/lit/ - Literature

>>8678612

To propel Ged out of his angst-ridden funk after his mishap at school and back into narrative motion, Le Guin has this shaky teen wizard decide to face down an island of dragons. He wins but he doesn’t have to face anything half as dangerous as Tolkien’s Smaug.
>“ Revenge!” he snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. “Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong, Thief in the Shadows!” he gloated. “My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”

Le Guin’s version:
>When he spoke the dragon’s name it was as if he held the huge being on a fine, thin leash, tightening it on his throat. He could feel the ancient malice and experience of men in the dragon’s gaze that rested on him, he could see the steel talons each as long as a man’s forearm, and the stone-hard hide, and the withering fire that lurked in the dragon’s throat: and yet always the leash tightened, tightened.
>He spoke again: “Yevaud! Swear by your name that you and your sons will never come to the Archipelago.”
>Flames broke suddenly bright and loud from the dragon’s jaws, and he said, “I swear it by my name!”