SOURCE: “Cultural Anthropology and the Rituals of Exchange in Ursula K. Le Guin's ‘Earthsea,’” in Mosaic, Vol. 29, No. 4, December, 1996, pp. 101-13.

[In the following essay, Senior draws attention to gift-giving, or ritualized exchange, in the Earthsea saga. Senior argues that such exchanges define and reinforce essential aspects of the fictionalized culture's values, social communication, and spiritual order.]

To the extent that literary works are attempts to construct worlds and societies that “model” our own, cultural anthropology offers a vast array of features on which to focus: myths, marriage customs, taboos, kinship structures, linguistic patternings, gender roles. Similarly, the ties that bind literature and anthropology are everywhere evident in the work of those concerned with systems of values and beliefs: Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, to use a traditionalist example, could be described as a quasi-anthropological defense of literature, just as Joseph Campbell provides an almost indistinguishable mix of the two disciplinary orientations in his monumental studies of mythology past and present. Within the last decades, furthermore, it is impossible to ignore the impact of Claude Lévi-Strauss on Structuralist theorizing; nor might it be too extreme to suggest that the current vogue of ethnic literature owes much to the influence of cultural anthropology.

Yet perhaps the most definitive example of the interaction between literature and cultural anthropology is to be found in the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin. Not only was her father, Alfred Kroeber, one of the pioneering cultural anthropologists whose writings and books are still de riguer reading, but her mother, Theodora, wrote the biography of the last “wild” Native American, Ishi in Two Worlds, and compiled a tome of American Indian myths. Given that Le Guin grew up in a household visited by anthropological scholars, Native Americans, and scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, the way that she describes her fictional projects is not surprising: “My father felt very strongly that you can never actually get outside your own culture. All you can do is try. I think that feeling sometimes comes out in my writing. My father studied real cultures and I make them up—in a way it’s the same thing” （qtd. in De Bolt 15-16）.

Although this acknowledgment might contain a touch of irony, as Jan Horner has argued in a study of Le Guin’s fiction as a critique of her father’s methods, it is equally true that the credibility of her worlds owes much to her concern with anthropological accuracy and that a primary strength of her fiction is the consistent attention to the way that cultures operate. Although this aspect of Le Guin’s fiction has been generally noted, I wish to look more closely at how Le Guin’s knowledge of anthropological theory is evidenced in her depiction of a ritual that in many ways constitutes the basis of social structure: gift-giving. Specifically I wish to focus on the way that this dynamic is played out with increasing sophistication and sensitivity in Le Guin’s 4-part saga about the customs and lifestyles of the inhabitants of a fictional world called “Earthsea.”

My reason for focusing on this series—and as a series—is twofold: first, if viewed singly and reduced to a plot summary, the “action” of each novel might seem to foreground a single protagonist, whereby fiction would seem to be most at odds with the interactive actualities/politics of “real” life; second, it is only by considering the series as a whole—in which the later novels in the Earthsea saga respond to the earlier ones—that one can appreciate the way that Le Guin translates the sociological theory of “exchange” into a principle for structuring literary works. Bearing in mind, then, this caveat about the dangers of plot summary, but with a view to showing how the respective novels interrelate, let me set the stage for my discussion of “gift-giving” with a brief synopsis of Le Guin’s Earthsea saga.

