Sadler's Lectures

Ursula K Leguin, Tehanu - Tenar And The Mage Ogion - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses the science fiction and fantasy author, Ursula K. Leguin's novel, Tehanu, the fourth of six Earthsea books

It focuses specifically on the relationship between Ogion the mage and Tenar, who had been his ward and student for some time after she left Atuan with Ged. Ogion dies not long after Tenar arrives with Therru.

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Duration:: 15m
Broadcast on:: 11 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Sadler Lectures Podcast. Responding to popular demand, I'm converting my philosophy videos into sound files you can listen to anywhere you can take an MP3. If you like what you hear and want to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. I hope you enjoy this lecture. Early on in Ursula K. Le Guinz-Tahannu, the fourth Earthsea novel. The great mage Ogyon, the teacher of Ged, who at that time is arc mage. And also the warder and teacher of Tenar will die. And Tenar is going to be there. And what happens is very important for setting the stage and also displaying what's going on with some of the key themes. But there's also something very important. There's a relationship between Tenar and Ogyon that developed over time. He is her adoptive father, as she's going to say, as she's telling Thiro, the very young, terribly abused girl who almost died, who she has taken in that Tenar is her mother in the same way that Ogyon was her father. So this is in some ways bringing a climax early on in the story, the death of Ogyon. But it's also a, in some respects, we get to see something of his life in that. And as it's going to turn out, his house will be a major setting throughout the entire novel. They spend quite a bit of time there after his death. And then they return to it later on, Tenar, Ged, and Thiro. And so there's a lot going on here. There's also a backstory. So in the tombs of Atuan, the second novel, it ends with Ged and Aarhar Tenar, who's, at that time, a young woman, leaving Atuan, the place where she grew up, the only place that she knows in the Cargish lands. And Ged says, "I'm going to take you to Hovnor. "We've restored the ring of Arath Akba. "They're going to see you as a princess." And she's like, "Ah, I don't really like that. "That's my idea. "This is not really for me." And then he says, "Well, you're not going to stay there forever. "I will take you to Gaunt, and I will take you "to my former master, Ojian, "who I probably would have done better, staying with, "and you can stay with him "and then decide what you're going to do with your life." So Tenar does stay with Ojian, and she studies with him for quite some time. We'll look at some of the passages in which she's talking about that. And then she decides that she wants to leave and take up a different life. She becomes Golha. And instead of being the Cargish woman, she becomes a Gauntish woman. She marries, has children, manages a household and a farm. One of her daughters marries and another farmer. Her son goes off to sea, and her husband will eventually die of a stroke at the farm. And she, you know, makes a lot of friends and talks to a lot of people and makes connections and retains a connection with Ojian, who's still on Gaunt, of course. He's never going anywhere else. And then when she assumes the responsibility for this horribly abused and nearly killed child whose face has been eaten away by fire on one half of it, actually one of her hands as well, she's going to take Thera with her, and she takes her to Ojian, in part because they need to go there anyway. And this is at the beginning of chapter two. It was more than a year later in the hot and spacious days after the long dance. A messenger came down the road from the north to Middle Valley, asking for the widow Gohha. People in the village put him on the path. He came to Oak Farm late in the afternoon. He looked at Gohha at the sheep and the fold beyond her and said, "Fine lambs, the mage of Ray Albee sends for you." He sent you, inquired, disbelieving and amused. Ojian, when he wanted her at quicker and finer messages, and Eagle calling her only his voice saying her name quietly, "Will you come?" The man nodded. He's sick. And so she goes on her way that very night, sets things up and takes Thera with her, and they make it to Ojian, and she tells her, "We're going to see an old man called Ojian. "He's a wise man and a wizard. "Do you know what a wizard is, Thera?" And if the child had a name, she did not know what her would not say it. Gohha called her Thera. She shook her head. "Well, neither do I," said the woman, "but I know what they can do. "When I was young, older than you, but young, "Ojian was my father, the way I'm your mother now. "He looked after me and tried to teach me "what I needed to know. "He stayed with me when he'd rather have been wandering "by himself. "He liked to walk along these roads like we're doing now "and in the forest and the wild places. "He went everywhere on the mountain, "looking at things, listening. "He always listened, so they called him the silent. "But he used to talk to me. "He told me stories. "Not only the great