Breaking and Liberating: The Harrowing of Hell in Tolkien’s

Legendarium and Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle

Robert Steed, PhD
For Presentation at Mythmoot IV
Leesburg, VA
June 3rd, 2017

Harrowing of Hell, by Pieter Huys (c. 1519—c. 1584)

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 The Harrowing of Hell Motif

Hell oncneow Crist, ðaða heo forlet hyre hæftlingas ut, þurh ðæs Hælendes hergunge.
“Hell acknowledged Christ when it let its captives out, through the Saviour's harrowing.”1

Medieval European narratives of “The Harrowing of Hell” were designed to account for the time

Christ spent in the tomb. The Nicene Creed states that Jesus was “[c]rucified for us under Pontius Pilate,

and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures…” This

statement lead to a particular question: what was Jesus doing in the time between his death on the

cross and his resurrection? One answer provided by the Harrowing of Hell narratives depicts Jesus

descending to Hell, described as a subterranean fortress-prison2, to liberate the captive souls of the

(usually righteous) dead held captive therein by Satan and his minions. While not generally considered

part of dogmatic orthodoxy, accounts of The Harrowing of Hell captured medieval Catholic interest. The

basic structure of the motif was gradually embellished and enhanced, with multiple variants appearing

over time. For the purposes of this paper, I suggest that the reader may identify the presence of a

Harrowing of Hell motif if the narrative passage under consideration shows the following features: 1) a

character or group of characters imprisoned in darkness 2) by an overwhelming-seeming evil entity 3)

who nevertheless cannot withstand the appearance of a liberating figure or figures 4) associated with

light 5) who then proceed(s) to liberate captives from their captivity.

Both J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973) and Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-) draw upon the motif of The

Harrowing of Hell for various episodes in their own narrative fiction. While they maintain the integrity

of the basic structure of the Harrowing of Hell accounts, they nevertheless creatively adapt it for their

1
Ælfric's homily for Easter, ca. 990 C.E. Found at http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2015/04/open-ws-t-eorrn-
harrowing-of-hell.html March 2017.
2
Most likely this image of Hell-as-prison-with-gates within Christian narrative tradition derives originally from
Matthew 16:18: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.” (Douay-Rheims Bible)

2
own purposes. In doing so, they participate in a form of narrative tradition that stretches back for

almost 1500 years and sustain its presence in contemporary literature.

The Harrowing of Hell in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings

And the light that leapt out of Thee, Lucifer it blente, [blinded]
And blew all Thy blessed into the bliss of Paradise!3

Tolkien, given his academic background as a medievalist and philologist and his profound

identification with Catholicism, no doubt was well aware of the variety of medieval Harrowing of Hell

accounts. Furthermore, he showed extreme care and skill in crafting his legendarium. When we

perceive Harrowing of Hell-type episodes in his legendarium, it is extremely likely to be due to the fact

that he consciously chose to incorporate them with the goal that they be noticed as such. In the

process, both Tolkien and the reader of Tolkien would thereby enter into participation with what he

called “The Tree of Tales.”4 “The Tree of Tales” is an image Tolkien creates to illustrate his theory of

story, which is that most, if not all, stories ultimately are variations (“branches” and “leaves”) growing

from a common source (“trunk”). It is not my intention in this paper to show all possible Harrowing of

Hell episodes in Tolkien’s legendarium; rather, the goal is to showcase a few examples of this motif, and

to use them as a springboard to explore ways in which Tolkien follows its basic structure while creatively

reworking aspects of it to suit his purposes. The four examples to be examined are those of Lúthien’s

freeing Beren from Sauron’s Tower, Tom Bombadil freeing the four Hobbits from the Barrow-wight’s

3
Langland, Piers Plowman lines 495-496.
Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories” 18-19.
4

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barrow, Gandalf freeing Théoden from Saruman’s spell, and Samwise freeing Frodo from Shelob’s lair5

and the tower of Cirith Ungol.6

Lúthien, Beren, and Sauron

“Of Beren and Lúthien” is in many ways the centerpiece of The Silmarillion. The tales in The

Silmarillion before this chapter all lay a foundation for it, and most of the major characters later in the

history are shown to be directly descended from the heroic couple and later stories branch out from the

events of the pair’s life. It should come as no surprise, then, that several themes that are important to