Overall, the series takes the forms of voyages by the protagonist/hero Ged to various islands of Earthsea, whereby he encounters many different customs and lifestyles. The first of the Earthsea books, A Wizard of Earthsea, traces Ged’s first journeys when, as a goatherd from a poor village on Gont, he discovers the latent magic power within him. He leaves his home for the Isle of Roke and its school for wizards, where his rashness and pride result in a horrific act as he overreaches his power. His subsequent education and long voyage to atone for his error bring him to many different lands in the eastern region of Earthsea. In the second volume of the saga, The Tombs of Atuan, Ged again journeys far on the oceans of his world, this time to find the lost half of the Ring of Erreth- Akbe and its power of binding and renewing. Trapped in a labyrinth on the island of Atuan, he rescues and is rescued by its high priestess, Tenar, whose spirit has been blighted by the dark gods she has served. In the third volume, The Farthest Shore, Ged takes to the sea again, with Arren, the heir to the throne of Havnor, and their journey takes them through strange, almost legendary, lands to the western end of the world and a confrontation with death. Tehanu, the final novel, seems to focus on Ged’s return to his original home after his battle with death, having sacrificed his power, but is actually more concerned with Tenar’s story than his. Tenar, now a widow, has taken Tehanu, a burned, maimed girl-child under her protection—in the same way that Tenar herself was once adopted by Ged’s mentor Ogion. Ged’s return, Tenar’s requital, and the child Tehanu’s apotheosis bring the different strands of Le Guin’s four-part saga to closure.

It is evident that in this tetralogy, Le Guin creates not just one social paradigm, but many, among the various islands, lands and peoples of Earthsea. One of the seminal cultural patterns that she explores is exchange, for in Earthsea, gifts are essential in establishing ties between people and cultures.

Cultural anthropologists and ethno-ethicists have long pointed out the importance in almost every culture of gifts as media for establishing mutual ties. It is in turn this need for reciprocity that makes “free gifts” problematic, according to Mary Douglas: “What is wrong with the so-called free gift is the donor’s intention to be exempt from return gifts coming from the recipient. Refusing requital puts the act of giving outside any mutual ties. Once given, the free gift entails no further claims from the recipient. A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction” （vii）. Fantasy literature similarly depicts the rituals of gift-giving and exchanges in light of their moral and social significance; gifts with their manner of and motives behind exchange are filigreed into the cultural warp and woof of the world and serve to define characteristics of the secondary creation （i.e., fiction） we have entered and to move it closer, through the common element of the gift, to our primary world. Gifts help us to define the ethos of a culture as well as various value systems, for each gift functions as a method of communication to indicate or establish concepts and models of social status and duty, standards of desired objects and their characteristics, the nature of generosity or charity, or even beauty. H. R. Hays points out that even today our exchange of Christmas cards constitutes a status system in which the most original or beautiful cards hold more value than others （302）. So all gifts—those given to Sleeping Beauty by the three fairies, Bilbo’s bequest of The One Ring to Frodo in Tolkien’s fantasy, Lear’s addled partition of his kingdom in Shakespeare’s tragedy—tell us something about the giver and receiver and establish a system of relationships.

At the center of fantasy lies the concern for order, for things in their rightful places in a systematic and comprehensible world. In the case of Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, many types of exchanges take place to help us understand the cultural patterning of this cosmos: bargains, barters, deals, sales, thefts （negative exchanges）, and trades, but primarily gifts. There is a pervasive pattern of gifts and returns in various forms: from physical objects, to names, to magical spells, to abstractions such as friendship and sacrifice. In all these cases, the gifts given and received comply with Marcel Mauss’s observation that in archaic societies all gifts carry a spiritual import or content and entail the giver offering a piece of himself and that gifts underpin and represent a universal need for reciprocity （see Ch. 1）. Gifts play especially enlightening roles in two facets of Earthsea: in encapsulating the macrocosmic system of the Balance that governs and stabilizes Earthsea and in charting Ged’s development, moral growth, and integration into the world about him.

These two facets, however, are also mutually supportive, and in an essay entitled “Gifts” the holistic philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson used a metaphor that is particularly appropriate for Le Guin’s fiction: “The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me” （156-57）. Captured in this ecological metaphor is the view that gifts have both a metaphysical and a physical dimension, that the gift becomes part of both giver and receiver, just as it maintains a connection to the world as a whole. The exchange of gifts, and the onus that comes with an exchange, reflects and foregrounds the very nature of the Balance, and thus the ontology of Earthsea itself. As Robert Scholes explains, the ontology of Earthsea reflects a view of the universe as “a dynamic balanced system, not subject to capricious miracles of any deity, but only to the natural laws of its own working, which include a role for magic and for powers other than human, but only as aspects of the great Balance or Equilibrium, which is the order of this cosmos” （36-37）. Framed in its broadest parameters, Earthsea’s Equilibrium or Balance consists of a system of exchanges, a system which implies obligations and responsibilities for those involved because of the reactions and fluxions that any earlier action generates. A young Ged grumbles at Ogion’s lack of magic as they are being drenched in a downpour, yet later an older Ged explains to Arren that a wizard must understand that causing rain one place might well cause drought in another, a drought for which he would then be responsible.

