SOURCE: Cummins, Elizabeth. “Earthsea.” In Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin, pp. 22-64. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Cummins provides a detailed analysis of Le Guin's “Earthsea” trilogy as a coming-of-age journey set in the realm of the fantastic, where fantastical elements resonate with “ethical, emotional, and aesthetic meaning.”

The impetus for the Earthsea series was Le Guin's invitation in 1967 from Herbert Schein, publisher of Parnassus Press, to write a book for an adolescent audience. That audience, Le Guin explains in her essay “Dreams Must Explain Themselves” (1973), led to her choosing the main theme of coming of age and the genre of fantasy. “Coming of age,” she writes, “is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's...