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BRAN’S GROWING POWERS AFTER his FINAL POV in ADwD


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On 2/3/2016 at 8:04 PM, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Thank you for your opinion on this, as mentioned you've turned my head on who/what is potentially present in the wind at different times, and the various examples of where 'howling' is used showing animosity is very interesting.  This has, as Longie has mentioned up thread opened my eyes as to the possibilities of a who/what/where presence in the wind.  Especially the 'howling wind'.  However, we have found a few mentions of the wind 'howling' then a wolf 'howling' a few paragraphs later, perhaps pointing to that animalistic personification of the wind?  It seems rather blatant in the AGOT prologue?  This is followed by the wind 'whispering through trees' and making cloaks become 'half alive' blah blah......  Even when you point out the possible animosity on the lake with the howling wind, I still look at the 'knife' and 'good as blind' reference and think it kind of sounds Bloodraveny.  :dunno:   Anyway, you make some really insightful and valid points as usual, some stuff to chew on, thanks.  :)

On personification in literature, of course authors/writers have poetic licence to play with such techniques, it brings the scene to life and enables wonderfully descriptive writing.  And there is rarely a need to plant a presence into such text. [The flames 'danced' etc]  It's hard to pin down.  But some of the things I've been spotting in the chapters I've posted about I think point to a [possibly] clever take on the personification of the trees.  We know the WW show human traits, they have eyes and a mouth, and the opportunity to be described as solemn, melancholy etc.......  Plus we know there is definitely a presence there.  But the soldiers and sentinels often seem 'alive' as well, that's where I see the subtle mentions of the wind come into play.   

Nice point about the trees protecting them, they are of course personified in the 'text' when they 'stand in battle formation garbed in white.' [again]  No presence is insinuated here, but they are personified nonetheless, trees can't stand, or garb themselves in white etc.....  But it was mentioned that 'the wind was in the trees' when Bran slipped into Summer, and I think that enables/helps/facilitates the trees to come to life textually, with a subtle possibility that it's the wind making this happen.  

Every time I have come across the trees being personified, [so far] it follows a subtle mention of the wind being in the trees.  The rustling of leaves we know from various text around the WW's is a sign of the old gods, talking, listening etc...  so I thought this interesting, I have mentioned this a little bit in posts up thread.  In this chapter he straight out tells us that when Bran slips inside Summer he hears the wind in the trees, they then go on to 'stand' in battle formation as we discussed.  He is often more deft than that, sometimes he has the branches 'croak and groan' with a subtle mention of wind somewhere [insinuating a 'rustle' of leaves]  in Tijgy's post the trees then turned into a sea etc......   In the AGOT prologue he has I think a breeze that makes the trees branches become 'wooden fingers scratching at each other'  In Bran's AGOT coma dream the leaves rustle on the WW before it turns and stares at him etc........  There are more.......

So basically, I feel the wind has a role to play in the trees 'coming alive' or having that descriptive text around it.  And in this case seemingly protecting them,  the soldiers and sentinels come to life in the wind or when the leaves potentially 'rustle'. [various descriptions]  As I mentioned, in the few chapters I've looked at, I feel this this is a reasonable line of enquiry.  :)   However, the 'howling wind' still seems separate from this scene and definitely something to think about. 

Thanks bemused, I will continue to post away when time allows.  Please feel free to offer up alternative opinions on whatever I muse.  I have my own ideas and take on things like everyone else, but welcome different angles.  :D                

 

On 2/10/2016 at 2:12 PM, Tijgy said:

Analysis of Bran I, ACOK

Introduction

I can actually be very short and say this chapter does not have any real signs of personified wind, soldier trees or some other things we are looking for.  (There is however a lot of howling wolves and a howling boy.). So I actually looked to this chapter in a different way. (And I still managed to write a text more than 5000 words :rolleyes:)

Personally, I think this chapter is still very important in our discussion on Bran’s powers and those of the old gods. In the other chapters we already discussed in this thread, you can say the sign of the divine inspiration is more on the background. Their powers and their interferences is mostly hidden but shown to us by those typical words of wind, howling wolves, … In this chapter some of the elements and signs of the old gods are not longer in the background but some of them are actually the main element of this chapter. Some of them are the main question which our POV character deals with in this chapter and maybe even in his storyline.

Just like my last analysis, the first part of this analysis consists of an objective collection of possible references to the old gods, (dire)wolves, Bran powers, … by just looking at the text. My own personal input consists of choosing the particular quotes (and I tried to this as complete as possible - but nobody is perfect)* and an occasional remark. The second part is a more speculative look on what is written in this chapter.

* It might always be interesting that you also rereads the chapters and might warn us all if I did miss something.

To start, I think I first need to give a little synopsis of the chapter: Bran sit at his window and thinks. (note: this is really what happens in this chapter except from a few talks with Luwin and with Osha)

Some author notes:

  • During my text I sometimes underline some words. This only means that in the books the words are cursive, because they are parts of the story that are the thoughts of the POV Character.
  • I also refer here just to the "Old Gods". This can of course how being interpreted according to your opinion: Bloodraven, seers of the Children, ...)
  • In some of my notes I am actually just laughing with maester Luwin. Just ignore them (except I am really right about that new prescription).

And enjoy (hopefully) 

:DCollection of possible references to the old gods, Bloodraven, direwolves and Bran's powers

This chapter starts with Bran looking all over Winterfell from his window seat.

He could not walk, nor climb nor hunt nor fight with a wooden sword as once, but he could still look. (…) “and he loved to listen to the direwolves sing to the stars.”

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them … not quite, not truly, but almost … as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. “Though it is stronger in some than in others,” she warned.

Summer’s howls were long and sad, full of grief and longing. Shaggydog’s were more savage. Their voices echoed through the yard and halls until the castle rang and it seemed as though some great pack of direwolves haunted Winterfell, instead of only two … two where there had once been six.”

Bran wonders if they also miss their family/siblings and he thinks of the answers some people of Winterfell (Rodrik, Farlen, Gage, Luwin, Osha) gave him regarding the question  “why they howled. According to Osha: “Your wolves have more wit than your maester. They know truths the grey men have forgotten. He also asked some people what the meaning was of the comet.  

“And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses, hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless nights. Only Bran did not mind. Ser Rodrik had confined the wolves to the godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the stones of Winterfell played queer tricks with sound, and sometimes it sounded as if they were in the yard right below Bran's window. Other times he would have sworn they were up on the curtain walls, loping round like sentries (note: the wolves are here the sentries). He wished that he could see them.”

He thinks further about the comet, how he used to climb the buildings of Winterfell and how he fell and he remembers the other times that the direwolves howled:

Summer had howled the day Bran had fallen, and for long after as he lay broken in his bed; Robb had told him so before he went away to war. Summer had mourned for him, and Shaggydog and Grey Wind had joined in his grief. And the night the bloody raven had brought word of their father's death, the wolves had known that too (note: Bran cursed here in his own mind “bloody raven” ^_^). Bran had been in the maester's turret with Rickon talking of the children of the forest when Summer and Shaggydog had drowned out Luwin with their howls.” (note: Summer and Shaggydog started to howl before Bran and Rickon even saw the raven.)

Who are they mourning now? Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be his brother Robb? Had his bastard brother Jon Snow fallen from the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters? Or was this something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?

Bran thinks “If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the songand he thinks of his wolf dreams where he stands on the summit of mountains (note: a reference to Jon’s chapter/Jon’s wolf dream in ACOK?). Bran himself starts to howl to the comet. “It sounded stupid, high and hollow and quavering, a little boy's howl, not a wolf's. Yet Summer gave answer, his deep voice drowning out Bran's thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran haroooed again. They howled together, last of their pack.

Hayhead, the guard, thinks this is weird behaviour, is growing concerned and get the big guns, Maester Luwin. Luwin wants that Bran goes to bed because it is time to sleep and they have a conversation about which creatures dream:

Bran: “When I sleep I turn into a wolf. Do wolves dream?”

Luwin: “All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”

Bran: “Do dead men dream?”

Luwin: “Some say yes, some no. The dead themselves are silent on the matter.”

Bran: “Do trees dream?

Luwin: “Trees? No…

Bran: “They do. They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste blood.

Luwin gets understandably worried and says he wished Bran would spent more time with the other children. (note: He was probably first happy with the arrival and the staying of the Little Reeds … until he realized Jojen was also someone who talked about dreams and such. And there went his happiness … poor maester Luwin). Bran says he hates the Freys (note: smart kid), the direwolves were locked up because of them in the godswood and “I'd sooner be a wolf. Then I could live in the wood and sleep when I wanted, and I could find Arya and Sansa. I'd smell where they were and go save them, and when Robb went to battle I'd fight beside him like Grey Wind. I'd tear out the Kingslayer's throat with my teeth, rip, and then the war would be over and everyone would come back to Winterfell. If I was a wolf . . ." And Luwin gets even more desperate when he sees Bran howling.

Bran thinks about the Little Freys and he thinks how and why Shaggy attacked Little Walder (note: smart wolf; good wolf; … okay LW is still a child so I should probably say “Bad Wolf”!): “until Little Walder had smacked Rickon with the stick, square across his belly. Before Bran could blink, the black wolf was flying over the plank, there was blood in the water, the Walders were shrieking red murder, Rickon sat in the mud laughing, and Hodor came lumbering in shouting "Hodor! Hodor! Hodor!”. And he tells further Rickon showed the crypts to the Little Freys and how he reacted: “Rickon even showed them the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father's tomb. "You had no right!" Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. "That was our place, a Stark place!" But Rickon never cared.”

Luwin and Osha entered Bran’s room together. Luwin gives Bran a sleeping draught which would give him a “sweet, dreamless sleep(note: Luwin definitely needs a new recipe for his sleeping draught) and he thinks it would make Bran feel better (note: Sorry Luwin, it did not work.)

Afterwards Luwin leaves and before Bran falls asleep, Osha and Bran have this little talk:

Osha lingered behind. Is it the wolf dreams again?”

Bran nodded

“You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”

“The gods?” he murmered, drowsy already.

Bran doesn’t have a sweet, dreamless sleep (note: new prescription is needed, Luwin.) but he has a new wolf dream as Summer.

In this dream Summer thinks about his brother: “He could smell his brother too, a familiar scent, strong and earthy, his scent as black as his coat. His brother was loping around the walls, full of fury. Round and round he went, night after day after night, tireless, searching . . . for prey, for a way out, for his mother, his littermates, his pack . . . searching, searching, and never finding. (…) He and his brother are both concerned how they need to find a way out. In the end he thinks: The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him suddenly. Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die.”

Interpretation of Chapter

Brandon Stark - The old god to be

You could say Bran doesn’t really do much during this chapter. He just sits in his window: “He could not walk, nor climb nor hunt nor fight with a wooden sword as once, but he could still look.” He does only the following things from his window seat and from his bed: he looks all over Winterfell, he remembers, he seeks out the truth, he howls, he talks with Luwin and he dreams.

But actually the fact he only does those things in this chapter is very interesting. Those actions are not the actions of a child, of a soldier or of a prince; they are the actions of a skinchanger, of a greenseer and the actions of the old gods.

First, he actually say few times that he wants to be a wolf or that he has wolf blood: “the Starks had wolf blood”; “If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song.”I'd sooner be a wolf.”; “If I was a wolf . . ." 

At one moment Bran actually starts to howl several times as a wolf and his four-footed friends responds to his howling: “It sounded stupid, high and hollow and quavering, a little boy's howl, not a wolf's. Yet Summer gave answer, his deep voice drowning out Bran's thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran haroooed again. They howled together, last of their pack.”

When he falls in sleep, even after drinking a sleeping draught for a sweet, dreamless sleep (note: I admit I am really laughing with poor Luwin now ^_^), he has a wolf dream.

This howling, his will to be a wolf and the wolf dreams refer of course to his first power given by the old gods: the power (or the curse?) to be a warg.

Second, Bran starts the chapter with looking all over Winterfell (“he could still look”) (note: GRRM put an emphasis on the word “look” so it is probably very important Bran does this action). It is very interesting to take in account from where Bran does this: Bran sits in his window in his tower room in Winterfell, a place which is compared in the books as a tree. Just like the greenseers, Bran is actually here looking through the eyes (window) of a tree (Winterfell) over the world outside.*

* I think some other blog writers already made that interpretation (like I think PoorQuentyn on tumblr … I might be wrong). I am probably inspired and influenced by those ideas. If you want to be credited for it, just let me know in a PM with your own original theory, analysis, ...

A large part of the chapter is Bran remembering things that have been happening the last few days: talks about the wolves and the comet, the Little Freys, … A very important aspect of greenseers and the old gods is remembering things that have been long forgotten ("What do the trees remember?""The secrets of the old gods," said Jojen Reed. Food and fire and rest had helped restore him after the ordeals of their journey, but he seemed sadder now, sullen, with a weary, haunted look about the eyes. "Truths the First Men knew, forgotten now in Winterfell … but not in the wet wild.", ADWDBran III). 

Bran doesn’t dream only of wolves, but he also dreams of trees (“They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me”). However I think this is not as much something that Bran is actively doing. I think we must more situate this as something which is being done to him by the old gods. They are using his dreams to call him (infra)

And the last thing Bran does during this chapter is trying to find the truth about some questions, like why do the wolves howl? what is the meaning of the comet? which creatures dream? what do my dreams mean? Several times it is told that it is impossible to lie for the trees/the olds gods ("see the truth that lies beneath the world" (ASOS, Bran I); "My lord father believed no man could tell a lie in front of a heart tree. The old gods know when men are lying (ACOK, Jon II). The old gods know the truth. And Bran is trying to know the truth to by asking several people the meaning of things.