Tolkien should be woven into this story. At the center of Beren and Lúthien’s tale, right at the heart of

this centrally significant story, is The Harrowing of Hell motif. Tolkien draws our attention to Lúthien’s

grace-full power in part by showing her liberating captives almost effortlessly. She does so in order to

free Beren from his imprisonment in Sauron’s7 guard tower on an island. She and her faithful hound

Huan having overcome various obstacles along the way, Lúthien confronts Sauron at the gate of that

tower:

Then Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the
spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown
down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare; and many thralls
and captives came forth in wonder and dismay, shielding their eyes
against the pale moonlight, for they had lain long in the darkness of
Sauron. But Beren came not. Therefore Huan and Lúthien sought him
in the isle; and Lúthien found him mourning by Felagund. So deep was
his anguish that he lay still, and did not hear her feet. Then thinking him
already dead she put her arms about him and fell into a dark
forgetfulness.8 But Beren coming back to light out of the pit of despair

5
I thank Dr. Patrick Malloy of Hawkeye Community College for pointing this example out to me in a conversation
we had in April 2017.
6
Aragorn and the Paths of the Dead would be the most obvious example, but that has already been covered
elsewhere.
At this point, Sauron is a lieutenant of Melkor/Morgoth’s. Sauron’s tower is therefore guarding access to deeper
7

regions of Morgoth’s domain.

8
This image is strikingly similar to that of a Pietà.

4
 lifted her up, and they looked again upon one another; and the day
rising over dark hills shone upon them.9
In this passage we see a kind of double-movement. First, Lúthien, by means of her graceful/grace-full

power, casts down the stones that imprison, at which point all of Sauron’s captives, dazed even in the

dim light of the moon by their unlooked-for freedom, come out, except for Beren. When Lúthien finds

Beren, she sinks into grief, thinking him dead, at which point he begins his movement, the second part

of the double-movement, freeing Lúthien from her grief as the sun rises.10

In her freeing the captives from Sauron’s stone prison by the power of her grace, Lúthien is

depicted in a way that encourages us to see in her actions a participation in the Harrowing of Hell motif,

but with some interesting modifications in keeping with Tolkien’s creative re-working of established

themes and motifs. Unlike Christ, Lúthien is not completely successful, and gives way to despair for a

brief moment. However, this permits Tolkien to show Beren in his Christ-like aspect, as the one who

revives from death11 and by so doing restores those whom he loves. Lúthien, then, is a Christ-figure in

her role as liberator, a Marian figure in her role as comforter, as well as a symbol of the Ecclesia (Church)

who is the recipient of Christ’s love. She does not show herself to be any of these in their fullness, but

to a great degree she participates in aspects of all of them.

Tom Bombadil, the Four Hobbits, and the Barrow-wight

Perhaps a less immediately obvious example of Tolkien’s re-working of The Harrowing of Hell

motif is that of Tom Bombadil’s freeing the Four Hobbits from the Barrow-wight’s barrow. The hobbits,

despite Bombadil’s warnings, are lured and captured by the Barrow-wight and imprisoned within his

9
The Silmarillion, 175.
10
This clearly is Easter/Paschal imagery.
11
Beren revives from apparent death several times and actual death once, repeatedly being depicted as a type for
Christ.

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barrow. The Barrow-wight’s dark song entrances them, making it difficult for them to move or take any

action much beyond lying still, waiting as they gradually transform into barrow-wights themselves.

Despite this, Frodo is eventually able to summon enough courage to sing a minor song of power that

Tom Bombadil taught to him and thereby summons him to help. Within a few moments, Bombadil

arrives and, as Tolkien describes it:

There was a loud rumbling sound, as of stones rolling and falling, and
suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day. A low door-
like opening appeared at the end of the chamber beyond Frodo’s feet;
and there was Tom’s head (hat, feather, and all) framed against the light
of the sun rising red behind him. The light fell upon the floor, and upon
the faces of the three hobbits lying beside Frodo. They did not stir, but
the sickly hue had left them. They looked now as if they were only very
deeply asleep.
Tom stooped, removed his hat, and came into the dark chamber,
singing:

Get out, you old Wight! Vanish in the sunlight!

Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,
Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!
Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!
Lost and forgotten be, darker than darkness,
Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.

At these words there was a cry and part of the inner end of the
chamber fell in with a crash. Then there was a long trailing shriek,
fading away into an unguessable distance; and after that silence.

At this point Tom and Frodo carry the others out of the barrow and lay them onto the grass to recover,

and then Tom returns to the barrow, apparently destroys whatever remains of the wight, and brings

treasures out of for all to share, singing:

Wake now my merry lads! Wake and hear me calling!

