History Literature / Earthsea

** When Sparrowhawk (Ged) travels to the island of Osskil in the far north, his magic fails because he isn't familiar with the differences in magic there.

* ''The Other Wind'' (2001)

* EncyclopediaExposita: ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' and ''The Other Wind'' both begin with in-universe {{epigraph}}s, "The Creation of Ea" and "The Song of the Woman of Kemay" respectively.

* EnemyMine: In ''The Other Wind'', representatives of four cultures normally at loggerheads -- if not outright enmity -- have to pool their respective mythological knowledge in order to figure out the truth about an ancient evil.

* NeverSleepAgain: In ''The Other Wind'', the wizard Alder is plagued by dreams of his wife in the land of the dead.

* PhysicalHeaven: In ''The Other Wind'', the Heaven in the West is...in...the West.

* TitleDrop: A variant -- the titles of the books are often casually said early on, and then dropped traditionally with meaning. In the case of ''The Other Wind'', the title could almost be considered ArcWords.
-->'''The Summoner:''' Where, where is that land?\\
'''Irian:''' On the other wind. The west beyond the west.

* {{Curse}}:
** Arha lays one in ''The Tombs of Atuan''
--->'''Arha:''' May the Dark Ones eat your soul, [[spoiler:Kossil]]!
** Aspen lays one on Tenar in ''Tehanu'', which controls her speech and later [[spoiler:forces her to come to him]]. She tries to use the same curse again, but to no avail.

* SomebodyNamedNobody: The Nameless Ones, formerly the main deities of the Kargad religion, are manifestations of Earth's more malevolent aspects. Some reside in the labyrinths on the island of Atuan.

* MagicVersusScience: Tenar (the priestess) is ironically disbelieving that Ged can perform magic until she sees him actually cast a spell. This is because of her Kargish upbringing--the Kargad are magically uninclined and take a rather arrogantly skeptical view of the western world's magical abilities (this isn't because they are in any way rationalists: in fact the Kargads are the only people in Earthsea who actually worship gods, and nasty ones at that--the Nameless Ones that Tenar serves are [[EldritchAbomination pretty horrible]], while most Kargads prefer to worship [[GodEmperor their own kings]]).

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Most people in Earthsea are like this--they receive a true name when they come of age, but keep it a secret to all but those whom they trust completely. Ged for instance, is known to the vast majority of Earthsea's population as "Sparrowhawk".

* {{Epigraph}}: ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' and ''The Other Wind'' both begin with in-universe epigraphs, "The Creation of Ea" and "The Song of the Woman of Kemay" respectively.

* HumansAreWhite: {{Averted}}. White humans (Kargish) are rare in Earthsea, and are more or less Vikings. Most people we encounter are AmbiguouslyBrown, with Le Guin having said that they look vaguely Native American, or black. Ged has red-brown skin and Tenar has white skin. [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/12/a_whitewashed_earthsea.html The implications of this are intentional.]]

* ''Tehanu'' (1990)

* AbusiveParents: [[spoiler: Tehanu's father raped her and threw her into a fire when she was a child, and later on killed her pregnant mother.]]

* CharacterTitle: ''Tehanu''.

* CosmicDeadline: ''Tehanu'' is fairly slow-paced until the last chapter, when suddenly [[spoiler:the main characters fall into a trap laid by the evil wizard who cursed Tenar, who savagely beats them then attempts to force them to jump off a cliff to their deaths. This prompts Tenar to finally call out the dragon's name she learned after spending all book dreaming about it, who arrives, burns them to death, and reveals that Tehanu is actually a dragon in human form]].

* {{Deuteragonist}}: Ged's character development is secondary to Tenar's in ''The Tombs of Atuan'' and to Arren's in ''The Farthest Shore.''

* TheDyingWalk: In ''Tehanu'', Tenar helps her old friend Aihal (Ogion the Silent) walk from his deathbed to the meadow where he wants to die.

* HeManWomanHater: In ''Tehanu'', ''every'' unsympathetic man is one of these, especially the wizards.

* POVSequel: The first half of ''Tehanu'' follows Tenar as she reacts to the changes wrought on Earthsea in ''The Farthest Shore''.

* PowersThatBe: The Nameless Ones in ''The Tombs of Atuan''. Their actual existence is up for debate [[spoiler:until the point where Ged pisses them off and they retaliate by trying to collapse the great labyrinth around him and Tenar]].