The looking through the eyes of a tree, remembering and knowing the truth does refer of course to his second power given by the old gods: the power of being a greenseer.

If you would ignore for a moment the dreams, the only things Bran does this chapter are the actions of the greenseers and the old gods without using their divine powers. He is a greenseer because of his actions and not because the divine means he uses: looking, remembering and (trying to) know(ing) the truth.

 

And this is actual the main difference with the other chapters we already discussed. Bran, as a greenseer/old god, is here the main character and (mostly) not the character which needs to be guided by the old gods. In this chapter we see the story through the eyes of the “old god” himself and not through the character which is guided by the old gods. And this has as consequence the actions of the old gods are not longer on the background but are in the forefront. We do not need to speculate: “are the old gods looking through Raven’s eyes” because we actually read that the “old god” is looking over Winterfell. The howling wolves are not longer a sound in the background but are actually one of the main questions in this chapters. We do not need to wonder do the dreams come from the old gods, it is directly told to Bran and to us by Osha.

To conclude, while Bran might not have the divine powers yet of the old gods, in this chapter he actually already performs their actions. He is here an old god/greenseer. 

Why do wolves howl?

During our research howling wolves are several times used to refer to a possible presence or interference of the old gods. In this chapter it is constantly repeated that the direwolves are howling and even Bran starts to do this.

But in this chapter the howling is not meant as a little indicator to the fact the old gods are watching, influencing things, … You can actually say the howling is one of the main subjects in this chapter. In this whole chapter Bran starts to search what is the meaning of this howling. He asked several people “why they howled”. He is starting to search the truth behind this howling as a true “old god”.

And he tries to do this by asking this question to several people (Rodrik, Farlen, Gage, Luwin, Oa). But I think the right answer is the answer Bran finds himself: it is either the fact they miss their family or the wolves are expressing the grief felt by the
(two-footed) brothers (note: and by them I mean Bran and Rickon of course).

Bran does reminds us of some interesting things:

-       “Summer’s howls were long and sad, full of grief and longing. Shaggydog’s were more savage”: I think here you can say that the wolves express their grief in the same way as their two-footed companions or the wolves are being used as an outled of the boys who are repressing their grief – their grief can be freely outted by those wolves

-       And the night the bloody raven had brought word of their father's death, the wolves had known that too.” Summer started to howl before even someone saw the raven. How did Summer know before the raven’s arrival the raven would bring such news? Did the old gods spoke to Summer then?

-       “Summer had mourned for him, and Shaggydog and Grey Wind had joined in his grief”. The interesting thing is actually that at that thing the howling of the wolves actually made Bran stronger. At that moment they were howling not (only) because of grief but als to strenghten him?

In the end Bran thinks that they are mourning something. He just doesn’t know what or whom (Who are they mourning now?). (note: is there actually at that moment someone or something else the wolves could be mourning for than that Ned’s death?) But he still wonders if he is wrong about this: “Or was this something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?”

What does his dreams mean?

Next to the big question of the howling wolves, there are two other truths Bran tries to find: the meaning of the comet* and the meaning of his dreams.

* The meaning of the comet is a question raised in many POVs. I am not really sure the answer to this question is of any importance to this thread except for the fact it just might mean the return of magic to the world. I do believe this should be discussed in its own analysis in its own thread where all the answers in the different POVs must be considered. And to be honest, I am not personally interested in it. So I will not say anything more about this subjes

This question is raised in two conversations Bran has in this chapter, one with Luwin and one with Osha (IIRC this question keeps returning in a lot chapters of Bran’s storyline).

The conversation with Luwin starts with Bran asking the question which creatures dream: wolves, men, dead men and trees. Is this list of dreaming creatures a list of possible creatures which can be influenced by skinchangers or greenseers, a list of possible creatures through which eyes a greenseer can see?

Bran saw through the eyes of wolves (Summer), the eyes of men (Hodor) and the eyes of trees (weirwood tree of Winterfell). And you have also Coldhands (dead man) who is used in some way by the 3EC. But this list might also of course have other meanings or maybe not even have a meaning after all?

According to Osha the dreams are a way of communication of the old gods (“You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”.

And what happens in those dreams?  A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me.” Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die”.

In this chapter it is literally said that the old gods are calling to Bran that he must come to them and that he must go outside in the true world or else he might die. The old gods are using dreams to talk to Bran just like they used several means to influence Tyrion, Theon and Jon. But the big difference is that it is clear to Bran that it are the trees who are talking to him and, thanks to Osha, he actually can trace it back to the old gods. In the chapters of Tyrion, Jon and Theon the possible divine inspiration is actually hidden and is a little revealed by the author. In this Bran chapter it is just literally said the old gods might talk to him in his dreams.

The old tongue, the song of wolves and forgotten truths

In this thread earlier bemused started to muse over the understanding of the old tongue by greenseers and Coldhands, … and especially in relation to the ravens.

I do think Cold Hands understands the ravens (part of what makes me think "they" did kill him very long ago, because the ravens were initially taught in the old tongue., and the older he is , the more likely he is to understand it.) ... Here's something interesting to muse on.. if BR or Bran are on the "weirnet" do they understand the old tongue because of sharing the awareness / memories of other greenseers?.. and if so, how might that affect the abilty of more birds having more words in the common tongue , with BR and Bran both on the case ? (I mean, it's easier to teach someone your language, if you understand theirs.. and how much easier, if you had mind to mind communication?)” - Bemused

“As for the ravens having the speech of the cotf and later the speech of Westeros, well, if the greenseers awareness is still faint in the ravens, and perhaps some more than others, it might just well be they can talk to afew who can understand them, like BR and CH.” @Longrider

The old tongue and the new. That 'is' something interesting to muse on.  I like your take that CH may understand the old tongue due to his age etc....  As for the whole translation thing for Bran and BR, that is a mind blower.  I have no clue really, but my first thought was to agree with your idea that sharing their awareness/memories would facilitate any understanding.  That would solve any translation issues which would be a massive problem otherwise.  At the very least, a cool little something to look out for/think about, maybe we'll see a raven whisper in a giants ear?  Probably not.  Anyway thanks again for your ideas” (@Wizz-The Smith).

In this chapter Bran actually refers to a forgotten language:

They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them … not quite, not truly, but almost … as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten.”

He says “the direwolves sing to the stars” and calls it a song of direwolves. He thinks further “If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song”.

In this chapter you have the forgotten song of the direwolves (howling), you have later the ravens who talk in a forgotten language to Coldhands (quorks and squacks; the True tongue?) and then we encounter the singers who also sing in old tongue, a language forgotten by men.

So what is the meaning of those songs? Can wolves also speak the True Tongue, did men and the singers used to understand the meaning of the howling of wolves, does it just refer to fact the Starks do not remember any longer their ability to warg?

The CotF are actually called "those who sing the song of earth". Maybe the wolves are singing the same song?  

To be honest, I am not really sure the answer to that exact question really matters. I think the parallel between the songs of the direwolves and the song of the CotF are more important, the parallel between the fact the wolves “know truths the grey men have forgotten” and the singers who also remember truths menkind have forgotten, and the parallel between that “if I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song” and that if he is truly a greenseer, he might also uncover those forgotten truths.*

* IIRC This parallel was already earlier discussed in the Bran reread.

In this chapter it is really forshadowed Bran might be the one who will uncover truths by understanding the songs written in a forgotten language (the song of the earth?) or he will at least uncover some forgotten and hidden truths.

Stark, wolf blood, direwolves and crypts

In this chapter there are some references to the special bond the Starks have to wolves and to Winterfell.

The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. “Though it is stronger in some than in others,” she warned.

And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses, hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless nights. Only Bran did not mind.

It looks like the howling really enerves and scares people. I think we already see this happen with Cat, Jeyne is also afraid of Grey Wind, … I think they (not-Starks) are actually the ones with the normal reaction. Bran (and other Starks) are special: he is not afraid and doesn’t mind the howling because he is a Stark who has wolf blood.

We see that howling wolves are sometimes related to the old gods (as earlier seen in this thread however @bemused warned us rightly that we have to be carefull when we associate everything regarding howling wolves to the old gods). But IMO it cannot be denied there is no link between them. However it might maybe be too much speculation to say the fact Bran doesn’t mind the howling means Bran has a special connection to the old gods and doesn’t need to fear them (the speculation rests here more on the “means” than anything else).

In this chapter Bran remembers Rickon showed the crypts to the Little Freys. Bran was not really happy about that and “You had no right!" Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. "That was our place, a Stark place!" But Rickon never cared.”

This reaction reminds me of how several people felt around the crypts, the godswood and Winterfell. Tyrion remembers the godswood of Winterfell and thinks that always would belong to the Starks and the old gods. Jon feels like he made not welcome in the crypts by the old dead Starks, … Bran actually is here the one on the opposite side. He is not an outsider who doesn’t feel welcome thanks to the anger of the old Starks of the old gods; he is in the fact the one who doesn’t welcome the outsider. He takes here again the place of the old gods (and the old Starks).

Some additional remarks

Shaggy

Shaggy bit the Freys when they hurt Rickon (until Little Walder had smacked Rickon with the stick, square across his belly. Before Bran could blink, the black wolf was flying over the plank, there was blood in the water, the Walders were shrieking red murder, Rickon sat in the mud laughing). Does Shaggy just because he saw them hurt Rickon or did he do it because it was something Rickon wanted to do those little urchins (sorry, I really don’t like them)? It think the first because Rickon likes them afterwards. Or maybe Rickon is a sort of Umber: haha, you survived the bite of my wolf. Let be friends … I really cannot get in the mind of a four year old.

The sound of the howling

“Their voices echoed through the yard and halls until the castle rang  and it seemed as though some great pack of direwolves haunted Winterfell, instead of only two … two where there had once been six.”

Ser Rodrik had confined the wolves to the godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the stones of Winterfell played queer tricks with sound, and sometimes it sounded as if they were in the yard right below Bran's window. Other times he would have sworn they were up on the curtain walls, loping round like sentries. He wished that he could see them.”

“when Summer and Shaggydog had drowned out Luwin with their howls.”

It sounded stupid, high and hollow and quavering, a little boy's howl, not a wolf's. Yet Summer gave answer, his deep voice drowning out Bran's thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran haroooed again. They howled together, last of their pack.

Bran described that Winterfell played queer tricks with sound. The wolves makes it sound like they are entire pack, like they are in places where they cannot be, … I do wonder if they were really able to hear Bran howling or did they hear him thank to some other more magical means?

Wolf dreams on the summit of the mountain

Bran says in his wolf dreams he is on the summits of the mountains. Is this also not the place from where Jon looks through Ghost eyes to the Wildling camp?

Sentries again

The wolves are described as sentries: “Other times he would have sworn they were up on the curtain walls, loping round like sentries”

Conclusion

In this chapter there was no mentioning of wind, trees, … However the howling of wolves was an important theme of this chapter. The direwolves were howling, Bran was howling, …

Except for the fact the old gods were calling Bran in his dreams and maybe some influences through the wolves, the old gods were not really present in their form of divine inspiration.

The mantle of the “old gods” was actually carried in this chapter by the POV. In several instances when it should be the old gods that should act it was Bran who acted. It was Bran who looked through the eyes of the tree, it was Bran who remembered, it was Bran who searched for the truth, it was Bran who didn’t want to welcome outsiders in the crypts, … You could say Bran was the most important “old god” in this chapter

 

ABOVE:  i brought the above forward because these posts are really meaty and I did not get time to read or react to them,

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23 minutes ago, evita mgfs said:

ABOVE:  i brought the above forward because these posts are really meaty and I did not get time to read or react to them,

Awesome, you beat me too it!  A great host to a great thread.  Tijgy has obviously put a lot of work into all her posts and there is loads of really cool stuff in there.  I enjoyed our chats together.  And in a slower time for the thread Tijgy and Longie were key to helping the thread ticking over.  Great work girls!  :wub:   

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2 hours ago, evita mgfs said:

I am posting a few threads I started that I have mentioned, and some of you may enjoy reading what other scholars have added to my observations and analyses.

 

Motifs and Meaning in Martin’s “Mercy” TWoW

 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/109264-spoilers-motifs-meaning-in-martins-mercy/

 

Arya and the Water Motif in Braavos

 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/76013-arya-no-one-and-the-water-motif-in-braavos/page-4

 

The Blood Motif in ASoIaF/Symbolism/Analysis/Patterns

 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/94439-the-blood-motif-in-asoiafsymbolismanalysispatterns/page-2

 

Thank you!! 

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17 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Hi Meera!  I should thank you as well.  You were another who gave me some encouragement with my posts.  I really did appreciate it.   :wub:

I'm very busy right now and I don't have time to read the essays you and the other members of this thread have posted during the last week, but as soon as I have time I'll read them.

Oh please, your welcome, butyour posts were amazing as it is this thread ;) 

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50 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

Thank you!! 

THANKS TO MEERA OF TARTH,:wub: TIJGY,:wub: LONGRIDER, :wub:AND WIZZ THE MAGNIFICENT :wub:FOR ALL THEIR HARD WORK KEEPING THE THREAD GOING!:grouphug:

NEXT, THE FATTEST LEECH opened a new BRAN AND THE WOOD DANCER thread.  I missed it and maybe others did as well.  So here is a shout out for all of the Bran lovers here to check it out:

 

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22 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

I'm very busy right now and I don't have time to read the essays you and the other members of this thread have posted during the last week, but as soon as I have time I'll read them.