Warm now be heart and limb! The cold stone is fallen;
Dark door is standing wide; dead hand is broken.
Night under Night is flown, and the Gate is open!

To Frodo’s great joy the hobbits stirred, stretched their arms, rubbed
their eyes, and then suddenly sprang up. They looked about in
amazement, first at Frodo, and then at Tom standing large as life on the

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 barrow-top above them; and then at themselves in their thin white rags,
crowned and belted with pale gold, and jingling with trinkets.12

The scene continues on for a bit, and the connections to the Harrowing of Hell are deepened as it goes

on, but I have presented enough here to establish the connection between this scene and that motif.

Frodo is often described in secondary literature as a kind of Christ-figure, serving as a type13 for

Christ-as-priest or for Christ-as-suffering-servant. However, Frodo has not fully come into those roles

here. Instead, he is the one who, even though the most resistant to the Barrow-wight’s spell, still needs

aid from outside in order to regain his and his friends’ freedom. That is, he is not the liberator, but one

of the liberated. It is Tom Bombadil who serves as a type for Christ here, being the one who comes in a

blaze of (sun)light, throws down the stone gates of the barrow, and easily overcomes the shadowy and

derivative power of the Barrow-wight. In some ways, the scene is an even fuller presentation of the

Harrowing of Hell motif than Luthien’s described above; not only are the captives liberated, they are

also clothed in gold, laden with treasures, and freed of their “old rags” as a result of Bombadil having

removed the wight’s curse from those items. The hobbits have in some way become newly refreshed

versions of their former selves as a result of their contact with Bombadil’s grace. Tolkien makes an

explicit connection between Bombadil and The Harrowing of Hell-Christ in Bombadil’s songs, especially

the end of the second one, where he sings of the hobbits’ liberation and celebrates the open Gate of the

dark underground prison. Frodo receives liberating grace from Bombadil here; perhaps he must first

experience the reception of grace before he can develop into a sharer of grace, a role which later he

much more clearly fulfills.

12
LOTR, 156-159.
That is, a typological “type” in which the character may be understood as a refraction or lesser “double” for
13

another character who fulfills the paradigm of the type. Thus, in one direction Moses, Isaac, Elijah and Elisha are
all types for Christ in the Bible, from a Christian perspective, and St. Francis of Assisi also serves as a type for Christ
in Christian tradition. Types are not limited by time-frame.

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 Gandalf and Théoden

The examples of The Harrowing of Hell motif drawn from the stories of Beren and Lúthien and

Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-wight are clear and not easily missed (as is that of Aragorn and the Paths

of the Dead). However, Tolkien crafted other episodes in his works which seem to draw upon this motif

in subtler ways that require more sustained attention to recognize. One of these is the narrative

sequence of Gandalf’s freeing Théoden from his despairing and nearly catatonic state brought about by

Wormtongue’s, and by extension, Saruman’s, and through Saruman’s palantir, Sauron’s intrigue against

him.

When Gandalf and his companions arrive in Meduseld, they find Théoden to be hostile, cold,

and unwelcoming. Under Wormtongue’s influence, he sees Gandalf as a threatening presence, a bearer

of ill news. Gandalf perceives that Théoden’s mind is weighed down by care and grief over the recent

death of his only heir and heroic son, Théodred, and therefore is highly susceptible to Wormtongue’s

insinuations of despair. The wizard takes immediate steps to help Théoden cast off those morose

shackles. Gandalf addresses him by name as Théoden son of Thengel, reminding him of his place within

a longer kingly lineage. Then, he sings a song about the beauty and grace of Galadriel, she who is closely

associated with light in the legendarium,14 drawing upon her grace-full power to aid him in the shadows

of Meduseld and in those of Théoden’s psyche. After rebuking Wormtongue, Gandalf raises his staff, at

which point thunder rolls and the hall falls into darkness, except for the shining figure of Gandalf

himself. At this point, Gandalf addresses Théoden, saying:

‘Now Théoden, son of Thengel, will you hearken to me?’ said Gandalf. ‘Do you ask for
help?’ He lifted his staff and pointed to the high window. There the darkness seemed to
clear, and through the opening could be seen, high and far, a patch of shining sky. ‘Not
all is dark. Take courage, Lord of the Mark; for better help you will not find. No counsel

14
Tolkien repeatedly and with great variety associates Galadriel with light, the most obvious examples being her
luminous hair, the phial of light she bestows upon Sam, and Tolkien’s descriptions of Lórien, her land, as being one
over which no shadows lay.

