A Wizard of Earthsea | Social Sensitivity

A Wizard of Earthsea Social Sensitivity

A Wizard of Earthsea presents the problem of growing up as largely a problem of self-discovery. The most difficult aspect of self-knowledge for young Ged is the recognition and acceptance of his Shadow, a symbol of those aspects of himself that he wishes to deny, the opposites of all those qualities of the self he wishes to cultivate. Children wish to hide from those parts of themselves that are frightening or forbidden, but they also wish to gain power over them and control them. Fairy tales use fantasy to present manipulable symbolic images of those frightening aspects of the self and, thereby, help the child to domesticate them. Le Guin believes that the child cannot move into adulthood without eventually confronting and integrating the whole complex of rejected aspects of the self, a sort of "antiself" that she calls the Shadow. Integration of the Shadow leads not only to adulthood,...
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