The Obelisk Gate

Nassun is Essun’s surviving child and the secondary protagonist of the novel. She is an absent presence throughout the first novel in the series: She does not appear in The Fifth Season, but the idea of her still being alive and stuck with Jija propels Essun forward through every moment of the text. This invites some assumptions (like the idea that Nassun wants to be saved from her infanticidal father) that The Obelisk Gate undercuts once Nassun is given a voice. She is a 10-year-old orogene child at the start of the novel, but her mother has already subjected her to years of abusive lessons on how to control her potentially devastating powers. This makes her resentful of Essun and brings her closer to Jija, who usually played the role of “good cop.” Thus, despite finding her father standing over her brother’s dead body, she still wants to leave with him because she sees it as an opportunity to get away from her mother.

Nassun subverts the typical narrative structure associated with adolescent characters, which relies on a loss of innocence to initiate a coming-of-age arc. Because she was born an orogene, she was never allowed a period of innocence or naivete; her mother and society at large ensured as much. She therefore quickly adapts to life on the road with Jija, who is constantly on a knife’s edge and ready to violently lash out. She learns to understand the way he thinks and to recognize his weaknesses so that she can manipulate him to get what she wants and needs.

All of this changes when Nassun meets Schaffa, who immediately recognizes her power and potential and takes her under his wing, and in whom she finds a replacement father figure. With Schaffa at Found Moon, she thrives because she finally feels loved, accepted, and able to be who she is. It is also here, however, that Jemisin explores the issues that can arise from having one’s childhood infringed upon by The Devastating Effects of Systemic Oppression, especially as they intersect with Parent-Child Relationships and Cycles of Trauma. Despite her resilience, resourcefulness, adaptability, and power, Nassun is susceptible to manipulation that appeals to her need for love and acceptance. This is why she so readily attaches to Schaffa (who may or may not be intentionally manipulating her, but appears to be using her either way) and later to Steel (who is definitely manipulating her) despite red flags that even she seems to recognize.

Schaffa is a stoic, ostensibly pleasant former Guardian capable of intense feats of violence. He appears in The Fifth Season, but it is not until this novel that Jemisin presents his own perspective, which recontextualizes his character. Through a series of dream flashbacks and dialogue expositions, pieces of Schaffa’s past are filled in: He was taken and violently turned into a Guardian at a young age; he has committed countless atrocities, though under whose command and for what purpose remain unclear; and he formed a particularly close bond with Damaya that other Guardians frowned upon. At the beginning of The Obelisk Gate, Schaffa is in mortal peril (which is rare for a Guardian), and he makes a deal with Father Earth—something he knows will lead to a fate worse than death but will ensure his survival. This process “contaminates” him, causing him to hear a very commanding voice in his head, and wipes nearly all of his memories, though his most basic instincts and his name remain.

The rest of the novel sees Schaffa, and by extension the reader, wrestle with the idea of his redemption. He knows he wants to be different and make up for past mistakes, but beyond this, his motives, what his idea of redemption looks like, and whether he is fully in control of his actions remain ambiguous. He starts his own community where he takes in orogenes but does not appear to use the same abusive techniques he used at the Fulcrum. It is here that he encounters Nassun, in whom he sees his real shot at redemption, as she resembles her mother in appearance and ability. This leads to more ambiguity. Schaffa appears to genuinely care about Nassun, potentially even love her, and she is happier than she has ever been while with him. He also endures great pain in resisting the urge to drain her of “silver” (which makes him temporarily feel much better). However, the nature of how Schaffa talks to her—how he says things, and what he doesn’t say—combined with the fact that he clearly sees her as useful casts doubt on the purity of their relationship. Through Schaffa, Jemisin explores the boundaries of identity, accountability, and redemption for someone who has been both the victim and perpetrator of great suffering.

Ykka is a “feral” orogene and headwoman of Castrima. She is a capable, considerate leader who invites and listens to advice from others but is not afraid to make tough decisions when she must (such as killing comm members whose injuries are too significant for them to be rehabilitated back to productivity). Managing a comm of openly mixed stills and orogenes is both dangerous and exhausting, but Ykka sees no value in survival if it means losing her comm and everything that gives her life meaning. In this way and others, Ykka serves as a foil for Essun. Their life experiences, and by extension their beliefs, values, and priorities, are fundamentally different. Unlike Essun, who has spent most of a lifetime hiding what she is, learning not to trust stills, moving from place to place, and putting up walls so that she isn’t hurt again, Ykka has lived her entire life with one comm that not only knows she’s an orogene but embraced her enough to make her headwoman. Likewise, where Essun learned technical mastery of orogeny in a Fulcrum-approved way, Ykka is self-taught and approaches orogeny in a much more practical manner. The result is that Ykka serves as a catalyst for Essun to confront a lot of the biases and assumptions that are preventing her from controlling magic the way she needs to.

Jija is Essun’s husband and Nassun’s and Uche’s father. He is a stoneknapper, which makes him useful to most comms during a Season. As a child, he witnessed a friend being iced by an orogene, causing his intense hatred toward them for the rest of his life. He provides one of the inciting incidents for the series when he murders Uche upon discovering that he is in fact an orogene. He then leaves Tirimo with Nassun and heads south, staying ahead of the oncoming Season while heading toward a place he has heard can “cure” orogenes.

While Nassun’s early memories of Jija depict him as being an ideal father—he always had time for her, made her feel loved, and never disciplined her much—this image quickly fades away. He cannot overcome his hatred of orogenes, even if it means being unable to love his daughter. He also lives in various states of denial, including about his family, whose nature he suspected but said nothing about until it boiled over into infanticide. Later, his denial evolves into a form of doublethink; he has brought Nassun to Found Moon to “cure” her but simultaneously refuses to acknowledge that she is an orogene or that he killed Uche. Unlike the characters whose trauma provides context and some vindication for the way they behave, Jija does not earn the novel’s sympathy. In the end, he is rejected and murdered by Nassun, suggesting that his unwillingness to reflect and change is the biggest parental failure in the text.

Alabaster is the most powerful Fulcrum-trained orogene in the Stillness and the former partner of Essun (their relationship was semi-romantic and the two had a child whom Essun was forced to kill to avoid him being enslaved). Alabaster has always challenged the status quo, jaded by the inequity and atrocities he’s seen across the Stillness, and is responsible for the Rifting—an act of such intense orogeny (later revealed to be obelisk-amplified magic) that he has begun turning to stone.

Alabaster plays a more peripheral role in The Obelisk Gate than in The Fifth Season, as his affliction limits him to an infirmary bed. He reveals what happened to him 10 years prior when a stone eater pulled him into the earth: He was taken to the other side of the planet to the remains of an ancient deadciv city that is inhabited by stone eaters. While there, he learned the truth about Father Earth and what started the Seasons. He now spends his few waking hours each day teaching Essun to use magic and question her assumptions, until one day he is forced to use an obelisk to stop Essun from turning everyone in Castrima to stone. This act completes his transformation to stone. Alabaster’s primary function in this text is as a vehicle for exposition about the world’s history; he also foreshadows Essun’s inevitable fate.