Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago (14 page)
Authors: Unknown
SUSAN VAUGHT
IN HIS ESSAY
“
EPIC
Pooh,” Michael Moorcock postulates that J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy barely rises above nursery-room prose that “tells you comforting lies.” Moorcock describes the epic as an anti-romance, laced with the author’s Christian belief system to the point that faith is substituted for artistic rigor. Tolkien’s peasants serve as a “bulwark against Chaos [. . .]. They don’t ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what’s best for us.” James L. Sutter furthers this idea in his November 2011 guest essay at Suvudu entitled “The Gray Zone: Moral Ambiguity in Fantasy,” noting that The Lord of the Rings has a fairy-tale simplicity, drawing on good and evil archetypes so stark that all the characters can easily be sorted into the boring categories of obviously “good” or irrefutably “bad.”
Sutter raises George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as a contrast, proclaiming that Martin demonstrates one antidote to the boring good/evil clarity of Tolkien, which is to “remove the boundaries altogether [. . .]. Few of his characters are unimpeachably good or irredeemably evil.” This description is right in line with those offered by other commentators. Heather Havrilesky, in her 2011
New York Times
review of the HBO adaptation of Martin’s epic, terms the tale “hedonistic and bleak,” and hints that it embodies a nihilistic worldview. Sutter goes even further. He notes that the series has a “lack of moralistic signposts.” Like many readers and critics, he identifies the world of Westeros as a place best described as morally ambiguous.
This perception appears to arise from the fact that characters cannot easily be sorted into fixed categories of “good” or “evil” based on intentions, character traits, actions, alliances, or outcomes. Unlike the archetypal heroes and villains in Tolkien’s work, characters in Westeros are often damaged, flawed, and beset by overwhelming emotions or passions that twist their heroic intent. Outcomes seem to reward bad behavior and corrupt intentions, and to punish good behavior and even the purest of intentions. The linear high-fantasy path of do-good-and-win (after some frightening setbacks)/do-evil-and-fall (after a few seemingly large victories) is not present in Westeros. Characters are often without clear alignments, and even if they manage to align with seemingly good or evil poles, this does little to ensure success, failure, or even survival. Even more importantly, we have no single, omniscient, reliable narrator to count on for guidance in this shadowy landscape. Readers see the action in Westeros exclusively through the fragmented, contradictory perspectives of its inhabitants. Much as in real life, we relate to some of the point-of-view characters and find little in common with others. We love some, we hate some, and through the filters of our own emotional, cognitive, and social biases, we do not always do well judging whether or not they represent good or evil by the standards of the Seven Kingdoms.
And there
are
standards.
To the observations and criticisms citing the lack of clear definitions of good and evil, I say:
What
moral ambiguity?
Westeros is not built upon a shifting foundation of chaos. True, there is no clearly marked, brightly lit path to salvation. Yet characters face a painful retributive justice, born of moral absolutism, that lends reality and depth to the medieval society portrayed in the series.
To grasp the cosmology at play in Westeros, consideration must be given to the way its society defines sin and evil. Since there is no distant, satanic eye atop a tower spawning unthinking mobs of obviously violent minions, evil must have a more mundane manifestation, and that manifestation arises from the fundamental threat to existence in the Seven Kingdoms: interminable winter
—Winter
—and the creatures Winter brings. “Winter Is Coming” becomes a denotative and connotative statement of the society’s core value and needs. In a very literal sense, the words of the Stark motto are a reminder that Winter will come to Westeros, as it always has, and it will bring with it terror and death that transcend typical human experiences. The more subtle shadings of the statement imply that for society to survive, residents of Westeros must keep to older traditions of working together in peace, productivity, and respect, to plan for this devastation. Otherwise, they will all perish when the light vanishes, the snow starts to fall, and the dead things begin to shuffle and stomp across the countryside.
Characters who engage in murder, sadistic cruelty, malignant selfishness or narcissism, dishonorable and dishonest acts, and obsessions with relative frivolities such as political intrigue and playing the game of thrones transgress against not just individuals but society itself. Those who fail to understand that Winter is coming—who fail to recognize that they must put aside lesser concerns and any bad behavior that gets in the way of preserving the kingdom—represent evil in Westeros. They commit sins against the unity necessary to survive the coming darkness, either to such a level that they become irredeemable, or to lesser extents, with failure or refusal to comprehend the seriousness of their wrongdoings. There is no ambiguity in the fate of characters who cannot or will not choose a path of redemption. They suffer, and they die, often in a fashion that approaches ironic justice. Robb Stark, Catelyn Stark, and Joffrey Baratheon serve as examples of characters who face this fate.
