Dear Leah, I'm hijacking your thread to tell you that I'm going to try out your game "Back From The Broken Land" tomorrow with ESL high school students, and I am absolutely scared as it's the first time I've ever tried something like this.
Thanks for the super booklet, everything's super easy to understand, I hope it'll be a hit with the kids (might be a total failure, too, no way of telling). If you have a chance, send kind thoughts my way. :-)
I will. :-) I'm just going over it again and marvelling a bit how well-thought-out the game is and how deep it goes, I mean what a powerful tool storytelling is in reflecting on and coming to terms with the past. Let's see how that goes with a bunch of teenagers. It might be brilliant. :-)
I loved this line from this chapter: "He did not see, or would not see, that in this rivalry [with Jasper] which he clung to and fostered as part of his own pride, there was anything of the danger, the darkness, of which the Master Hand had mildly warned him."
I think we often look at our internal feelings as trivial or fragile when they actually can be quite powerful, quite dangerous, and grow or deepen into something that is fundamentally altering and not at all fleeting. I've been thinking often about how so much of parenting is little nudges helping a child become one who cherishes kindness (like Vetch! I loved this line too: "a greater unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.") and seeks goodness in themselves and those around them.
To your 'knowing exactly as wholly' question - right now something I'm thinking about a lot is labor union / employer bargaining. Critical to good negotiations is as complete a picture as possible of the possibilities and ramifications of different choices, both human and financial. The negotiations should be a time of learning - about the needs, desires and well being of the employees and about the current and projected financial health of the organization. It can be a time of honest reckoning and healthy reconciliation. But when there isn't listening or understanding ramifications can cascade and compound not just in those particular negotiations (strike!) but also, if a contract is ratified, across future contracts.
Thank you for posting the reflection questions, too. I've enjoyed considering Julia’s question about the pursuit of mastery. There's a mixed example in the biography, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Murray’s “origin story” tells of a childhood infused with the grace of a sharp and quick mind in love with words for their own sake, but growing up quickly makes that love of mastery for its own sake search for economic purpose, too.
It is easier to see a pure love of knowledge and craft in stories of youth. As society rewards excellence, and imposes pressures to provide for oneself and family, motivations might deepen but also grow more complex as well. In Murray’s life, this was the case: by adolescence he was always looking to employ his love, which isn't a bad thing!
Here's what I mean about pure joy in things themselves: when he was a toddler, James “was given a primer ‘reading made easy’ [...] the first time he saw his baby brother, [...] he at once brought his primer, saying, ‘I will show little brudder round O and crooked S,’ as the greatest treat he could offer the baby.” I love this pure gift of letters to his newborn brother.
A more fanciful love he showed was the way in which he would go about learning every foreign language he encountered. Though it’s also consequence of his family’s economic means and religious background, I find it a sign of what we might quickly call colloquially a “God-given-gift” that James’s preferred and earliest “method of learning a foreign language [was] by acquiring a Bible, and if possible a grammar.” At one point he could read, to some extent, 25 different languages.
There is also a beautiful description of his childhood walk to school, which again shows that same desire to know things on their own terms, not for any use. In fact, the walk really reminded me of the description of Ged going out on a meandering errand for Ogion through the plants in the area:
It started by a footpath up the Dean Burn, crossing and recrossing the stream as it cut its way over and through sandstone rocks, the cliffs overhung with trees and the banks full of beautiful wild flowers at all seasons. Here in spring were celandine, marsh marigold, wind-flower, primrose, cowslip and dog’s violet. James learned to chew the wood sorrel for its acid flavour, to watch for its flowers closing on approach of rain, and found where the rare birds’ nest orchid grew. Every season brought fresh discoveries: in July, when they came out of school, the children would collect bladder campion and sitting down ‘burst its air distended calyx and wondered at the [...] noise [such] wee things as the Cow-crackers could make.’ Possibly this walk awakened James’s life-long interest in botany.
Later in his 20s James Murray worked as a school teacher and school master despite no promise of it gaining him what he wanted - in fact, it was an alternative path he took out of economic necessity instead of the university studies that he seemed better suited for; despite no interest in teaching, and no direct path to advancement both because of his other academic interests and his family’s minority religious background, he gave it his all and went out of his way crafting original materials and gifts of learning for students. This is characterized in the biography, and probably in any popular imagination, as showing a profound moral goodness and dignity in the man who seeks to do justice to the tasks before him, to the utmost, and shows signs of enjoyment of the challenge, and love of detail in it.
