Friday, September 28, 2018

Scene Analysis #11 - A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Greetings Persistent Writers! Here is my latest analysis: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.


As a refresher from my copywork blogpost (click here to read the full post), here is the color coding on the highlights:
  • Orange for Action beats
  • Green for Descriptions
  • No highlights for Dialogue
  • Yellow for Summary/Transition
  • Blue for Thoughts
  • Pink for Authorial/Narrator Intrusion
  • Purple for Exposition
A double highlight means that a sentence is functioning with more than one mode.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s narrator in A Wizard of Earthsea was a treat to copy. There was something magical about the narrator’s tone towards the protagonist, Duny. Also, the beats were neatly organized, and it was clear where abstract beats started and ended.

The starting beats are abstract. The narrator tells us about the island of Gont, which is famous for wizards and also known as the birthplace of one of the greatest. The narrator tells us the name of this great wizard, which was Duny, and introduces us to the village where he was born.



The narrator tells us about Duny’s family and the upbringing he had as a child. Briefly, we are given some concrete beats that shows Duny “always off and away; roaming deep in the forest” and the likes.

The narrator tells us about Duny’s aunt, who only cared for him until he could look after himself.



Introducing the aunt becomes the starting point for concrete beats. Here, Duny hears a rhyme from his aunt that forced a goat to do her bidding. With this rhyme, Duny uses it on the goats he herds, which begins to follow him. This fascinates Duny, so he shouts the rhyme again, unwittingly losing control over his herd.



The scene continues with Duny being rounded by the goats, which leaves Duny crying and humiliated. The aunt comes out and says something to lift the spell. Here, the aunt tells Duny to follow her so she can assess Duny’s powers. We return to some abstract beats as the aunt thinks about Duny, seeing him in a new light.



The aunt then tells him about the other rhymes she could teach him, one of which was calling down a falcon. Duny is excited at this, and both nephew and aunt agree to keep this a secret. The aunt prepares and casts the spell on Duny, and when the aunt tests the spell on him, Duny laughed in response.

We transition to mostly abstract beats. The aunt is afraid of Duny’s strength, revealing to us that she had intended to use him as a slave (though the narrator uses the phrase “to her service in the craft of sorcery”). Despite this, the aunt teaches him the rhyme to call down a falcon.

The narrator closes this scene by telling us that this was the first-step to his life as a mage. The narrator also alludes to a future adventure, hinting at what’s in store for Duny’s story. Finally, the last sentence of the scene shows the narrator’s feelings to the wizard, which is wistful.





The structure of the first scene are as follows:
  • TRIGGER: Duny hearing his aunt say a “rhyme” to a goat
  • GOAL: Duny wants to use this rhyme on his herd
  • CONFLICT: (None)
  • OUTCOME: Will Duny successfully use the rhyme on his herd? YES, BUT he loses control of the herd and is humiliated
And for the second scene:
  • TRIGGER: The aunt seeing power in Duny
  • GOAL: The aunt wants to put a spell on Duny because she wants him to be of service to her craft
  • CONFLICT: But Duny has an innate resistance to her spell
  • OUTCOME: Will the aunt bind Duny to her service? NO
Duny’s emotional shifts on the scenes are as follows: curiosity, humiliation and wisdom. Curiosity at what the rhyme could do; humiliation after the goats round him; wisdom as he learns a new spell.

Below is a graph of the narrative modes of the copied scene. This shows the rhythm between abstract and concrete beats. It scales from -3 to +3 with the following sequence respectively: Exposition (as -3), Intrusion, Thought, Transition (as 0.5), Description, Dialogue and Action (as +3).






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