In Westeros, as in the real world, there are few if any saints, or even adults, who do not sin at one level of severity or another. Only the very young seem to have claim to complete innocence and impunity. Those who violate the moral and actual laws of the land, but grasp the depth of their indiscretions and attempt to atone—those who seem to truly understand that Winter
is
coming, and everything that the words imply—serve as representatives of good in Westeros. These characters still walk a wicked road of atonement that can be staggering. There is no ambiguity for them, either. They will suffer. They will lose everything and be reduced to nothing, and they will have to find the strength to rebuild their identities, or die along the way and be heartlessly forgotten. Davos Seaworth, Sansa Stark, and Jaime Lannister appear to be struggling through such grueling journeys of redemption.
Robb Stark, the young and newly proclaimed King in the North, does good in Westeros by establishing a measure of peace and unity amongst disparate groups when he gives his word that he will marry a daughter of Lord Walder Frey. He then breaks that promise by marrying his nursemaid, Jeyne Westerling. His reasons for marrying Jeyne are honorable, as he is attempting to protect her reputation after he takes her maidenhead; however, these reasons apply primarily to individual needs, namely Jeyne’s need for this protection and Robb’s need to avoid the guilt related to his sin of lust and how it might affect Jeyne in the future. As a citizen of Westeros, and especially as a man purporting to be a king, Robb fails to recognize the magnitude of his more serious sins: the tarnishing of his honor through his oathbreaking not just to the Freys but to the people of Westeros under his guidance and protection. By giving in to his own base desires and then betraying the Freys to assuage his own conscience, he shatters alliances and creates enmity that impairs cooperation in preparations for Winter’s approach. This increases the likelihood that many of Robb’s subjects—or perhaps most of them—will not survive. This sin is perhaps magnified by the fact that Robb is a Stark, and he has been hearing and saying the Stark motto his entire life.
Robb shows some level of recognition of his wrongs and has a plan to make amends to the Freys; however, he does not understand the level or depth of their offense at his betrayal. He makes a simplistic attempt to appease their anger by securing a marriage between one of Frey’s daughters and Edmure Tully, but he ends up a guest at the Freys’ Red Wedding. Robb and his men are butchered, and Robb’s corpse is desecrated with the head of Grey Wind, his direwolf, sewn onto its shoulders. The symbolism of this final insult seems to place Robb on par with animals who cannot control lust even when much more is at stake.
Catelyn Stark has many excellent qualities as a human being, including a loving nature, fierce loyalty, and keen intelligence. She also has difficulty forgiving, demonstrates a tendency to seek vengeance, and acts on impulse. When in an emotional state, Catelyn lashes out, without significant attention to the long-range consequences of her tantrums. She cannot see past her own need for retribution, and never truly acknowledges her own faults, to herself or to anyone else.
Catelyn’s list of wrongs begins to mount early in
A Game of Thrones
. She never finds it in her otherwise large heart to show Jon Snow, the bastard child in her care, any form of acceptance and cannot seem to forgive her husband for bringing the boy to live at Winterfell. Through her coldness to Jon, she exacts revenge on him for being in her life and makes an innocent child pay for her unhappiness. Her penchant toward both vengeance and rash, emotionally-driven action becomes more obvious when she erroneously arrests and imprisons Tyrion Lannister to avenge the assault on her son Brandon. Her capture of a Lannister endangers her husband, and ultimately her whole family—and the event becomes a catalyst for war. Despite living with and loving some of the Starks for most of her adult life, Catelyn dishonors their purpose as Wardens of the North. She pursues her own emotional satisfaction and commits an ultimate sin in Westeros by further dividing society and greatly damaging the chances that inhabitants can make themselves ready for Winter.
Catelyn’s penalties for her impulsive actions and her failure to understand her own faults are steep: the execution of her husband and the death (real and supposed) of her children. These losses do not spark understanding of how her rash choices led to disaster, and Catelyn does not embark on a path to redemption. In fact, prior to her death, she commits an emotion-laced atrocity, using Walder Frey’s intellectually impaired grandson Jinglebell as a hostage during the Red Wedding, then cutting his throat as Robb Stark dies. With this act, she further tarnishes her character and her soul. When she rises from death after three days in the river, she becomes Lady Stoneheart. This vengeance-obsessed incarnation makes physically manifest the coldness she showed Jon and the ugliness she demonstrated in murdering Jinglebell. Lady Stoneheart is hard and devoid of emotion, obsessed only with retribution against her perceived enemies. In death, Catelyn becomes little more than a scarred and merciless reflection of her former self. There is little ambiguity in the fate she suffers, as her body and mind are given wholly over to their darker nature.
If ever a literary character deserved penalty instead of redemption, Joffrey Baratheon would be the boy. Spoiled and indulged by emotionally absent parents, he enjoys bullying and torturing any creature he perceives to be beneath him in status—which encompasses most living things in Westeros. It would be faster to list Joffrey’s positives than his negatives, since he has so few of them. In fact, only the Lannister good looks and a dash of superficial charm come to mind. He is narcissistic and devoid of the capacity to love. Not surprisingly, he has no inkling of his own weaknesses, and he does nothing but sow division amongst the people he swears to protect as first their crown prince, and then their king.
