When I picked up Ursula K. Le Guin's young adult novel The Wizard of Earthsea, I was intrigued immediately by the plot. This first book in the Earthsea chronicle centers on a young and egotistical boy, Sparrowhawk, with wizardly powers of a mage, who learns that in order to unlock the secrets of the world, one must learn the true name of a thing.
Despite his stalwart call-to arms in support of hatred, he ends his essay sounding like a wounded child: "It is because pleasure asks a greater effort of the mind to support it than pain; and we turn, after a little idle dalliance, from what we love to what we hate!" I can almost feel Hazlitt sobbing into his cuffs.
First year TA graduate students are obsessed with teaching Michel Foucault's theory of Panopticism from his book Discipline and Punish for reasons that I've never fully understood: even when I taught it myself, as a first year instructor.
