“Come home, Tenar! Come home!”
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan, 1971
///
Book 2 in the tales of Earthsea moves the narrative away from the countless islands of the temperate archipelago and to the northern, desert land of the Kargad people. Our protagonist is a nameless young girl chosen to be a ceremonial head priestess for an ancient religion.
This young girl was born the very night the previous priestess died and is believed to be her reincarnation, the next in a long line of women who have never left the tombs since time immemorial. As part of her initiation into her lifelong role she is taken from her parents and stripped of her name and identity.
The “eaten one” (as she calls herself because of her life of sacrifice) isn’t necessarily likable, but she is pitiable. Though the great kings and dignitaries of old once visited the Tombs of Atuan, the deserted ruins and tunnels which are her home, the worship of the Nameless Ones is mostly the vestige of another time. She now exists to perform solitary and esoteric rituals in the most holy place of a dying religion.
Those who know I was part of a cult for a decade will understand how I would resonate with a story whose central character is forced to slowly lose her identity to serve a cold and exacting religion. I personally have wrestled with the questions the book poses about the nature of power in a system where individuals are usurped by the role they must play in it, the complete emptying of self for a religion which ultimately gives nothing in return, and the emptiness which comes after a search for answers comes back with none.
The book ends up intertwining with the previous one in some interesting ways, and it ultimately doesn’t leave “the eaten one” in her isolation. Her bittersweet triumph as she witnesses the true nature of the gods she represents is one of the most affecting character arcs I’ve read in some time.