Earthsea encourages the reader to question assumptions about race and separates personal identity from ethnicity, while Lewis often relies on racial stereotypes and clings to outdated views of individuals’ worth as inherently tied to their bloodlines. While Narnia is extremely Eurocentric and explicitly Christian, Earthsea is intentionally secular, drawing inspiration from many cultures and religions. While she drew from many common inspirations, her views were influenced by the growing civil rights, feminist, and other leftist movements of her time, as well as by the various traditions of peoples across the globe. Approximately two decades later, Le Guin would begin her own fantasy epic. In the nineteen-fifties, Lewis, like many of his contemporary fantasy authors, drew inspiration largely from tales with traditional Christian and pre-Christian European values featuring idealised male heroes of noble lineages going on fantastical quests to prove their worth, a worldview he often replicated. Le Guin’s Earthsea are two beloved fantasy series known for their depth of imagination and exploration of complex philosophical issues, yet in many ways, the two series stand in opposition to each other. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula K. Identity, Environment, and Escape in The Horse and His Boy and The Tombs of AtuanĬ.
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