Men's Wall

The Men's Wall is a low, irregular rock wall that runs in a long semicircle around the Hill of the Place, the sacred precinct of the Tombs of Atuan. It does not so much protect the Place as cut it in two: on one side lie the temples and houses of the priestesses and wardens, on the other the quarters of the guards and of the slaves who farm, herd, and forage for the community. None of these men ever cross the wall, except that on certain very holy festivals the guards, with their drummers and horn-players, attend the procession of the priestesses; but they do not enter the portals of the temples. No other men set foot upon the inner ground of the Place. The wall thus enforces a strict spatial and social segregation, making visible the absolute separation between the female religious authority and the male secular labor force that sustains it.

Physical Description and Location

The Men's Wall is a lower, secondary wall that trails off from the main Tomb Wall, which itself encircles the crest of the hill and the nine standing stones known as the Tombs. From the Tomb Wall, the Men's Wall runs northward toward the river, forming a long, irregular boundary. It is easily climbable, with crevices that allow one to fit one's toes and scramble up. The wall is made of rock, laid without mortar, and in many places it is half fallen down. It stands about ten feet high in the section where the girls sit. From its top, one can look out over the flat plains that stretch east and north to a vast, vague horizon, or down at the roofs and walls of the Place laid out below, and watch the first stirrings of activity around the Big House and the guards' barracks, and the flocks of sheep and goats going off to their sparse pastures by the river.

The Transgression and Its Punishment

The Men's Wall is the site of a key transgression by the young priestess Arha and her friend Penthe. One afternoon in late spring, when they are both twelve years old, they slip away from their weaving duties in the Big House and climb up to sit on top of the wall, their bare legs dangling down on the outside. Penthe speaks of her longing to see the sea again, and Arha, chewing a bitter stem of milkweed, responds with fierce contempt for the "vile accursed sorcerers" from the west. When Manan, Arha's eunuch guardian, comes looking for her, the two girls slide down the far side of the wall and cling there, invisible from the inner side, jeering at him in whispers. They are eventually seen by Mebbeth, who reports them to Kossil, the High Priestess of the Godking. Kossil whips Penthe with a bundle of reed canes, cutting her skin, and sends her to bed without supper and without food the next day, warning that worse will happen if she is caught climbing over the Men's Wall again. Arha, as the One Priestess, cannot be punished, but Thar reminds her that it is not fitting for her to be seen climbing and running with other girls.

Symbolic and Narrative Significance

The Men's Wall functions as a concrete symbol of the rigid gender hierarchy and the isolation of the priestesshood. It marks the boundary between the sacred, female-dominated inner world of the temples and the profane, male-dominated outer world of labor and military force. The wall is also a site of adolescent rebellion and the assertion of identity. Arha's defiance in climbing it, and her subsequent emotional collapse when she realizes that even as the Eaten One she is not truly free, reveals the psychological cost of her role. The wall is a place where the girls can momentarily escape the oppressive order of the Place, but it is also the place where that order reasserts itself most violently through punishment. The wall thus encapsulates the central tension of Arha's existence: she is the highest religious authority, yet she is also a prisoner, confined by the very walls that define her power.