A Wizard of Earthsea Analysis

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Here's what happens when you don't have electrical light and have to use candles and torches – you get a heck of a lot of shadows. A Wizard of Earthsea is kind of like a shadow magnet: it's just...

Setting

Earthsea. A magical land full of seas and… earth. Ged gets a nice little tour of Earthsea – such a nice tour that you really need a map to follow. Hopefully your copy of A Wizard of Earthsea ha...

Genre

A Wizard of Earthsea is fantasy: it takes place in another world where magic exists and dragons are real. It's a coming-of-age story: Ged grows up from a child to a man. And it's a quest story for...

Style

If you've ever written a story for class, you probably had a teacher tell you, "Show, don't tell." Like, if you want to write about a young boy who is wild, you should give examples of how that boy...

What's Up With the Title?

Here's a fantasy book that tells you exactly what it's going to be about: you see, there's this wizard and he lives on Earthsea. The title may (or may not) be clear, but we can still break it down,...

What's Up With the Epigraph?

Only in silence the word,only in dark the light,only in dying life:bright the hawk's flighton the empty sky- The Creation of EaFirst things first: if you try to find The Creation of Ea in your libr...

What's Up With the Ending?

At the end of Chapter 10, Ged faces off against the shadow, and it turns out that the shadow is actually a part of him. If you want to know more about that, check out "What's Up With the Epigraph?,...

Tough-o-Meter

Ursula K. Le Guin actually wrote A Wizard of Earthsea for readers eleven years old and up, but that doesn't mean the book's super easy (source). She actually has a few essays in other books about h...