Sadler's Lectures

Ursula K Leguin, Tehanu - Tenar Teaching Therru - 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 Tenar's attempt's to follow Ogion's final instructions "teach her all", about her young adopted daughter Therru.

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Duration:: 14m
Broadcast on:: 08 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. In Ursula K. LeGweens, fourth Earthsea novel to Hanyu, one of the key themes that runs throughout the entire work is that of teaching and learning. Tenar has to determine what kind of things young Thero, the maimed and abused child ought to be taught, what things she ought to learn and who should be doing the teaching and how. And it's not just the challenge that faces every parent what to do with their children, how to prepare them for life. In this case, Tenar has been given a charge by her old teacher and, in effect, parent, Oji on the mage. And as he is on his way towards death, he tells her about Thero that she has to do something and it sends everybody away. When little Thero woke, he spoke to her in the kind, dry, quiet 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 kargish at all. Thero means burning the flaming of fire, she said. Ah, ah. He said in his eyes gleamed and he frowned. He seemed to grope for words for a moment and now he says two really important things. That one, he said, that one, they will fear her. They fear her now, Tenar said bitterly. The mage shook his head, so he's giving. That kind of prognostication or prophecy about the fear that people are going to feel in relation to Thero. That is not the fear simply of a maimed, burned child. That perhaps it's not just evil has been done to it but it is evil. Rather, it's about what's going to happen. When Thero does, in fact, come into her power, although Tenar doesn't get that at that point in time, then he says, teacher Tenar, teach her all. Not Roque, they are afraid. Why did I let you go? Why did you go to bring her here too late? Meaning that Ojian himself would have taken part in teaching young Thero. And he's saying not Roque. What does that actually mean? Well, Roque is this island where the high arts are being taught. We'll get an interpretation of that a little bit later from beach. Well, actually, let's take a look at that right now because it's what we could call a rather facile interpretation. It's not one that we want to have any credence. And so, Tenar says, Ojian told me to teach her, teach her all, he said, and then not Roque. I don't know what he meant. Beach had no difficulty with it. He meant that the learning of Roque, the high arts wouldn't be suitable for a girl, let alone one so handicapped. But if he said to teach her all but that lore, it would seem that he too saw her way might well be the witch's way. He pondered again more cheerfully, having gotten the weight of Ojian's opinion on his side. In a year or two and she's quite strong and grown a bit more, you might think about asking Ivy to begin teaching her a bit. Not too much, of course. Even that, of that kind of thing, till she still has her true name. And Tenar feels a strong immediate resistance to the suggestion. She says nothing because beach is a sensitive man. So, this is probably not the right interpretation. We're getting right. But what is the right interpretation? It's gonna be much more simple and much more complex than that. So, we've got these two things. They will fear her, teach her all, don't teach her Roque or don't teach her at Roque. And then we have a number of different occasions where teaching comes up. One of the first ones has to do with the witch, Auntie Moss. And we find that Moss got on with a burn child. Perhaps it was Moss who was working this change, this slight easing in Thero. With her Thero behaved as with everyone else. Blank, unanswering, docile in the way, an inanimate thing, a stone is docile. But the old woman had kept at her, offering her little sweets and treasures, bribing, coaxing, weedling. Come with Auntie Moss now, dearie. Come along and Auntie Moss will show you the prettiest sight you ever saw. And she says she took the child into those fields and showed her a Larks nest in the green hay or into the marshes to gather white hallows, well, wild mint and blueberries. She did not have to shut the child at an oven or change her into a monster or seal her and stone that had been done already. Those are the things witches were supposed to do. She was kind to Thero, but it was a weedling kindness. And when they were together, it seemed she talked to the child a great deal. Tenor did not know what Moss was telling or teaching her whether she should let the witch fill the child's head with stuff. And as they go on in the thing, watching Moss with Thero now, she thought Moss was following her heart, but it was a wild, dark, queer heart, like a crow going its own ways on its own errands. And she thought Moss might be drawn to Thero, not only by kindness, but by Thero's hurt, by the harm that had been done to her by violence, by fire. So she's thinking there's something not quite right about this or something that needs to be watched. But then she says nothing Thero did or said showed she was learning anything from anti-Moss, except where the Lark nested in the blueberries grew and how to make cats' cradles one-handed. And Tenor thought what Bond linked her herself to the child beyond pity, mere duty, to the helpless. So it's okay for Moss to teach her in part because Thero is just learning bits and pieces of things. She's not learning a way of life. She's not learning Moss's perspective so much. A little bit later, there's some ideas about maybe a parentacing Thero. We'll talk about the witch one in just a moment. But first, there's an idea about perhaps apprenticing her to fan the weaver. And Tenor's thinking to herself, that Tenor thought of Thero sitting at that loom, it would be a decent living. The bulk of the work was dull, always the same over, but weaving was an honorable trade. And in some hands, a noble art. And people expected weavers to be a bit shy, often to be unmarried, shut away at their work, as they were, yet they were respected and working indoors at a loom. Thero would not have to show her face, but the claw hand could that hand throw the shuttle, warp the loom, and was she to hide all her life? But what was she to do, knowing what her life must be? So on the way, Tenor is thinking about these things. And then when she finds Thero missing, she thinks to herself, this is my penalty for having these thoughts. She said, this was her fault that she had caused it to happen by thinking of making Thero into a weaver, shutting her away in the dark to work to be respectable. When Ojion had said, teach her, teach her all, Tenor. And here's a very important line. When she knew that a wrong that cannot be repaired, must be