Oh please, your welcome, butyour posts were amazing as it is this thread ;) 

Thanks!  Would love to hear your thoughts once you've read them all, some cool posts from everyone!  No rush, being busy restricts forum involvement I know.  Just nice to see you're still here to be honest.  :D  :cheers:

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On ‎11‎/‎07‎/‎2015 at 10:34 AM, bemused said:
In the Dunk and Egg stories..mist is associated with Bloodraven who is believed to be able himself into a mist ,or use mist to obscure what he's doing. From The Mystery Knight...

Some claimed the King's Hand was a student of the dark arts who could change his face, put on the likeness of a one—eyed dog, even turn into a mist. Packs of gaunt gray wolves hunted down his foes, men said, and carrion crows spied for him and whispered secrets in his ear.

 

 

and...

 

 

An army had appeared outside the castle, rising from the morning mists. ...

 

 

.... A single white dragon announced the presence of the King’s Hand, Lord Brynden Rivers.

 

 

Bloodraven himself had come to Whitewalls.

 

 

So I sense the presence of both Bran and Bloodraven in WF and later in the TWoW Theon chapter. If Bran is learning to magically manipulate mist, he's learning from an adept.

 

 

I haven't settled on one or the other of the following in my mind, yet , but it seems that either (1) what had been impossible for Bloodraven (Bran is told he will not be able to make himself heard) becomes possible through their joint efforts... or that (2) Bran's talent as a greenseer is so prodigious he will be able to surpass his master. Perhaps it's a little of both, because even if Bran should eventually surpass BR, I don't think it will be quite yet ... And of course, even their joint efforts still might not be enough to allow them to be heard, generally. ...Theon's fragile mental state, now so open to / aware of the supernatural, makes him an ideal recieiver for Bran's transmissions, but the spearwives standing behind him don't hear Bran.

 

 

I think this sensitivity to the supernatural traces back to his true dream of the feast of the dead before the sack of WF, and that dream was surely influenced by Bloodraven, since it showed him deaths he could not have heard of. Following the dream...

 

 

Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls.A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. ... ... The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword**, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. ... ... On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited. Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands.

 

 

This is a precursor of what is to come for Theon in ADWD in Winterfell.

 

 

** Why is "Stark's sword" included here ? No Stark sword is visible, and Ned's sword went with him to King's Landing. But Theon has seen Ned use his sword to mete out justice after Ned passed judgement... and I think he has a sense of what judgement and justice would be appropriate in his own case. In ADWD, at "Ned's tree", he doesn't ask for forgiveness... “A sword, that’s all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek.”

 

 

Still, considering what happens after Bran is fed the weirwood seed paste (and it's only that), I do think Bran will be progressing by leaps and bounds... After returning to his sleeping chamber, disconnected from the tree, he has a "dream" that is no dream, but a spontaneous re-connection to history witnessed by the WF heart tree.

 

 

Since you bring up the Mercy chapter for comparison, I was just thinking about it the other night, having recently learned that it was intended to be included as Arya's last chapter in ADWD, but was pushed forward to TWoW at the last minute. So the WF mist and the fog in Braavos would have been experienced in closer relation to each other by the reader....The "Prince of Winterfell" chapter, with all of its grey, grey, grey = Stark, Stark, Stark imagery, would have come first, as well as " the Turncloak" and possibly "Theon" , in both of which we at least have the reminder that Jeyne's eyes are not grey.(Those chapters are split by "A Ghost in WF" , which has no direct reminder..but it does have references to Ned, and Stark ghosts.)

 

 

On the Arya side of the comparison, "The Blind Girl" and "The Ugly Girl", with the night wolf and the spontaneous warging of the cat were always designed to come first.

 

 

!! Spoilers for mercy chapter ahead !!

 

 

For me, it was instructive to look at all the references to fog in order.

 

 

She could see the green water of the little canal below, the cobbled stone street that ran beneath her building, two arches of the mossy bridge… but the far end of the bridge vanished in greyness,

 

 

I see this as a long-term foreshadowing. It's logical (for me) to make the extension from her building, to her street, her bridge. This is the path leading away from the buildling that houses her now. Two arches of the bridge are visible, her life in Westeros and her life in Braavos - distinct from each other, but part of the same bridge that she must cross, vanishing into (leading to) Greyness - her identity as a Stark.

 

 

The mists seemed to part before her and close up again as she passed.

 

 

Says to me that she's aware she's on a secret mission, her approach to and departure from any given spot are cloaked in fog and because the word "mists" is used, I certainly wouldn't rule out that she has some assistance.. but whose, exactly, is a mystery.

 

 

Braavos was a good city for cats, and they roamed everywhere, especially at night. In the fog all cats are grey, Mercy thought. In the fog all men are killers.

 

 

She had never seen a thicker fog than this one.

 

 

The cats are important ..she's been "Cat" and has seen through the eyes of "Cat", as well as the eyes of the cat in Pynto's.. she used knowledge gained as "Cat" to escape as The Ugly Girl. In the dark, in fog, even with Mercy's face, dressing as "Cat" might be a good escape plan.

 

 

In "The Queesguard" chapter, we find an echo : Barristan and Skahaz meet at night, in secret...

 

 

“A cat?” said Barristan Selmy when he saw the brass beneath the hood. When the Shavepate had commanded the Brazen Beasts, he had favored a serpent’s-head mask, imperious and frightening.

 

 

“Cats go everywhere,” replied the familiar voice of Skahaz mo Kandaq. “No one ever looks at

 

 

them.”

 

 

"In the fog all men are killers." Shows that she already knows she will cause a man to be seen as a killer..her killer. She will create another kind of fog to assure it. ... "She had never seen a thicker fog than this one." may again suggest she has some unseen help.

 

 

Mercy passed an old man with a lantern walking the other way, and envied him his light. The street was so gloomy she could scarcely see where she was stepping.

 

 

Having some familiarity with the Tarot, the old man immediately made me think of the Hermit - among the various meanings: inwardly seeking your path, seeking enlightenment, being on a solitary journey. Because he's going the other way , it portends that Arya will have to change direction at some point. In Arya's present, she has a mission to accomplish, but she can "scarcely see where she's stepping" - she's not yet 100% sure how she'll do it.. Unlike the Ugly Girl's mission, there's no time to observe habits, etc.. she'll have to identify an opportunity, or create one quickly.

 

 

The last bridge was made of rope and raw planks, and seemed to dissolve into nothingness, but that was only the fog. Mercy scampered across, her heels ringing on the wood. The fog opened before her like a tattered grey curtain to reveal the playhouse.

 

 

This bridge is not a bridge that's made to last .."Only the fog" makes it seem to lead into nothingness..( Perhaps only the fog makes her appear to be no-one) She has no concerns now about the fog (if she ever did have) but the tattered curtains suggest shredding or dissolving and show that things will now become clearer for her. The playhouse is her stage in a sense, and she's making her entrance.

 

 

(Eventually, we get to "The gods have given me a gift.") From here on, she's completely at ease, even a bit reckless in the fog.. the real fog is her friend and she's confident of the fog she's creating.

 

 

Mercy took him by the hand, led him through the back and down the steps and out into the foggy night.

 

 

Hand in hand, they went racing through the fog, over bridges and through alleys and up five flights of splintery wooden stairs.

 

 

So, yes I do think Bran might be keeping tabs on her , but I think Bloodraven was doing so long before Bran got to the cave of the CoTF.

 

 

This is also a post worthy of another look.  bemused has some great views, different from a lot of ours, but should not be ignored, some cool thoughts on Asoiaf. 

I see Bloodraven in the text quite a bit, a lot actually, this is a well informed post I feel, and well worth looking at again.  :) 

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2 hours ago, evita mgfs said:

ABOVE:  i brought the above forward because these posts are really meaty and I did not get time to read or react to them,

 

Thanks. I actually starting to feel really proud of myself because I really admire your posts so I am really happy to hear you appreciate one of mine :D

Sadly, I have been busy these last days with school (a test and a paper concerning organizational crime and sadly not about gods, wolves, trees, :crying:) so I have not really able to read the posts in this thread. But I do hope I am able to do it and react to them in the near future. 

1 hour ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Awesome, you beat me too it!  A great host to a great thread.  Tijgy has obviously put a lot of work into all her posts and there is loads of really cool stuff in there.  I enjoyed our chats together.  And in a slower time for the thread Tijgy and Longie were key to helping the thread ticking over.  Great work girls!  :wub:   

Thank you! :D

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42 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

Thanks. I actually starting to feel really proud of myself because I really admire your posts so I am really happy to hear you appreciate one of mine :D

Sadly, I have been busy these last days with school (a test and a paper concerning organizational crime and sadly not about gods, wolves, trees, :crying:) so I have not really able to read the posts in this thread. But I do hope I am able to do it and react to them in the near future. 

Thank you! :D

Hey, super Awesome!  :wub:I plan to address your ideas, but I need to get away from all the chirping on the forum that keeps distracting me.  Then Wizz sidetracks me with his great insights, and I have recently met some super amazing people here on this thread and elsewhere, and I dilly-dally sending PM's instead of focusing on writing.

Now, I will once again try to pay attention to my reading and my writing.

[I love socializing though -  doing such is a great temptation, especially with Martin fans who love to discuss his works.

You get your studies done:read: - we are not going anywhere, and Wizz or I will bring good posts forward if we need to when you finally have time to join us again.

Very nice to meet you my dear.  :cheers:Wizz has spoken highly of your efforts, and from what I have read thus far, you are quite an amazing gal with great insights and perceptions.

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9 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

This is also a post worthy of another look.  bemused has some great views, different from a lot of ours, but should not be ignored, some cool thoughts on Asoiaf. 

I see Bloodraven in the text quite a bit, a lot actually, this is a well informed post I feel, and well worth looking at again.  :) 

Thanks, Wizz ...  I have been looking in from time to time, but often refrain from posting, because I don't want to be a Debbie Downer... ;) .. and my readings often take a slightly different turn. I have no desire to play resident contrarian pain-in-the-neck.

Note I say "slightly" different, because I agree Bran's abilities are prodigious - I just don't see him as being quite so powerful so soon, and think it makes more sense dramatically, if it's a bit more touch and go as to whether Bloodraven can prepare Bran in time for his greatest challenges.

Of course, that means I think this thread is sometimes stinting in it's recognition of Bloodraven. <_<

I had this example pop up at me again, in the process of doing something else. It' the scene from ACoK, Theon V.- After having his dream of the dead, and abusing Kyra in an attempt to dispel it ...

Yet even then, he could not sleep.
Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls. A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. He watched the forest go from grey to green below him as light filtered through the silent trees. On his left he could see tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. I am a Greyjoy of Pyke, born to paint a kraken on my shield and sail the great salt sea. I should have gone with Asha.
On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited.
Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands. The miller’s boys had been of an age with Bran and Rickon, alike in size and coloring, and once Reek had flayed the skin from their faces and dipped their heads in tar, it was easy to see familiar features in those misshapen lumps of rotting flesh. People were such fools. If we’d said they were rams’ heads, they would have seen horns.

At this stage of the game, Bran is hiding in the crypts. Now, after thinking about the warning Bran receives from Leaf about not seeking to call Ned back from death, I tend to think that warning would also apply to reaching back to influence the past as well. That's not to say Bran couldn't do it, or wouldn't ever do it... but if he ever did, I think it would be for something really important (not just to make Theon feel uncomfortable or guilty)... But there are other possibilities...

Bloodraven might take a poke or two at Theon in the present. Theon's dream of the dead was a true dream (probably influenced) and BR might be in the wind, since his attention would be on WF anyway, watching what Bran & co. were doing. ... and then there's the magic in WF, itself.

Like many others, I think the blizzard that envelops Stannis and the north later, does emanate from WF.. but unlike some, I don't think it happens because there is no Stark in WF, but because there is a Stark there, secretly - Benjen, the hooded man. (My personal conviction, though others won't agree.) ... So, if the magic can bring on snow, why not wind? The wind swirling through the battlements could be a WF wind. It could tug on Theon's cloak.. and really, given the ghosts of long dead Starks appearing in Theon's dream, can we be sure that the shades of the poor miller's boys are not responsible for Theon's sense of small ghostly hands?

I have a strong feeling that the magic of the Wall is "alive" (e.g., the Black gate ; the wall shakes off Jarl, a potential rival to Jon as future leader of the free folk, as well as for Val's affections / loyalty ; Jon is reflected inside the wall, not just by the surface), and I suspect the same sort of magic is built into WF. At the Wall, it only works optimally if the NW remains true, while at WF, a Stark must be physically present, and even better, one capable of leading. (This might also mean that some of the cloak flapping and snapping at the Wall might be down to the magic, itself.)

A couple of side issues - and I'm not a grammar and punctuation maven of evita's calibre, ;)but... tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green ... GRRM likes to play with sun/son ... on the bright side, Bran and Jon are about begin their arduous rise. They may have different fathers, but they are both sons of Winterfell - Stark by blood ... sadly, there's also a dark side, and this can also foreshadow that the roofs will be gilded by the blaze of flame lit by Ramsay, a rising Bolton son.

Now comes a fun bit I hadn't noticed before.. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. ..  I had looked at this before (maybe in this very thread) focusing on Theon's emotions... 

