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The Obelisk Gate
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Nassun, needed”
Schaffa has two other Guardians working with him, and at the time of Nassun’s arrival, nine orogene children are under their “care.” Jija is welcomed into the comm because his skills as a stoneknapper are sorely needed. Nassun is treated less enthusiastically by the comm but embraced fully by the other orogene children. They range in age, origin, and orogenic ability, but Nassun quickly learns she is far superior to all of them when it comes to orogeny.
Shortly after her arrival, Schaffa pulls her aside for a conversation. He explains orogenic ability is innate as well as practiced and that there aren’t many orogenes left with her natural talent because “so much has been done to breed the gift out of the world” (149). Nassun tells Schaffa that her father thinks she is evil because of what she is. Schaffa recognizes Fulcrum techniques in the way she uses her abilities and asks where she learned them. Nassun provides him with a detailed breakdown of all the ways her mother taught her. The teaching methods she describes are the same ones used in the Fulcrum, including the abuse; at one point, Essun even broke her hand to see if she could control herself through the pain. Revisiting the memories makes Nassun decide she will no longer refer to Essun as “Mama” and instead just use her name, as she now does with Jija.
Schaffa comforts Nassun with a tight hug and tells her it is wrong to hurt people one loves. Nassun feels she loves Schaffa and will do anything for him. While in his embrace, she notices that he constantly flinches in response to pain that comes from the silvery threads emanating from the back of his head. She can feel that these threads are hungry and cautiously reaches out to touch them with her orogeny. She feels them faintly tug at her and feels tired. Schaffa reveals that Guardians are always in pain and confirms that what Nassun did relieves the pain for a time. It is why he touched the back of her neck when they first met and the reason Guardians constantly smile—the endorphins lessen the pain slightly. His instinct is to kill her for learning this about Guardians, but her willingness to let him do it stops him. He warns her not to let the other Guardians know what she knows. Nassun feels like she has a home for the first time in her life.
Chapter 10 Summary: “you’ve got a big job ahead of you”
Alabaster recounts what happened to him when he disappeared during the attack on Meov 10 years prior (as described in Syenite’s storyline in The Fifth Season). Antimony pulled him through the Earth and out the other side to a deadciv city called Corepoint. It is built on top of an immense shield volcano and has a gigantic hole at its center that descends deep into the Earth’s core. The entire purpose of the city is to contain the hole. Despite being a ruin, the city is largely intact because it is constructed out of unnatural, “undecaying” materials, and there have been dozens of stone eaters living there for tens of thousands of years. At first, Alabaster resisted the stone eaters and tried to kill them, but they continued to bring him food and keep him alive regardless.
Once he settled down, Antimony took him to the hole and explained why he was there: Corepoint was a city run by orogenes, and the hole was created to exploit the Earth’s power. The obelisks and other tools were created to harness the core’s power, but something went wrong, and the moon was flung away from the planet. This started the war between people and Father Earth, whom Alabaster is adamant is real and alive, and resulted in the Shattering. There are now three sides involved in this war: those who want to kill the people that remain, those who want to neutralize them (keep them alive but render them completely harmless), and those who want to create a truce by returning the moon to its orbit around the Earth and restoring equilibrium. Alabaster explains that the stone eaters used to be people and are a botched attempt at neutralizing them. Some of them (Antimony and Hoa, for example) have been around since the very beginning.
The conversation exhausts Alabaster, and he goes to sleep. Antimony then fills in the final few details: By creating the rift, Alabaster has caused the Earth to churn out magic that can be channeled into the Obelisk Gate—a network of all the obelisks that amplifies energy. This energy can then be used to catch the moon, which is currently on a trajectory toward the Earth thanks to course corrections Alabaster has already made. Antimony is taciturn when Essun asks which side she is on, and replies that there are always options and that not all stone eaters agree. Essun is overwhelmed and falls asleep in the infirmary.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Schaffa, lying down”
Schaffa has started dreaming, which Guardians do not normally do because of the corestone embedded in their sessapinae (the organ at the base of the brainstem that allows inhabitants of the Stillness to detect tectonic activity; they are larger and more complex in orogenes). He knows the dreams are a bad sign but can do nothing about it. The content of his dreams appears to be memories: of his parents (it is implied his father was a feral orogene), the violent procedure he underwent as a child to become a Guardian, another Guardian (Leshet) that he believes is too soft on the children attached to her and whom he eventually kills, a woman he has sex with and later kills (along with her entire village) because she is pregnant, and Damaya, who stands out as special among the hundreds of children he has had attached to him.
Schaffa realizes who Nassun’s mother is and checks on her one night. When she wakes, he asks if she fears him. She responds “never” before falling back asleep, stirring him to tears. He resolves to be different than the monster he was. The voice in his head commands him to use Nassun and break her like her mother, but he resists. The other Guardians at Found Moon grow suspicious of him.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Nassun, falling up”
Nassun thrives in Found Moon. She can practice orogeny whenever she wants for as long as she wants and realizes how much she likes it. Left to explore her abilities on her own, she begins to develop techniques different than those taught by Fulcrum instructors. This results in rapid improvement, specifically in relation to controlling what she now calls “the silver” (the same thing Alabaster and Essun are calling magic). The other Guardians at Found Moon tell her that in the Fulcrum, any orogenes that discovered magic were culled or put into node duty (lobotomized in a way that left their ability to control seismic activity intact). This makes Nassun realize that these are no longer proper Guardians connected to the Fulcrum.
