A plot-spoiling deep read of Le Guin's The Farthest Shore

Themes of mortality and duty in The Farthest Shore

[unstopitable]

UKL is one of my all-time favorites. This may be a little off topic (since it's not "liminal") but I noticed a theme shared between this book and Ende's The Never-Ending Story . In Farthest, it's the amnesia, in Fantasia, the Nothing. I can't help wondering if this, too, is a subgenre; I wonder for personal reasons, b/c of my own series. (Both UKL and Ende were/are a big influence on me). I wonder, do you know of any other stories that fall into this kind of genre? If you think about it, the problem plaguing both worlds (Earthsea and Fantasia) is absolutely existential. They are deeply existentialist (if read in this light). When I was reading them as a child, I couldn't articulate the existential crisis, but felt deeply (through the death of an extremely close family member). I might be projecting my own childhood onto these books, but they hit me really hard. As an adult, now (again going through grief of another passing) these strike me as all the more powerful. I wonder if anyone else has felt this while reading either Farthest Shore or Never-Ending. Thanks for the thought-provoking video. Peace.

[kallianpublico]

It's funny, you had a post about "A rose for ecclesiastes", which was about vanity.
Is there any purpose or motive that is not vain? By vain I mean both done for a self interested purpose, and also done for a purpose that can never be fully accomplished: done in vain.
It seems to me that death makes a mockery of all accomplishments, doesn't it? As long as death abides all is in vain. Does that mean that even unselfish acts are done, as well, in vain? It seems so.
Therefore is it not to be desired that death should be overcome, once and for all? Is not that purpose: the defeat of death, the only purpose to be sought that is not, ultimately, vain?
Why does Le Guin make this sorceror, who seeks immortality, the enemy?
I remember reading a Marvel comic where a man was given a wish and he wished for no more death. He found out that without death plants, bugs, animals would overpopulate the planet. While existence would be immortal it would also be overcrowded and miserable. Death serves a purpose itself, in this world.
In the Bible the final thing to be conquered is death itself, so it seems that death will eventually be overcome. The thing to watch out for, which I believe Le Guin is trying to point out, is that there are "unnatural" ways to conquer death. Ways that warp and mutilate what it means to be alive.
Vampires, zombies, liches, sorcerors, witches, clones, downloadable consciousnesses, do find a kind of immortality; but their forms of "life" are immensely parasitic on the rest of Creation, or are sterile and stagnant when it comes to "evolution".

[Blaize]

It's not that Ged *wants* to be a hermit. He used up all his magic closing the rift Cob made and doesn't want to be a powerless man among the powerful and have people pity him.

[zkhan]

Is Cob mentioned in the first two novels?