Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (1971) is the second novel in her fantasy series for young adults, the Earthsea Cycle. The story follows the coming-of-age of Arha, the high priestess who serves the “Nameless Ones” on the island of Atuan. Arha was taken from her family as a young child and dedicated to the gods’ service.
At fifteen years of age she leads a lonely existence, wandering the underground Labyrinth of the Nameless Ones, until the wizard Ged arrives on a quest to find the long-lost Ring of Erreth-Akbe. Arha traps Ged in the Labyrinth and condemns him to death, but she finds herself drawn to him and his tales of the outside world. Eventually, Arha helps Ged to escape from the Labyrinth with the ring and Ged helps her to remember her true name, Tenar, which was taken from her when she became a priestess. Tenar leaves Atuan with Ged and embarks on a new life.
The Underground
Le Guin uses the underground setting in The Tombs of Atuan to examine not only Tenar’s journey of self-discovery in the underneath, but also the enduring spiritual consequences of her eventual escape. The “Domain of the Nameless Ones” threatens Tenar both physically and spiritually. The Labyrinth is dangerous in the sense that Tenar could become lost forever in its maze of tunnels, but also because of the physical threat of the Nameless Ones, which Tenar discovers when she chooses to forsake her faith and escape with Ged: “She had never feared the silence of the underneath before. But never before had she disobeyed the Nameless Ones, never had she set herself against them.”
The Nameless Ones also threaten Tenar spiritually because they attempt to darken and destroy her spirit. As Ged explains, the evil forces in the Tombs of Atuan “are dark and undying” and “all their power is to darken and destroy.” So Tenar must fight an additional spiritual battle against these supernatural forces to avoid the fate of the priestess Kossil, who “has prowled these caverns as she prowls the Labyrinth of her own self, and…cannot see the daylight anymore.”
The Labyrinth in The Tombs of Atuan is a powerful symbol of Tenar’s spiritual journey. Like Kossil, Tenar must negotiate the “Labyrinth of her own self” as she learns some harsh life lessons in her role as the One Priestess. Perhaps the most important of these lessons occurs in “The Prisoners,” when Tenar must decide the fate of three blasphemers held captive in the Room of Chains. Tenar’s punishment for the prisoners is to have them left in the dark and starved to death. Once she has passed this sentence, she flees the Room of Chains to seek refuge in the darkness of the underneath, which seems “sweet and peaceful as a starless night, silent, without sight, or light, or life.”
The danger posed by the power of the Nameless Ones is clear, since the darkness, traditionally a metaphor for ignorance, allows Tenar to avoid the knowledge of her cruelty to the prisoners. However, her decision haunts her dreams, and each night she wakes up screaming, “‘They aren’t dead yet! They are still dying!’” The lesson Tenar learns here is fundamental to the development of her character, since it is the memory of her cruelty that allows her to feel compassion for the sorcerer she has trapped in the Labyrinth, and it is this compassion that leads her to spare his life, an act that eventually results in her decision to forsake her worship of the Nameless Ones and to flee the Tombs of Atuan.
Light and Dark
The pity and horror Tenar feels for the prisoners who are slowly dying in the darkness underlines the importance of light in the novel. It is Ged, who first brings light into the Undertomb. Once she has locked him in the Labyrinth, Tenar vows to avenge the Nameless Ones, but discovers that “instead of terror at the sacrilege and rage against the thief” she can think only of “the quivering radiance of the lighted cavern, life in the place of death.”
Ged’s life-affirming light, with its additional connotations of goodness and wisdom, counters the sterility of Tenar’s death-like existence as the priestess whose identity has been wholly consumed by the Nameless Ones and whose spiritual light has been obscured by their darkness. Moreover, it is what remains of Tenar’s spiritual light that allows Ged to help her: “‘You are like a lantern swathed and covered, hidden away in a dark place. Yet the light shines…As I know the light, as I know you, I know your name.’”
Unfortunately, Tenar must battle the darkness of the underneath even after her narrow escape from the imploding Labyrinth and Undertomb. Before leaving for Havnor, Tenar develops a bleak interpretation of Ged’s intentions, believing that “he had fooled her, and would leave her desolate.” Moreover, even when Tenar feels the grip of the Nameless Ones letting her go, she is overcome by the burden of her newfound liberty and the memories of what she perceives to be an immoral past: “She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.”
Tenar’s eventual escape from the womb-like Undertomb, with Ged pulling her free from the “lipless mouth of the Tombs,” may symbolize her rebirth as “Tenar,” but everything that “Arha” believed has been shattered and Tenar must relearn and rebuild her identity.
Reference
- Le Guin, Ursula K. The Tombs of Atuan . New York: Simon Pulse, 2003.
Jennifer McNeil Bertrand - Jennifer McNeil Bertrand is an association professional with a background in English Literature and Communications.
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