Le Guin, not yet a feminist by her own words (see paragraph eleven) at this point in time, used a children’s fantasy novel to lay out a deeply feminist understanding of power. First, by implicating the relationship between gender and power through Arha’s struggles with Kossil and with her forced role as First Priestess. Second, by implicating further the disempowerment of Kossil. Third, by implicating the Godking’s own falsified establishment of power over not only Kossil (and Arha), but over an entire nation. The fragility of the Godkings’ masculinity abided neither wizards nor words, for both have power, both can see through the illusion of ideology. Hollindale, Peter (September 2003). "The Last Dragon of Earthsea". Children's Literature in Education. 34 (3): 183–193. doi: 10.1023/A:1025390102089. S2CID 160303057.

a b Dooley, Patricia (1980). "Magic and Art in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy". Children's Literature. 8: 103–110. doi: 10.1353/chl.0.0319. A prolific writer best known for her works of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin produced The Earthsea Cycle between 1968 and 2001. She had not planned to start a series for young adults, but began working on A Wizard of Earthsea at the request of her publisher. Books in The Earthsea Cycle have won numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, a Nebula Award for Best Novel, a National Book Award, and a Newbery Honor; the series also includes a collection of stories. Le Guin’s high fantasy classics have been adapted into a BBC radio production, a graphic novel, an animated film from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, and a television miniseries. A wasting disease kills Thar in autumn. Though stern, she was never cruel and taught Arha as best she could. Before she died, Thar prepared Arha. She talked of the Godking honestly and unflatteringly, what the previous Arha did and looked like, and hinted at future dangers with Kossil. The new High Priestess of the Twin Gods would not arrive until spring, so Arha and Kossil were left as sole rulers of the Place of the Tombs. Arha discovered unfaith from gentle Penthe, but accepted its existence cautiously. But, this also gave her a new insight into Kossil. Kossil did not worship or believe in the Nameless Ones or the gods. She only believed in power and viewed Arha's position with envy and menace. Arha, now feeling a sense of rebirth, embraces her name Tenar. In the Big House dining hall she tells Kossil, "I have done away with the robber.... What a fine day it is!" Kossil reminds her that the Priestess must fast for 3 days after a human sacrifice, but Arha had clearly forgotten. Arha fumbles, saying that he's been buried alive. The questions and answers escalate to threats until Arha curses Kossil. Arha shouts, "May the Dark Ones eat your soul, Kossil!" and Kossil visibly staggers before entering the Temple of the Godking.

Recent Comments

The Godking ceases sending prisoners to the Tombs, and gradually, Arha's nightmares stop. Determined to know her domain, she explores the Undertomb section of the Labyrinth except the Iron Door tunnel. Thar gives Arha directions to the other rooms in the greater Labyrinth. She also points out spy holes into the Labyrinth from aboveground areas. Thar has never entered the Labyrinth herself. She only recites memorized directions from the previous Arha. In fact, most people don't even know the underground Labyrinth exists. The relationship between Sparrowhawk and Arha is well developed in such a short story, and it’s interesting to see the further development of Sparrowhawk through the eyes of a different character. He has clearly learned much since the first book, and has become both more powerful and more wise. The character or Arha was a bit annoying early on, but by the end her hero’s journey is as believable as it was nuanced. Hatfield, Len (1993). "From Master to Brother: Shifting the Balance of Authority in Ursula K. Le Guin's Farthest Shore and Tehanu". Children's Literature. 21 (1): 43–65. doi: 10.1353/chl.0.0516. hdl: 10919/25443. Erlich, Richard D. (1987). "Ursula K. Le Guin and Arthur C. Clarke on Immanence, Transcendence, and Massacres". Extrapolation. 28 (2): 105–129. doi: 10.3828/extr.1987.28.2.105. Something of an inverted repeat of A Wizard of Earthsea, this story is not that of a peasant boy from the archipelago-lands who learns to become a powerful wizard, but instead follows one of the pale-skinned Kargs - those raiders who featured very briefly yet importantly in the beginning of the first book. This Karg is the child priestess of an ancient cult dedicated to the dark gods of the Kargish peoples, chosen from birth as the reincarnation of her predecessor. The story follows how she processes her identity, being at once imbued with great cultural prestige and power, yet from a personal angle being less than powerless. It is a coming-of-age type narrative far more compelling and unique than any of the thousands of YA novels you will find out there, despite being just 4 hours long.

