50 pages • 1-hour read
The Tombs of Atuan
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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Great Treasure”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender-based discrimination, racism/xenophobia, and religious discrimination/trauma.
Arha keeps Sparrowhawk prisoner in the Painted Room. Kossil does not ask about him again, perhaps thinking he is already dead. Realizing she cannot request food for a dead man, Arha stops eating, instead hoarding most of her meals to take to him in secret. She grows weak, though she is used to fasting for several days at a time. On the fourth day, she brings food to Sparrowhawk and questions him about the Inner Lands. He describes the city of Havnor, where great palaces and towers of white marble house the richest princes and merchants of Earthsea.
Sparrowhawk mentions Erreth-Akbe, and Arha tells him what she knows of the story. Sparrowhawk adds that Erreth-Akbe was a dragon lord, or a person who can speak the language of dragons, earning their respect. Sparrowhawk is also a dragon lord. Again, Arha accuses him of being a petty thief who pretends to know everything to make her feel small and ignorant. She says that she knows the only true thing: the silence and darkness of the Tombs.
Arha claims she will only keep him alive so long as he can tell her things and entertain her. In response, Sparrowhawk creates an illusion around Arha, dressing her in a beautiful silk dress. Unnerved, Arha orders him to stop. The illusion drops, leaving her in her plain black robes again. Just as she is about to speak, Sparrowhawk stops her and points up. She glances up toward the spy hole she knows is there. Though she can see nothing, she knows Kossil is watching.
Afraid, she loudly announces that Sparrowhawk’s magic is mere trickery and lies, and leaves. Manan waits for her in the tunnels beyond. Arha orders him to go to the Painted Room and announce, so Kossil will hear, that he has been ordered to take the prisoner to the cavern beneath the Tombstones and bury him alive. Then he must take Sparrowhawk deeper into the Labyrinth.
Manon begs Arha to kill the prisoner, afraid that Sparrowhawk has cast a spell over her and corrupted her with his presence. Arha orders him to be quiet and do as he is told. Manon collects the prisoner and follows Arha, who leads them both through the tunnels. They cross a narrow ledge over a large pit trap and arrive at a locked door.
Arha orders Manon to stay outside. If he enters this room, he may never leave again. She unlocks the door and ushers Sparrowhawk inside, telling him that he has at last found the great Treasury but may never leave. Sparrowhawk looks at her with an expression of sadness and betrayal, and she adds that Kossil expects her to execute him. If he wishes to live, he must stay here. She promises to bring him food when she can, but it will be a while, as she has already starved herself and needs to eat. Quietly, Sparrowhawk tells her to be careful, calling her Tenar.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Names”
That night, Arha dreams of golden hair and a woman’s voice calling her name. When she wakes, she is filled with despair and feels like she is suffocating in burial clothes. Then daylight breaks into her room, and she wakes again, for real this time. She thinks, “I have my name back. I am Tenar!” (96). She feels terror, joy, and confusion. She tells Kossil that the prisoner is now dead. When Kossil questions her, Arha shouts at her, trying to put her in her place. Kossil reminds Arha of her own power as the Godking’s priestess, suggesting that the Nameless Ones are old and forgotten. Their power is gone, and Arha could be the last priestess as well as the first.
Later, Manan again begs her to execute Sparrowhawk and make peace with Kossil. He fears that Kossil will lock her beneath the Tombs so that she remains alive but cannot perform her rites, ensuring that no new priestess is reborn and worship of the Nameless Ones ends. Arha says that her masters will protect her, but Manan counters that the Nameless Ones are angry with her. Arha gently tells him not to worry and sends him away, heading to the trap door to enter the Undertomb again.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Ring of Erreth-Akbe”
Arha enters the Treasury to find Sparrowhawk lying across a stone slab, unmoving. Afraid he is dead, she calls his name until he moves. She gives him water and food, but he says he is not hungry and does not move. Suddenly, Arha drops to her knees and sobs, crying out that she is neither Tenar nor Arha, and the gods are dead.
Sparrowhawk picks her up like a child to sit down on the slab beside him. When she calms down, he asks what is wrong. She explains that as she came here, she saw Kossil, with lanterns, digging in the false grave she had Manan make in the cavern. Kossil knows that Arha did not execute Sparrowhawk and will come for her soon. Worse, she defiled the sacred dark and the Nameless Ones did not strike her dead. This proves to Arha that Kossil’s assertion that the gods are weak and gone is true.
Sparrowhawk tells her not to weep for the death of the Nameless Ones. They are not dead but here, all around them. He knows this because since entering the Labyrinth, he has spent all his energy holding them back using spells of sleep, stillness, and concealment to keep them quiet. Now, everything he has is nearly depleted and only Arha’s presence gives him the strength to keep fighting. He tells her that the Nameless Ones only have the power to darken and destroy. Though they are powerful and should not be forgotten, they also should not be worshipped as gods. They exist, but they are not her masters. Now, Tenar has broken free.
Afraid, Arha asks how Sparrowhawk knows her name. He explains that wizards must find a thing’s true name to weave magic. In the Inner Lands, people keep their true name secret from all but those they trust most, because true names hold power. Sparrowhawk has a special gift of being able to see a person’s true name. The first time he saw her, she was like a lantern swathed in a dark cloth, but he could see the light hiding and knew her name.
Sparrowhawk asks what she will do now, but Arha does not know. She believes Kossil will wait for her to emerge and execute her for betraying the gods. While she considers her fate, Sparrowhawk tells her that he found the thing he came for: the broken half of the amulet. The two halves will make the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, an armband that contains the nine Runes of Power, four on each half, with the ninth obscured at the breaking point. The ninth is the Bond-Rune, a symbol of peace that will bring harmony to the lands of Earthsea. He points out that she has the other half. Startled, she looks at the metal talisman she took from him.
