The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula KI. Le Guin - Book Report/Review Example

The Tombs of Atuan” - A Novel of Inner Growth and Development The Tombs of Atuan is the second of a series of books written by Ursula KI. Le Guin set in her fantasy archipelago of Earthsea, first published in 1971. It follows on from A Wizard of Earthsea and is continued in The Farthest Shore. The Tombs of Atuan was a “Newbery Honor” book in 1972. All of Le Guin’s books are books of fantasy, including The Tombs which is a heroic novel of fantasy. “A fantasy is a story based on and controlled by an overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility.”1 Such an adolescent novel of ideas as The Tombs, embraces those books “that grow the mind a size larger.”2 Betsy Hearns, noted writer of children’s literature, has as prime examples of such books – the works of Ursula Le Guin, Robert Cornier and Peter Dickinson. She maintains that these three are writers of great imaginative gifts and high political intelligence. They delight in patterns, analogies and concepts. The latter constitute a combination which is not unduly common in novelists at any level. Le Guin, particulary, has progressed from writing fairly staightforward children’s books just before 1970. The Tombs of Atuan is already deservedly famous and has been a bestseller since it was first published. Other authors of note have made claims about the ways in which this novel depicts states of mind and feeling together with experiences of the social world which have a representative and truth-bearing quality in relation to their intended readership, the pre-teenagers. Le Guin has found a way of representing a theme of emotional experience in childhood in imaginative terms. The stories by Le Guin have been written for children of primary school age, between five and eleven. The children or child, in the case of The Tombs of Atuan, is also of this age or a bit older. This is a period in which the family usually remains central to the childs preoccupation. At the same time and independent exploration of the social world takes place. This is a time spent at school, brief periods spent away from parents and increasing time with friends. The more obvious development of an inner identity begins – the in-between space between family and the social world which is connected with the childs development of personal self. In the case of Tenar, she is taken at the age of five to The Place which is in the Kargard lands, where the people are pale-skinned and there are no Wizards. The Place has the temples of the God-King and the twin gods, and the Temple of the Nameless Ones who were there before all the others. The centrality of family relationships is universal. The Tombs of Atuan teaches then young reader how to deal with the loss of attention of mother. It is at this time when children become more involved with each other and move to a greater distance from parents. This situation exposes them to anxieties regarding rejection and abandonment – feelings by which all children feel threatened at all times. The heroine of the story, Tenar, underwent such an experience. Le Guins novel enhance in the pre-teen reader the capacity to think, to maintain an internal resilience to temporarily bad experiences, through the memory of the good. This is crucial to development and depends in part on powers of language, play and imagination. Language is vivid and important in the form of dialogue in the novel, exemplifying and celebrating the childs capacity to find fresh words to deal with unexpected experiences and so maintain hopefulness in adversity. Tenar, or Arha (her new name) copes with her new life away from her parents. As time goes on, Arha spends more time in the Labyrinth below The Place, where her masters dwell. The undertomb, which is their place of power, where no light is allowed, and the Labyrinth itself, with its twists and turns and hidden rooms. Children are by nature afraid of the dark, but Artha explores her new territory, she begins to enjoy the darkness. During this period of latency, children are tempted to deal with painful feelings by pushing them into others. The unconscious purpose of this is to make others feel bad or worthless in order not to feel bad themselves or “worthless” in order not to feel bad themselves. In the case of Arha, while she is enjoying the darkness of her new territory, she discovers one day that it is full of light and there is a stranger there – a man. She shouts and he flees into the Labyrinth. She follows and shuts the iron door, sealing him inside. There are many peek holes into the Labyrinth. She goes to one, watching him try to open the door, and then laughing at his own defeat. This is Arha’s way of banishing her own feelings of danger and helplessness and pushing them on to the stranger. The strong concern with issues of right and wrong often shown by latency-aged children, can serve as a means of regulating conflicts over good and bad feelings which may seem to need to be ordered strictly in accordance with principles, if they are not to get out of control. “There is a major genre which describes children coping with the situation of living without the support of parents struggling between gang-like projections of feeling and consequent feelings of persecution and more integrative and cooperative ways of living together.”3 Arha is the pupil of two other High-Priestesses, Thar and Kossil. The latter priestess is the Priestess of the God-King, and when Thar dies, she warns Arha that Kossil is her enemy. Although Arha is the higher authority, she is not strong enough to antagonize Kossil. After Arha captures Sparrowhawk, she decides she doesnt want him to die down in the labyrinth. She goes to where he is with Manan, her servant who is a Eunuch. They both take their prisoner and chain him. While they are discussing magic, Sparrowhawk glances upward and notices Kossi, warns Arha of her presence. Realizing that Sparrowhawk is an ally, Arha releases him. The Tombs shows the integration of Arhas feelings of love and hate, as Arha recognizes Kossil for what she is. Arha ultimately becomes less moralistic and more understanding toward Sparrowhawk who proves to be a friend and later more than just a friend. The story skillfully develops innate preconceptions of morality in the child readers. The universe of the classic fairy tale is usually much more catastrophic than the fictional worlds of most modern childrens classics. Hansel and Gretels family is threatened with starvation. The cruel punishment meted out by the witch in Rapunzel as well as Rumpelstiltskin, requires a mother to give up her baby. Snow White is given a poisoned apple to eat by her jealous stepmother, the Queen. If Little Red Riding Hood was coerced into getting into bed with the wolf in her grandmothers clothes, she would have lost her virginity. The peril faced by Arha in the Tombs of Atuan is not expulsion from The Place but death at the hands