One winter night, Arha descends into the Labyrinth and notices a faint gray light in the Undertomb. Light was never permitted, so she sees the beautiful natural cavern of limestone sparkling with crystal, diamond, and amethyst for the first time. A dark-skinned man carries a staff glowing with magic light searching the Undertomb. At first, Arha cannot even conceive that it is a stranger, a thief violating the sacred Undertomb where no man was permitted. She wonders why the Nameless Ones don't eat this man like the prisoners buried shallowly in the Undertomb, until she realizes they mean her to take action. She shouts, "Go! Go! Begone!" startling the man. He momentarily glimpses Arha, puts out the light, and flees into the darkness. Eventually, Arha traps the intruder in the greater Labyrinth slamming the Iron Door behind him. The notion of faith and deep belief is a large part of the novel, and is related to the book's other theme of identity. Throughout the story there is a tension between faith in the Nameless Ones and their power, and human curiosity and the tendency to question. [38] The importance of tradition and belief in Kargish culture is emphasized when Tenar is taken from her family, and chosen to be the high priestess of the Tombs. However, Tenar's mother unsuccessfully tries to dupe the priestesses into believing the child has a skin disease. Commentators state that this episode suggests certain universal impulses can lead to resistance against "cultural imperatives"; Tenar's mother is willing to bend the rules to keep her child. [17] Unlike the rest of Earthsea, which relies on the "Old Speech" for its magic and rituals, the Kargish lands use their own tongue, and rituals are conducted with meaningless babble; thus from the moment the chanting of the priestesses is described, Le Guin suggests that the Kargish faith is one of meaningless words and ritual. [24] The Kargish deities are revered as the "Nameless Ones"; thus Ged's statement to Arha that all things have names also works to undermine her faith. [24] Like A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan is a bildungsroman that explores Tenar's growth and identity. Tenar's coming-of-age is closely tied to her exploration of faith and her belief in the Nameless Ones. The Tombs of Atuan explores themes of gender and power in the setting of a cult of female priests in service to a patriarch The Tombs of Atuan / ˈ æ t uː ɑː n/ [4] is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in the Winter 1970 issue of Worlds of Fantasy, and published as a book by Atheneum Books in 1971. It is the second book in the Earthsea series after A Wizard of Earthsea (1969). The Tombs of Atuan was a Newbery Honor Book in 1972.Le Guin let down a lot of folks when she couldn’t imagine a girl-wizard becoming a powerful wizardess in her first Earthsea novel. She then made the rather startling decision to write a sequel in which Ged appears only halfway through and in which he is not, in fact, the protagonist. True, Tombs ’s Arha is not a wizard and even lives in a land where wizards are barely more than a legend, but Arha is a priestess, the High Priestess of the Tombs, born into her office as First Priestess, raised believing in her continued rebirth since time began, and brought into service of the Nameless Ones who dwell below the Tombs of Atuan, who in her and the Kargs’ beliefs have dwelt so since the beginning of time. Arha, in short, is powerful beyond measure. At least in word. The main protagonist of The Tombs of Atuan is a young Kargish girl named Tenar. Because she was born as the previous high priestess of the Tombs of Atuan passed away, the Kargish believe that Tenar is the reincarnation of the priestess. (There are many high priestesses, and the priestess of the Tombs of Atuan is just one of them). Renamed Arha, which translates as “the eaten one,” Tenar is forcibly removed from her family at the age of five and conscripted into the society’s patriarchal upper caste known as the Nameless Ones. Though the house she is given to live in is tiny, Tenar’s status as the future priestess is very high in Kargish society. Meanwhile, a young eunuch named Manan becomes her eternal servant. Though the structure of the Earthsea novels is in many ways typical of fantasy, it has been described as subverting the tropes of this genre. The protagonists of her stories, with the exception of Tenar, were all dark-skinned, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used. [60] [61] [5] The Tombs of Atuan examines the development of a young girl in great detail, a choice unusual for a fantasy writer of the period in which the book was written. [5]

