![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
race in Earthsea
Here's a report on an interesting Wiscon panel, "How To Describe Nonwhite Characters Sans Fail". It occurred to me to take a look at how Ursula Le Guin did it. Le Guin has spent a good portion of her later life trying to apologize and compensate for what she's come to see as unthinking sexism in the earlier Earthsea books, but she can remain justly proud of A Wizard of Earthsea as a model for a novel by a white author in which the characters' default race is not white. Cover illustrations and movie versions with a bleached Ged properly earn scorn.
So I went through A Wizard of Earthsea looking for descriptions of the color of the human characters' skin - and hair and eyes, as those were described in association. A detailed accounting is below; the summary is, there isn't much. This is a formal, slightly distant story without a lot of physical description or the more inward forms of thought. Specifically, she doesn't go in for evocative synonyms. Dark, copper, light, pale, sallow, and the simple color names about exhaust her descriptive vocabulary. There's a few nature-oriented similes.
Le Guin's way of introducing her hero's red-brown color is interesting. She avoids it at first, implying it by contrast. The first physical description is of the brutal invading Kargs: "a savage people, white-skinned, yellow-haired," the word savage and the specific citation of their skin and hair color as the first distinguishing characteristics in the book right away suggesting that there's something alien about these central-casting Viking types. Serret as a girl is "very sallow, almost white-skinned," due to her foreign mother, another alienation of the white, and for further impact Ged finds her ugly. Only among and after these are we told, equally casually, that Ogion and Ged and Jasper are red-brown or copper-brown, and, oh yes, Vetch is black-brown, and that these are the normal colors in the lands of their births.
However, Le Guin can't avoid the white default altogether. The character who gets by far the most physical page-time is the adult, seductive Serret, and she is white and bright and light, with the strong suggestion that Ged no longer considers her ugly. I'm not sure what to make of the passing reference to a boy "red-faced" with exertion when he's from an island where the people are black.
There's a lot of imagery of light and dark outside of skin and hair color in this book, and light is good and dark is evil in this context, but by repeatedly describing the altogether good Vetch as "dark" and emphasizing the cold, chilling evil of the "pale, bleached" (not positive associations of white) North, I trust that Le Guin manages to differentiate her imagery from skin color.
Chapter 1
Ged's aunt has "black hair"
The Kargs "are a savage people, white-skinned, yellow-haired ..."; ref to "the White Godbrothers of Atuan"
Ged's eyes are "dark"
Chapter 2
Ogion "was a dark man, like most Gontishmen, dark copper-brown; grey-haired ..."
Serret "was a tall girl ... very sallow, almost white-skinned; her mother, they said in the village, was from Osskil or some such foreign land. Her hair fell long and straight like a fall of black water. Ged thought her very ugly ..."
Chapter 3
The Archmage Nemmerle: "His hair and beard and robe were white, and he seemed as if all darkness and heaviness had been leached out of him by the slow usage of the years, leaving him white and worn as driftwood ..."
Vetch "had the accent of the East Reach and was very dark of skin, not red-brown like Ged and Jasper and most folk of the Archipelago, but black-brown." Ref to his "dark fingers" and "dark face" (Jasper's color was previously unmentioned in his description)
The Lady of O: "bright as new copper, her black hair crowned with opals"
Chapter 4
Archmage: "hawk nose and high forehead and white hair bleached by moonlight all to the color of bone"
Ged after the shadow's attack: "He had been light and lithe and strong. Now ... [he] did not raise his face, the left side of which was white with scars."
The new Archmage, Gensher: "like most men of Way and the East Reach Gensher was black-skinned"
Vetch's "black blunt face"
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Ship's crewmen of Osskil: "they were dour men, pale-skinned with black drooping mustaches and lank hair. Kelub, the red one, was Ged's name among them." One of them, Skiorh, has "an ugly face, pale, coarse, and cruel"
Chapter 7
Serret's hair "fell straight down like a fall of black water."
Compares Serret as an adult to the Lady of O: "She [the Lady of O] had been like a slight, bright candle-flame, but this woman was like the white new moon."
The servants and Serret: "pale, dour Osskilians they were all. She was light of skin, but unlike them she spoke Hardic well"
Lord Benderesk is "bone-white"
Ged pities Serret: "She was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wing-clipped, like a silver ring on an old man's finger."
