The Wild Wood And Ursula Le Guin's The Bones Of The Earth

The ending of a story will communicate an author’s ideals and may reveal consequences of previous actions. The Wild Wood by Charles de Lint and Ursula Le Guin’s short story “The Bones of the Earth” are stories that both culminate in the saving of a population from a force of destruction, however several differences between them can be found in spite of both authors attempts at illustrating ideals of dying and rebirth as a form of healing and rescue. In both fantasy stories, the ending results in the rescue of a population from a destructive force and it is in this way that they are similar. The difference between the rescues is the how, in that the authors use contrasting ideas of death and rebirth as a means to accomplish the final result.

In “The Bones of the Earth”, Dulse is plagued by his aching bones from the immediate start of the story. Not only this but he realizes that the “bones of the earth ached to move” as well (Le Guin 161). By becoming part of the earth itself in order to prevent the earthquake, Dulse is able to finally be relieved of his aching bones. Throughout The Wild Wood, Eithnie expresses a suppressed grief over the loss of her miscarried child from seven years prior. By conceiving a child with a faerie and gaining such an intimate relationship with nature itself, Eithnie is able to face and overcome the grief that surrounded her since her miscarriage and to finally accept the idea of the “baby she’d been afraid to admit she wanted” (de Lint 195) and “she…knew she wouldn’t visit that awful landscape again” (de Lint 197). Through these actions and subsequent recompenses both de Lint and Le Guin show how having an intimate connection with nature can act as a healing, restorative process. de Lint also wishes to illustrate how modern thinking has lost these ideas. A polluted environment is like a polluted mind and one cannot see how a relationship with the surrounding nature can benefit by being a restorative and healing