* ReligionOfEvil: Zig-zagged in ''The Tombs of Atuan'': Tenar is a priestess who [[EvilWearsBlack wears all black]] worships {{Eldritch Abomination}}s who live in a labyrinthine CreepyCave where it is always [[DarkIsEvil pitch black]], and she offers them HumanSacrifice on a regular basis. Ged tells her outright that the beings she worships are very real and ''very'' evil, and that [[spoiler: he has been expending all his magic to keep their powers at bay.]] But it's not quite a ReligionOfEvil -- Tenar hasn't known that her religion is evil, and assumes that the Nameless Ones are deserving of worship because they are powerful and [[ReligiousHorror will destroy everything if they are blasphemed or aren't properly appeased]].

* ''The Farthest Shore'' (1972)

* AntiVillain: Cob in ''The Farthest Shore.''

* BedouinRescueService: Happens in ''The Farthest Shore'', when Ged is badly wounded and the heroes run out of water. They are stranded in the middle of the ocean, but fortunately, a tribe of nomadic raft dwellers happen to pass nearby.

* TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget: [[spoiler: At the end of ''The Farthest Shore,'' after breaking the laws of magic to conquer death itself, Cob can't even remember his own true name.]]

* DoWithHimAsYouWill: Ged does this in ''The Farthest Shore''. On a slaver ship. Where there are only half a dozen slavers. All he needs is to remove the slaves' chains.

* IAmOneOfThoseToo: In ''The Farthest Shore'', Ged tells Arren they are going to pose as merchants from Arren's island, and has the foresight to ask him to give some large town as a fake birthplace -- just in case they run into a townsman.

* LiminalBeing: The enemy in ''The Farthest Shore'' claims to be this.

* MadeASlave: Prince Arren is briefly sold as a galley slave in ''The Farthest Shore'', until Ged turns up, lays a smackdown on the slavers, and frees Arren and the other slaves.

* MagicStaff: Wizards trained on Roke are distinguished from mere sorcerers by carrying staves. Ged is awarded a staff made of yew bound with copper in ''A Wizard of Earthsea''. When it is lost [[spoiler:in Osskil,]] Ogion makes him a replacement from a length of wood formerly intended for a longbow. Wizards of Paln, certainly Seppel in ''The Other Wind'', and at first Cob in ''The Farthest Shore'', do not seem to use staves- but Cob does acquire the metal staff of the Pelnish Grey Mage later in the book.

* AProtagonistShallLeadThem: Arren/Lebannen from ''The Farthest Shore''.

A classic series of high fantasy books by Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin, which began as a pair of short stories in 1964, "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names". These stories were shortly followed by a trilogy of young adult novels:

Le Guin revisited Earthsea again in 2014 with the short story "The Daughter of Odren", followed in 2018 by the very last Earthsea story, "Firelight".

* ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' (1968)
* ''The Tombs of Atuan'' (1971)

* AbusiveParents: Ged's father beats him. [[spoiler: Tehanu's father raped her and threw her into a fire when she was a child, and later on killed her pregnant mother.]]

* TheApprentice: Ged to Ogion in ''A Wizard of Earthsea''.

* BanOnMagic:
** While wizards are not strictly ''forbidden'' from using forms of magic other than illusion, there is a powerful taboo against it, for [[RealityWarpingIsNotAToy very good reason]].
** All "magic" is prohibited to Kargs and in the Kargad Lands. As it turns out, they [[spoiler:worship evil gods who hate magic, which is actually OK]].

* BigEater: Penthe, who is plump when she is introduced and continues to gain weight because of her enormous appetite.
* TheBlacksmith: Ged's father is a bronzesmith.

* ChildMage: Ged is this early on in ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' before he goes on to become Archmage. His aunt, a witch, notes that he has unusual magical power, and when he was eight or nine, he saved his entire village from the Kargs using a spell he essentially made up on the spot. Some time after, he goes to Roke, which, as it's a wizarding school, is also full of child mages.

* {{Curse}}: Arha lays one in ''The Tombs of Atuan''
-->'''Arha:''' May the Dark Ones eat your soul, [[spoiler:Kossil]]!

* DamselInDistress: Tenar to Ged in ''The Tombs of Atuan''. (It can be argued that Ged is also a Distressed Dude to her.)

* DefrostingIceQueen: Arha/Tenar fits this trope very much in ''The Tombs of Atuan'', although there is a subversion in that the protagonist, Ged, who plays the role of dashing adventurer in the novel, does not "defrost" her through sex as often happens, but rather helps her develop a sense of morality and reconnect with her buried humanity.

* DesertedIsland: Ged is sea-wrecked on a very small one during the first book.

* EldritchAbomination:
** The gebbeth that Ged unleashed.
** The "Nameless Ones" are entities that the wizards refer to as the dark powers of the Earth, which are the focus of the oldest religion of the Kargad lands in ''The Tombs of Atuan''.