transcended. When she knew that the child had been given her and she'd failed in her charge, failed her trust, lost her, lost the one great gift. Thero is special. Tenor is supposed to teach her. It's not just her, it got instinct telling her this, but her own teacher who says you need to teach her all, not just find an occupation, a vocation for her, that's going to be safe. And in some respects, the easy way out. You need to embrace this difficulty. Then there's Ivy the Witch. And after this conversation with Beech, she goes to Ivy and she says, listen, I would like to talk to you about Parentising, Thero for a Witch when she's a bit older. And Ivy says, well, I wouldn't take her. And there's already some bad blood, some background between Tenor and Ivy. Ivy, like most of the women, you know, in the vicinity, thinks that Tenor has been a bit too uppity, has played off of her difference, being a former priestess, being the Mage of Ogion. And Tenor thinks, yeah, actually, there's something to that. I'd better start, you know, mending bridges with Ivy. And so she talks with Ivy and she says, well, why not? What do you have against Thero? And she says, she's a child, an ill-used child. And Tenor gets angry and says, that's not all she is. Must a parentess witch be a virgin? And Ivy says, that's not what I mean. So here we get a really interesting discussion. That bears on who Thero is, but also bears on what kind of education she should receive. Ivy says this, I don't know what she is. When she looks at me with that one eye seeing and one eye blind, I don't know what she sees. I see you go about with her like she was any child and I think, what are they? What is the strength of that woman for she's not a fool to hold a fire by the hand to spin thread with a whirlwind? They say, mistress, that you lived as a child yourself with the old ones, the dark ones, the ones underfoot and that you were queen and servant to those powers. Maybe that's why you're not afraid of this one. What power she is, I don't know. But it's beyond my teaching. I know that or beaches or any witch or wizard I ever knew. I give you my advice, but where her the day she finds her strength, that's all. Tenor is still angry. She says, nobody would help her. She thought she knew the job was beyond her. They didn't have to tell her that, but none of them would help her. Ogion had died, an old moss, ranted an ivy, warned and beach kept clear and get the one who might really have helped get ran away. So, you know, she's feeling overwhelmed and perplexed by this charge of teaching Theru. And there's a point where she considers to herself what she's actually imparting to Theru. There's a very important passage where this takes place and she thinks, am I just giving her training in domestic things? Theru plays with these, what she calls the bone people. I should be teaching her tenor thought to stress, teach her all, Ogion said. And what am I teaching her, cooking and spinning? Then another part of her mindset in Goja's voice, let's Goja is her use name. Are those not true arts? Needful and noble is wisdom all words. So, you know, the domestic thing. I mean, this is actually a very important theme. And at Ged will actually like clean up his own plate and do things that tenors kind of spoiled son, Spark won't do because that's women's work, right? One of the messages in this is that so-called women's work isn't really women's work, it's needful work. And cooking is an art and spinning is an art. All you gotta do if you don't know about these sorts of things is try your hand at them for an hour and then a day and find out just how much art is involved in cleaning, for example. But is that what she should be teaching thorough? Those are useful things, but that's not where it should end. A domestic education. So she starts talking to her. She says it's maybe it's time you began to learn the true names of things. There's a language in which all things bear their true names and deed and word are one. By speaking that tongue, Sogoi raised up the islands from the deep, it's the language of the dragon speak. The child listened silent. Tenor laid down her carting combs and picked up a small stone from the ground. In that tongue this is talk, you know, the stone, right? One that was used as an example in Wizard of Earthsea, by the way. That's the only word that Tenor actually teaches her in the old tongue. And she talks about that with Gad later on. She told him how she had taught there the one word and then had stopped for it and not seemed right, though she did not know why. Now this is very interesting, right? Why? Why shouldn't she go on and teach her more? I thought perhaps it was because I'd never truly spoken that language, never used it in majory. I thought perhaps she should learn it from a true speaker of it. Gad says, well no human being is a true speaker of that. And he says, only the dragons speak it as their native tongue. And then Tenor says, do they learn it? And he was slow to answer, calling to mind all, he'd been told the new of the dragons. I don't know. What do we know about them? Would they teach as we do mother to child, elder to younger? Or are they like animals teaching some things but born knowing most of what they know? Even that we don't know, but my guess would be the dragon and the speech of the dragon are one, one being. They don't learn, they are. So, you know, this seems to be a bit of a digression. Of course, it's gonna turn out that perhaps there doesn't need to be taught the old speech. So what does she taught instead? Tenor says, here's what I can do for you. Maybe when you have your true name, I'll teach you the words, not now. Now listen, now is the time for stories for you to begin to learn the stories. I can tell you stories of the archipelago and the Kargish lands. I told you a story I learned from my friend Aihal the Silent. Now I'll tell you when I learned from my friend, Lark, when she told it to her children in mind. This is the story of Andar and Avad, as long as forever, as far away as Celadore, there lived a man called Andar and sort of tapers off here. So she's teaching her the lore of the land that she lives in, which is still something quite useful, right? And later on, we're gonna find that Theru is learning some of the great songs and can recite them together. She's learning them very quickly as well. She's a bright kid. And so until the radical revelation that happens in the last chapter of the work, this is the course of Theru's education. As it's gonna turn out, perhaps some of it is, in fact, not needful or redundant, but all of it is an attempt for Tenar to fulfill what Ojian is telling her she needs to do and to do right by the child. Special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. You can find me on Twitter @philosfor70 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) (gentle music)