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 have I to give to those that despair. Yet counsel I could give, and words I could speak to
you. Will you hear them? They are not for all ears. I bid you come out before your
doors and look abroad. Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales
and crooked promptings.’
Slowly Théoden left his chair. A faint light grew in the hall again. The woman hastened
to the king’s side, taking his arm, and with faltering steps the old man came down from
the dais and paced softly through the hall. Wormtongue remained lying on the floor.
They came to the doors and Gandalf knocked.
‘Open!’ he cried. ‘The Lord of the Mark comes forth!’
The doors rolled back and a keen air came whistling in. A wind was blowing on the
hill.15

It is true that Théoden is not literally dead nor is he being held captive in a literal and physical sense.

Still, he is a captive, even if it is primarily to his own despair and dark imaginings reinforced by

Wormtongue’s crafty counsel. He sits in darkness, both that of shut-off Meduseld and that of his mind.

When Gandalf comes, he does so as a bolt of lightning that shatters the dark while overturning

Wormtongue, and recalls Théoden to remember who he is and to assume his proper glory. He is a Lord

of the Mark; Meduseld should be open to the winds of the world, and he should be out in that world of

wind and light. Remembering who and what he is with the aid of Gandalf’s liberating grace, Théoden is

freed and made new. This pattern is that of The Harrowing of Hell motif.

Sam, Frodo, Shelob, and the Tower of Cirith Ungol

This sequence is lengthy, spanning two chapters split between two books. As a result, quoting

the entire narrative to highlight the ways in which it fits the Harrowing of Hell motif is impractical. In

addition, the motif is shown all of a piece; the elements of it are spread throughout the chapters with

many non-motif insertions and interruptions, making it more of a challenge to recognize its presence

15
LOTR, 536-537.

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than in the examples involving the Barrow-wight or Lúthien and Beren. For the purposes of this paper a

summary will have to suffice.

Frodo is led into a “shortcut,” by Gollum who, under the ruse of seeming to be helpful, actually

takes Frodo to the lair of Shelob, a large spider who is a descendent of Ungoliant, who helped Melkor to

kill the Two Trees of Valinor in the First Age of the world. Shelob traps Frodo in her webs and stings him,

her venom paralyzing and apparently killing him. Sam, who has been separated from Frodo due

primarily to Frodo’s decreasing ability to think clearly and Gollum’s machinations, decides to follow

Frodo nonetheless, and when he does so he discovers that Frodo has been captured by Shelob. Sam

then engages in a heroic effort to fight off Shelob and recover Frodo’s body. Upon doing so, Sam thinks

Frodo to be dead and reluctantly takes Frodo’s weapon and the Ring to try to continue the quest.

Shortly after Sam does this, the orcs find Frodo’s body and take it to the tower of Cirith Ungol, and Sam

realizes that Frodo is still alive. At this point Sam raids the tower, finds Frodo by singing16, and carries

him out.

This easily may appear to be a typical story of adventure and rescue, and in many ways it is. The

trials that Sam must overcome in particular fit that model. However, two things in particular move it

from being such a story to one that manifests the Harrowing of Hell motif. The first is the presence of

light, especially in the form of the phial of Galadriel. This phial is filled with water from her fountain and

pool, which themselves hold the light of Eärendil's star, a Silmaril which holds the light of the Two Trees

of Valinor, that radiate the light of Varda, the Star-Kindler of the Valar, whom the elves call Elbereth.

Sam uses this phial both to ward off Shelob17 and later to break through the gate of the Two Watchers at

Cirith Ungol:

This echoes Beren and Lúthien’s tale, in which at one point they locate each other by singing.
16
17
Shelob, like her forbear Ungoliant, is associated with darkness and unlight and serves as a foil for Galadriel, the
luminous one.

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 They [the Watchers] were like great figures seated upon thrones. Each had three joined
bodies, and three heads facing outward, and inward, and across the gateway.18 The
heads had vulture-faces, and on their great knees were laid clawlike hands. They
seemed to be carved out of huge blocks of stone, immovable, and yet they were aware:
some dreadful spirit of evil vigilance abode in them. They knew an enemy. Visible or
invisible none could pass unheeded. They would forbid his entry, or his escape.
Hardening his will Sam thrust forward once again, and halted with a jerk, staggering as
if from a blow upon his breast and head. Then greatly daring, because he could think of
nothing else to do, answering a sudden thought that came into him, he drew slowly out
the phial of Galadriel and held it up. Its white light quickened swiftly, and the shadows
under the dark arch fled. The monstrous Watchers sat there cold and still, revealed in
all their hideous shape. For a moment Sam caught a glitter in the black stones of their
eyes, the very malice of which made him quail; but slowly he felt their will waver and
crumble into fear.19

Sam’s repeated use of the grace-filled light of the Phial of Galadriel moves the narrative to more closely

fit a Harrowing of Hell pattern.