Gift exchanges are tied to the same exigencies, in keeping with Le Guin’s insistence that “all things—organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object, and force—shape and are shaped by each other” （Cummins 10）. Each “present” and/or “presentation” conforms and responds to a need on both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic scales. As Mary Douglas explains, the dynamic which controls systems is neither serendipitous nor haphazard:

Spelt out it means that each gift is part of a system of reciprocity in which the honour of giver and recipient are engaged. It is a total system in that every item of status or of spiritual or material possession is implicated for everyone in the whole community. The system is quite simple; just the rule that every gift has to be returned in some specified way sets up a perpetual cycle of exchanges within and between generations. The cycling gift system is the society.

（viii-ix）

Gifts have value and meaning insofar as they occupy their rightful place in the cultural potlatch. Walter Goldschmidt explains that gift-giving is good only within “a patterned…situation” and that both “the good and the true are defined by place in pattern” （101, 102）. The magic of Earthsea operates in similar fashion, for each act of magic has consequences on a variety of levels: its literal effect is felt by those close to it; its ontological effect includes all of Earthsea, in keeping with the way that fantasy stresses the importance of the sum of the parts; its spiritual effect resides in the doer in that his （or her） actions are a reflection of his soul or spirit. In the case of gifts, the giving or accepting equally entails consequences for all concerned parties, and great events can result from even small gifts.

Le Guin’s tales of Earthsea are filled with gifts of all sorts. When Ged leaves Ten Alders with Ogion, he takes his only possessions, all gifts: a bronze knife, a cut down old coat, and “an alder-stick his aunt had becharmed for him” （Wizard 15）. When he leaves Roke for his assignment as a wizard, he wears “a heavy dark-blue cloak, the gift of the township of Low Torning” （74）. After he returns to Ogion and resolves to hunt his shadow, he departs dressed in the “decent Gontish leggings and shirt and vest of leather and linen” that Ogion has given him （131） and sails off with few provisions which he treasures, thinking “gratefully of the silent Gontishwoman who had given him the food” （134）. Such utilitarian gifts ground us in the Archipelago and its life, just as they reflect the import of seemingly casual or everyday items. In his study of culture, John Beattie notes that the system of “exchange is not an economic one, [so] what is the point of it?” （198）; in Le Guin’s fiction clearly the point lies in the idea of the gift and the motive behind its offer. Each of the gifts represents the good wishes of the givers and corresponds to their ability to give and their understanding of what is proper. The folk of Low Torning wish to honor their new wizard and accordingly present him with something of value to them （a warm cloak against the wind and rain）, but the gift also binds Ged to these people and demands reciprocation. Ged’s friendship with the fisherman Pechvarry marks the wizard’s hesitant entry into the island’s society, a friendship that begins with exchange whereby each attempts to overcome his uncertainty about the other. As Elizabeth Cummins explains, “Ged weaves some protective spells for Pechvarry’s boats and Pechvarry gives Ged sailing lessons. The exchange of gifts is a manifestation of the trust that makes human community possible” （35）. In a different vein, Ogion’s present to Ged of Gontish clothes in particular, coming from one who understands him so well, constitutes another link in Ged’s recovery of himself.