* EnemyWithout: The shadow in ''A Wizard of Earthsea''.

* EvilCounterpart: The shadow to Ged.

* {{Familiar}}: Ged's Otak--a small, rodentlike creature similar in size and disposition to a [[WeaselMascot weasel]]. He tames it in the wild using the Old Speech, and it follows him around everywhere after that, usually riding on his shoulder or resting in his hood.

* FantasyForbiddingFather: Ged's father, a blacksmith, is always telling him his fantasies will do him no good, and that learning to make a living as a blacksmith is the only realistic way for Ged to get by in the world. He's proven wrong when Ged becomes a wizard.

* FarmBoy: Ged starts out as a goatherd, son of a blacksmith, on a very rural island out on the edge of civilization.

* GodEmperor: In the Kargad lands, the (apparently mortal) Godking is worshipped as a deity, which, by the time of ''The Tombs of Atuan'', has severely pissed off The Unknown Nameless Ones.
* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: The Nameless Ones in ''The Tombs of Atuan''.

* HeadPet: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', Ged has an otak, a small, very shy wild creature that rides around in his hood and will tolerate almost no one else. When he's attacked at one point, it tries to protect him, screaming (this is notable because otaks have no voices). [[spoiler:Ged is heartbroken when it dies.]]

* HeroAntagonist: Ged to Tenar in ''The Tombs of Atuan''.

* HighPriest: Arha, the Eaten One, the high priestess of the Powers in ''The Tombs of Atuan''.

* JobTitle: The protagonist of ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' is a wizard of Earthsea.

* LivingShadow: What Ged summons up and then must deal with in the first book.

* TheMaze: The labyrinth in the tombs of Atuan
* MeaningfulRename:
** Every human gets a new secret name when they come of age, and adopt a publicly-used nickname. In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', the boy called Duny becomes the man called Sparrowhawk, whose secret true name is Ged.
** In ''The Tombs of Atuan'', the rite turning Tenar into the priestess involves taking away her name; henceforth, she is Arha, the Eaten One. [[spoiler:Ged restores "Tenar" to her, a significant plot event.]]

* NamingCeremony: Children are given their TrueName by a wizard in a special ceremony. Sparrowhawk receives his in ''A Wizard of Earthsea''.

* OminousFog: The boy who will grow up to be Sparrowhawk uses a fog control/illusion spell to confuse invaders and save his village.

* OrphansPlotTrinket: The MacGuffin in ''The Tombs of Atuan''.

* ThePlace: ''The Tombs of Atuan''.
* PolitenessJudo: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', the last task the apprentice wizard Sparrowhawk must achieve before he leaves the school as a fully-fledged wizard is to discover the name of the Master Doorkeeper. Since a wizard will always protect the secret of his name, he thinks long and hard about what form of magic he could use to wrest the information from the vastly more powerful Master Doorkeeper. Eventually he goes before the master and admits he must give up, but only after asking one question: [[spoiler:"What is your name?" The Master Doorkeeper cheerfully gives him the answer: politely requesting his name was in fact the solution to the test.]]

* PrivilegedRival: When Ged arrives at Roke Island, he gains a rival named Jasper, who's the son of the Lord of the Domain of Eolg on the Isle of Havnor. Ged is just the son of a smith, and is rubbed the wrong way by Jasper's extremely polite but condescending manners.

* RiteOfPassage: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', the mage Ogion the Silent gives Duny his TrueName of "Ged" in a coming of age ceremony.

* ShadowArchetype: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', Ged accidentally raises an evil spirit representing the darkness in himself, which is actually called the Shadow in the book. It follows him everywhere until he can call it by its true name--[[spoiler:which is ''Ged'']].

* ShoulderSizedDragon: The ''harekki'' Yarrow keeps as a pet in ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', possibly the very first example.

