Language and mood
A Wizard of Earthsea and other novels of the Earthsea cycle differ notably from Le Guin's early Hainish cycle works, although they were written at a similar time.[4] George Slusser described the Earthsea works as providing a counterweight to the "excessive pessimism" of the Hainish novels.[4] He saw the former as depicting individual action in a favorable light, in contrast to works such as "Vaster than Empires and More Slow".[4] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said the book was pervaded by a "grave joyfulness".[40] In discussing the style of her fantasy works, Le Guin herself said that in fantasy it was necessary to be clear and direct with language, because there is no known framework for the reader's mind to rest upon.[4]
The story often appears to assume that readers are familiar with the geography and history of Earthsea, a technique which allowed Le Guin to avoid exposition:[85] a reviewer wrote that this method "gives Le Guin's world the mysterious depths of Tolkien's, but without his tiresome back-stories and versifying".[5] In keeping with the notion of an epic, the narration switches from looking ahead into Ged's future and looking back into the past of Earthsea.[85] At the same time, Slusser described the mood of the novel as "strange and dreamlike", fluctuating between objective reality and the thoughts in Ged's mind; some of Ged's adversaries are real, while others are phantoms.[86] This narrative technique, which Cadden characterizes as "free indirect discourse", makes the narrator of the book seem sympathetic to the protagonist, and does not distance his thoughts from the reader.[87]
Myth and epic
A Wizard of Earthsea has strong elements of an epic; for instance, Ged's place in Earthsea history is described at the very beginning of the book in the following terms: "some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage."[85] The story also begins with words from the Earthsea song "The Creation of Éa", which forms a ritualistic beginning to the book.[85] The teller of the story then goes on to say that it is from Ged's youth, thereby establishing context for the rest of the book.[85] In comparison with the protagonists of many of Le Guin's other works, Ged is superficially a typical hero, a mage who sets out on a quest.[88] Reviewers have compared A Wizard of Earthsea to epics such as Beowulf.[89] Scholar Virginia White argued that the story followed a structure common to epics in which the protagonist begins an adventure, faces trials along the way, and eventually returns in triumph. White went on to suggest that this structure can be seen in the series as a whole, as well as in the individual volumes.[90]
Le Guin subverted many of the tropes typical to such "monomyths"; the protagonists of her story were all dark-skinned, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used; the Kargish antagonists, in contrast, were white-skinned, a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics.[50][91][92] Critics have also cited her use of characters from multiple class backgrounds as a choice subversive to conventional Western fantasy.[92] At the same time, reviewers questioned Le Guin's treatment of gender in A Wizard of Earthsea, and the original trilogy as a whole. Le Guin, who later became known as a feminist, chose to restrict the use of magic to men and boys in the first volume of Earthsea.[5] Initial critical reactions to A Wizard of Earthsea saw Ged's gender as incidental.[93] In contrast, The Tombs of Atuan saw Le Guin intentionally tell a female coming-of-age story, which was nonetheless described as perpetuating a male-dominated model of Earthsea.[94] Tehanu (1990), published as the fourth volume of Earthsea 18 years after the third, has been described both by Le Guin and her commentators as a feminist re-imagining of the series, in which the power and status of the chief characters are reversed, and the patriarchal social structure questioned.[95][96][97] Commenting in 1993, Le Guin wrote that she could not continue [Earthsea after 1972] until she had "wrestled with the angels of the feminist consciousness".[95]
Several critics have argued that by combining elements of epic, Bildungsroman, and young adult fiction, Le Guin succeeded in blurring the boundaries of conventional genres.[98] In a 1975 commentary Francis Molson argued that the series should be referred to as "ethical fantasy", a term which acknowledged that the story did not always follow the tropes of heroic fantasy, and the moral questions that it raised. The term did not become popular.[99] A similar argument was made by children's literature critic Cordelia Sherman in 1985; she argued that A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the series sought "to teach children by dramatic example what it means to be a good adult".[100]