"Serret's face bright and shadowy in the candle-light"; "her strange bright eyes"; "her face grew bright"
Serret and Ged: her hand "looked narrow and fair on his dark, strong hand"
Chapter 8
The abandoned Kargish prince is "a man with white, long hair" and a "bush of dirty white hair." The princess has "long whitish-grey hair"
Kargs are "white barbaric folk"
Chapter 9
On Iffish is "a little lad red-faced" (this is in the East Reach)
Yarrow, Vetch's sister, is "dark like her brother" and has a "shining black head"
Chapter 10
ref to "Skiorh's white face"
So I went through A Wizard of Earthsea looking for descriptions of the color of the human characters' skin - and hair and eyes, as those were described in association. A detailed accounting is below; the summary is, there isn't much. This is a formal, slightly distant story without a lot of physical description or the more inward forms of thought. Specifically, she doesn't go in for evocative synonyms. Dark, copper, light, pale, sallow, and the simple color names about exhaust her descriptive vocabulary. There's a few nature-oriented similes.
Le Guin's way of introducing her hero's red-brown color is interesting. She avoids it at first, implying it by contrast. The first physical description is of the brutal invading Kargs: "a savage people, white-skinned, yellow-haired," the word savage and the specific citation of their skin and hair color as the first distinguishing characteristics in the book right away suggesting that there's something alien about these central-casting Viking types. Serret as a girl is "very sallow, almost white-skinned," due to her foreign mother, another alienation of the white, and for further impact Ged finds her ugly. Only among and after these are we told, equally casually, that Ogion and Ged and Jasper are red-brown or copper-brown, and, oh yes, Vetch is black-brown, and that these are the normal colors in the lands of their births.
However, Le Guin can't avoid the white default altogether. The character who gets by far the most physical page-time is the adult, seductive Serret, and she is white and bright and light, with the strong suggestion that Ged no longer considers her ugly. I'm not sure what to make of the passing reference to a boy "red-faced" with exertion when he's from an island where the people are black.
There's a lot of imagery of light and dark outside of skin and hair color in this book, and light is good and dark is evil in this context, but by repeatedly describing the altogether good Vetch as "dark" and emphasizing the cold, chilling evil of the "pale, bleached" (not positive associations of white) North, I trust that Le Guin manages to differentiate her imagery from skin color.
Chapter 1
Ged's aunt has "black hair"
The Kargs "are a savage people, white-skinned, yellow-haired ..."; ref to "the White Godbrothers of Atuan"
Ged's eyes are "dark"
Chapter 2
Ogion "was a dark man, like most Gontishmen, dark copper-brown; grey-haired ..."
Serret "was a tall girl ... very sallow, almost white-skinned; her mother, they said in the village, was from Osskil or some such foreign land. Her hair fell long and straight like a fall of black water. Ged thought her very ugly ..."
Chapter 3
The Archmage Nemmerle: "His hair and beard and robe were white, and he seemed as if all darkness and heaviness had been leached out of him by the slow usage of the years, leaving him white and worn as driftwood ..."
Vetch "had the accent of the East Reach and was very dark of skin, not red-brown like Ged and Jasper and most folk of the Archipelago, but black-brown." Ref to his "dark fingers" and "dark face" (Jasper's color was previously unmentioned in his description)
The Lady of O: "bright as new copper, her black hair crowned with opals"
Chapter 4
Archmage: "hawk nose and high forehead and white hair bleached by moonlight all to the color of bone"
Ged after the shadow's attack: "He had been light and lithe and strong. Now ... [he] did not raise his face, the left side of which was white with scars."
The new Archmage, Gensher: "like most men of Way and the East Reach Gensher was black-skinned"
Vetch's "black blunt face"
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Ship's crewmen of Osskil: "they were dour men, pale-skinned with black drooping mustaches and lank hair. Kelub, the red one, was Ged's name among them." One of them, Skiorh, has "an ugly face, pale, coarse, and cruel"
Chapter 7
Serret's hair "fell straight down like a fall of black water."
Compares Serret as an adult to the Lady of O: "She [the Lady of O] had been like a slight, bright candle-flame, but this woman was like the white new moon."
The servants and Serret: "pale, dour Osskilians they were all. She was light of skin, but unlike them she spoke Hardic well"
Lord Benderesk is "bone-white"
Ged pities Serret: "She was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wing-clipped, like a silver ring on an old man's finger."
"Serret's face bright and shadowy in the candle-light"; "her strange bright eyes"; "her face grew bright"
Serret and Ged: her hand "looked narrow and fair on his dark, strong hand"
Chapter 8
The abandoned Kargish prince is "a man with white, long hair" and a "bush of dirty white hair." The princess has "long whitish-grey hair"
Kargs are "white barbaric folk"
Chapter 9
On Iffish is "a little lad red-faced" (this is in the East Reach)
Yarrow, Vetch's sister, is "dark like her brother" and has a "shining black head"
Chapter 10
ref to "Skiorh's white face"