Sparrowhawk tells her that he found it on an adventure that sent him across the sea. He came to a small desert island, where he found an old man and woman living in squalor. They spoke Kargish. Because he had not yet learned the language, they could not communicate, but they helped him. When he found a way to leave the island, the old woman gave him a bit of metal as a gift. He did not know its significance until much later. When he finally realized he possessed half of the ring, he went to the princes on Havnor and offered to steal the other half on their behalf.
Sparrowhawk tells Arha that she must choose between giving him to death or escaping with him. “You must be Arha, or you must be Tenar. You cannot be both” (113), he says. She admits her fear that she will die if she leaves the Place, and he replies that one must die to be reborn. In a show of trust, he tells her, “My true name is Ged. And this is yours to keep” (114). He puts the second half of the ring in her hands. Holding the two broken halves side by side, Arha agrees to escape with him.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Sparrowhawk’s arrival in the Tombs marks the turning point of the plot and triggers the start of Arha’s change process. Though her shame and guilt over the deaths of the three prisoners hinted at her desire for change, she had so deeply internalized her own oppression—one of The Roles of Women in Patriarchal Society—that she was not consciously aware of her internal conflict. Sparrowhawk’s appearance forces her to face this struggle directly.
Ged, who experienced his own coming-of-age in the first Earthsea novel, appears as a mature adult to assist Arha in her coming-of-age. This is a painful process akin to death; as Ged says in Chapter 9, “to be reborn one must die” (114). For Arha, this process is tied to her concept of faith and her socially imposed role as a priestess, suggesting that The Nature of Faith in Arha’s context is to impose identity on its adherents without their consent. However, she cannot imagine any other way of being until the arrival of Sparrowhawk, an outsider of the faith in which Arha was raised, presents alternatives. In the struggle between light and dark, between an oppressive role placed upon Arha and her desire for freedom, Sparrowhawk’s solution forms the core of the theme of The True Meaning of Freedom. Sparrowhawk presents the idea that true power comes from knowledge and self-mastery and freedom requires both individuality and trust in others, represented by the two characters’ sharing of their true names, Ged and Tenar.
Some literary critics, such as Elizabeth Cummins in her 1990 book Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin, have noted that Ged’s coming-of-age in the first novel requires him to grow into the characteristics and role that his society believes men should have. Tenar’s coming-of-age, in contrast, requires her to actively resist the role her society has imposed on her. Ged’s coming-of-age occurs through a series of adventures he chose for himself, while Tenar’s is forced upon her, first by the priestesses who make her the Eaten One, then by Ged’s arrival. This contrast suggests that the roles of women in patriarchal society are less flexible than those of men, forcing women into positions not of their choosing. In order to be themselves, women in such societies must choose to rebel against their culture in favor of their own self-realization. Though Ged encourages and assists her, Arha must be brave and strong enough to commit to this process and see it through. As Ged states in Chapter 9, the choice is hers: She can remain Arha and give Ged over to death or let Arha die, become Tenar, and be free. This connects the theme of women’s roles to that of the true meaning of freedom, suggesting that freedom, like women’s self-actualization, requires conscious choice.
Ged’s arrival also intensifies the external conflict between Arha and Kossil, who struggle against each other for what little power they can acquire as women living in a patriarchy. This power struggle comes to a head when Kossil learns that Arha lied to her to save Ged’s life. The struggle between Arha and Kossil externalizes Arha’s internal conflict over what kind of woman she will be and whether she will retain her faith. Kossil represents the patriarchal society that imprisons them both, which she has internalized and cruelly enforces against other, less powerful women. Unlike Arha, whose devotion to the Nameless Ones dominated her childhood and blinded her to her own oppression, Kossil seems aware that the priestesses’ supposed power is controlled and limited by the patriarchal structures of the Godking and Kargish society. However, instead of resisting these structures, Kossil elects to work within them to wrest what power and control she can from her environment. Moreover, the external conflict between Kossil and Arha adds a sense of urgency to Arha’s coming-of-age by forcing her to choose to either kill Ged and submit to her role or save him and carve her own path.
This section also expands on the motifs of both names and dark versus light. In these chapters, Ged comes to represent the light that both literally and figuratively holds back the dark, for example, using magic to light the cavern. The names motif, which recurs throughout the Earthsea series, also plays an important role in this section. The repressive Kargish society does not recognize the power of true names, but nevertheless imposes names on at least some of those under its control, as evidenced by Tenar’s being renamed as Arha. Among the wizards, on the other hand, true names have literal magical power and are kept secret. Arha does not remember her true name, Tenar, until Ged speaks it in Chapter 7, suggesting that her name is symbolic of her power of self-determination. Reclaiming her name gives her a feeling of “terror, and exultation” (96), implying that her true name holds power, even if the Kargish people do not believe so. Ged’s assertion that she must choose her name in order to choose her fate reinforces this idea.
The Ring of Erreth-Akbe’s symbolic meaning, foreshadowed in earlier chapters, also becomes clear in Chapter 9. Ged reveals that the ring provides concrete power in the form of a lost rune, which symbolizes a state of unity, harmony, and peace for the people of the Inner Lands. This connects the symbol of the ring to the theme of the true meaning of freedom. When Ged places the two halves in Arha’s hands as a sign of trust, the gesture signifies their need to work together to be free, suggesting that freedom depends on trust and community.
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