The second feature is Frodo’s near-resurrection. It is true that he is not fully dead20 but he

appears that way to Sam, and probably is near death. Either way, he is beyond hope. When Sam draws

near to Frodo, singing about the Sun high above dark towers and bearing the Phial of Galadriel, Frodo

begins to revive. He is first liberated from the bonds of death, and later freed from the imprisoning

tower of Cirith Ungol. It may be odd to think of Sam as a force whom evil cannot resist; Sam certainly

does not see himself in this way. Still, as the narrative develops, that is what he is. Neither monstrous

spider, nor orc-warriors, nor supernaturally evil guardians, nor cold stone blocks and iron bars can stop

Sam from breaking into the dark places with his light and liberating his friend. Sam is the light-bearing

liberator at the center of the Harrowing of Hell motif.

The Harrowing of Hell in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle

18
These images bear a striking similarity to the Greek deity Hecate, who is associated with the underworld, terror,
and magic and bore in one of her forms three faces; my thanks to Haydee Comparán-Steed for alerting me to this
point.
19
LOTR, 937.
20
Which a great sage has pointed out means he is slightly alive.

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 Ursula K. Le Guin, like Tolkien, creates a masterfully-constructed fantasy world in her Earthsea

Cycle of novels and short stories. Unlike Tolkien, she does not do so from an explicitly (or implicitly)

Catholic viewpoint.21 Her interests lie elsewhere, and her project in writing is therefore distinct. The

moral vision shaping Earthsea, in particular, is of a different sort than that underlying Tolkien’s work; it is

more concerned with maintaining balance and respect, of flowing with things-as-they-are than it is with

exploring a Boethian theory of evil.22 As a consequence, when Le Guin employs the Harrowing of Hell

motif in the context of Earthsea, it tends to be in a more flexible, or at least less traditional, way.

Tolkien takes the pattern and shows how it can be applied in a variety of settings by a range of

characters; Le Guin takes it and re-shapes it to suit her rather different (but not opposed) interests.

In this section of the paper I will explore five such cases23 of Le Guin’s use and re-working of the

Harrowing of Hell motif: Ged failing to liberate Ioeth from the Land of the Dead in A Wizard of Earthsea,

Ged liberating Tenar from the tombs of Atuan in the book by that name, Ged freeing Arren from the

slavers in The Farthest Shore, Ged closing the gap in the stone wall in The Farthest Shore, and the crowd

of the “marginalized” tearing down the wall of stone that separates the living from the dead in The

Other Wind. As with the Tolkien section of this paper, my purpose is not to list all possible examples of

Le Guin’s use of the Harrowing of Hell motif in her stories, but to explore a few major examples.

Ged and Ioeth

The protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea is a young man named Ged (use-name “Sparrowhawk’).

Ged is naturally talented at the Art Magic, but is willful and more often learns lessons from bitter

When pressed to give herself a religious label, the one Le Guin seems to use most is that of “Taoist.”
21
22
Roughly put, the Boethian theory of evil argues that evil is not self-existent, but is instead a falling away from or
perversion of a previously-existent good. So, in Tolkien’s legendarium, for example, Morgoth was not created evil,
and was a great a noble spirit, but gradually “fell” into increasing states of corruption.
23
Due to space constraints I cannot examine one of the more dramatic Harrowing of Hell moments in A Wizard of
Earthsea, when Ged accidentally (?) summons a shadow-creature while a student of the silent mage Ogion, and is
saved when Ogion appears, staff blazing with light, and dispels the creature. I did not want to leave it unmentioned
at all, at any rate.

