Ged is the main protagonist in A Wizard of Earthsea in which he is a serious and arrogant boy who matures into "one of the wisest and most powerful magicians in the land.
A small boy, Ged had overheard the village witch, his maternal aunt, using various words of power to call goats.
Still, his arrogance and a dispute with a classmate caused him to try a very dangerous spell: he attempted to call the spirit of the long-dead queen Elfarran from the "Dry Land" - the bleak, joyless afterlife of Earthsea.
This willpower hunted Ged, attempting to possess his body and turn him into a "Gebbeth", a soulless creature serving the forces of darkness.
During Ged's travels and attempts to flee, he drives off a dragon on the isle of Pendor by calling its true name and also encounters a remote island where he is given half of a ring.
[6] When Ged was in his thirties, he traveled to Atuan, one of the Kargad isles, to recover one-half of the broken Ring of Erreth Abke (having been given the first half during his flight from the shadow).
He met Arha, the teenage high priestess of the Nameless Ones - ancient, formless evil spirits worshipped in Kargad and other gods.
Ged was imprisoned by Arha in the Tombs of Atuan, where the Nameless Ones were strong, but eventually, he convinced her to leave with him and escape religious servitude.
Ged bought her to the isle of Havnor, and the two presented the ring to the ruler there, restoring a powerful force for peace and unity in Earthsea.
In his middle age, Archmage Ged embarked on a quest to halt the decline of magical power from Earthsea, leading people to widespread outbreaks of madness.
This allowed Cob to enslave and summon the spirits of the dead and draw people to him in dreams but had also led to the decline of magic and a general pervasive madness in the populace.
Kalessin brought Ged to Tenar, now a widow with grown children who had left home, aside from the mutilated child Therru whom she had recently adopted.
Alder was a sorcerer troubled by dreams where the dead, including his wife, begged him to free them from eternal, dreary existence in the Dry Land.
The 2004 Sci Fi Channel miniseries Legend of Earthsea, loosely based on the first two books of the series, cast white actor Shawn Ashmore to play the part of Ged.
[9] A major theme of the entire Earthsea series is Ged's rite of passage and transformation from a child to an adult.