of the Nameless Ones, upon the instigation of Kossil, in case Arha decides not to kill Sparrowhawk after all. The threat of death is more “palatable” to young readers since the story provides hope that Arha will ultimately be helped to escape by her allies. By contrast to classic fantasy, in 20th century childrens literature, the direct and overwhelming fear of rape, famine or death fades. There is less seduction in the magic by which such dangers are avoided. There is a change of mood between the world of the fairy tale and modern childrens experience. For example, Potters The Tale of Jemima is comic in a way that Little Red Riding Hood is not. The mood is more down-to-earth and identifies a bit more closely with the real world of the children. The effect of this change of conditions has been, in some cases, to shift the themes of writing for children from directly experienced threats of death to less severe experiences of loss or separation. The Tombs of Atuan deals with the fantasies evoked by experiences which are far from catastrophic in their literal meaning. Another response has been to explore the effects of turmoil in the wider society as these bear indirectly on the smaller world of the child. “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (stories from Narnia by C.S. Lewis) seems in a number of respects, to reflect the changes brought about in wartime Britain. In some instances, a world of social violence and conflict has been successfully transformed into allegorical form.”4 Lewis story is framed by an experience of separation of children from their parents. It describes adventures which take place away from parents, such as what Arha experiences away from her own after she was taken away at a very young age. While the trilogy of Le Guins first book consisted of a coming-of-age process through an arduous voyage which would ultimately lead to Ged confronting his own issues, The Tombs of Atuan works in a much more restricted, confined space, which reflects itself in the narratives style and progression. “Tenars take is more intimate and less epically-inclined than the previous novel.”5 Whereas Geds quest leads to his dramatic confrontation of himself and his own darkness, and ultimately, to his acknowledgment of his full identity and power, Tenars triumph is that of coming to freedom. The Tombs of Atuan is concerned directly with themes of emotional development and are literally about younger children. The story explores the role of play and symbol more generally as a means of growth. The story succeeds in linking the external aspects of learning with emotional dimensions and preconditions of development. The heroine of our novel is a Kargish girl who is taken away from house and home to become a high priestess in the service of the “Nameless Ones”. Her real name Tenar is changed to Arha, meaning “the eaten one”. All high priestesses are believed to be reincarnations of Arha. Since Tenar was born the night when the previous Arha died, Tenar was chosen to be the next Arha. Tenars youth is a stark contrast between the erstwhile gay and lighthearted escapades and the dark rituals of the Nameless Ones. However, she plays her role well and comes to accept life in the dark labyrinth she now calls her home where she dwells together with the older priestesses, the evil and powerful Nameless Ones. Just as Tenar is about to enter her adolescence, the protagonist, Ged, enters her life. She catches him in his attempt to rob the tombs of the long-lost half of the magic king of Erreth-Akbe, necessary to maintain peace in Earthsea. She traps him underground with the intention of letting him die. Ged saps his strength by continuing to fight to keep himself from being discovered by the Nameless Ones. Tenar knows that these malevolent ones will kill him when he grows too weak to hide himself. She is drawn to him in her loneliness and she listens as he tells her of his world. Because Ged is kind to her, she ultimately won over and helps him escape from the tombs. Realizing that the Nameless Ones have forced her to serve them without any kind of remuneration, she decides to escape her being their priestess and goes away with Ged. Before Tenar releases Ged, Tenar learns that he is a wizard named Sparrowhawk. When she interrogates him, taunting him, he just answers her quietly. Tenar takes him to the Treasury and leaves him for a few days. Upon her return, he tells her that he knows her real name to be Tenar. He tells her, too, that he has found the half-ring and that it fits perfectly the other half which he has brought with him. He glues the two half-rings together and presents it to Tenar to wear on her arm. The fabulous storyteller that Ursula Le Guin is, concludes that “Tenar decides to let him go, and he convinces her to come with him. They race through the tunnels and escape just as the entire Labyrinth collapses. Together, they journey to the sea, to leave the Khargad lands. Together they sail to the city of Havnor with the ring of Erreth-Akbe. It has been healed across the rune which was known the broken rune. This rune of peace has been sought ever since and without which the land cannot be ruled.”6 In conclusion, Le Guin opines that “the reader of fantasy has the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of the nature of his/her own society.”7 If individuals are prepared to use their imaginations, to see beyond the real as it is represented, then they may be freed from the tyranny of that reality. They will be able to make some choices about the values by which they live, the assumptions which govern their actions and the institutions with which they interact. References Campbell, J. “The Hero and the God” in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd Edn., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 31-39, 1968 Cranny-Francis, A., “Feminist Fantasy” in Feminist Fiction: Feminist uses of generic fiction, London: Polity, pp. 75-106, 1989 Hearne, B., “Virginia Hamilton”, in Twentieth Century Childrens Writers, 3rd ed., Tracy Chevalier, ed. p. 424. Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1989. Hollindale, P., “The Adolescent Novel of Ideas”, Childrens Literature in Education, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1995 Jackson, R., “The Fantastic as a Mode”, in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, London: Methuen, pp.l 13-60, 1981 Jenkins, L., “Female Stereotyping in Quest Novels”, in Childrens Literature and Contemporary Theory, ed. Michael Stone, Wollongong (NSW): New Literatures Research Centre, Dept. of English, University of Wollongong, pp. 22-39, 1991 Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan. Rustin, M. & Rustin, M., “Deep Structures in Childrens Literature”, in Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in modern childrens fiction, London: Verso, pp. 1-26, 1987 Wikipedia, The Tombs of Atuan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tombs_of_Atuan Accessed 03 August, 2007 Read More