Yet there is more. In a short episode that initially seems relatively insignificant among his other ventures—Ged’s shipwreck on the isolated island—he receives, unbeknownst to him, the greatest of all gifts, half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. As Ged is repairing his shattered boat, an old woman watches entranced at “his marvelous work” and is moved to bring him “a gift: a handful of mussels she had gathered on the rocks.” She then shows him the treasured dress of her childhood and insists that he accept “a bit of dark metal…the half-circle of a broken ring” and then smiles because “she had made him a present” （142）. In this possessionless world on a forgotten island, the spirit behind the gift of the Ring matches its importance and power, for these aged, marooned children have almost nothing to give and were long ago deprived of the world of gifts itself. As George Slusser notes, one of Ged’s earliest revelations is that the spirit in which an act is done is often more important than the act itself （37）. And the mage, who cannot thank them in return for their kindness and who “had no present for the woman as he would have liked…set a charm on that salty unreliable spring. The water rose up through the sand as sweet and clear as any mountain spring in the heights of Gont, nor did it ever fail” （143）. What greater present could he give these two than fresh water? In this act is the reciprocity that all anthropologists insist upon: “the freedom and obligation inherent in the gift, [and the] generosity and self-interest that are linked in giving” （Mauss 68）. In a further sense, the gift binds Ged to these castaways for life, since their story now becomes an integral part of his.

Gifts transcend the mere objects that they often are, especially in fantasy where all beings and things have their own significance and function. Mauss posits that each gift has a power in it and that it “is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him”; because the gift is an extension of the giver, in fact often of his soul, “it follows that to make a gift of something to someone is to make a present of some part of oneself” （11-12）. Here again we see the connection of gift-giving to the laws of magic, for another form of gift prominent in A Wizard of Earthsea is that of names, forms of power which entail exactly the spiritual nature and the extension of self that Mauss describes. In Earthsea, to give one’s true name is to render oneself completely. Thus, when Ged is at his lowest ebb and Vetch explains that his true name is Estarriol: “it was a great gift Vetch had given him,” for he “had given that gift only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakable trust” （69）. In this case the trust lies in making a present of himself, for Vetch incarnates stability, home, a sense of rootedness and security—in short those virtues that Ged lacked on Gont. Thus, it is consistent and significant that later, sheltered under Vetch’s roof in Ismay, Ged awakes from an exhausted sleep to find himself at peace and secure: “All day long a little of this dream-peace clung to his thoughts, and he took it, not as a good omen, but as a gift” （161）. The spirit of the gift, like the spirit behind an act of magic, endows its potency. Because this is one of Ged’s few peaceful moments and a rare moment of domestic comfort among others, it is natural that he should view it as a gift.

Le Guin herself explains that Wizard is about coming of age （Language 50）, and various critics of the Earthsea novels have commented that one of the book’s preoccupations is with Ged’s movement from an isolated, self-interested loner to a committed member of a larger community. George Slusser describes the movement as one toward companionship and collaboration （33-34）, and Rollin Lasseter draws attention to the sense of completion that Tenar and Ged achieve in the second volume of the trilogy （103ff）. Ged’s journey to adulthood involves several stages, and gifts help define each. Upon leaving each place, we should note, Ged has not only changed in attitude and acquired wisdom; he also leaves with different gifts. Although the respective gifts do not exactly match his spiritual and emotional gains, they clearly function as signs of renewal and engagement with others and serve to chart the stages of Ged’s development.

In the second volume of the series, The Tombs of Atuan, the paradigm of exchange and reciprocity is at the outset reversed: in this harsh sterile world there is not only an absence of exchanges but the standard pattern is taking, not giving. Children are taken, lives are taken, light is taken, obedience is extracted, emotion is obliterated, identity is erased, and names themselves are eradicated, but nothing is given in return. Upon becoming the One Priestess, Arha “is eaten,” devoured and deprived of self-hood in a sterile mummery which lacks meaning or significance. The Tombs constitute a prison of both body and spirit where Arha/Tenar is mistress only of “The silence, and the dark” （26）. As Charlotte Spivack phrases it, “the tombs represented for Arha an undifferentiated unconsciousness, deep, demanding, and dumb” （35）; yet the old, nameless powers of the place return nothing for all their endless demands, and they effectively contrast with the life-affirming powers of gift-giving and its significance. As Ged tells Tenar, “They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy” （106）.