But there's a whole other context that I wasn't thinking about at the time. GRRM begins with "Ned Stark's tree" but then he drops the "Ned", and continues, "Stark's wood, Stark's castle ", and so on. He wants us to consider it without the "Ned". Change all those Stark's to the plural  possessive, Starks'... OK.. Ned's tree is the Winterfell heart tree. For thousands of years it has been the tree of the Starks (so it's also Starks' tree ) The wood  and castle are the wood and castle of the Starks. The gods are the gods of the Starks.

The sword ? Wait a minute, why does Theon even include Stark's sword? He can't see it, hasn't been thinking about it ... he saw no swords in his dream. Earlier , I tried to see how it might fit emotionally, for Theon to mention it , but really, it's an anomaly. It's not present, because Ned took "Ice" to KL with him, and we know what happened to it . However, whether Theon knows it or not, we know there was a much earlier "Ice, the sword of the Starks", that present day ,Valyrian steel "Ice " was forged to replace. Where is it? Conveniently, Theon also thinks, This is their place, not mine. .. This sentiment has been repeated often, in various wordings, usually about being in the crypts (though Cat feels something like it in the godswood,too).. So now I feel that "Ice" is probably in the crypts. Before, I just thought it was a possibility, sure... there was nothing to point to it, but I couldn't rule it out. Probably the readers with a sword or artifact obsession are well aware of this, I haven't really delved into their threads .. but it was a fun revelation to me, and shows once again that in a single brief passage, GRRM can salt clues to multiple topics.

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Jon?

The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .


A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

 

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

“He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.”

Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.”

 

That interaction with Jon and Bran took place in “A Clash of Kings” when Bran was still in Winterfell hiding in the crypts.  It took place before he had received any formal training with the Three-Eyed Crow.  What it means is that Bran did this most likely at a point in the future after “A Dance with Dragons.”  So a future Bran was able to go back and interact with his brother/cousin Jon at a point in time after the event had already occurred.
 
The line where Bran says to Jon Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them.   This seems to me similar to what the Three-Eyed Crow teaches Bran about the dark after he makes it to his cave.  

 
“There he sat, listening to the hoarse whispers of his teacher.  Never fear the darkness, Bran.” The lord’s words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. “The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.”

 

To me this indicates proof positive that Bran has evolved further than the Three-Eyed Crow.

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19 hours ago, evita mgfs said:

 

ABOVE:  i brought the above forward because these posts are really meaty and I did not get time to read or react to them,

Bran’s Growing Power’s Reactions #2

 

Thank you for your opinion on this, as mentioned you've turned my head on who/what is potentially present in the wind at different times, and the various examples of where 'howling' is used showing animosity is very interesting.  This has, as Longie has mentioned up thread opened my eyes as to the possibilities of a who/what/where presence in the wind.  Especially the 'howling wind'.  However, we have found a few mentions of the wind 'howling' then a wolf 'howling' a few paragraphs later, perhaps pointing to that animalistic personification of the wind?  It seems rather blatant in the AGOT prologue?  This is followed by the wind 'whispering through trees' and making cloaks become 'half alive' blah blah......  Even when you point out the possible animosity on the lake with the howling wind, I still look at the 'knife' and 'good as blind' reference and think it kind of sounds Bloodraveny.     Anyway, you make some really insightful and valid points as usual, some stuff to chew on, thanks.  

On personification in literature, of course authors/writers have poetic licence to play with such techniques, it brings the scene to life and enables wonderfully descriptive writing.  And there is rarely a need to plant a presence into such text. [The flames 'danced' etc]  It's hard to pin down.  But some of the things I've been spotting in the chapters I've posted about I think point to a [possibly] clever take on the personification of the trees.  We know the WW show human traits, they have eyes and a mouth, and the opportunity to be described as solemn, melancholy etc.......  Plus we know there is definitely a presence there.  But the soldiers and sentinels often seem 'alive' as well, that's where I see the subtle mentions of the wind come into play.   

Nice point about the trees protecting them, they are of course personified in the 'text' when they 'stand in battle formation garbed in white.' [again]  No presence is insinuated here, but they are personified nonetheless, trees can't stand, or garb themselves in white etc.....  But it was mentioned that 'the wind was in the trees' when Bran slipped into Summer, and I think that enables/helps/facilitates the trees to come to life textually, with a subtle possibility that it's the wind making this happen.  

Every time I have come across the trees being personified, [so far] it follows a subtle mention of the wind being in the trees.  The rustling of leaves we know from various text around the WW's is a sign of the old gods, talking, listening etc...  so I thought this interesting, I have mentioned this a little bit in posts up thread.  In this chapter he straight out tells us that when Bran slips inside Summer he hears the wind in the trees, they then go on to 'stand' in battle formation as we discussed.  He is often more deft than that, sometimes he has the branches 'croak and groan' with a subtle mention of wind somewhere [insinuating a 'rustle' of leaves]  in Tijgy's post the trees then turned into a sea etc......   In the AGOT prologue he has I think a breeze that makes the trees branches become 'wooden fingers scratching at each other'  In Bran's AGOT coma dream the leaves rustle on the WW before it turns and stares at him etc........  There are more.......

So basically, I feel the wind has a role to play in the trees 'coming alive' or having that descriptive text around it.  And in this case seemingly protecting them,  the soldiers and sentinels come to life in the wind or when the leaves potentially 'rustle'. [various descriptions]  As I mentioned, in the few chapters I've looked at, I feel this this is a reasonable line of enquiry.     However, the 'howling wind' still seems separate from this scene and definitely something to think about. 

Thanks bemused, I will continue to post away when time allows.  Please feel free to offer up alternative opinions on whatever I muse.  I have my own ideas and take on things like everyone else, but welcome different angles.  

 

:bowdown:WIZZ-THE-SMITH:  I am in agreement about the enigmatic powers of the wind,:cheers: and I tend to believe that Bran will not be alone in his ability to compel the wind to do his bidding when it is necessary.  Actually, I am leaning toward Sansa as the Stark who will discover her latent powers, and Martin has long associated her with birds and air and wind.

Here is but one example of many that I came across in AGoT last night.  During an argument with Arya, Sansa says,

“Go ahead, call me all the names you want,” Sansa said airily” [476 AGoT].

Now, regarding Martin’s fondness for personification, as you know, I have supplied a thousand examples in earlier posts.  His rich imagery allows me to envision scenes in my mind.

Martin dresses the trees in numerous costumes, and even though I am not certain how this will play out long-range, I will speculate with an “Evita-out-of her-mind” theory:

As in the Wizard of Oz, the trees will come to life, albeit rooted to the earth.:o  The bloody hands of the heart tree have already touched the forehead of one supplicant before the old gods.

 

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7 hours ago, b00gieman said:

Jon?

The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .

 


A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

 

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

“He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.”

Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.”

 

That interaction with Jon and Bran took place in “A Clash of Kings” when Bran was still in Winterfell hiding in the crypts.  It took place before he had received any formal training with the Three-Eyed Crow.  What it means is that Bran did this most likely at a point in the future after “A Dance with Dragons.”  So a future Bran was able to go back and interact with his brother/cousin Jon at a point in time after the event had already occurred.
 
The line where Bran says to Jon Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them.   This seems to me similar to what the Three-Eyed Crow teaches Bran about the dark after he makes it to his cave.  

 

 
“There he sat, listening to the hoarse whispers of his teacher.  Never fear the darkness, Bran.” The lord’s words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. “The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.”

 

To me this indicates proof positive that Bran has evolved further than the Three-Eyed Crow.

WELCOME! :cheers: I am delighted that you found your way to this thread as you have a good handle on time-traveling, an expertise in which I have limited insight.:wub:

I will share with you some of my observations about the passage you have shared, and I apologize that my essay is so long.  However, I have read through your brilliant, prolific, and voluminous posts, so maybe you will enjoy reading mine as well.

We invite you to keep visiting our thread.:D 

Can a Howl be Silent?

Neither Jon nor Ghost display “surprise” or amazement when Ghost exercises his voice for the first time.  The confusion of the dream platform may be a reason for the lack of reaction from boy and wolf.  Several other possibilities for Martin omitting what seems to be important include:

1.)  Ghost issues a “phantom” howl which Jon dreams of hearing, in a way similar to Bran’s speech registering with Jon.

2.)  Jon hears the wind in the rocky passages while he is in a dream state, and he mistakes it for Ghost’s keening.

3.)  Ghost’s howl is a “non-event” in comparison to the other meritorious happenings in Jon’s wolf dream.

4.)  Jon hears sounds in his wolf dream that he heard while awake, specifically wolves howling:  “A sound rose out of darkness, faint and distant, but unmistakable: the howling of wolves.  Their voices rise and fell in a chilly song, and lonely” [ACoK  515].

Before Analysis

Before analyzing Jon’s wolf dream, it is important to keep in mind the source of Jon’s mystical experiences.  Bran inspires Jon with his greenseeing powers that have advanced beyond Bran looking through the carved eyes in the heart trees, visual aids left by the singers to awaken the magic of new greenseers [ADwD].

Since Martin vigorously describes the limited vegetation among the rock layers defining the Skirling Pass, the author establishes that a heart tree is not in the vicinity of the rangers’ camp where Jon dreams.  Instead of accessing the trees, Bran accesses Jon’s wolf dream. Moreover, the singers and their greenseers have endowed the ringfort built by the First Men atop the Skirling Pass  with powerful magic that assists in making Bran’s return to a past event a possibility.

Bran may open his third eye in the Winterfell crypts as of his last POV in ACoK, but he has not yet sat his weirwood throne to learn how to see as the gods see and to know what the trees know.  Therefore, Bran returns to Jon’s wolf dream after he masters aspects of his magic so that he can inspire Jon to embrace his warg nature, to open his third eye, and not to fear death and darkness.

Bloodraven cautions Bran that “the past remains the past.  We can learn from it, but we cannot change it” [ADwD 458].  Then the Last Greenseer draws from his personal experiences to convince Bran that his lord father Eddard Stark cannot and does not hear him. “You cannot speak to him, try as you might.  I know.  I have my own ghosts, Bran.  A brother I loved, a brother I hated, a woman I desired.  Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them” [ADwD 458]. 

Bran tests for himself the perimeters of the rules of greensight imposed upon him by Bloodraven and Leaf, and Bloodraven suspects and Leaf knows that he will.  After all, Bran ignores warnings of his mother, father, and maester about climbing.  Bran challenges rules and authority, and when he knowingly decides to break rules, he may indeed garner some enlightenment, but often this is won at great cost and loss by way of dire consequences.  By far Bran’s biggest lesson is in determining whether the risks justify the means.  A boy already broken may feel he has nothing more to lose when he dares to tempt fate.

Unlike Bloodraven’s efforts to speak with his ghosts through the trees, Bran reaches Jon through Ghost and through Jon’s wolf dream, and Bran uses mental telepathy, not speech, to establish communication.

 

Bran manages to gift Jon a glimpse of his future, drawing from the shadows on Jon’s soul, hidden in the recesses of Jon’s mind. By accessing events from Jon’s “waking world”, Bran emphasizes his lessons in a dream.  For instance, Bran “inspires” – or facilitates - Jon’s first “warg” experience, employing his greenpowers to oversee a smooth transition for his bastard brother into the skin of his direwolf via the dream venue.  Martin implies that Bran’s powers are compelling and still in their infancy if readers measure acquisition of knowledge to physical growth.  Moreover, Bran communicates telepathically and empathetically with Jon via Ghost “from a future time” past the novel A Dance with Dragons. 

                                                 

Jon’s Dream of Direwolves

“When he [Jon] closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves” [ACoK 515].

·        Since dreams are lessons, and vise-versa, Bran opts for the realm of dreams to reach his siblings, specifically his half-brother Jon Snow: “Dreams became lessons, lessons became dreams, things happened all at once or not at all” [ADwD 451].  Through Jon’s direwolf Ghost and within Jon’s wolf-dream, Bran makes his presence known.  Bran takes his older brother to school with lessons disguised as dreams and with dreams that rouse raw and instinctive emotions. 

·        The period is the “end mark” that concludes the above sentence [“When he [Jon] closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves”] which announces the beginning of Jon’s wolf dream, a sequence of pivotal events that continue until Jon wakes calling for Ghost. 

·        Martin sets this one sentence apart in a paragraph of its own to separate it from the paragraph that precedes it and that follows it in order to establish and sustain ambiguity in pronominal references especially in writing the dream narrative that will follow. 

·        The preceding paragraph includes the following sentence, “He [Ghost] wants to hunt, Jon thought”, which is the last time Martin identifies in printed text the name “Jon” until after the dream. Within the wolf dream narrative, Martin does not distinguish either Jon or Ghost as an antecedent for the masculine pronouns he uses.  Hence, grammatically speaking, the masculine pronouns are referents to Jon since he is the last noun clearly stated.  That simply doesn’t work for the following reason:

·        Many of Martin’s descriptors and action words are decisively canine-oriented.  By persistently not distinguishing either Jon or Ghost as an actor in the dream segments, Martin blurs the singular identities of boy and wolf, which is very likely his intention.

·        The clause “he dreamed of direwolves” showcases the alliteration of the consonant “D” which emphasizes a hard sound that Martin repeats in his frequent use of the words “darkness” and “death”.

·        Martin affirms that Jon is the dreamer, not his direwolf Ghost even though the narrative may confuse the thoughts of Ghost with Jon’s and vice versa.

·        It is Jon Snow who closes his eyes, it is Jon Snow who dreams of direwolves, but it is Martin who shifts perspectives.