12
experience than from his mentors. Early on in this novel, while at the school for wizards on Roke Island,

he summons something from the darkness that he should not have, and the encounter leaves him

scarred, both physically and spiritually. After he recovers physically (the spiritual healing takes much

longer) he completes his time on Roke and earns his wizard’s staff. His first “job” after graduation is to go

to the island of Low Torning and serve as wizard for the fishermen there, primarily to protect them from

the depredations of a dragon named Yevaud. He is befriended by one of these fishermen named

Pechavarry, who has a young son, Ioeth. One evening, Ioeth is struck with the red-fever, and Pechvarry

begs Ged to save him. Against his better judgment, for he suspects the Ioeth is too far gone to save, Ged

summons his power and makes an effort to cure him. In a trance-like state, Ged perceives Ioeth (rather,

his spirit) running down the slopes towards the land of the dead. Ged pursues him, and crosses the stone

wall that separates the living from the dead. Almost immediately he realizes he has gone too far, and

struggles to turn around and return to the land of the living. In one last desperate move, Ged summons

what remains of his power, sends forth a blaze of light from his staff, and crosses the wall. Pechvarry, his

wife, and the local healing witch who are in attendance upon Ioeth’s sick-bed only see Ged freeze in place

for a while until:

Now what Pechvarry and his wife and the witch saw was this: the young wizard had
stopped midway in his spell, and held the child a while, motionless. Then he had laid
little Ioeth down on the pallet, and had risen, and stood silent, staff in hand. All at once
he raised the staff high and it blazed with white fire as if he held the lightning-bolt in his
grip, and all the household things in the hut leaped out strange and vivid in that
momentary fire. When their eyes were clear from the dazzlement they saw the young
man huddles forward on the earthen floor, beside the pallet where the child lay dead.24

It is remarkable that in this, Ged’s first full Harrowing of Hell moment, he fails. All of the other aspects

of the motif are there: the captivity, darkness and light, and the movement by a powerful character to

liberate. However, The Dry Land keeps Ioeth despite Ged’s luminous saving activity. It is one of the

ways in which Le Guin, I argue, throughout the novel inverts the tropes established in much previous

24
A Wizard of Earthsea, 113.

13
literature and religion. Ged is a savior, yes, but he is a savior who may not always be able to save. Not

only that, but the land of the dead on the other side of the wall is not exactly evil; it is dry and dusty, but

there is no evil will actively holding the dead there. Ged, for his part, is subject to failure and other

consequences that may flow from hasty acts to change that-which-is. This scene is not the first one in

which Le Guin inverts or subverts the Harrowing of Hell motif, but I think in its own way it is the first one

to fully announce that tendency.

Ged and Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan

From a certain angle, the whole story of The Tombs of Atuan is an extended exploration of and

elaboration on the basic Harrowing of Hell motif. That said, it takes some unconventional turns and like

much that Le Guin does with her Earthsea cycle she modifies or inverts aspects of the traditional

narrative pattern of such stories. Here we meet Arha (“the Eaten One”), a young priestess of the

Nameless Ones, old Powers associated with the island of Atuan. An underground labyrinth and an

aboveground temple complex where other priestesses and their eunuch attendants live encompass all

that Arha knows about the world. She spends much of her time in the dark of labyrinth, learning it not

by sight but by touch as she feels her way along its walls and memorizes its turns. One day she spies a

new sight, a young man carrying a staff with a light on the end of it, cautiously wending his way about

the labyrinth. Arha seals the exits, trapping the young man inside. After some days, she begins to

converse with the man, taunting him but also fascinated by him. He is a person unlike any she has

known, and eventually her sneering disgust towards him transforms into a more honest curiosity, and

then she becomes a willing partner in a trusting relationship. The young man is Ged, the wizard who

was the protagonist of the first novel in the series. He convinces her to abandon her priestly role, to re-

14
assume her true name, Tenar, and then to escape with him to a different life together, in the process

defying the Nameless Ones and causing the labyrinth to collapse in on itself.

On the surface, this looks very much like a standard Harrowing of Hell narrative structure: A

savior-figure associated with light enters into a dark place and liberates someone being held captive

there by powerful entities. However, if we read a bit more closely, we can see Le Guin subverting that

narrative pattern at a few key points. First, Ged does not easily liberate Tenar. He is, after all, trapped

in the prison of the labyrinth, and before he convinces her to escape with him he has grown so weak

that he is unable to sustain the magic light he uses, plunging into darkness himself. He is just as trapped

as Arha/Tenar.