Jija begins to grow impatient that Nassun hasn’t been cured yet, which makes her worry he is going to do something that will get him hurt or killed. Because she is stressed, she makes a mistake while practicing and narrowly avoids seriously hurting herself. Schaffa makes her stay the night instead of going home to Jija. Before she goes to bed, Schaffa explains the systemic mistreatment of orogenes and his complicity in that process. He wants to make up for past mistakes by “[repairing] something long broken […] and [settling] a feud whose origins lie so long in [their] past most [people] have forgotten how it began” (190).
That night, Nassun has a nightmare. When Eitz attempts to wake her from it, she reflexively taps into an obelisk and turns him to stone. At the same time, Jija is on his way to retrieve her, but Schaffa stops and threatens him. Nassun reveals to Schaffa that she could feel the entire node network while she was connected to the obelisk and sensed a group of about 25 orogenes nearby. Schaffa is surprised by this, as he had previously believed the Antarctic Fulcrum was purged. He and the other Guardians are concerned they will soon be discovered at Full Moon.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
Schaffa and Nassun develop their bond over the course of these chapters, though the nature of their relationship and whether it is healthy remain ambiguous. Initially, their bonding involves a lot of transference because they each see someone important that they have lost in the other. Nassun sees a loving father figure to replace Jija—one who accepts her no matter what and can keep her safe. Schaffa sees all the former children he abused and manipulated under his care as a Guardian (Damaya, in particular, since she was always his favorite) and a shot at personal redemption. From the beginning, each projects onto the other the things they want—perhaps need—to see. Complicating matters further is the fact that Nassun has just rejected both of her parents (resolving to refer to them as Essun and Jija instead of Mama and Daddy) and is so desperate for approval and acceptance that “she does not care that Schaffa cannot possibly love her, when he has known her for only a few weeks. She loves him. She needs him. She will do anything for him” (155). This immediate and unquestionable devotion causes Nassun to overlook some red flags about Schaffa. Upon first meeting her, he drains her of “silver” to ease his pain without her consent. He quickly recognizes her abilities and begins to ignore the other children in favor of her (suggesting he does not care about them and was simply looking for an orogene powerful enough to suit his needs). Finally, his interest in her grows deeper when he realizes her connection to Damaya.
However, the relationship does appear to influence them both positively, despite its fraught foundation. Nassun is happier than she has ever been and feels like she has a true home for the first time. This is in large part because “she has the freedom to be fully who and what she is, and she no longer fears that self” (182). In Schaffa, she has found someone who believes, trusts, and supports her—and all of that directly because she is an orogene. This is a stark contrast to how Essun approached orogeny as something to fear and hide. The result is that Nassun realizes how much she enjoys orogeny and rapidly improves, to the point that she learns to detect and channel the silver all by herself—something she would not have done under her mother’s care (though this too is something Schaffa appears interested in).
Schaffa demonstrates personal growth too. When Nassun shares the traumatic experience of having her hand broken by Essun, it appears to spark a lost memory: “[T]here is a strange look on his face. Not the usual wondering, confused look that he sometimes gets. This is something he actually remembers, and his expression is...guilty? Rueful. Sad” (154). This reaction does not suggest someone who is pretending to be sympathetic to manipulate Nassun; he is genuinely reflecting on incomplete but troubling memories. Moreover, his deepening bond with Nassun and the fact she isn’t scared of him motivate him to resist the “contamination” that has grown stronger ever since he made the necessary deal with Father Earth to survive. He vows to be better and acknowledges that she is “more to him than just relief from pain” (180). After the first instance where he drains her without her consent, he refuses to allow it again, suggesting he is changing. Since Parent-Child Relationships and Cycles of Trauma so often hinge on replaying one’s traumatic past, the fact that Schaffa has lost most of his memories provides him with the opportunity to craft a healthier dynamic with Nassun.
The revelation of what Alabaster learned at Corepoint brings the novel’s climate-based critiques into focus. While the novel has always had climate disaster looming in the background, this chapter takes a stance on how and why things have gone wrong. The idea that the Seasons are the direct result of attempting to exploit the Earth’s resources without considering the consequences echoes real-world climate problems, as does the notion that a few powerful people have the capacity to make decisions that will impact the future of everyone on the planet. Thus, the novel is critical of any human relationship with the non-human natural world that positions humanity as above everything else. This is also where Alabaster’s insistence that Father Earth is real and alive fits into the picture: The Earth should not be viewed as an exploitable resource, but rather as a living entity that will react depending on how we treat it. Living equitably and sustainably with the environment means finding balance and equilibrium (a motif that arises with both Nassun and Essun when they are learning to use magic later in the novel). For Alabaster and now Essun, this means first returning the moon to its orbit and then radically reimagining what the world could look like.
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