The Dream Begins

Below, the initial wolf dream passage from ACoK describes Ghost’s instinctive connection with his pack whose scent he has lost.  Martin’s word choices are repeated when Bran’s wargs with Summer in his first POV in the novel A Storm of Swords.  It is worth considering that these feelings Bran and Summer experience at a later date on the timeline farther from Jon’s wolf dream are inspiration for Bran the greenseer when he returns to Jon’s dream, a profound way to unify the warg and wolf by evocating the shared emotions indicative to the direwolves and their wargs.

 

The matching words and their meanings are color coded for easier consideration:

There were five of them [direwolf pups] when there should have been six, and they [direwolf pups]  were scattered, each [pup] apart from the others [direwolf pups].  He [Ghost/Warg] felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they [wolf pups] were so small, so lost. His [Ghost’s] brothers [wolf pups/warg siblings] were out there somewhere [in the world], and his [Ghost’s] sister, but he [Ghost] had lost their [wolf pups’] scent.  He [Ghost] sat on his haunches and lifted his [Ghost’s] head to the darkening sky, and his [Ghost’s] cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his [Ghost’s] ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow” [ACoK].

Compare the language and meaning in Bran’s wolf dream, which occurs after Jon’s wolf dream.

“He [Bran in Summer] had a pack as well, once.  Five they had been, and a sixth who stood aside . . . He remembered their scents, his brothers and his sisters.  They had smelled alike, had smelled of pack, but each was different too . . . The others were scattered, like leaves blown by the wild wind” [ASoS 123].

The similarities between the dreams are marked, as both warg Bran and warg Ghost count living siblings, noting the pup who dies; both note the scent of pack; and both see the pack mates as “scattered”.  Bran experiences his dream far from Jon’s, in the next novel, and these are emotions Bran chooses to share with wolf and warg when he returns to revisit Jon’s wolf dream.

·        The dream setting is the forest, which is unlike the “wind-carved arch of grey stone [that] marked the highest point of the Skirling Pass” [ACoK  517] where Qhorin orders his rangers to rest until “shadows began to grow again” [ACoK  763].

·        Ghost’s location among the trees brings to mind the location where Ghost digs furiously from “behind a fallen tree” at the base of the hill that the “wildlings called . . . the Fist of the First Men” [ACoK  507].

·        Ghost leads Jon to a recently dug grave where “there was no smell, no sign of graveworms”, a contrast to what Ghost sniffs near the weirwood sapling.

·        Jon unearths the obsidian tucked within “the black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch” [ACoK 518].

·        This signature outerwear designates a visual uniformity among the black brothers. 

·        The black cloak symbolizes the “skin”, or the outer covering that protects men.  Jon metaphorically slips his skin when he wargs Ghost in his wolf dream

·        The unclaimed black cloak also signifies Jon turning cloak to wear a wildling’s guise, but only to obey the orders of Qhorin Halfhand.  Nevertheless, Jon feigns a shift in loyalties to infiltrate the enemy where he hopes to learn their secrets.

·        The first part of Jon’s wolf dream limits the third-person point of view narration to Ghost’s perspective as perceived by the dreamer Jon Snow and inspired by the greenseer Bran.

·        Ghost telepathically and empathetically connects with his pack, those littermates with whom he at one time shared a womb.  They also share a past, and even though the pups are separated from each other by great distances, Ghost still feels his brother’ and sister’s collective presence even if he has lost their scent.

·        Only Ghost owns five littermates at this juncture on the timeline, and the sixth wolf that Ghost cannot account for is Sansa’s Lady, the direwolf who meets an early demise. 

·        Bran is at Winterfell when Lady’s corpse is returned for burial in the lichyard; therefore, if Bran inspires Jon’s wolf dream, he may also divulge this information to warg and wolf. 

·        On the other hand, Ghost’s telepathic and instinctive connection to his pack enables him to sense that one wolf from the six born in the litter is now dead.  Through meeting minds with Ghost, Jon learns of Ghost losing a sister.

·        Jon experiences Ghost’s “deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness”.  Likewise, Jon misses his siblings, which is evident on several occasions when Jon thinks of his siblings individually or collectively.  For example, when Jon climbs the Skirling Pass with the rangers, he remembers “cold nights long ago at Winterfell when he shared a bed with his brothers” [ACoK].

·        Martin’s language depicts the behaviors of Ghost, yet there is much that relates to Jon and his warg pack:  Jon’s siblings are “scattered, each apart from the others”, and Jon’s brothers “were out there somewhere”.

·        Ghost’s cry is a “long lonely mournful sound” which is similar to the mournful keening attributed to the Skirling Pass.  Perhaps this is the sound Jon hears in his wolf dream.  More likely, the wind causes the skirling, and Bran, as part of the godhood, has powers of communication related to the wind.

·        Ghost listens for an answer, one that takes a human voice that speaks after “the sigh of blowing snow” [ACoK].  Instead of a littermate’s wolf-song, another brother makes contact.

Who Calls Jon?

“Jon?

“The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only...

“A weirwood”.

·        Martin does not enclose Jon in quotation marks, yet he distinguishes Jon with italics, which separates dialogue from a character’s inner thoughts and feelings.  Bran sends his call for Jon to the minds of both Jon and Ghost. 

·        Bran’s green magic appoints him as a telepathist who communicates directly from his mind to another’s, an extrasensory exercise Bran achieves by utilizing Ghost as the conduit and a dream as the platform to meet and to share with his brother Jon as a warg.

·        Martin selects words with care, employing singular masculine pronouns as references that have no clearly printed antecedents separating wolf from boy. Martin demonstrates that wolf and warg are truly of one mind, one spirit, instinct and intellect married by a shared past with mystical influences at work.  Together they endure both emotional and physical pain.

“The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent?”

·        Ghost responds to the call name for Jon? as if the call name is his own, which is Ghost.   Regardless of hearing “Jon”, Ghost expects to see his own grey brother, as in his grey direwolf brother, even though Ghost surely knows that any one of his pack does not speak with words, does not call out names, does not whisper secrets, and does not shout into the silence. 

·        Martin pens a brilliant moment of suspense as a transition that provokes anticipation among Ghost, the warg Jon, and the readers who literally and/or figuratively “turn” with or AS Ghost, eagerly awaiting a lean grey direwolf. 

·        Alas, for a heartbeat, Martin fools those in the moment with shared disappointment that he colors with unflattering commentary:  “nothing” and “only” are not winning words by way of an introduction to the greenseer behind the weirwood. 

“Can a shout be silent?”

·        The silent shout emphasizes Bran’s telepathy. 

·        Martin does not mention that the tree has a mouth, and through omission, the author makes clear that Bran does not need a carved mouth to speak words when he can use thoughts; therefore, Jon and Ghost hear Bran’s voice not with their ears.

The Weirwood

“It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?”  [ACoK  766].

·        When Bran first meaningfully connects with Jon, he inhabits a weirwood sapling.

·        Jon observes the tree maturing rapidly, a visual metaphor of Bran’s accelerated “intake” of greenseeing knowledge compared to the physical growth of a weirwood from a sapling and beyond.  The expanding tree limbs that extend toward the sky are the greenseer’s arms spreading wide and shooting upward as if stretching far beyond other trees to grasp the greatest enlightenment.

·        The visibly growing weirwood Jon sees resembles the rapidly moving visions that Bran experiences through the eyes of Winterfell’s heart tree.  Bran watches trees dwindle and vanish through the “mists of centuries” [ADwD 460].

·        Bran’s learning takes place on a field of time according to a weirwood:  “a thousand human years” equal “a moment to a weirwood”’ [ADwD 458].

·        Bran’s red weirwood eyes mirror Ghost’s, “When the direwolf raised his head, his eyes glowed red and baleful, and water streamed from his jaws like slaver.  There was something fierce and terrible about him” [ACoK 516].

·        Their ferocity is symptomatic of visionaries, prophets, priests, and priestesses.  And, after experiencing visions, these mystics may have a loss of consciousness, physical weakness, intense thirst, temporary confusion, memory loss, and difficulty speaking.

·        Martin gives readers a glimpse of how a weirwood ages from the surface of Planetos, but Martin mentions very little as to the labyrinthine roots that embrace Bran in his weirwood throne.

·        The weirwood, at varying stages of growth, is and will be the symbolic representation of Bran the greenseer when he visits the dreams of his siblings through their direwolves.  Lord Brynden reaches Bran through dreams during which he wears the skin of a three-eyed crow, the bird that commands Bran to choose:  fly or die! The crow wakes Bran, kissing his forehead with a peck – a “dream” pain that Bran feels still upon waking.  The Three-Eyed Crow wants Bran to open his third eye, and an intense moment of physical discomfort in a dream may serve as a waking memory later.

·        The parallels between Bran’s first three-eyed crow dream and Jon’s wolf-dream are many, but both tree and crow impress the importance of opening the third eye.

Bran Answers What Jon Thinks

Had his [Jon’s] brother [Bran] always had three eyes?

“’Not always’, came the silent shout.  Not before the crow’” [ACoK  766].

Martin demonstrates Bran’s telepathic powers because after Jon Snow thinks:  “Had his brother always had three eyes?”  Bran answers, “’Not always’, came the silent shout.  Not before the crow’”.  For the second time, Martin refers to the silent shout pertaining to Bran’s thoughts, which Martin conveniently italicizes.

The Smell of Death and Darkness

 “He  [Ghost] sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs” [ACoK  766].

Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark” [ACoK 766].

Ghost alerts to the smell of death when he sniffs the weirwood sapling, a scent that appears to originate with Bran and his residence either in the Winterfell crypts or in the Cave of Skulls.  Death surrounds Bran, literally and figuratively.

1.)  Beneath the snow and earth concealing the entrance to the Cave of Skulls, Bran sits his own weirwood throne, his Uncle Brandon Stark’s iron sword at hand and  his direwolf Summer nearby.  Bran’s posture is   like those dead Stark lords and Kings of Winter in Winterfell’s crypts who sit upon their own rock-carved thrones, their iron swords across their laps and stone direwolves at their feet.  The Cave of Skulls represents a symbolic crypt for Bran.  Moreover, the stone Starks frozen on their stone thrones are as crippled as Bran the broken whose useless legs take him nowhere.

2.)  Bran the “crippled boy” travels with a simple-minded giant and two crannogmen far from the Neck, a suspicious crew who are deliberately perpetuating the myth that the Prince of Winterfell is dead.  Jojen says, “So long as Bran remains dead, he is safe.  Alive, he becomes prey for those who want him dead for good and true” [ASoS 129].

3.)  Bran thinks of himself as dead because he is broken.  When Jojen dreams Bran dead , Bran thinks:  he dreamed me dead, and I’m not.  Only he was, in a way . . .” [ASoS 129].

4.)  Bran’s teacher is a talking corpse and not the three-eyed crow from his dreams.

5.)  The interior of the cave features assorted skulls, and they rest upon the floor and line the walls.

6.)  Outside the cave the dead with black hands walk but cannot enter.

·        Ghost instinctively recoils from death, displaying very physical, canine-inspired reactions that include sniffing, cringing, bristling, and snarling.  Martin discloses that Ghost associates death with “something terrible”, from another occasion:  When the dead came walking, Ghost knew.  He woke me, warned me” [ACoK 515]. So, Bran comforts Jon’s direwolf Ghost with “Don’t be afraid”, words to assure the unsettled Ghost.

·        Ghost smells “wolf and tree and boy” before he senses “something else, something terrible.  Death, he knew”.

·        Ghost recaptures the scent of his pack when he smells wolf. Upon recognizing the encroaching smell of death, Ghost reacts protectively:  “He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs”. 

·        Furthermore, Ghost’s signature reaction is baring his fangs because he has no voice to signal a warning, to express fear, or even to attract Jon’s attention.

·        In these words are prophesy well-hidden.  Bran hopes to assure Jon that he has nothing to fear from death and darkness when Jon encounters both at some point in the future.  Moreover, Bran insinuates that he will be there when the time comes to ease Jon’s transition to the netherworld.

·        Jojen hints at Bran’s potential for wizardry in A Storm of Swords when he says: “To me the gods gave greendreams, and to you . . . you could be more than me, Bran.  You are the winged wolf, and there is no saying how far and how high you might fly . . .  if you had someone to teach you” [ASoS 131].

·        Jon as warg shares sensory experiences with Ghost while wearing his skin. Not only may Jon share what Ghost smells, he identifies the smell as if he is a wolf himself.

·        On the other hand, Jon Snow recognizes death’s smell.  While at the Fist of the First Men, Hake says, “There’s no smell to cold”.  Jon silently disagrees, recalling his own experience with this smell: “There is, thought Jon remembering the night in the Lord Commander’s chambers.  It smells like death” [514].

“[You] Don’t be afraid” of WHAT? Unclear.

Analyzing the grammatical elements of the sentence offers little clarity. 

The full sentence reads “Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark”. 

·        The nominative case pronoun “You” is an implied “subject” of the predicate “do not be afraid”.  The implied subject “You”  may refer to either Jon or to Ghost since the pronoun’s spelling “Y – o – u”  remains the same in the plural form, nominative case. 

·        A comma joins these two short, simple sentences, and it is a weak punctuation choice for this occasion.  Although a period is the “preferred” end mark to conclude and to separate two complete thoughts linked without a coordinating conjunction or a conjunctive adverb, there are several options for revision to clarify meaning.  Quick editorial fixes are  1.) employ a coordinator:  Don’t be afraid, and I like it in the dark”;  2.)  replace the comma with a semicolon “Don’t be afraid; I like it in the dark”; 3.) use a subordinator with an optional comma:  Don’t be afraid because I like it in the dark”, or Don’t be afraid, because I like it in the dark”. 