Perhaps my favorite part of the biography so far is the prologue which quotes Murray’s negative views towards biography, itself also an indication of an admirable rigor and focus on craft and acts for their own sake and not for the garnering of praise or attention to the actor:
“It is one of the hateful characteristics of a degenerate age, that the idle world will not let the worker alone, accept his offering of work, & appraise it for itself, but must insist upon turning him inside out, and knowing all about him, and really troubling itself a great deal more about his little peculiarities & personal pursuits, than his abiding work. [...] I am thankful we know so little of Chaucer & Shakspere[sic]”
I’ll conclude with the line that stood out to me most from this chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea, since I feel I should at least acknowledge chapter 3, and not have gone full-throttle writing about a totally different text that we all aren’t sharing (sorry - and thank you for the inspiration):
“It seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by sunlight”
— Beautiful, and yet in the context of the preceding chapter title The Shadow, and how the chapter ends with “the joy of the evening darkened” after Ged’s experience of bitter envy, well… the shadow is so literal, too: when Ged is haunted by a shadow, he gets consumed by it enough or is near it enough that he cannot see too far in front of him, he loses perspective.
Here’s a thought: another’s brightness can lead us to feel shadowed by it, but can it also shed light on our own brightness, add flame to our flame. When have you felt thankful for the opportunity to be a light that could add to another’s light? When have you felt that you were receiving light from another? I can think of a small example: I admired someone’s regular exercise routine during the morning hours when I, too, wished to go out and exercise, so I asked if I could join them on their runs a couple of times a week, hoping the light of their discipline will catch on me! When there is the potential for some shadow, noticing something another has that one desires, there is also an invitation to turn on a light, sometimes by simply asking how they do it.
As a teacher who’s currently listening to other teachers’ advice on the craft, I’m touched by the idea that a good teacher sees something in the student that the student does not yet see themselves, and helps them realize it.
It wasn't until I read this, halfway through the chapter -
"Any witch knows a few of these words in the Old Speech, and a mage knows many."
- that it struck me that all the mages we've seen are men. I admit I didn't think anything of it when I read this at the beginning of the chapter:
"They came down to eat the noon meal at the Long Table of the refectory, along with a hundred or more boys and young men."
It's later pointed out more explicitly that not only are women not trained as mages (unless there's some women's school somewhere), but that their presence at that school is not even welcome under other circumstances:
"It was seldom that any woman sat in the halls of the Great House, and some of the old Masters looked at her sidelong, disapproving."
Is women's magical capability actually different from men's? Or do women with magical talent learn to be witches in a more apprentice-style fashion only? Witches, and women's magic in general, has been looked down on so far.
From a mage's point of view, I wonder if anyone's worried about uneducated witches going around upsetting the Balance in their ignorance, and whether it would be better to standardize them (and make them legible, to refer back to an earlier blog post). Then again, maybe it would be better to keep them, and as many people as possible, shut out from dangerous knowledge. But why have two different strategies for two different genders: standardize the men, and shut out the women? IDK.
It was only when I was reading something about how interesting it was to have characters be dark-skinned, with one negative characterization of a light-skinned character (the sorceress's daughter) that I realized, okay so in some ways there's subtle subversion* of (fantasy/general fiction) norms, such as the skin color as well as all the times that we're told "nothing happens," but in other ways, such as gender dynamics, same-old same-old.
Otherwise I didn't think about it. Sad to say it reads as "natural," or consistent with reading say European folktales or histories, because women are excluded from these formative, often also hazing, group education systems. It's funny how not much is given to us in descriptions, but enough is to paint a picture of a medieval-style fantasy world (though, as noted, bronze-age), and therefore the few descriptions encourage an assumption that women are only expected to rear children or if widowed and/or childless and unmarried to be in the askance-viewed healing arts. Just from the very beginning, knowing Ged's mother only as someone who died shortly after giving birth, painted almost all the detail in that picture for me.
This comment makes me reflect on how the way the world is presented to us allows for the sense that what we have so far is an incomplete view, and even an unreliable narration element, since we do receive the story from Ged's young man mage point of view after all. I hadn't fully considered this, even after reading and pausing over what Leah said regarding how "It’s the “mere village witchery” that cures warts, rather than cloaking them; that mends pots so that the water will not run out." Your comment inspires all this world speculation!
Also, on a related note, because it's Ged's aunt who's a witch, there's a sense that I at least assumed "magic" IS hereditary and not random and he inherited through his mother. Is there any direct mention of magic as hereditary?
*One more 'subversion' of a norm is the riddle at the doorway: I love how Ged is able to defeat the ‘riddle’ of the door by asking for help, and that what's more, he asks for help despite himself, really showing how he's learned from Ogion but has a lot of learning left to go, because he doesn’t really want to say what he says:
“I cannot enter,” he said **unwillingly**, “unless you help me.”
Dear Leah, I'm hijacking your thread to tell you that I'm going to try out your game "Back From The Broken Land" tomorrow with ESL high school students, and I am absolutely scared as it's the first time I've ever tried something like this.