Like A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan is a bildungsroman that explores Tenar's growth and identity. Tenar's coming-of-age is closely tied to her exploration of faith and her belief in the Nameless Ones. The Tombs of Atuan explores themes of gender and power in the setting of a cult of female priests in service to a patriarchal society, while providing an anthropological view of Kargish culture. Tenar, who became the subject of Le Guin's fourth Earthsea novel, Tehanu, has been described as a more revolutionary protagonist than Ged, or Arren, the protagonist of The Farthest Shore (1972), the third Earthsea volume. Whereas the two men grow into socially approved roles, Tenar rebels and struggles against the confines of her social role. The Tombs of Atuan shares elements of the story of a heroic quest with other Earthsea novels, but subverts some of the tropes common to the genre of fantasy at the time, such as by choosing a female protagonist, and a dark-skinned leading character. [5] Scholars have compared The Tombs of Atuan to The Beginning Place, another of Le Guin's fantasy works; both stories have a female protagonist guiding a blundering male through a labyrinth of sorts. [40] Comparisons have been made to a number of Le Guin's works which have a notion of a dream world in which the protagonists undergo a transformation; in The Tombs of Atuan, this is the labyrinth. [40] Ged's journey through the series has been compared to the traditional heroic quest, including a "descent into the underworld" represented by the labyrinth in The Tombs of Atuan. It has drawn comparisons to the character of Alvin in Arthur C. Clarke's novella The City and the Stars. [66] [67] Publication and reception [ edit ] What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it. In deed, Arha is powerless, her office filled merely for the ritual of it. She has no real dominion over those who in theory serve her, neither over Kossil of the Godking nor over Thar of the Twin Gods. Indeed, her very name is no name at all, for it was ritualistically taken, rendering her nameless as the Nameless Ones. Le Guin calls this loss of personal identity, this being folded into the belief that the young girl is the First Priestess eternally reborn, “eaten” and so Arha is the Eaten One. The name reminds me so much of Lily Myers’s poem “ Shrinking Women ” and it gets at the heart of Le Guin’s critique, namely that, in a patriarchal world, women with power hold power only insofar as they are made (by holders of actual power) to believe they are powerful. The dark is a powerful fictive tool, taking on a life of its own, and Le Guin makes such beautiful art of it in Tombs . Since this is Le Guin—and it’s me reading Le Guin—you bet your ass she took it beyond incredible sentences, artful descriptions, and expert use of setting and tone, by now all obvious staples of her work as a writer. Out of the darkness of the Place of the Tombs of Atuan, from Arha’s struggles with Ged and with herself in the dark of the Labyrinth, comes a powerful critique of ideology, of what it means to believe—and more daringly, what it means to be oneself in a world where one is made to believe. These are important aspects of children’s literature generally, in which protagonists often struggle to understand who they are, what the world is, and how they fit in and jibe with the world as whoever they are.In 2004, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan were adapted to a miniseries starring Shawn Ashmore as Ged. The series made a number of changes to the books of which Ursula K Le Guin did not approve. Most of the characters are made to be light skinned, so that Ged is pale skinned, but Tenar was portrayed by a person of color. The timeline was also changed, so that Ged is approximately the same age as Tenar, and they fall in love. Tenar is not called Arha. Thanks for joining me on this journey through Le Guin’s feminist-anarchist children’s fantasy novel. Due to scheduling issues caused by me simultaneously working from home and homeschooling an eight-year-old, I’ll return next Wednesday (rather than in two weeks) with a look at the third Earthsea novel and the final novel of the first portion of The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread . After The Farthest Shore , we’ll take a short break and when we return start in on a chronological reread of Le Guin’s novels, stories, essays—even some poetry! Be seeing you. Now 15, Arha reflects on her life as the full Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan. Though she receives respect from others, her daily chores and religious duties remain unchanged. She fears this monotony will persist from age 6 to 15 until the end of her days. Arha confides her concerns to Manan, who surprises her with actual answers. He recounts how noble quarrels were once resolved by seeking counsel from the Nameless Ones through the Priestess of the Tombs. However, since the Godking conquered the 4 lands of the Kargad Empire, he has taken on the role of settling disputes. Each successive Godking's worship waned. Now, the only remaining ritual is the sacrifice of prisoners to the Tombs. In this second novel in the Earthsea series, Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, and everything is taken from her—home, family, possessions, even her name. She is now known only as Arha, the Eaten One, and guards the shadowy, labyrinthine Tombs of Atuan. To take Le Guin’s genius—please permit me this one, unironic usage—further, Tombs suggests another type of power, that of the bond. After all, in the story of Sparrowhawk’s life, the Tomb of Atuan is the setting of his great adventure to reunite the broken halves of the lost Ring of Erreth-Akbe and the novel itself ends with the ring being held aloft by Tenar as Lookfar glides into the harbors of Havnor to triumphant cheers. It is a Tolkienian scene, perhaps the only one in all of the Earthsea novels, but the ring is important. (Sadly, Le Guin does not explain how this vision of power-sharing fits with the very idea of kings and princes, still very much active in her pseudo-medieval fantasy world, but genius isn’t all-encompassing.) Whether or not Erreth-Akbe’s ring is a ring of power in the sense of Tolkien’s rings, it symbolizes (and supposedly aids) the ability of leaders to bind together the people of Earthsea not under the autocratic submission of tyrants and princes, but in peace. The ring of Erreth-Akbe is sought once lost because the broken rune, the Bond-Rune, was lost. Tenar and Ged reunite the runes through an act of solidarity and trust. Ged survives the Labyrinth because he trusts Tenar; she escapes the Tombs and her ideological enthrallment because she trusts Ged.