stories everyone learns, "the heroes and the kings and the things that happened "long ago and far away, but stories, only he knew." And she says, "I'll tell you one of those stories now." And she tells her a very important story, her understanding the relationship between dragons and human beings, that has to do with Ojian. When they get there, they find Ojian is actually in a very bad way. He's not just sick. He is, in fact, dying. And what we find is she sat down beside Ojian's pellet cross-legged on the floor. "No one looking after you. "I sent them off," he whispered. His face was dark and hard as ever, but his hair was thin and white and the dim lamp made no spark of light in his eyes. "You could have died alone," she said fierce. "Help me do that," the old man said. "Not yet," she pleaded, stooping, laying her forehead on his hand. "Not tonight," he agreed, "tomorrow." And he says, "If only Ged would come." Ged is his pupil, the person who Tenar escaped from Atuan with and they discuss whether he's lost or not. So Tenar is actually there to help Ojian not come back to life, not to heal, but to have the death that he wants to have outside. He doesn't want to die indoors. And a little bit later, we find that he says, "Help me get up." "No, no." "Yes," he said, "Outside, I can't die indoors." "Where would you go? "Anywhere, but if I could, the forest path," he said, "the beach above the meadow." When she saw he was able to get up and determined to get outdoors, she helped him. Together they got to the door where he stooped and looked about the one room of his house. In the dark corner of the doorway, his tall stiff, leaned against the wall, shining a little. Tenar reached out to give it to him, but he shook his hands, "No, not that." "Come on," he said at last. "When the bright wind from the west blew on his face "and he looked out at the high horizon," he said, "That is good." And they walk, and then they come, he sank down between the roots of the beach tree as back against its trunk. For a long time, he could neither move or speak in his heart pounding and faltering shook his body. He nodded finally and whispered, "All right." And then she sends Thero off to get a rug because Tenar needs something. For a long time, he did not speak, but sat back against the tree trunk, his eyes closed, watching his face, Tenar saw it change slowly as the light changed in the west. He opened his eyes and gazed through a gap in the thickets of the western sky. He seemed to watch something, some actor deed, in that far clear golden space of light. He whispered at once, hesitant as if unsure, the dragon. And there is indeed a dragon on the way as we're going to find out. He gripped her hand and shut his eyes and began once more of the struggle to breathe until there was no more breath. He lay then like one of the roots of the tree while the stars came out and shone through the leaves and branches of the forest. Tenar sat with a dead man in the dusk and dark. A lantern gleamed like a firefly across the meadow. That night, his neighbors sat with Ojian and he did not send them away. So this is how he dies outside with somebody, Tenar. Before that, something else happens. He teaches her something or tells her something about her ward, Thero. When little Thero woke, he spoke to her in the dry kind way, Tenar remembered. The child went out to play in the sun and he said to Tenar, "What is the name you call her?" He knew the true language of the making but he'd never learned any carcass at all. Thero means burning, the flaming of fire, Tenar said, "Ah, that one, that one, they will fear her." They fear her now, Tenar said bitterly. The maid shook his head, "Teach her, Tenar. Teach her all, not roak, they are afraid. Why did I let you go? Why did you go to bring her here too late?" And she says, "Be still." He struggled with words and breath and could find neither. He shook his head and gasped, "Teach her and lay still." So what we see here is, Ojian is taking the last bits of his energy and transmuting them into language, trying to convey a meaning and imperative to Tenar. She'll meditate on this, "What should I actually teach her? What can I teach her? What is there to teach? What does she need to learn?" There's one other thing that Ojian is gonna say as he's dying his final words, which I skipped over in reading that passage, but now we need to think about it. Over, he whispered with exaltation. All changed, changed, Tenar, wait, wait here for. Those are his final words. So there's two components there. Everything is changed. He's not saying this in a gloomy way. Everything has changed, it's all going downhill. And notice this is at the same time that all the events in the previous novel are taking place. The magic has been going out of the world and Ged and Labanen are the ones who will write that problem. Instead, it's exaltation. Things are changing. Something new is coming about. And there's gonna be a lot of meditation and discussion, meditation upon discussion of what could that possibly mean throughout the rest of the novel? And then, wait, wait for what? Well, as we'll find out in the next chapters, wait for the dragon to come. The oldest dragon of all, Kalisin, Bering Ged, the