcast, probably prior

[02:10:43] to this coming out. So definitely go check that out if you're into the Star Wars things, because I kind of think that the holiday special should be required viewing for any Star Wars fan. It is singular in nature.

[02:10:53] It is a disaster, and I love every minute of it. As long as I can keep my earplugs in for any time the Wookiee family is shrieking. I don't know what it was, but the timbre of their voices, I just couldn't. It was terrible. It was awful.

[02:11:12] I really couldn't. You're going to. I guess I'll just have to forward pass that. You're going to need to. Oh, the Wookiees are there for the whole time. I'm going to be honest with you. They are. They are the thing you keep coming back to in the right.

[02:11:23] But it's the first 10 minutes or so that it is egregious. Yes. When Itchy and Lumpy are in. Lumpy is my favorite. He's got human teeth instead of Wookiee fangs for some reason, and it looks like he has veneers. Like, it's just it's absolutely ridiculous. Just it's on YouTube.

[02:11:43] Look up Star Wars holiday special. Come listen to the podcast. We had a blast with Stephen Anthony. It's one of the funniest podcasts I think we've recorded. Well, I think it's time to do some Patreon shout outs quick.

[02:11:56] We have a Patreon where you can get early and add free access to our podcasts. You can get bonus stuff like second breakfast. The last one was two hours and 45 minutes because we're insane.

[02:12:07] We talk about all the things we love and we talk about the things that we're not covering and video games and and movies, writer strikes and movies. And oh my, we're going to do a Christmas movie for December and you can actually catch

[02:12:20] the December second breakfast on the public feed where we'll be ranking our our top 10 shows of the year. If you want to vote in that, you have to sign up for the Patreon.

[02:12:30] So definitely get on the Patreon if you want to be part of that polling and you want to have some fun with us on on our pooling of who did what right this year. All right. Now I'm rambling.

[02:12:42] We're two hours and 15 minutes in here are our lore masters or top tier patrons who get a shout out on every podcast as part of their benefits. Some Martian Cyrus Mark H. Michael G. Michelle E. David W. Brian P. Nick W. S. C. Peter O. H. Bettina W.

[02:13:00] Adam S. Nancy M. Lavinia T. Dove 71. Brian 80 63. Frederick H. Sarah L. Garrett C. Eric F. Matthew M. Sarah M. DJ Mewa. Andre B. Kwang Yu. Laura G. Dead Eye Jedi Bob. Nathan T. Alex V. Aaron T. Subzero. Aaron K.

[02:13:21] And Adrian, who will always be last on the list, apparently. He wants it so. All right. Indeed. This was a blast. I'm so glad we got to close out the year with Tehanu and that we can start fresh in the new year with the additional books of Earthsea.

[02:13:37] Which one are we doing first? Do we know? Tales of Earthsea comes first. Tales of Earthsea. We can talk about if we want to do them all or we just pick some. I'm doing them all. Because I believe it's a series of short stories, right?

[02:13:50] Some might qualify as novellas. Okay. I think it might be fun to rope in some of our other co-hosts for a shot or two. But yeah, we'll do some planning and we'll work out some formatting for it. Very cool. All right. It's been fun.

[02:14:10] We will see you all in the new year. Thanks, folks. The Lorehounds Podcast is produced and published by The Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the lorehounds.

[02:14:28] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of 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, my soul is as black as night. Your turn.

[02:14:56] 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. Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing.

[02:15:09] We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made for the Lorehounds. 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.

[02:15:22] 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.

[02:15:40] 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.