Thanks for the super booklet, everything's super easy to understand, I hope it'll be a hit with the kids (might be a total failure, too, no way of telling). If you have a chance, send kind thoughts my way. :-)
Thanks a bunch!
Oh man! Please come back and tell us how it went!
I will. :-) I'm just going over it again and marvelling a bit how well-thought-out the game is and how deep it goes, I mean what a powerful tool storytelling is in reflecting on and coming to terms with the past. Let's see how that goes with a bunch of teenagers. It might be brilliant. :-)
I loved this line from this chapter: "He did not see, or would not see, that in this rivalry [with Jasper] which he clung to and fostered as part of his own pride, there was anything of the danger, the darkness, of which the Master Hand had mildly warned him."
I think we often look at our internal feelings as trivial or fragile when they actually can be quite powerful, quite dangerous, and grow or deepen into something that is fundamentally altering and not at all fleeting. I've been thinking often about how so much of parenting is little nudges helping a child become one who cherishes kindness (like Vetch! I loved this line too: "a greater unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.") and seeks goodness in themselves and those around them.
To your 'knowing exactly as wholly' question - right now something I'm thinking about a lot is labor union / employer bargaining. Critical to good negotiations is as complete a picture as possible of the possibilities and ramifications of different choices, both human and financial. The negotiations should be a time of learning - about the needs, desires and well being of the employees and about the current and projected financial health of the organization. It can be a time of honest reckoning and healthy reconciliation. But when there isn't listening or understanding ramifications can cascade and compound not just in those particular negotiations (strike!) but also, if a contract is ratified, across future contracts.
Thank you for posting the reflection questions, too. I've enjoyed considering Julia’s question about the pursuit of mastery. There's a mixed example in the biography, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Murray’s “origin story” tells of a childhood infused with the grace of a sharp and quick mind in love with words for their own sake, but growing up quickly makes that love of mastery for its own sake search for economic purpose, too.
It is easier to see a pure love of knowledge and craft in stories of youth. As society rewards excellence, and imposes pressures to provide for oneself and family, motivations might deepen but also grow more complex as well. In Murray’s life, this was the case: by adolescence he was always looking to employ his love, which isn't a bad thing!
Here's what I mean about pure joy in things themselves: when he was a toddler, James “was given a primer ‘reading made easy’ [...] the first time he saw his baby brother, [...] he at once brought his primer, saying, ‘I will show little brudder round O and crooked S,’ as the greatest treat he could offer the baby.” I love this pure gift of letters to his newborn brother.
A more fanciful love he showed was the way in which he would go about learning every foreign language he encountered. Though it’s also consequence of his family’s economic means and religious background, I find it a sign of what we might quickly call colloquially a “God-given-gift” that James’s preferred and earliest “method of learning a foreign language [was] by acquiring a Bible, and if possible a grammar.” At one point he could read, to some extent, 25 different languages.
There is also a beautiful description of his childhood walk to school, which again shows that same desire to know things on their own terms, not for any use. In fact, the walk really reminded me of the description of Ged going out on a meandering errand for Ogion through the plants in the area:
It started by a footpath up the Dean Burn, crossing and recrossing the stream as it cut its way over and through sandstone rocks, the cliffs overhung with trees and the banks full of beautiful wild flowers at all seasons. Here in spring were celandine, marsh marigold, wind-flower, primrose, cowslip and dog’s violet. James learned to chew the wood sorrel for its acid flavour, to watch for its flowers closing on approach of rain, and found where the rare birds’ nest orchid grew. Every season brought fresh discoveries: in July, when they came out of school, the children would collect bladder campion and sitting down ‘burst its air distended calyx and wondered at the [...] noise [such] wee things as the Cow-crackers could make.’ Possibly this walk awakened James’s life-long interest in botany.
Later in his 20s James Murray worked as a school teacher and school master despite no promise of it gaining him what he wanted - in fact, it was an alternative path he took out of economic necessity instead of the university studies that he seemed better suited for; despite no interest in teaching, and no direct path to advancement both because of his other academic interests and his family’s minority religious background, he gave it his all and went out of his way crafting original materials and gifts of learning for students. This is characterized in the biography, and probably in any popular imagination, as showing a profound moral goodness and dignity in the man who seeks to do justice to the tasks before him, to the utmost, and shows signs of enjoyment of the challenge, and love of detail in it.