Tenar can realize her humanity only by leaving and denying these forces, which are personified in Kossil, a lifeless, grasping reaper who wishes to gather all power to herself but has no real use or any actual application for that power. Tenar’s exchange of the halves of the ring with Ged marks her first step to selfhood, while her return of Ged’s staff reflexively ties her to Ogion. Cummins notes that “At their last meeting in the Treasure Room they exchange gifts, a manifestation of the bond between them, that which makes possible human community. Its essential elements are nurturance, trust, cooperation, respect for the other” （46）. Their journey away from the Tombs is marked with further exchanges, as Tenar begins her re-entry to the world that she was denied as a child. After they beg a meal in a small mountain village and also receive beds for the night, Tenar asks if mages beg often, and Ged responds: “They are received and given food, by most people, gladly. They do make some return” （133）. He goes on to explain that he cured their hostess’s goats because “Hospitality…kindness to a stranger, that’s a very large thing” （134）. When Ged summons a rabbit for her, he explains the power of names and refers to his own power of calling as “a gift,” insisting that he will not abuse the gift by calling the rabbit only to eat it （129）. Obligation matches ability in this instructive parable and reinforces the reciprocality and morality demanded by the gift exchange.

In this second book, Ged’s role also changes from receiver to giver as he repays, through parallel actions, the gifts of the first book, here to reintegrate Tenar into the world as he was reintegrated himself. Yet there are few tangible gifts like those he received in Wizard; in Tombs they are life-giving gifts of the spirit, not knives or clothes or staffs. Ged’s first offering to Tenar is a vision of herself in a beautiful silk dress that reveals her true beauty and self and which is designed to repay her: “You gave me your cloak.…Can I give you nothing?” （88）. Later Ged gives Tenar back her name, as Ogion gave him his true name; he also gives her his own true name in trust, as Estarriol did with him. “I have trusted you,” he tells her, “from the first time I saw your face for one moment in the cave beneath the Tombs, beautiful in the darkness. You have proved your trust in me. I have made no return. I will give you what I have to give. My true name is Ged. And this is yours to keep” （114）. He then presents her with the other half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, just as the old woman gave him his half, giving what she had to give. Thus, through gifts the deeds of his life are brought full circle and given meaning, and they renew the world at the same time.

The Ring itself transcends its status as object and symbolizes the spirit of hope and life which alone can defeat the oppressive masters of the Tombs. Tenar is now freed from the Dark Powers and possessed of a future as she begins a coming of age in the same way that Ged did; further, he reciprocates Vetch’s gift of home and security by offering Tenar what she had lost, a place of her own （on Gont with Ogion）, so that she sails into Havnor “like a child returning home.” Ultimately, Tenar’s growth is signaled by her ability to give—and to receive—and Ged tells her that she will be welcomed in Havnor because of “the great gift” she brings its people （131）, for it is truly hers to give now. In the chain of events that typically undergirds fantasy, this gift will lead to Arren’s own journey in The Farthest Shore, which recounts his own return to the gift which will enable his future kingship.

In The Farthest Shore, gifts move beyond the individual to the social, and the loyalty that enables order and rule is invoked as the supreme gift, a theme suggested at the beginning of the second chapter.

The nine mages who are the Masters of the School are considered the equals of the great princes of the Archipelago. Their master, the warden of Roke, is held accountable to no man at all, except the King of all the Isles; and that only by an act of fealty, by heart’s gift, for not even a king could constrain so great a mage to serve the common law if his will were otherwise. Yet even in the kingless centuries, the Archmages of Roke all kept fealty and served the common law.

