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Why did Arya not kill Sandor?


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As Sandor was unconscious she grabbed Needle and approached him in order to kill him. Then he opens his eyes and more or less gave her permission by telling her where to strike. Then she froze and denied her attempt. He got angry at this and wanted her to get on with it. As she still did not react, he threw all those things at her in order to make her angry enough to kill him, but his provocations had the opposite effect. Instead of giving him a quick death, she left him wounded and feverish with the prospect of a slow painful death.



Arya said that he did not deserve the gift of mercy. So she left him to suffer for a long time instead of just ending his life and his pain.



That is what she said, but I think there could have been more beneath the surface.



After the fight in the inn, she helped him to treat his wounds and that evening she realized that she had left out his name from her death list, but could not explain why before she remembered herself that she hated him for the death of Mycah.



We see some more instances in which she wavered a bit in her belief that the Hound is such a bad monster. For example when she started to think that he might be bluffing with these threats like cutting out her tongue or beating her up. And she really had seen people doing a lot of bad things on the march to Harrenhal(especially the Tickler at work).



Compare that to the way we actually see her kill. She usually strikes with the intention to kill, she does not draw out the suffering. The only difference I noticed is in the WoW chapter where she copied what the man had done to his victim in order to let him know why she did it, perhaps also along the line "an eye for an eye". If she wanted to punish Sandor for Mycah, a drawn out suffering would not mirror Mycahs death. Why did Arya not simply kill Sandor?



Arya never admitted it, but Sandor had actually acted for her benefit since he had captured her in order to bring her to Robb. Instead of delivering her to the highest bidder which would be the Lannisters, the winners of the war, which could have likely earned him a pardon and a lot of money, he tried to get her to the next relative he can find: first Robb and Catelyn, then Lysa, then the Blackfish.... She also blamed him for preventing her from going into the Twins in order to save her mother, but that saved her life. Could it be that she is somehow subconsciously aware of that?



Could be that she had subconsciously started to doubt her initial judgement of him? That she was no longer so sure that he really deserved death?



And now I have to bring in the words of her father Ned:


"The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."


And what did Sandor do that caused Arya to freeze in her approach with the weapon in hand? He opened his eyes!



So, what do you think? That she wanted him to suffer, or that she just could not kill him anymore at this point?


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Yes, I am pretty sure this had nothing to do with wanting him to die a slow death. She might have used this to justify her actions to herself, but it's clear from her other actions, both regarding Sandor and other people she actually did kill, that she just couldn't bring herself to kill him. She seems to have been torn between still viewing Sandor as a kind of enemy that she blames for his past deeds, which prevented her from trying to save him or at least stay with him and ease his death, and not being convinced enough that he deserved death anymore to do it herself. Of course, this ended in the rather pointless compromise of leaving him to a lingering death, eschewing both the mercy AND the revenge of killing him.



Though since he quite obviously survived, it turned out for the better.


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She didn't think he was going to survive anyways so I don't think wanting him to live is a reason. She says he's dead in Braavos so she thought he died. She had no way of knowing that he would be found and saved.




I don't think in that scenario not killing him is a sign of caring. Sandor is called a dog. IRL if you have a dog and it's suffering if you care for it you want to stop its pain. Even if she couldn't bring herself to kill him she just left him there and never looked back. She didn't call for help. ETA: Although as his captive I will say she owed him nothing so I don't think she was wrong for being cold to him in the end.




I think it's more likely that Sandor would have been killed as a deserter after the Lannisters snatched Arya from him. Going back to the Lannisters wasn't an option for him IMO. I don't think she's aware of the saving the mother thing because she has nightmares in Braavos in which the Hound is a monster who prevents her from getting to her mother. Although he's the one who took her there in the first place. The BWB already had a vision from Thoros not to take her there.


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She thought he was dead on his feet and, even though they had travelled together and bonded in some meaningful ways, he was still one of the people on her death wish-list. She wanted him to suffer before he died rather than experience a quick and clean death.


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She's an economical killer. She only kills when she has to, or when the person really deserves the "gift" of death.

I was more surprised when she killed Daeron, because it seemed so unnecessary. But Daeron was a deserter. The Hound was trying to get her back to her family, and in the end she pitied him in his miserable state.

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She says the names on her list, but not the Hound. Then she calls him Sandor, and wonders why she left him off her list. Immediately after, she answers her own question - she's come to know him.

Sandor moaned, and she rolled onto her side to look at him. She had left his name out too, she realized. Why had she done that? She tried to think of Mycah, but it was hard to remember what he'd looked like. She hadn't known him long.

She thinks he should go back on her list, but she doesn't kill him. She stays with him. She takes care of him some more. And then she spells it out, she doesn't want to kill him. I wouldn't have to = not something she wants to do.

I wouldn't have to kill him. If I just rode off and left him, he'd die all by himself.

She had chance ofter chance to leave and kill him but she didn't, she defended him at the inn and took care of him, and only left when he goaded her into killing him. Then she makes up an excuse, you should have saved my mother, but she knows he saved her (and she also knows he saved Sansa). She's working through feelings of guilt and grief, she's alive and her mother is dead.

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Yes, I am pretty sure this had nothing to do with wanting him to die a slow death. She might have used this to justify her actions to herself, but it's clear from her other actions, both regarding Sandor and other people she actually did kill, that she just couldn't bring herself to kill him. She seems to have been torn between still viewing Sandor as a kind of enemy that she blames for his past deeds, which prevented her from trying to save him or at least stay with him and ease his death, and not being convinced enough that he deserved death anymore to do it herself. Of course, this ended in the rather pointless compromise of leaving him to a lingering death, eschewing both the mercy AND the revenge of killing him.

Though since he quite obviously survived, it turned out for the better.

this is pretty much it. Ironically, the "hound" in him seems to have died and he is working out a "pennance" burrying the dead on the Quiet Isle.

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I think it was both that she couldn't kill him and she was angry that he says that he laughed at Mycah's death and wanted to rape her sister (if someone told me they wanted to rape my sister, I'd probably try to hurt him real bad too). And note this isn't the only time when she couldn't bring herself to kill him. Back at the Hollow Hill, she had a knife and a few seconds in which she could've killed him but upon seeing his burnt wounds she couldn't do it. A part of her pities him I think. She had cleant his wounds after the crossroads fight and tended to him until it was glaringly obvious that he would die soon when she really didn't need to. I mean, she was his hostage and wasn't by far the best type of captor, considering that he didn't care that she had a fever and wasn't the most symphatetic about Arya's state post RW. She really didn't need to help him but she did and in the end she couldn't kill him.


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But she doesn't use the words he used to goad her as her reason for leaving. She sees him sobbing as he says those things, a point is made that she notices that. He's pretty transparent that he's goading her.

As she leaves she says he should have saved her mother, not anything about what he said.

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