·        Each clause has its own subject and its own verb, and Martin presents each clause from a different point-of-view:  “[You] Don’t be afraid” is second person, but “I like it in the dark” is first person.

·        These grammatical inconsistencies are an exercise in determining Martin’s deliberate language choices.  In Bran’s telecommunications, Martin seemingly wants his readers to confuse Ghost with Jon and vice versa because the warg bond between boy and wolf is strong.  They think and feel as one.

·        Furthermore, these word groupings disclose that Bran perceives the fears of “both” Jon and Ghost, which makes him an empath as well as a telepathist,  and both warg and wolf share fears of the smell of death.

·        Or, Bran’s words may inform to the “general”, as in “Don’t be afraid of the smells, or of the weirwood and the boy inside it, or of anything you may see or hear as a warg in this wolf-dream”.

·        Detracting from these happy conclusions is “Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark”. Bran is a child who has had great responsibility placed upon him, and his words are childlike with childlike logic:  Don’t be afraid of the dark because I like it in the dark”.  That is, if Martin wishes for the readers to find meaning in skewed logic.

·        Perhaps Martin unveils the mystery shrouded in ambiguity upon Jon’s waking when Jon himself considers the manner of the fear: “and what about the weirwood with his brother’s face that smelled of death and darkness?” [ACoK  768].

·        Actually, the words are as weighty as they are few.  Bran prophesizes that Jon need not fear the smell of death or the smell of the darkness in the times “to come”.

·        Bran asserts, “Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark”, words that are part of Lord Brynden’s lessons to Bran in ADwD, when the Last Greenseer lectures “Never fear the darkness” [ADwD  450].

·        In the novel A Clash of Kings, Arya’s POVs parallel Jon’s and Bran’s lessons.  Note in the following sentences how Syrio’s instruction mirrors Bloodraven’s:  “Syrio had told her [Arya] once that darkness could be her friend, and he was right” (ACoK  684). 

Martin has made clear Jon’s fear of darkness and death as evidenced in Jon’s dream of Winterfell’s crypts.  Even though Ghost dislikes the smell of death, Ghost has never behaved in a manner that demonstrates that he fears darkness.

“No one can see you, but you can see them”.

·        The above words are as potent as their forbearers:

·        These words are imperative in arguing that Bran reaches Jon Snow from a point in the future, after Bran learns to “see” and to “hear” others who cannot see him nor hear him from the heart tree – and more.

For example, Bran revisits his lord father through Winterfell’s heart tree, only on this occasion, Bran does not sit his weirwood throne and he does not have an eager audience curious about his visions.  Alone in his bedchamber, Bran fails again: “He [Eddard] cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing.  He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all he could do was watch and listen.  I am in the tree.  I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t” [ADwD 459]. 

What follows is a breakdown of Bran’s thoughts professing his failed attempts to reach his father.  After each segment, textual evidence is presented that proves Bran achieves all that he fails to do by the end of his last POV in ADwD.

He [Eddard] cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing . . . but all he could do was watch and listen”.

Bran  watches unseen and unheard by his father. Bran’s frustrations and despair are replaced with a gleeful revelation of his talents to Jon,  “No one can see you, but you can see them”. 

In Jon’s wolf dream and in Theon’s godswood interactions, Bran moves beyond these restrictions.  Bran’s sorcery allows him ways to let those he blesses recognize him with visual, tactile, olfactory, and/or auditory cues.

“I am in the tree.  I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red  eyes”,

Bran transforms the expression on Winterfell’s heart tree to resemble his own and endows the weirwood sapling with his likeness.  Consequently, Bran’s sorcery is so convincing that Jon, Theon, and Ghost recognize Bran’s visage in the white bark marked with red sap.

 

Theon reveals, “And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran’s face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad.  Bran’s ghost, he thought, but that was madness” [ADwD 616].

 

“He wanted to reach out and touch him”

Even though Bran has no means to reach out and touch his dead father, Bran meets with success when he leans over to touch Ghost between the eyes in Jon’s wolf dream.  Furthermore, Bran touches Theon’s forehead using a red, five-fingered weirwood leaf. 

Both with Jon and with Theon, Bran’s greenseeing powers move beyond their limitations in his last POV in ADwD.  The symbolic gesture of touch is Bran’s attempts  to awaken Jon and Theon’s third-eyes.  He wants them to see beyond the “darkness” and look to enlightenment.

Theon reveals, “A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool.  It floated on the water, red,  five-fingered, like a bloody hand” [ADwD 616]. 

“but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t”

Bran communicates with Jon telepathically and empathetically, as he does with Theon in lesser degrees.  Bran speaks to Theon with rustling leaves as well as the weirwood’s mouth.

Theon reveals, “The night was windless, the snow drifting . . . yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name, ‘Theon,’ they seemed to whisper, ‘Theon’.

The old gods, he thought.  They know me.  They know my name.  I was Theon of House Greyjoy.  I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children” [ADwD 616].

 ‘. . . Bran,’ the tree murmured”.

They know.  The gods know.  They saw what I did” [ADwD 616].

 

·        After Bran’s final POV in A Dance with Dragons, Bran secures a mental bond with Theon that evolves into a mystical, even spiritual, communion with the heart tree in Winterfell’s godswood.  With Bran wearing the guise of an ancient weirwood thousands of years old, Bran relates to the Turncloak in the present time of the novel’s action. 

·        Evidently, the rules for engaging another in the past and for engaging another in the present time are different, each with its own restrictions and limitations, for humans and for greenseers. Each sees in time through eyes uniquely his own:  Jon is trapped in the river of time, Bran has the weirwood’s eyes: “seasons pass in the flutter of a moth’s wing, and past, present, and future are one” [ADwD 458].

·        Bran gains Jon’s attention in Jon’s wolf dream, which Bran likely revisits from a point in the future. 

Bran Opens Jon’s Third Eye

 

“Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him”.

·        Because Bran influences and inspires Jon’s wolf dream, the greenseer in the tree leans over to touch Ghost between the eyes, a symbolic gesture that compels the warg to open his third eye, after which the forest setting suddenly vanishes.

Bran deftly executes opening Jon’s third-eye in a wolf dream, which is unlike Bran’s own painful experience when the three-eyed crow forces open Bran’s third-eye in a dream, ordering Bran again to “Fly or die!” [ACoK 260].

After Bran prays to the Old Gods to send him dreamless sleep, Bran receives an answer by way of a “nightmare” not a dream, and Bran thinks, “they [the Old Gods] mocked his hopes, for the nightmare they sent was worse than any wolf dream” [260].  The pitiless three-eyed crow attacks a pleading Bran with his “terrible sharp beak,” blinding both Bran’s eyes.  Then, the three-eyed crow pecks at Bran’s brow”, finally wrenching out “slimy . . . bits of bone and brain” [260].  This sorcery allows Bran to see again, through all his eyes. 

What materializes in the vision  is pure terror: Bran relives his crippling fall, and even more frightening than a wolf dream.  Bran sees “the golden man” who saves Bran, then pushes him, excusing his murderous act with these words: “The things I do for love” [260].

In actuality, Bran’s nightmare has inspiration from real events that he experienced recently in his daily life, and what Bran “hears” has such an impact on Bran that he becomes physically ill, unable to breathe, his blood roaring in is ears

Visiting guests Cley Cerwin and his knights are joking about Stannis making his claim to the throne based upon Joffrey’s bastardy.

Several key sentences bandied about by the bannermen evocate a visible reaction from Bran:

1.     “Queen Cersei bedded her brother” [259].

2.    “Small wonder he’s [Joffrey] faithless, with the Kingslayer for a Father” [259].

3.    “the gods hate incest.  Look how they brought down the Targaryens” [260].

Sadly, in three lines, Martin sums up what Bran witnesses from outside the window of the gargoyle guarded tower:  Bran’s vision, sent via the wizardry of the three-eyed crow deliberately after Cley and his knights jolt Bran’s waking memory, is evidence of incest, proof that the Queen and the Kingslayer are guilty as charged, but more importantly, the three-eyed crow imparts to Bran undeniable verification of the identity of the golden knight who causes Bran to fall.

A greenseer must learn to see and to acknowledge what is true, no matter how painful the truth may be.  Bran buries his most unpleasant memory deep in his subconscious, disguising it in darkness, choosing not to acknowledge to himself what he now knows for sure to be true. 

Even after the agony of his nightmare,  Bran is not keen on acceptance; however, Bran denies many truths about himself, something that Jojen Reed learns while educating a reluctant Bran on his powers.  Bran gets angry at Jojen’s talk of Bran as a warg in Summer, and he doesn’t understand how to open his third-eye.  Nor does he share with the Reeds, or anyone else, that the Kingslayer caused his fall.

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8 hours ago, bemused said:

Thanks, Wizz ...  I have been looking in from time to time, but often refrain from posting, because I don't want to be a Debbie Downer... ;) .. and my readings often take a slightly different turn. I have no desire to play resident contrarian pain-in-the-neck.

Note I say "slightly" different, because I agree Bran's abilities are prodigious - I just don't see him as being quite so powerful so soon, and think it makes more sense dramatically, if it's a bit more touch and go as to whether Bloodraven can prepare Bran in time for his greatest challenges.

Of course, that means I think this thread is sometimes stinting in it's recognition of Bloodraven. <_<

I had this example pop up at me again, in the process of doing something else. It' the scene from ACoK, Theon V.- After having his dream of the dead, and abusing Kyra in an attempt to dispel it ...

Yet even then, he could not sleep.
Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls. A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. He watched the forest go from grey to green below him as light filtered through the silent trees. On his left he could see tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. I am a Greyjoy of Pyke, born to paint a kraken on my shield and sail the great salt sea. I should have gone with Asha.
On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited.
Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands. The miller’s boys had been of an age with Bran and Rickon, alike in size and coloring, and once Reek had flayed the skin from their faces and dipped their heads in tar, it was easy to see familiar features in those misshapen lumps of rotting flesh. People were such fools. If we’d said they were rams’ heads, they would have seen horns.

At this stage of the game, Bran is hiding in the crypts. Now, after thinking about the warning Bran receives from Leaf about not seeking to call Ned back from death, I tend to think that warning would also apply to reaching back to influence the past as well. That's not to say Bran couldn't do it, or wouldn't ever do it... but if he ever did, I think it would be for something really important (not just to make Theon feel uncomfortable or guilty)... But there are other possibilities...

Bloodraven might take a poke or two at Theon in the present. Theon's dream of the dead was a true dream (probably influenced) and BR might be in the wind, since his attention would be on WF anyway, watching what Bran & co. were doing. ... and then there's the magic in WF, itself.

Like many others, I think the blizzard that envelops Stannis and the north later, does emanate from WF.. but unlike some, I don't think it happens because there is no Stark in WF, but because there is a Stark there, secretly - Benjen, the hooded man. (My personal conviction, though others won't agree.) ... So, if the magic can bring on snow, why not wind? The wind swirling through the battlements could be a WF wind. It could tug on Theon's cloak.. and really, given the ghosts of long dead Starks appearing in Theon's dream, can we be sure that the shades of the poor miller's boys are not responsible for Theon's sense of small ghostly hands?

I have a strong feeling that the magic of the Wall is "alive" (e.g., the Black gate ; the wall shakes off Jarl, a potential rival to Jon as future leader of the free folk, as well as for Val's affections / loyalty ; Jon is reflected inside the wall, not just by the surface), and I suspect the same sort of magic is built into WF. At the Wall, it only works optimally if the NW remains true, while at WF, a Stark must be physically present, and even better, one capable of leading. (This might also mean that some of the cloak flapping and snapping at the Wall might be down to the magic, itself.)

A couple of side issues - and I'm not a grammar and punctuation maven of evita's calibre, ;)but... tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green ... GRRM likes to play with sun/son ... on the bright side, Bran and Jon are about begin their arduous rise. They may have different fathers, but they are both sons of Winterfell - Stark by blood ... sadly, there's also a dark side, and this can also foreshadow that the roofs will be gilded by the blaze of flame lit by Ramsay, a rising Bolton son.

Now comes a fun bit I hadn't noticed before.. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. ..  I had looked at this before (maybe in this very thread) focusing on Theon's emotions... 

But there's a whole other context that I wasn't thinking about at the time. GRRM begins with "Ned Stark's tree" but then he drops the "Ned", and continues, "Stark's wood, Stark's castle ", and so on. He wants us to consider it without the "Ned". Change all those Stark's to the plural  possessive, Starks'... OK.. Ned's tree is the Winterfell heart tree. For thousands of years it has been the tree of the Starks (so it's also Starks' tree ) The wood  and castle are the wood and castle of the Starks. The gods are the gods of the Starks.

The sword ? Wait a minute, why does Theon even include Stark's sword? He can't see it, hasn't been thinking about it ... he saw no swords in his dream. Earlier , I tried to see how it might fit emotionally, for Theon to mention it , but really, it's an anomaly. It's not present, because Ned took "Ice" to KL with him, and we know what happened to it . However, whether Theon knows it or not, we know there was a much earlier "Ice, the sword of the Starks", that present day ,Valyrian steel "Ice " was forged to replace. Where is it? Conveniently, Theon also thinks, This is their place, not mine. .. This sentiment has been repeated often, in various wordings, usually about being in the crypts (though Cat feels something like it in the godswood,too).. So now I feel that "Ice" is probably in the crypts. Before, I just thought it was a possibility, sure... there was nothing to point to it, but I couldn't rule it out. Probably the readers with a sword or artifact obsession are well aware of this, I haven't really delved into their threads .. but it was a fun revelation to me, and shows once again that in a single brief passage, GRRM can salt clues to multiple topics.