Perhaps my favorite part of the biography so far is the prologue which quotes Murray’s negative views towards biography, itself also an indication of an admirable rigor and focus on craft and acts for their own sake and not for the garnering of praise or attention to the actor:
“It is one of the hateful characteristics of a degenerate age, that the idle world will not let the worker alone, accept his offering of work, & appraise it for itself, but must insist upon turning him inside out, and knowing all about him, and really troubling itself a great deal more about his little peculiarities & personal pursuits, than his abiding work. [...] I am thankful we know so little of Chaucer & Shakspere[sic]”
I’ll conclude with the line that stood out to me most from this chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea, since I feel I should at least acknowledge chapter 3, and not have gone full-throttle writing about a totally different text that we all aren’t sharing (sorry - and thank you for the inspiration):
“It seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by sunlight”
— Beautiful, and yet in the context of the preceding chapter title The Shadow, and how the chapter ends with “the joy of the evening darkened” after Ged’s experience of bitter envy, well… the shadow is so literal, too: when Ged is haunted by a shadow, he gets consumed by it enough or is near it enough that he cannot see too far in front of him, he loses perspective.
Here’s a thought: another’s brightness can lead us to feel shadowed by it, but can it also shed light on our own brightness, add flame to our flame. When have you felt thankful for the opportunity to be a light that could add to another’s light? When have you felt that you were receiving light from another? I can think of a small example: I admired someone’s regular exercise routine during the morning hours when I, too, wished to go out and exercise, so I asked if I could join them on their runs a couple of times a week, hoping the light of their discipline will catch on me! When there is the potential for some shadow, noticing something another has that one desires, there is also an invitation to turn on a light, sometimes by simply asking how they do it.
As a teacher who’s currently listening to other teachers’ advice on the craft, I’m touched by the idea that a good teacher sees something in the student that the student does not yet see themselves, and helps them realize it.
The trickiness in affecting the whole ocean vs. just one bay or inlet, and all rocks vs. one pebble, reminded me of this comic strip about King Midas:
https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1355
Heh heh heh
It wasn't until I read this, halfway through the chapter -
"Any witch knows a few of these words in the Old Speech, and a mage knows many."
- that it struck me that all the mages we've seen are men. I admit I didn't think anything of it when I read this at the beginning of the chapter:
"They came down to eat the noon meal at the Long Table of the refectory, along with a hundred or more boys and young men."
It's later pointed out more explicitly that not only are women not trained as mages (unless there's some women's school somewhere), but that their presence at that school is not even welcome under other circumstances:
"It was seldom that any woman sat in the halls of the Great House, and some of the old Masters looked at her sidelong, disapproving."
Is women's magical capability actually different from men's? Or do women with magical talent learn to be witches in a more apprentice-style fashion only? Witches, and women's magic in general, has been looked down on so far.
From a mage's point of view, I wonder if anyone's worried about uneducated witches going around upsetting the Balance in their ignorance, and whether it would be better to standardize them (and make them legible, to refer back to an earlier blog post). Then again, maybe it would be better to keep them, and as many people as possible, shut out from dangerous knowledge. But why have two different strategies for two different genders: standardize the men, and shut out the women? IDK.
It was only when I was reading something about how interesting it was to have characters be dark-skinned, with one negative characterization of a light-skinned character (the sorceress's daughter) that I realized, okay so in some ways there's subtle subversion* of (fantasy/general fiction) norms, such as the skin color as well as all the times that we're told "nothing happens," but in other ways, such as gender dynamics, same-old same-old.
Otherwise I didn't think about it. Sad to say it reads as "natural," or consistent with reading say European folktales or histories, because women are excluded from these formative, often also hazing, group education systems. It's funny how not much is given to us in descriptions, but enough is to paint a picture of a medieval-style fantasy world (though, as noted, bronze-age), and therefore the few descriptions encourage an assumption that women are only expected to rear children or if widowed and/or childless and unmarried to be in the askance-viewed healing arts. Just from the very beginning, knowing Ged's mother only as someone who died shortly after giving birth, painted almost all the detail in that picture for me.
This comment makes me reflect on how the way the world is presented to us allows for the sense that what we have so far is an incomplete view, and even an unreliable narration element, since we do receive the story from Ged's young man mage point of view after all. I hadn't fully considered this, even after reading and pausing over what Leah said regarding how "It’s the “mere village witchery” that cures warts, rather than cloaking them; that mends pots so that the water will not run out." Your comment inspires all this world speculation!
Also, on a related note, because it's Ged's aunt who's a witch, there's a sense that I at least assumed "magic" IS hereditary and not random and he inherited through his mother. Is there any direct mention of magic as hereditary?
*One more 'subversion' of a norm is the riddle at the doorway: I love how Ged is able to defeat the ‘riddle’ of the door by asking for help, and that what's more, he asks for help despite himself, really showing how he's learned from Ogion but has a lot of learning left to go, because he doesn’t really want to say what he says:
“I cannot enter,” he said **unwillingly**, “unless you help me.”