Butler, Catherine (2012). "Modern Children's Fantasy" (PDF). In James, Edward; Mendlesohn, Farah (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. Cambridge University Press. pp.224–235. doi: 10.1017/CCOL9780521429597.021. ISBN 9781139014625. a b c Walton, Jo. "Let Her be Eaten!: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan". Tor.com . Retrieved November 17, 2014.

Above the tombs is the island of Atuan, located in the Kargad Lands. It is said that people are taken to the tombs, usually prisoners, are sent to be sacrificed to the Nameless Ones for a slow death. It is said that each priestess is a reincarnation of the first, and are therefore taken into the tombs for a lifetime of servitude at a young age. Tenar, or Arha, is the only priestess who is allowed to roam the labyrinth above. Because the tombs are below Kargad Lands, there are no wizards present because of the Kargad belief that wizardry is impermissible. The story follows a girl named Tenar, born on the Kargish island of Atuan. Born on the day that the high priestess of the Tombs of Atuan died, she is believed to be her reincarnation. Tenar is taken from her family when five years old and goes to the Tombs. [14] Her name is taken from her in a ceremony, and she is referred to as "Arha", or the "eaten one", [24] after being consecrated to the service of the "Nameless Ones" at the age of six with a ceremony involving a symbolic sacrifice. [28] She moves into her own tiny house, and is given a eunuch servant, Manan, with whom she develops a bond of affection. Arha devises a plan to protect Sparrowhawk and deceive Kossil. Manan will escort Sparrowhawk to the Great Treasury by following Arha, then dig a fake grave deep in the Undertomb. Manan disagrees, but obeys Arha's commands. A treacherous pit lies across their path and can only be crossed via a hand-width ledge skirting the left wall. Finally, Arha and Sparrowhawk enter a room with Manan waiting just outside the door. Inside, six great stone chests lie under a layer of dust, but neither seems interested. She tells him this is the Great Treasury he's been seeking, but that he can never leave. Dejected and betrayed, Sparrowhawk says nothing. Arha promises to return with food and water when she's able, but it will be sporadically, since she cannot starve herself forever. Sparrowhawk replies, "Take care, Tenar." Chapter 8: Names [ ]