* SorcerersApprenticePlot: In Ged's youth, his FatalFlaw is his desire to prove himself good enough by showing off, as well as a rash belief that he's more powerful and skilled than he really is. It gets him into the same trouble -- dealing with a SummoningRitual and a LivingShadow -- twice, because YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb and he doesn't sufficiently learn his lesson the first time. The first is a {{Downplayed|Trope}} rendition and the latter {{Exaggerated|Trope}}.
** At the age of 13, when Ged is the apprentice of Ogion, he goes through his master's lore books without permission while his master is gone. He finds a spell for summoning the spirits of the dead. He finds himself magically unable to look up from the book until he reads to the end of the spell. When he does, he's filled with vague dread, and there's a LivingShadow of something crouching in the corner of the room, whispering indistinctly to him. Then Ogion bursts into the room, banishes the shadow, and fixes everything.
** A few years later, at 15, while studying at WizardingSchool on Roke, Ged gets into a competitive challenge with his classmate Jasper. He attempts to summon the spirit of a long-dead legendary queen. A deadly LivingShadow ends up being looses into the world. It promptly tries to kill him. Archmage Nemmerle (head of the school) has to save Ged--and he used so much energy doing so that he dies soon afterwards. Ged has to spend a month in sickbed afterwards. The shadow is only run off for a time, and it then stalks Ged for the next several years trying to finish him off. He had to spend the rest of the book taking responsibility for his action by hunting down the shadow and dealing with it.
* SpoiledBrat: Jasper
* SternChase: ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' has Ged getting chased from island to island by a creature from the shadow realms.
* SummoningRitual: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', Ged decides to show off by summoning the spirit of Queen Elfarran from the dead. He succeeds, but also inadvertently calls a "Shadow", which promptly tries to kill him, then stalks him for the next several years trying to finish him off.

* ThatsNoMoon: Ged once goes to an island to fight off dragons. The first dragons are relatively small and easy to defeat... then the ''castle'' on the island moves and it's the main dragon.

* TheTropeWithoutATitle: The Nameless Ones.
* {{Tsundere}}: Tenar in ''The Tombs of Atuan''. By the time we see her again two books later, in ''Tehanu'', she seems to have grown out of it.
* TurningBackHuman: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' Ged spends too much time in the form of a hawk (and focused on nothing but survival), so he has to be turned back into human by his teacher and even then it takes a couple of days before his mind is back to normal.

* UnusualPetsForUnusualPeople: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', Ged ends up with an otak as his familiar. It's explicitly noted that otaks are not easily domesticated at best, and it is shown when his otak nearly bites some of the other students at his school.

* WhenYouSnatchThePebble: To graduate from the wizards' School on Roke, a student must find out what the Master Doorkeeper's name is. [[spoiler:While there may be a way to find out by magic, it's perfectly acceptable simply to ask him what it is, and he will tell you.]]

* WizardDuel: Not actually a fight, but Ged's attempt to outdo a schoolyard rival with flashy demonstrations of magic led to tragedy in ''A Wizard of Earthsea''.

* YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb: In ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', the young students are showing off their spellcraft when Ged foolishly casts a dangerous and powerful spell to show off. He nearly dies himself, the Archmage does die, and a creature is unleashed.

-->''"May the Dark Ones eat your soul, [[spoiler:Kossil]]!"''

* RobeAndWizardHat: Averted in the main series, as while wizards usually wear simple robes and practical cloaks, they never have hats - at most, they have a hood. However played straight in ''Tales from Earthsea'': before the existence of Roke, when wizards acted as magical mercenaries and magic was still a wild and mysterious thing, they all wore extravagant robes of many colors covered in runes, as well as tall, pointy and wide-brimmed hats to look even more imposing.

* TitleDrop: A variant - the titles of the books are often casually said early on, and then dropped traditionally with meaning. In the case of ''The Other Wind'', the title could almost be considered ArcWords.
-->''"Where," the Summoner said, "where is that land?"''
-->''"On the other wind," said Irian. "The west beyond the west."''

** A few years later, at 15, while studying at WizardingSchool on Roke, Ged gets into a competitive challenge with his classmate Jasper. He attempts to summon the spirit of a long-dead legendary queen. A deadly LivingShadow ends up being looses into the world. It promptly tries to kill him. Archmage Nemmerle (head of the school) has to save Ged--and he used so much energy doing so that he dies soon afterwards. The shadow is only run off for a time, and it then stalks Ged for the next several years trying to finish him off. He had to spend the rest of the book taking responsibility for his action by hunting down the shadow and dealing with it.

* AllDeathsFinal: Mortality is a necessary and fundamental part of the world in Earthsea: attempts to circumvent it are disastrous and unsustainable:

* AllDeathsFinal: Two cases of "exceptions become the fulcrum of the plot":

** Dragons are described as having their own morality, and while perilous for humans to interact with, are not actively evil. They appear to qualify more as BlueAndOrangeMorality.

* AbusiveParents: Ged's father beats him.

** In ''The Farthest Shore'' [[spoiler: Ged encounters the mage Cob who claims power over the dead, and brings him physically to the barrier of life and death in order to humble him. The mage instead uses the experience to open a passage between life and death that allows him to return from death eternally but in doing so disastrously upsets the balance of the world, draining art and magic through the wound. In the climax, Ged reveals that even Cob himself has been diminished by sacrificing his mortality: he can no longer remember his true name, nor can he exert power throught the true names of others.]]