The Farthest Shore

*As always there are spoilers ahead, so read on at your own risk.*

The Farthest Shore is Le Guin’s third book in the Earthsea cycle, and another excellent novel.  At root, it is the story of Arren as he journeys from being the boy prince of Enlad to the man and future King of All the Isles.  Arren travels with Ged across the Western isles and into the realm of the dragons in search of who is responsible for what appears to be the death of magic in Earthsea. 

The list of Le Guin’s talents and gifts as a writer is long, but one of my favorite is her refusal to tell any story but the one that is right to her, no matter what genre and tradition might say.  We have seen the story of the boy who became king many times.  If he’s a prince, as Arren is, then he’s usually arrogant and used to wielding power, and he must learn humility and responsibility.  Or he is feckless and must learn the gravity of what it means to rule.  In other stories, he proves himself in battle or saves the realm with feats of heroism.

Arren has none of these traits.  He falls in love with Ged upon meeting him and wishes only to serve him.  He may not be humble, but nor is he arrogant.  He puts others above himself for most of the story.  When he is on the rafts of the Children of the Sea, the ruler acknowledges Arren as a prince, but doesn’t know whether to address him as an equal or a child.  The narrator tells us at that time that Arren prefers to be thought of as a child.  Arren’s sword remains in Lookfar throughout the novel, coming out only as Ged and Arren land at Selidor.  He swings the sword once, but it does nothing against Cob because “there is no good in killing a dead man.”

The battle with Cob seems to be what the narrative is bending towards from early on in the novel, once Ged and Arren determine that one wizard is likely responsible for the state sweeping over the world.  But there is never a battle at all.  When living Cob faces Ged, Orm Embar the dragon crushes Cob before the battle begins.  In the realm of the dead, when Ged and Arren again face Cob, Ged makes it clear that Cob has no actual power; he can’t even remember his own name, let only exert any magic.  Arren swings his sword, but it does nothing, and Ged, well, Ged doesn’t even bother with Cob.  The climax isn’t about Cob at all, but about the healing of the rift that has been torn between life and death.  Ged spends all his magic not defeating Cob but restoring balance to Earthsea by closing the rift.  And Arren grows to manhood, not by partaking in that act, but by bearing witness to it and carrying Ged up the mountain to reenter the world of the living.  We know that he has grown because when he meets Kalessin the dragon, he meets him as an equal, one ruler to another.  Now, Arren doesn’t prefer to be treated like a child.  Instead he says to Kalessin, “Let my lord be.  He has saved us all, and doing so has spent his strength and maybe his life with it.  Let him be!”  Arren spoke “fiercely and with command. He had been overawed and frightened too much, he had been filled up with fear, and had got sick of it and would not have it anymore. He was angry with the dragon for its brute strength and size, it’s unjust advantage.  He had seen death, he had tasted death, and no threat had power over him.”  Yelling at the oldest dragon on the planet is pretty badass, and a sure sign of Arren’s growth. 

The Farthest Shore is about a world being torn apart by self-interest and greed, the willingness to ruin the world if only it means I can live forever.  But Cob and his greed is only a symptom of the larger problem.  The ring of Erreth-Akbe have been returned and peace should rule the land, but it doesn’t.  There is an absence of war, but that is a poor substitute for true peace.  True peace in this tale comes by the uniting of all the islands under one ruler.  I think this is not about the importance of a ruler, but about the coming together as a joint entity, not as a nation, but as a people.

The whole series is about split things coming together.  In the first novel, Ged is split with himself and must rejoin the two.  In the second novel, East and West come together to deliver the ring of Erreth-Akbe to Havnor.  In the third novel, all of Earthsea is rejoined by the separating of life and death.

There’s a reading to be made about the importance of dragons in this novel, how they are linked to human beings, so that the rift between life and death affects them both equally.  They move from legend and distant threat to partners with Ged in this book.  I was particularly struck by Arren’s observation when Orm Embar curls up beside Ged as he slept after arriving at Selidor: “Arren was aware of his yellow eye, not ten feet away, and of the faint reek of burning that hung about him.  This was no carrion stink; dry and metallic, it accorded with the faint odors of the sea and the salt sand, a clean, wild smell.”  Dragon are not supernatural, but a part of nature. This reading of the dragons, I’ll leave to others, but I will say that Le Guin was clever in her use of them to escalate the stakes of the conflict.  Seeing the dragons cannibalize each other and go mad made clear that all of Earthsea is endangered by Cob’s actions, not just the fate of the people of Earthsea.

I really enjoyed the novel, though The Tombs of Atuan is still my favorite of the Earthsea novels so far.  I am excited to get back to Tenar in the next half of the series!