After watching the EarthSea movie in class I must say I was rather disenchanted by it. It was hard to pick up the book and start reading it because of the impression the movie left. The book itself was nowhere near as bad as the movie, but still did not send shivers of wonder down my spine. This may be because I've never read a novel with such high fantasy content in it before.
One thing I couldn't get out of my head while reading it was how similar it is to Harry Potter. The comparisons between the two are plentiful and uncanny at times.
Both protaganists are on the cusp of adolesence and pre-disposed to a superlative power for magic, both go to a school for wizards and have an arch nemesis (Earthsea - Jasper, Harry Potter - Draco), and both have some 'shadow' or 'evil' entity (The shadow - Voldemort) burdening them throughout their journey. The list goes on.
Something I will say, that totally differentiates the two, is that EarthSea lacks depth of character and focuses more on Ged's journey rather than building his character up in the reader's mind. I felt as though I never really knew Ged all that well. He was somewhat of an enigma to me, he was hard to like, has a serious nature about him and maintains an air of arrogance (which slightly diminishes upon trying to summon the dead on the Roke Knoll). Whereas Harry Potter focuses much more on character as well as the journey.
Most of the similarities between the two books are generally thought of as common archetypes.
Good vs evil, (which is portrayed as rather black and white). The coming of age. The slightly comedic friend (EarthSea - Vetch, Harry Potter - Ron Weasley). The old wise men/mentors. And the Increasing of responsibility and wisdom that occurs as time goes on. etc.
Both books follow very closely to Voglers 'The Writers Journey'. Starts off in the Ordinary world (or roundabout) - the call - the refusal - meeting mentor - crossing first threshold - tests - approach, so on and so forth.
J.K Rowling seems to have taken credit for alot of ideas Le Guin presents. In response to the Harry Potter books, Ursala K. Le Guin states that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors", she does not feel Rowling has "ripped her off", but feels she was overpraised for her supposed originality.
So, really, Rowling has layed her conceptual model on top of Le Guin's, and in turn, taken it to another level. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, and kudos to Rowling on her work. But, In my opinion, Le Guin deserves more notable recognition for some of her original ideas, ideas that gave her book, a Wizard of Earthsea, a spot in the 33 best all-time fantasy novels.
Just sayin......
Great post Benjamin - it would be great if you could reference some of the ideas that you brought up, like your usage of Vogler's 'The Writer's Journey', and where you found the reference to Earthsea being in the the top 33 best fantasy novels of all time, for example.
ReplyDeleteYou could say, of course, that the reason there are so many parallels between Earthsea and Harry Potter is because they both follow conventional fantasy archetypes. Le Guin herself was influenced by the fantasy writers that went before her - like Tolkien, and she has been open about this before in interviews.
So I think the point she was trying to make is not so much that Rowling ripped off her ideas, but that she should acknowledge the genre influences that can be found in her work.
Excellent reasoning though!
We all know that writers borrow (or steal) from one another. That’s OK. It’s part of the game. And fantasy writers are perhaps more guilty than most of recycling not just plots and imagery but specific details and situations from other works, both contemporary and ancient. This is most likely because fantasy (as Karen said)is a genre that deals with archetypal situations…
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