Secondly, and due to the circumstances of the first point, Ged needs Tenar just as much as she

needs him:

She stopped.
Halted a few steps behind her, he said softly, “What is it?”
“I have…I have lost count of the turnings.”
“I kept count,” he said, coming a little closer. “A left turn after the pit; then a right,
and a right again.”
“Then the next will be right again,” she said automatically, but she did not move.
“Make the light.”
“The light won’t show us the way, Tenar.”
“Nothing will. It is lost. We are lost.”
The dead silence closed in upon her whisper, ate it.
She felt the movement and the warmth of the other, close to her in the cold dark. He
sought her hand and took it. “Go on, Tenar. The next turn is to the right.”
“Make a light,” she pleaded. “The tunnels twist so….”
“I cannot. I have no strength to spare. Tenar, they are---they know that we left the
Treasury. They know that we’re past the pit. They are seeking us, seeking our will, our
spirit. To quench it, devour it. I must keep that alight. All my strength is going into that.
I must withstand them; with you. With your help. We must go on.”25

In this passage, and elsewhere as well, Le Guin makes it explicitly clear that Ged cannot liberate

Tenar. He cannot even liberate himself. Rather, he can only accomplish the deed with her trust

and her aid. He has the light, but not the power to make it at this point, and even if he did, it

25
The Tombs of Atuan, 118.

15
would still not avail them in the purpose of escape. Tenar is the one who knows the way out,

and to that degree she must lead Ged. Neither could she do this by herself; she needs Ged’s

trust and his will to buttress her own. This Harrowing of Hell is made possible only by Ged and

Tenar’s relationship with each other; neither has the power to escape on his or her own. In this

narrative, then, Le Guin de-centers the Harrowing motif from the light-bringing liberator figure

and re-centers it on the relationship between liberator and liberated, showing how each

character is both liberator and liberated.

Ged, Arren, and the Slavers

If in general Le Guin inverts or subverts the Harrowing of Hell motif, she does not always do so.

The prime example of this is in the episode in The Farthest Shore involving Arren being captured by

slavers and held on their ship and then, at the moment of his greatest despair, being liberated by a

luminous Ged:

The ship rolled a little on the quiet sea. Beyond the dim rails was nothing: blank.
Something grated against the ship’s side. The noise was loud in that dead, weird silence
and darkness. “We’re aground,” one of the prisoners whispered, but the silence closed
in on his voice.
The fog grew bright, as if a light were blooming in it. Arren saw the heads of the men
chained by him clearly, the tiny moisture-drops shining in their hair. Again, the ship
swayed, and he strained as far up as his chains would let him, stretching his neck, to see
forward in the ship. The fog glowed over the deck like the moon behind thin clouds,
cold and radiant. The oarsmen sat like carved statues. Crewman stood in the waist of
the ship, their eyes shining a little. Alone on the port side stood a man, and it was from
him that the light came, from the face and hands and staff that burned like molten
silver…
Arren tried to speak and could not. Clothed in that majesty of light, the Archmage
came to him and knelt down on the deck. Arren felt the touch of his hand and heard his
voice. He felt the bonds on his wrist and body give way; all through the hold there was
the rattling of chains. But no man moved; only Arren tried to stand, but he could not,

16
 being cramped with long immobility. The Archmage’s strong grip was on his arm, and
with that help he crawled up out of the cargo-hold and huddled on the deck.26

This simply is a paradigmatic example of the Harrowing of Hell motif, fulfilling all of its parameters. If it

stands out, it does so precisely because here Le Guin does not deviate from the standard pattern.

Ged and the Repair of the Wall27

The main storyline of The Farthest Shore concerns Ged and his young companion Arren as they

journey about Earthsea in an effort to find out why magic (and, indeed, all of the arts of human life) are

diminishing and disappearing from the world. It turns out that a necromantic wizard by the use-name of

Cob who is in the habit of summoning the dead to toy with them, whom Ged had humiliated years

earlier by forcibly dragging him to the other side of the stone wall, has found a way to return from the

land of the dead. In effect he has attained an apparent immortality, but the price for that is the draining

of that which makes life worth living (beauty, magic, caring human relations) through the gap in the

stone wall. By denying death, Ged argues, life is also denied. The remedy, then, is for Ged to go to the

stone wall and find a way to repair the hole in it that Cob has created. He does so at great cost to

himself; he must pour all of his wizardly power into the act of repair, and effectively sacrifices himself as

a wizard to accomplish this task. Le Guin describes that act:

“It will be shut,” Ged said, coming beside them: and the light blazed up now from his
hands and face as if he were a star fallen on earth in that endless night. Before him, the
dry spring, the door, yawned open…
With all the skill of his life’s training, and with all the strength of his fierce heart, Ged
strove to shut that door, to make the world whole once more. And under his voice and
the command of his shaping hands the rocks drew together, painfully, trying to be
whole, to meet. But at the same time the light weakened and weakened, dying out

26
The Farthest Shore, 61-62.
27
In the Earthsea cycle there is a stone wall that separates the land of the living from that of the dead. Wizards
can, with great difficulty and risk to themselves, cross the wall and return, but the dead cannot usually do so.

