A Wizard of Earthsea and the Green Knight

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first we have ged, a proud boy of humble origins finding himself in a place where he has been told he has potential, power, capability, a destiny — and we the reader are told he will be a Great Man, go on to do things that change the world, become myth

but he can’t see any of it yet – he’s trying to be good, but really he’s feeling a bit purposeless, and he gets caught up in the confusion and frustration of youth

but! it’s solstice! a festival! and games are afoot! and young, ambitious, and desperate to prove himself, Ged takes on a challenge out of pride and hubris — and it goes wrong in a way he could not have imagined – he opens the door and lets in the shadow, right?

and the terms of that mistake are: it is his burden and his alone now. No one else can deal with it for him. And it is transparently a mortal danger from the start.

but he doesn’t have to deal with it immediately! he has time to prepare himself. but he doesn’t know what he is up against – no one does! so preparation feels somewhat futile.

And then it is time for him to go forth. And he tells himself he is prepared, that he is noble and capable, and that he is on a noble quest – but he can’t ignore it. it is a doom as well as a quest.

He is offered false (or true but impossibly costly) protection/aid by a dragon and resists it. He is a good man and he is trying to do right, but he made this choice earlier and it compromises his ability to do right. He is vulnerable because of it.

he nearly dies.

he is humbled again and again, and in his darkest moments he becomes a puppet of fate, arriving on the sandbar to receive and give basic kindness to people so ill done by, so ruined as to seem almost beyond life, who reward him for it.

but he doesn’t understand the gift they give

great history is happening around him and he cannot engage at all with it, he is trapped inside his own quest.

and as he becomes more afraid and the fear controls him, he ends up trapped in a castle, courted, kind of, by a woman who would subvert him against her lord’s wishes.

She wraps him in gold and furs and he becomes a rare treasure until he realizes what is happening.

She promises him protection but it becomes clear to him that he is worth more to her while in this doomed state, and he confronts the trap. Escaping it reduces him to almost nothing – he is nearly lost as a hawk on his way out. All he takes with him is the doom he owns.

and finally he knows he must go to meet the challenge despite the horror of it

he submits to his fate as an intrinsic part of himself

in fact by turning to meet it the horror lessens, the haunting is reversed, and he becomes the pursuer – there is an incredible clarity and beauty for him now

but only once he accepts he must pursue it to the edge of life and death.

and he knows that everything hinges on this confrontation. if he fails, and the gebbeth takes his body, he will rise to great power as a shell of himself, housing only fear and darkness

so he must own it fully, he must entirely accept his own fate.

…and then he is reborn from the edge of life and death, which is perhaps a twist on many green knight interpretations

LeGuin was very interested in balance and cycles and the wheel of the seasons and the intrinsic ties between dualities, so for an arthuriana reference, this makes a lot of sense to me? But i haven’t noticed till now! The movie really made the Green Knight stick in my mind in a way reading it decades ago as a teen did not.

Would love love love to hear actual arthuriana folks’ thoughts! Or if anyone knows of other writing on the subject!