A Wizard of Earthsea

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1968

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “The Dragon of Pendor”

Ged travels to Low Torning, a tiny rural island, to become their town wizard. Ordinarily, Roke-trained wizards usually took on more prestigious positions in cities, but Low Torning is being threatened by an ancient dragon and several new hatchlings to the west. Ged agrees to take this post because he is still doubtful of his skills and does not want to be tested by fame. He’s also excited about the possibility of seeing a dragon for the first time. The Archmage is hesitant at first to send Ged away from Roke because Ged’s future is dark and hidden from the old master, but he feels Low Torning will be safer than any other post. While at Low Torning, Ged befriends Pechvarry, a boat maker. When Pechvarry’s son becomes ill, Ged tries to help. However, the boy is suffering from a grave illness and his spirit is ready to leave. Though Ged does try to heal the boy, he is unable to save the child and his spirit slips away. Ged sends his own spirit after the boy’s to try to bring it back home but realizes he has chased him too far into the land of the dead. The shadow finds him there, and he must choose whether to go back into the land of the dead or to step back into life where the shadow will be waiting for him. He chooses life. Realizing the danger that he has put the rural village in, Ged decides he must deal with the threat of the dragon, so he can leave the island and draw the shadow away. Ged kills several of the young dragons and controls the oldest one by revealing that he knows the dragon’s true name, which he has guessed correctly by piecing together the history of dragons he pored over at Roke. The dragon offers to reveal the shadow’s name so that Ged may control it in the same way, but Ged only has one bargaining chip to save the people of Low Torning, so he declines the offer out of duty to his post. Making the dragon swear on its name to never fly eastward, Ged ensures the safety of the small islands he came on behalf of.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Hunted”

Ged enjoys one night of celebration back on Low Torning. Afterward, he departs but is pursued by the shadow and the winds conjured at Roke meant to stave off evil blow against the ships that attempt to take him back to Roke. To save the crew, he tells the men to take him back to Serd where they began. Because the protective spells of Roke will not allow him to return, he wanders aimlessly from island to island, always fleeing the shadow he feels following him.

On one island, he talks to a man who has heard rumors of Ged and who tells him to go to the Court of the Terrenon in Osskil, an island far to the north. Though distrustful of the man and recalling that Osskil has a bad reputation, Ged hesitates but eventually decides to follow the man’s suggestion. Ged finds a boat headed to Osskil, but he must become an oarsman to pay for his trip. The men on the boat are not kind, and one man named Skiorh asks prying questions before turning away. However, Ged sees a change come over the man as if he were being controlled, and he tries to avoid him. When they land, Skiorh offers to lead him to the Court of Terrenon. Ged does not trust the man but has no other choice. After leading him into the wintery hills of Osskil, Ged realizes the man has been possessed by the shadow. The shadow uses Ged’s name to take away his powers, so Ged must run away. He flees through the night but finds a beckoning light that leads him to the entrance of a castle, where he collapses once inside.

Chapters 5-6 Analysis

Ideas of agency, light and dark, the uncanny, and names run throughout these next two chapters.

Ged is compelled to stay on Roke to complete his education in the previous chapters. Now, he is once again able to exercise his agency. Though he is scared to leave the safety of Roke, once he begins to travel, “his impatience turn[s] from fear to a kind of glad fierceness” (101). Ged reasons that “[a]t least he sought this danger of his own will; and the nearer he came to it the more sure he was that, for this time at least, for this hour perhaps before his death, he was free” (101). Though Ged is traveling toward the dragon of Pendor in this instance, he will later apply this same logic to the shadow at Ogion’s urging; as long as he chases the shadow, it cannot chase him.

These chapters also begin to portray the shadow in greater detail, and it quickly enters the realm of Freud’s uncanny, in the sense of something ordinary made strange and terrifying. All things cast a shadow, but when sentient, this shadow quickly becomes unnerving. As Ged describes it, “the thing was not flesh, not alive, not spirit, unnamed […] a terrible power outside the laws of the sunlit world” (99). Seen this way, Ged’s shadow becomes a terrifying entity and readers can feel the tension of Ged’s flight even clearer. It is also worth mentioning the shadow sometimes brings to mind Kristeva’s abjection as well; it is something so unsettling that it has been cast outside the realm of the common and becomes wholly other.

The importance of names also reappears in these chapters. Ged wins against the dragon of Pendor through calling it by its name, Yevaud; he forces Yevaud to swear by his name that neither he nor his brood will fly east toward the settlements of humans. Later, once Ged has arrived in Osskil and encounters the shadow directly for the first time since he initially freed it, the shadow exerts a similar power over Ged by calling him by name. This parallel also speaks to the idea of balance that is hinted at throughout the novel as well.

Light and dark also continue to play a large role in these chapters. Ged escapes the shadow by stepping into the realm of the living and casting a blinding light to bring him back from the darkness in the land of the dead. After this moment, there are constant glimpses of darkness, some of it obscuring the truth of the situation. The man Ged speaks to who tells him to go to The Court of Terrenon has his face completely cast in shadow where it looks like he has no face at all. Once Skiorh is possessed by the shadow, his face also disappears into the darkness of his cloak on the way to the Court. The light beckons to Ged and guides him to safety, though eventually it is revealed that this light was a false light. The shadow knows light is its opposite, so it uses the light to lure Ged into its trap.