17
 from his hands and his face, dying out from his yew staff, until only a little glimmer of it
clung there. By that faint light Arren saw that the door was nearly closed.28
Le Guin presents another inversion of the Harrowing of Hell motif here. Unlike with Ioeth, Ged

succeeds in rescuing that which needs rescuing, that is, the whole world which was held captive to Cob’s

desire for immortality. However, he is not the invincible savior-figure. His luminosity dims to almost

nothing, and we find out later that Ged, in fact, has lost all capacity to work magic for the rest of his life.

Not only does he work change, he himself is changed, and from a certain angle, severely weakened as a

result. This Harrowing of Hell depicts Ged manifesting the sacrificial aspect of Christ, but not the rising-

again-in-glory aspect. He survives, but diminished and unable to continue “saving the world.”

The Tearing Down of the Stone Wall in The Other Wind

In many ways, The Other Wind, the last novel (but not the last story) set in Earthsea, re-

examines and deconstructs many of the elements established elsewhere in the Earthsea cycle. Included

within that deconstruction is the stone wall that separates the living from the dead, which is both

literally and metaphorically deconstructed29 by the end of the novel.

There is a long backstory here; indeed, the novel is an exploration of much of that backstory. To

state it as succinctly as possible, it turns out that in the past the stone wall was built by wizards,

especially those that would come to be associated with the magic of Roke Island, as a means to stabilize

and secure their magic and power. Clear separations between orders of beings had to be made (or so

they thought) and hierarchies established, so that magic could become regularized and the wizards’

power rooted in something stable. This meant boundaries were established, and the most fundamental

of these is the boundary between living and dead, marked by that stone wall. The dead and the living

28
The Farthest Shore, 183.
29
This is appropriate, since the image of the wall is polyvalent, and is itself both literal and metaphorical.

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must be separate; dragons and humans, who once were the same, take different forms and follow

separate destinies, and so on.

The problem is that in establishing these boundaries, the wizards limit freedom and force the

world to bend to their image of what it should be, in the process creating various kinds of marginalized

groups, women being the most prominent among them, but also non-Rokish wizards, “ethnic”

minorities, and various groups that transgress or cross those established boundaries. In a reversal of

what happens in The Farthest Shore, the wall must be completely torn down. This is not for the purpose

of seeking immortality as Cob did, but for the purpose of truly liberating all of those, including the dead,

who are held captive by that wall on both sides of it. So, near the end of The Other Wind members of all

of these marginalized groups, including the dead, come together and, stone by stone, dismantle the

wall, leading to a liberation for all of them. Even the dead can now truly be dead, and not held as

captive shadows in the Dry Land on the other side of the wall. Near the end of this dismantling, we read:

There was a vast, soft cry among the shadows on the other side, like the sound of the
sea on a hollow shore. Their darkness surged up against the wall…it was no longer dark.
Light moved in that sky where the stars had never moved, quick sparks of fire in the
dark west.30

In a way, this is the most difficult use of the Harrowing of Hell motif to argue for, since it seems to invert

most of the tropes of that motif. However, I think that is one of Le Guin’s points. The ultimate captivity

is not to a particular overtly powerful being, but to the social categories we establish in the name of

creating or maintaining our power. A harrowing of that hell requires not one, but a multitude of beings

to accomplish. Those beings in themselves may not be all that powerful, but since the power of the

powerful rests on them, collectively they can take their power back and re-shape the world to a freer

and truer image. The end result is freedom and luminosity. It’s the Harrowing of Hell motif, but

democratized.

30
The Other Wind, 238.

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 A Brief Conclusion

This paper does not, and is not intended to, present a strong thesis or argument. Rather, the

goal was to look for and examine some, but not all, examples of The Harrowing of Hell motif as it

appears in Tolkien’s legendarium and Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle. Still, within each example there are

interpretive observations to be made and small arguments to forward. If nothing else, this paper

hopefully highlights how frequently the Harrowing of Hell motif is worked and re-worked into the stories

of these two masterful writers who sustain and extend this motif popular in the history of Western

narrative.

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