（14; emphasis mine）

Arren’s first reaction to Ged is an offer of fealty to which Ged replies, “The offer of a generous spirit is not one to refuse lightly” （7）. The young prince also muses on his father’s gift of a renowned sword, which he had received “solemnly and had worn it, as if it were a duty to wear it.” The sword’s history and nature—that it had been drawn only “in the service of life”—make it a gift whose spirit and implications he must both respect and obey. His last action before leaving Roke is to purchase for his mother a silver brooch, for “The idea of buying a gift for his mother pleased him” （30）. His motives, born of filial affection and burgeoning pride in his independence and growing maturity, combine both gratitude and reciprocity, and the gifts form a connection to his parents, despite the vast distances that will separate them. Thus, from the outset the “heart’s gift” inspires the story. Yet Arren worries about his lack of personal gifts or attributes, noting that his father has the gift of magic which he himself lacks （19）, and that he has “no great gifts or skills” （27）, a clear departure from the realm of the gift as possession. What is left for him to give, then, is himself. His doubts and fears center on his ability to give and then keep this fealty, and his failures—in Hare’s den and in Lookfar after Ged’s wounding—result from these very doubts and fears.

As in Tombs, in The Farthest Shore a blight of the spirit infects the world and inhibits exchange. All transactions in Earthsea are becoming empty, and one directional. Ged muses about the ex-mage Hare who, he says, “traded” his power: “For what? Life for life, he said. Power for power” （49）. Yet we discover that those who have offered their power to Cob receive nothing in return. As in the case of the Old Ones in The Tombs of Atuan, there is no exchange, no act or return of spirit that would foster health. Thus, in Hort hazia addicts sit and stare while the once colorful and active stalls of the marketplace have become blanched specters of themselves. In trade, productivity has declined; the dyers of Lorbanery sit and bemoan the passing of the old days because they cannot make their goods anymore, without understanding why. Both Ged and Arren are struck by the disconsolate people and the vacuousness they meet. Men of power have given up their treasure and thus have forfeited identity and joy, a plague that has spread throughout Earthsea. So in response to Ged’s inquiry about what is missing in Lorbanery, “Arren said without hesitation, ‘Joy in life’” （87）. As an old folk saying goes, “If a treasure is given to you, you will have joy throughout life” （Daniels & Stevans 453）, but because of Cob’s one-sided dealing, the adage becomes as empty and sere as the Dry Lands themselves.

Ged explains the solution to Arren in his comments on the inevitability and rightness of death. The knowledge of death, he says, confers “a great gift: the gift of selfhood” （122）. This statement defines the gift in its most reified form, divorced entirely from any possession; the gift of death/selfhood is a functional, rightful aspect of the laws of the universe and as such exacts its own requisite action. In the end, Ged will give something in return for his own gift of magery since a power of that magnitude creates its proper moral demand for an equivalent return. To quote Emerson again: “Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience” （154）. In this instance, the petitioner is the world and its demands are weighty, yet Ged meets them. To reassert the Balance, Ged commingles the power of magic with the reciprocity of the gift, thereby interlacing all three. He gives all that is asked at great inconvenience and sacrifice, the “heart’s gift” once more.

The fourth book of Earthsea, Tehanu, published some twenty years later than the original trilogy, has a different focus and flavor, as Le Guin herself explains in “Earthsea Revisioned;” in this novel Tenar “has not abnegated power. But her definition of action, decision, and power is not heroic in the masculine sense. Her acts and choices do not involve ascendance, domination, power over others, and seem not to involve great consequences. They are ‘private’ acts and choices, made in terms of immediate, actual relationships” （13）. Thus, the monomyth that dominates the first three gives way to more local and limited concerns, and the emphasis on gifts and exchanges is muted. On one level, however, there is a continued observation of the primary functions and meanings of gifts, just as there is a development of the earlier motif in the way that the focus of the gift is elevated from the abstractions of The Farthest Shore into the realm of myth through the child Therru.

The first direct reference to a gift does not come until the fifth chapter, “Bettering,” with Ogion’s death, where it also hints at what will come. First, a significant exchange occurs that brings full circle the giving of names—from Ogion to Ged, Ged to Tenar, and now Ogion to Tenar—when Ogion lays his hand on Tenar’s, “giving her the gift, his name, giving it away” （52） The passage of Ged’s power and Ogion’s passing prepare the way for Therru’s apotheosis; such a paradigm exchange is necessitated by the Balance, and constitutes the means whereby a new world, “All changed” in Ogion’s words, comes about. His prophecy adheres to the falling-world myth and foretells the coming of the avatar who will reverse the pattern of decline. In this way, Le Guin appends to the earlier, shadowy myths of Earthsea the story of the separation of humans from dragons and the gulf of memory between them.