archmage drained of all of his power upon his back. That's what Ojian was referencing and saying, the dragon. So things are about to change radically. And Ojian will not be there to see them, but he dies in his place. Then, as is always the case, what do you do with the dead after they have died? And we find that Moss, the village witch, attends to what is called the homing of the dead, often to the burial. We have this nice description. It was Auntie Moss who had come across the meadow with the lantern with tenor and the others. She'd watched the night by Ojian's body. She said a wax candle and a glass shade there in the forest and burned sweet oils and a dish of clay. She'd said the words that should be said and done what should be done. When it came to touching the body to prepare it for burial, she'd looked at once at tenors for permission and then gone on with her offices. Then we see these two wizards coming on the scene. There are other wizards on Gaunt. When the wizard came down from the mansion house, a tall young man with a silvery staff of Pinewood and the other one came up from Gaunt poor to stout middle aged man with a short used staff. Auntie Moss did not look at them, but ducked and bowed and drew back, gathering up her charms and witcheries. When she'd laid out the corpses, it should lie to be buried on the left side with a knees bent. She'd put in the upturn left hand, a tiny charm bundle, something wrapped in soft goat skin and tied with colored cord. The wizard of Rialbi flicked it away with this tip of his staff. "Is the grave dug?" asked the wizard of Gaunt poor. "Yes," said the wizard of Rialbi. "It is dug in the graveyard of my lord's house." And he pointed towards the mansion house. "I see," said Gaunt poor. "I thought our mage would be buried in all honor "in the city he saved from the earthquake. "My lord desires the honor," said Rialbi. "But it would see him," Gaunt poor began and stopped not liking to argue, but not ready to give in to the young man's easy claim. He must be buried nameless. I walked all night, became too late, a great loss, made greater. Then Tenar says several things. His name is actually, his name was Aihal, and his wish was to lie here where he lies now. So this is viewed as a kind of impertinence by both of these wizards. Both men looked at her. The young man seeing a middle-aged village woman simply turned away. The man from Gaunt poor stared a moment and said, "Who are you?" "I'm called Flint's widow, Gohosh," she said. "Who I am is your business to know, I think, "but not mine to say." And then we have a prefiguring of what's gonna happen later. The wizard of Rialbi found her worthy of a brief stare. "Take care, woman, how you speak to men of power. "Wait, wait," said Gaunt poor, trying to calm Rialbi's indignation and still gazing at Tenar. "You were, you were his ward once." And friend, Tenar said. Then she turned away her head and stood silent. She had heard the anger in her voice as she said that word, "friend." She looked down at her friend. A corpse ready for the ground, lost and still. They stood over him alive and full of power offering no friendship, only contempt, rivalry, anger. And then, Auntie Moss actually intervenes kind of courageously. She says, "Yes, she was, nobody else but her. "He sent for her. "He sent young towns in the sheep dealer "to tell her come clear around the mountain. "And he waited his dying till she did come "as one was with him. "And then he died and he died where he'd be "buried here." And then Tenar says, "He told me his name. "Must I repeat it to you?" To her consternation, she saw from their expressions they had, in fact, not heard the name. Ogion's true name, they'd not paid attention to her. "Oh," she said, "this is a bad time, "a time when even such a name can go unheard. "Is listening not power? "Listen then." His name was Aihal, his name and death is Aihal. In all the songs, he will be known as Aihal of Gaunt if there are songs to be made anymore. And then she tells them, "Will you see to it "his grave is dug here where he desired it?" First, they're the older man, then the younger, nodded. So they accede to her wishes because they are Ogion's wishes, right? And Tenar is the one who knows. She is the one who is connected with him. These others have a professional relationship, you could say, and want to run things. But it's actually Tenar who is the one who can do that because she knows Ogion and loved Ogion. They were friends. And so we see Ogion's life come to an end. It's not the end of his legacy, of course. Ged and Tenar, and in a certain respect, Thiru, who Tenar has been told to educate in some way, are, in some respect, Ogion's adopted children and grandchildren, and they live in his house kind of unexpectedly for a while, and then move on coming back to it towards the end. Special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. You can find me on Twitter @philos for 70 on YouTube at the Gregory B. Sadler channel and on Facebook on the Gregory B. Sadler page. Once again, to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. Above all, keep studying these great philosophical works. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (soft music) [MUSIC PLAYING]