As the narrative progresses, the general references to the gifts established in the earlier novels continue but more sporadically. When Tenar and Moss, the witch, discuss wizardry and power, the older woman tells Tenar that “Some are born with that gift,” echoing Ged’s assessment of his power （54）. She later comments that she does not know if she could give up magic to be respectable, because she has “the one gift, maybe, but not the other” （110）. As Tenar settles into Ogion’s house, she wonders about how she will survive, since Ogion had existed on the gifts from the area’s inhabitants and being abstemious had given away any “excess of food and raiment and tools and livestock” left at his door （85）. When she leaves her own farm to move up on the mountain, she leaves behind the money for her son Spark as her gift to his future wife （236）. The finest thing in the village of Re Albi is an old fan, the “gift, so the story went, of a generous sea pirate to his grandfather for some speedy sailmaking in time of need,” perhaps the only comic gift in the four novels （114）. These incidents and items all reflect the “immediate, actual relationships” to which Le Guin refers in distinguishing how the novel differs from the previous ones.

In Tehanu, however, a final function of gifts is also introduced, one that builds upon the theme left off in The Farthest Shore where Arren leaves childhood for adulthood—the gift of the child. This last book recalls to us the theme of childhood and its loss in the stories of Ged, Tenar, Arren, and the marooned siblings in Wizard. Le Guin comments that until she had a vision of the maimed child Therru, who becomes Tehanu, she had no story to tell: “Until I saw Therru, until she chose me, there was no book. I couldn’t see the story till I could look through her eye” （“Earthsea Revisioned” 19）. For Tenar, Therru was “given to her out of fire, chosen by her soul.” Deprived, beaten, raped, maimed, she is a child to whom so much must be returned, and Tenar, who knows what it is to be deprived of childhood and life, herself fears that she cannot give the girl what was taken away from her. Significantly, she conceives of both Therru and the joy of childhood in terms of a gift: “she knew that the child had been given her and she had failed in her charge, failed in her trust, lost her, lost the one great gift” （118）.

When Tenar tells Ged of Therru’s life and Ogion’s injunction to “teach her all,” Ged, who has emptied himself by giving all but who sees the latent power in the child, laments, “I have nothing to give her” （96）, signaling the end of the old world. As Tenar has made clear, however, Therru is herself a gift, a response to the gifts of home, protection and love which Tenar has given her, the gift which will return Earthsea itself to the world it should be. Ged has plugged the leak in the world; the Balance has been righted; a new king sits in Havnor. There awaits only the final change. Maimed and yet saved by fire, Tehanu will eventually phoenix-like rise in fire to join the dragons, and her function is defined by Kalessin/Segoy when he says to Ged and Tenar, linking man and dragon, “I give you my child, as you will give me yours” （249）. In this apocryphal exchange, as the paradigm insists, the world will be made new—through a child—as the eldest and youngest reunite.

As Kathryn Hume states in her study of fantasy, “Meaning for the individual comes from imitating mythic patterns; meaning for the reader or listener comes from seeing these patterns imitated in the story” （33）. Le Guin’s uses of archetypal myths and traditional narrative patterns—the development of the hero, the voyage of discovery, the descent into death, the falling world—have been well documented, but her true genius lies in the specific details of worldbuilding that tie her fictional worlds to ours. Gift-giving, as a result of its relationship to the Equilibrium and because of the way it functions in the everyday life of the characters, achieves mythic status by asserting value as both part of a pattern and as a pattern in its own right. The philosophy of exchange “is total—religious, moral, sentimental” （Hays 392）, and in this way the gift itself reveals the heart of the world. Exchange is the dynamic which permits community, individual and corporate prosperity, relations between strangers, stability, and even salvation.

Works Cited

Beattie, John. Other Cultures. New York: Free P, 1964.

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