:bowdown:BEMUSED: :wub: As always, you have made excellent points. :D You are not a Debbie-Downer.  We do not expect everyone to agree with everything we write.  I am guilty of allowing my thoughts to get away from me, and a voice of sanity is always welcome.

Now, give me time to respond to your work - I will post later, but I have to finish with Tijgy first.

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18 hours ago, Tijgy said:

Thanks. I actually starting to feel really proud of myself because I really admire your posts so I am really happy to hear you appreciate one of mine :D

Sadly, I have been busy these last days with school (a test and a paper concerning organizational crime and sadly not about gods, wolves, trees, :crying:) so I have not really able to read the posts in this thread. But I do hope I am able to do it and react to them in the near future. 

Thank you! :D

The old tongue, the song of wolves and forgotten truths

In this thread earlier bemused started to muse over the understanding of the old tongue by greenseers and Coldhands, … and especially in relation to the ravens.

I do think Cold Hands understands the ravens (part of what makes me think "they" did kill him very long ago, because the ravens were initially taught in the old tongue., and the older he is , the more likely he is to understand it.) ... Here's something interesting to muse on.. if BR or Bran are on the "weirnet" do they understand the old tongue because of sharing the awareness / memories of other greenseers?..and if so, how might that affect the abilty of more birds having more words in the common tongue , with BR and Bran both on the case ? (I mean, it's easier to teach someone your language, if you understand theirs.. and how much easier, if you had mind to mind communication?)” - Bemused

“As for the ravens having the speech of the cotf and later the speech of Westeros, well, if the greenseers awareness is still faint in the ravens, and perhaps some more than others, it might just well be they can talk to afew who can understand them, like BR and CH.” @Longrider

The old tongue and the new. That 'is' something interesting to muse on.  I like your take that CH may understand the old tongue due to his age etc....  As for the whole translation thing for Bran and BR, that is a mind blower.  I have no clue really, but my first thought was to agree with your idea that sharing their awareness/memories would facilitate any understanding.  That would solve any translation issues which would be a massive problem otherwise.  At the very least, a cool little something to look out for/think about, maybe we'll see a raven whisper in a giants ear?  Probably not.  Anyway thanks again for your ideas” (@Wizz-The Smith).

In this chapter Bran actually refers to a forgotten language:

They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them … not quite, not truly, but almost … as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten.”

He says “the direwolves sing to the stars” and calls it a song of direwolves. He thinks further “If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song”.

In this chapter you have the forgotten song of the direwolves (howling), you have later the ravens who talk in a forgotten language to Coldhands (quorks and squacks; the True tongue?) and then we encounter the singers who also sing in old tongue, a language forgotten by men.

So what is the meaning of those songs? Can wolves also speak the True Tongue, did men and the singers used to understand the meaning of the howling of wolves, does it just refer to fact the Starks do not remember any longer their ability to warg?

The CotF are actually called "those who sing the song of earth". Maybe the wolves are singing the same song?  

To be honest, I am not really sure the answer to that exact question really matters. I think the parallel between the songs of the direwolves and the song of the CotF are more important, the parallel between the fact the wolves “know truths the grey men have forgotten” and the singers who also remember truths menkind have forgotten, and the parallel between that “if I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song” and that if he is truly a greenseer, he might also uncover those forgotten truths.*

* IIRC This parallel was already earlier discussed in the Bran reread.

In this chapter it is really forshadowed Bran might be the one who will uncover truths by understanding the songs written in a forgotten language (the song of the earth?) or he will at least uncover some forgotten and hidden truths.

 

:bowdown:MOST EXCELLENT ANALYTICAL THOUGHT. :cheers: I am going to address your many insights concerning sound and song as these themes are my especial favorites.

I am drawing from my essay “The Singers of the Song of Earth”, which another plagiarized on the forum; therefore, if you recognize any of the content from another's thread, please know that my draft is the original.

“The Singers of the Song of Earth”

George R. R. Martin grudgingly sprinkles his prose with information about the “children of the forest”, and readers must rely upon Old Nan’s titillating tales, Maester Luwin’s drab discourse, and a handful of others in-the-know like Osha, Jojen, and Meera,  in order to piece together a fabric that advances an articulation of these enigmatic singers.

The main challenge with the CotF is that Martin writes of them cryptically, devising  ambiguities that arouse  reader curiosity  and build suspense and tension.  So much is open for interpretation.

Because of Martin’s conscientious editing, he orchestrates the release of new material in a timely manner that his fans eagerly await, especially when readers who are also writers know how difficult it is to create, populate, and “juggle” an entire world that exists only in the author’s head. 

Each novel Martin publishes in his series ASoIaF, he strategically divulges literary clues about “mysterious” entities, families, and plot developments to sustain and incite reader interest.  Martin exercises self-control, and by doing so, Martin demonstrates his respect for his readers and fans.

A delightful, engaging, and enthusiastic speaker, Martin guards his secrets like the ravens.  Doing this is not easy, especially when he is coaxed by fans.  However, Martin wants his readers to make their own decisions, but mostly he does not want to “spoil” his surprises by revealing too much information too soon. 

For example, readers and writers had time to study four novels before ADwD, and in these first four, here and there is a mention of the children of the forest.  But it is in ADwD that Martin delivers them.

Up until Bran meets “those who sing the song of earth” for the first time, he relied on others’ exaggerated, even misinformed  tales; now he can study real specimens at his leisure and make his own decisions about them and the last greenseer who only has one eye, not three.

I salute the brilliant strategist in Martin who invites his readers to join Bran when he first meets these wise children whose existence had been doubted by many naysayers.

OBSERVATION 1: “DEAD MEN SING NO SONGS”

From the very first page of the Prologue in AGoT, Martin places “death” and “song” together and in a prominent location.  Both words are in dialogue written for three men of the Night’s Watch tracking wildlings beyond the Wall.

During a heated discussion about whether dead wildlings are truly dead, Will and Royce reveal a myth from their youths:

"My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he [Will] put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,"  Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead."  His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest. 

I point this out before visiting the “children” since these singers are associated with “song”, yet the first mention of song in the series is linked to the dead.

Of course, Will’s remark is innocent enough, and he may be invoking humor to ease the stress among the rangers. However, the fact that it is placed on the first page of the first novel of the Series is more than a happy coincidence.

LC Mormont said that the CotF could speak with the dead, so perhaps the wights are the upshot of using magic to communicate with the no-longer-living.

I have noticed that Martin has put forth wights that are silent and a wight with a voice – as in Coldhands.

The wights are the dead walking, not talking. In order to talk, they need to breathe.  So from what readers learn later, the wights have no voice singly or collectively.  Perhaps it is a voice they seek.

If the dead no longer “breathe”, they have no voice.

ColdHands does not breathe, yet he speaks.

In order to make noise or attempt to speak words, vibration is necessary.  Often, the wind creates sound by causing a vibration, as when the wind rustles through the leaves, which can evocate the sound of whispered words.

The reason the wights do not speak is that they are dead; therefore, they no longer inhale and exhale air.  Without the passage of air over human vocal chords, a human cannot speak.  This concept appears in many vampire mythologies in that these “undead” do not perform the act of respiration, which is a typical human process that vampires attempt to emulate by training themselves to inhale and exhale.  Strangely, vampires do speak, and the science of how they do so is seldom clearly explained.  Probably some dark magic produces vibrations even without respiration.

·       Why does this interest me?  Well, I think Martin’s frequent assignation of voices to inanimate objects has far reaching significance in the series as a whole.  Furthermore, the appearance of an “allegedly” talking Coldhands has not been clearly explained by Martin . . . yet.  I, however, think Coldhands “is” a clue or “clues” to something ???? important. Coldhands covers his mouth and nose so that Bran and company cannot see that he speaks without lips and without respiration, and that he does not inhale and exhale.  So, how does Coldhands speak words?  [His crow companions may provide CH’s voice, a possibility since Martin describes  CH as always in the company of at least one or two crows, and most often even more crows.]

What does everyone else think?

 Is he an exception? More later, now the children.

Observation 2: “THE SINGERS of the SONG of EARTH”

Martin titles his series “A Song of Ice and Fire”,  and he arranges songs, verses, ballads, instrumentals, and sounds to set a rhythm or beat that compel the story forward while complementing action in the moment of the series. 

A group most-associated with voices gifted in song are the “children of the forest”. 

Leaf affirms, “The First Men named us children,” the little woman said. “The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years.”

·        Martin achieves a tone of superciliousness in Leaf’s clipped comments to Bran and Meera.  She rejects the name that men have given to her and her like, which Leaf implies is an insult that mocks the children’s diminutive size.

·        Bran dislikes when he is called crippled, so perhaps he relates to their umbrage.

·        Or not.  Meera and Bran take it upon themselves to make up names for the singers which helps them in their daily dealings with the singers.

·        “Bran and Meera made names for those who sing the song of the earth: Ash and Leaf and Scales, Blackknife and Snowylocks and Coals”. 

·        The “names” are based on their appearances.

·        Even though Bran and Meera mean no disrespect when they impress the ways of men upon the children, assigning them a label like Leaf and Snowylocks even after they had been told of the singers’ aversion to epithets.

·        Bran wonders what the singers think of their new names, but only Leaf knows the language that Bran speaks, and Leaf probably finds her name Leaf a shallow name given to her because of her distinctive leafy attire.

“Those who sing the song of earth

·        The singers are obviously a proud group who take their identity very seriously.

·        In the True Tongue, their names are long with lovely sound. 

·        But “those” is a plural pronoun, and indefinite for it refers to no one individually with an honorific. 

·        “Those” also is a vague reference, because it has no antecedent for clarity.

·        It seems the singers are “nameless” as individuals, but collectively, they share one name.

·        The subtext is in Leaf’s delivery and reader inference:  ‘giants [dimwits] and men [dimwits] called us stupid names because we liked trees and were small.  Ha Ha!  We sang the song of earth 10,000 years in a really hard language called The True Tongue way before men even uttered their first words of the Old Tongue!”

At one point, Bran is told that even the ravens were smart enough to speak the really hard language that the humans forgot, but the ravens still “remember” – their bright black eyes “hold secrets”.

Leaf and her people have grounds for resentment.  But Meera makes an observation:

 “You speak the Common Tongue now.”

Leaf quips:

“For him. The Bran boy.”

·        Speaking Bran’s language is a tolerable duty for Leaf and she does so only because of Bran’s inability to speak or comprehend the language of those who sing. She has no great love for the words men speak.

·        Then Leaf establishes her credentials, revealing her long years studying.

·        Leaf calls Bran “boy”: she does not use his proper name.  Since Leaf and her singers prefer being addressed collectively, it makes sense that she would not use his proper name.

·        But – boy is general and impersonal.  Leaf is certainly not “warm and fuzzy”.  She is “testing the waters”, keeping an emotional distance from the boy so she and he can have a prosperous working relationship.

“ I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home.”

“Two hundred years?” said Meera.

The child smiled. “Men, they are the children.”

·        Leaf is boastful – she knows more of men than they know of themselves after 200 years of watching, listening, and learning.

·        Unlike men in general, Leaf took the time and applied her energies to the pursuit of knowledge.

·        Leaf is a wee bit smug when Meera asks in disbelief “200 years?”  Depending on how the line is delivered, Leaf’s smile might convey just how silly men are who choose to label others in degrees of shallowness.  

·        Leaf has a bit of attitude when she points out that men, not them, are the children – not full grown, not mature, not wise.

“Do you have a name?” asked Bran.

When I am needing one.”

·        An early chapter in AGoT describes the old gods of the north as “nameless” and “faceless”, so those who are the choristers avoid emulating “men” and claiming an identity. 

·        Leaf’s snappy response is “so Arya!”

·        They are not vain; mark their armor, sticks, leaves, and woven vines.  They carry unassuming weapons, and their issues with the First Men are entrenched in their right to worship their gods in safety and in peace, and their totems or idols are cherished in the core of their beliefs. The “squirrel”/”Child” demand respect from invaders who steal their lands, destroy their homes, and blaspheme their gods.

·        And in whose blood flows the very same blood that nourished the bodies of these “First” Men. Stark!

·        Why “First”? Some of those who sing may very well resent the presumptive appropriation of this moniker– yes?

·        Could be these smart singers with their elaborate network have things all sewn up. 

Bran reveals his deep respect for the cotf:

“Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer”.

·        Leaf’s tale of hiking 200 miles brought to mind “The Wandering Jew”, which I am sure has been mentioned by other scholars.

·        Sweet natured Bran admires these little wise folk of the forest.  Leaf is not without an acute perceptivity, and Bran’s youth makes him an easy victim to manipulate.

·        Worse yet, Bran’s first association with Leaf is his own sister Arya whom Bran fears may be dead.  Leaf sings sad songs.  The Knight in the “old” Bran may aspire to chivalry.

OBSERVATION 3: SONG

In ADwD,  Bran’s POV, he finally sees and hears a child, or singer:

“That was not Arya’s voice, nor any child’s. It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

·        Martin endows Bran with a sensitivity to feel what he hears: Bran has a physical reaction to the “high and sweet” voices that intone “sadness” that “might break his heart”. 

·        Bran addresses the child’s “voice”. He associates the child with Arya, but she does not have Arya’s or ANY child’s VOICE.

Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from some place far below.  The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves in the True Tongue that no human man can speak.  The ravens could speak it, though.  Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck at his skin when they hear the songs” (448).

·        Bran is not alone in being moved by the song of earth.

·        The song of earth have an effect on the ravens when they hear the singers.  They “caw” as if trying to join their voices with the singers.  They also peck at Bran’s skin, which suggests their nervous excitement.

·        The ravens may want Bran to join in the song as well.

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

“Gone down into the earth . . . Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few . . . That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

·        These singers are so very wise, and Leaf is the singer who speaks for all the singers.  When she says Westeros was once their HOME, Leaf surely realizes that Winterfell was once the home of Bran and the Stark family.

·        If being displaced was not bad enough, the other singers are in the earth, in stones, and in trees.  It is like they were driven underground with the dead.

·        Leaf’s stories are strategically designed to win Bran’s sympathy.  She focuses on their shared losses.

·        Leaf understands human nature, and Bran’s tender sensibilities allow him to relate to the plight of the singers.

·        The singers going underground is also similar to Bran and his companions hiding underground in the Winterfell crypts to escape death.

·        Leaf’s lesson on the singers’ dwindling, along with the giants, mammoths, unicorns, lions, and direwolves, definitely tugs at the heart strings.  Leaf even mentions that the direwolves will die out, which is not the best thing to say to a crippled boy in a creepy cave with a corpse-like tutor whose greatest companion is a direwolf.

“She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well.”

·        Score!  Leaf achieves her goal.  She manipulates Bran’s emotions, causing him to feel sad for the way mankind treated them.

“ It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance.  The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.”

·        These lines narrated by Bran’s character disclose his frustrations.  Sad songs will not lead the singers to victory over their enemies.  They need to be more like men – get angry, spread hate, and vow vengeance

·        It seems that Bran will be highly motivated to absorb knowledge at record speed – he has a purpose.  His thoughts strongly insinuate that Bran will prove vengeance is the righteous path, and some bad men are deserving of a bloody death.

AUTHOR’S QUESTION:  What music have we experienced that made us sad and heart-broken?  

AUTHOR’S RESPONSE:

I often “feel” music deeply, I confess.  But if I had to select one piece of music that evoked a response like the one that Bran describes, I choose the haunting voice that opens James Cameron’s movie Titanic, composed by James Horner and entitled “Back to Titanic” – which you may hear at this site [It lasts maybe a minute]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJB6wTo2wM

This piece was omitted from the original soundtracks. A haunting woman’s voice evocates emotions, and even without the visual aspect, the melody makes my heart hurt.  It captures the tragedy and the sorrow that awaits the unsuspecting voyagers.

So, Martin hints at the “power” of music and song, suggesting that pleasing sounds will move most men not iron-hearted.  

OBSERVATION 4:  THE VOICE

Bran finds HIS VOICE in the Cave of Skulls, but readers learn of Bran’s escalating magic prowess in POV’s narrated by Theon’s various incarnations. Set at Winterfell’s godswood before the heart tree, Theon hears through the rustling of red leaves, which is Bran “flexing” his magic-muscles by  manipulating the “wind”.

Bran speaks again to Theon when there is no wind to rustle the leaves.  He says Theon’s name – he can enunciate, not like when he is in Summer or the ravens [at first]. Moreover, Bran achieves his goal of “touching” someone through his weirwood – here, a hand-shaped leaf brushes against Theon’s forehead.  This is a symbolic gesture of forgiveness.

Bran, as a young weirwood sapling, leans over to touch “the warg” that is his  bastard brother Jon Snow, who is having a wolf dream in his direwolf Ghost.  It is as a result of this connection –the mute Ghost howls.  Even Ghost will find his voice to sing with his pack.

Because of Theon’s physical and mental decline, most readers attribute Theon’s mystical communications with Bran via the weirnet as hallucinations, flights of fancy.

Whatever powers the singers have in their arsenal of magic tricks, their VOICES appear to have an effect on others.

The theme of finding a voice is a theory I have, and it includes all things associated with the oral cavity, tongue, vocal chords, neck, face, ears, teeth, and throat.

Bran and company enter the Cave of Skulls, a virtual charnel house with a pathway of bones that crunch beneath their feet. The entrance is called “mouth” several times.

Outside the cave, the wights are gathering.  Why?  Are they preventing Bran’s entrance?  Are they trying to prevent Bran leaving?  What are they attracted to?  The VOICES?  Are they gathering because of the song? 

Are the wights in search of a Voice?

More MOUTH Allusions:

Leaf leads Bran and his companions through a cavern with stone teeth “hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through the floor.  The child in the leafy cloak wove a path through them” (174).

“The ward upon the cave mouth still held” (452).

“Jojen had taken to climbing up to the cave’s mouth when the day was bright” (455).

The reference to teeth suggests a mouth.  This description also correlates to Arya passing through the dragon’s mouth and over the stone teeth.

“She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door” (AGoT).

Lord Brynden loses his voice when he does not exercise it regularly:

“The pale lord’s voice was dry.  His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten to form words” (178).

After Bran’s first vision through the weirwood, which occurs after he eats the paste, his throat is dry:  “his throat was very dry.  He swallowed.  “Winterfell . . . I saw my father” (458).

Martin uses the same word – dry – to describe Lord Brynden’s and Bran’s throats.

Visionaries sometimes have symptoms similar to BR and Bran’s after “seeing”.  They often experience a depletion of energy, and even faint after seeing something profound.

Othor forces his hand down Jon Snow’s throat during the attack on Mormont in AGoT.  Does he try to take Jon’s tongue?  “Tongue” is referenced quite often by the singers in ADwD.  Maybe the weirwoods need a tongue? 

Lord Brynden tells Bran, “The children carved eyes in the heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use . . . but in time, you will see well beyond the trees themselves” (ADwD 459).

·        The “eyes” are utilitarian and part of the education of new greenseers.  Bran will appear in the godswood heart tree in Winterfell to attend the nuptials of Ramsay Bolton and Jeyne Poole, where Theon will assume the role of “Ward” of Lord Eddard Stark.

When Bran finds his father in a second vision, one after Lord Brynden and Leaf firmly impress upon him that he has not the powers to “speak” to his father, but “all that he could do was WATCH and LISTEN.  I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t” (ADwD 459).

·        Then why do the children bother to carve mouths with opened lips in the trunk of the weirwoods?

·        The Voice that may speak through the heart tree will be ___?

·        Bran does communicate with Theon.

OBSERVATION 5: The Others’ Voices

The Others have a profoundly distinctive voice:

“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. […] Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles” (AGoT ).

[Anyone care to offer a vocalist who could do this? My best is Rod Stewart.]

In ASoS, Sam Tarley stabs an Other in the throat with obsidian, and “He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man’s foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse . . .” (ASoS).

·        The Others’ strange language may be the tongue the singers have used for thousands of years.  Or maybe the Others have developed their own language.

·        When Sam stabs, he hears ice cracking when his obsidian blade made contact with the Other’s throat. A screech that may have a windy kick to it  sends Sam backwards.

·        The sound is so unpleasant that Sam uses his hands to cover his ears instead of using them to break his fall.

·        Does the screech suggest that the Others feel pain?

Martin maintains his winter theme when choosing words to describe the Singers’ voices:

“And they [children of the forest] did sing. They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air”.

OBSERVATION 6: Greek Mythology and the Sirens / Singers

I cannot discuss the singers without mentioning their equivalent in Greek mythology, at least in my mind.  The Sirens’ are creatures with seductive voices who lure sailors to their deaths.  No man can resist the Siren’s song.

However, one sea captain cheats death and hears the voices no mortal had lived to speak of, and that hero is Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, resourceful Achaean beloved of Athena who inspires all his brilliant ideas.

·        Homer writes:  “So they [Sirens] sent their ravishing voices out across the airand the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer”.

·        Martin writes:  “It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

And:

·        They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air” (ADwD).

In both Homer and Martin, the Sirens and the Singers have voices light as air and when they sing their seductive song “the heart” “throbbed” or “broke his heart”.

I quote from Fagles translation of Homer’s Odyssey.

 OBSERVATION 7:  PETER PAN/ LEAF & SINGERS / REEDS

The children of the forest and even the Reeds reminded me of Peter Pan in appearance.  The “cloak of leaves” is reminiscent to J.M. Barrie’s description of Pan in Peter Pan and Wendy: “He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees;” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26654/26654-h/26654-h.htm#CHAPTER_I

Peter Pan flies with the help of pixie or fairy dust, which TinkerBell  the fairy  gives to him.   He does not grow wings. 

Bran Stark flies with greenseeing magic, and he does not grow wings.  However, Bran can skinchange birds. 

Pan has a band of mates called The Lost Boys, and they live at Neverland.

Bran has several companions and nears the Land of Always Winter.

OBSERVATION 8:  ARYA

“Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes.

 No one has eyes like that. *****

Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it” (ADwD 174-5).

****This may be an ON PURPOSE by Martin, a pun of words that speaks to Arya in Braavos who goes by many names and faces, including the appellation “no one” and the visage of a pussycat, the latter of whose eyes she borrows while she is blind.

OBSERVATION 9:  ALICE and ARYA:  DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

I cannot resist a nod to Lewis Carrol:

Bran knew. “She’s a child. A child of the forest.” He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan’s tales”.

OBSERVATION 10: BURIAL by SNOW

“The snow,” Bran said. “It fell on me. Buried me.” Eliminating the speaker attribution, Bran says, “The snow fell on me.  Buried me”.

***Bran’s choice of verbs, “fell” and “bury”, give action to the subject of the sentence SNOW.  FELL is part of the compound, proper noun Winterfell, Bran’s home, the home of House Stark.  BURY indicates the crypts of WF and who are buried beneath snow and earth.

Meera says the snow HID Bran, which offers a different and MORE optimistic perspective of the event.

“Hid you. I pulled you out.” Meera nodded at the girl. “It was her who saved us, though. The torch … fire kills them.”

OBSERVATION 11: FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING

Perhaps the wights forget they are dead, and what little of their past lives they remember helps the magic to animate the shadow that once was.

OBSERVATION 12: THAT THROAT THING

Samwell, even with his eyes tightly closed, embeds the dragonglass into the Other’s throat, a fatal blow that melts the armor and all that is beneath it.

“When he [Samwell] opened his eyes the Other’s armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked”.

Martin masterfully draws a vivid image of the Other’s death, accompanied by sounds dominated by esses - ssss:  blood “hissed” and “steamed” and its fingers “smoked” when they touched the “obsidian”.  Is anyone else lisping?

Martin employs other examples of alliteration in his description, which elevates his prose to poetry, and in this he truly embraces the totality of the genre “great epic”.  Only POEMS about the deeds of heroes are “great epics”.

Martin’s fondness for lyrical language sets a mystical, magical tone that permeates and thickens as Bran’s point-of-views appear less.  In ADwD, Bran’s final POV is at the midpoint of my text, roughly

OBSERVATION 13:  SOUNDS

Martin marks the journey of Bran and company to the Cave of Skulls with long periods of silence shattered by harsh, discordant noises, such as the ravens screaming, their leathern wings flapping, even Hodor screaming “Hodor”:  “Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.”

·        Martin’s decision to employ figurative language and poetic devices is evident in his repetition of words and sounds, in his forgoing commas when using items in a series, in his pattern of grouping words in some series of numbers.  In the example above, the pattern of lines is four words, four words, then five words, all of which share a balance and a center.

·        The words may be delivered musically, such as a chant or a lilt.  Martin has fun with his omission of commas in similar examples, which contrast sharply with those instances the items in a series are mechanically and grammatically sound.

Once Bran and his group enter the Cave of Skulls, Martin’s language becomes more poetic and lyrical, an homage to those who sing the song of earth.  The singers and their heart-breaking voices are one redeeming feature of the time spent in the Cave of Skulls.

As a matter of fact, Martin creates a rhythm by repeating key words and phrases intermittently over the course of Bran’s Cave of Skulls POV’s.

For instance, the phasing moon announces nightfall, but Martin’s language is repeated word for word.  Actually, this is a great epic tradition:  repetition of words and sound which some scholars believe assisted the bard’s in memorizing long works for oral performances.

·        “The moon was fat and full” (ADwD 448, 452).

·        “The moon was a black hole in the sky” (ADwD 449, 455).

·        “The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife” (ADwD 454).

Repetition of key words and phrases establish transitions and tell the passage of time. Martin enriches his narratives through styling language with a myriad of poetic devices.  He evokes a mental picture with the moon as a black hole in the sky, and he uses simile, the crescent moon is “thin and sharp as the blade of a knife”. These are but a few examples of how Martin makes music with words.

To demonstrate Martin’s poetic style, I will write in verse a passage from Bran’s last POV in ADwD:

 

The Cave of Skulls

Timeless, vast, silent

Were the caves

They were Home

To three score singers

The bones of thousands

Dead

Far below

The hollow hill

 

OBSERVATION 14:  HOSPITALITY AND GUEST RITE

The singers host Bran and his companions, providing them shelter, bedding, and meals.  Bran sums up their meagre fare:

“They had cheese and milk from the goats that shared the caves with the singers, even some oats and barleycorn and dried fruit laid by during the long summer. And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender”.

The goats are kept warm and safe because they give cheese and milk, a life-saving commodity in a deadly long winter.  However, goats are mentioned frequently in Greek tragedy and Homeric epic and myth.  The goat is most likely offered to the gods as a sacrifice.

In one example of a sacrificial goat occurs in Homer’s Odyssey.  In order to speak with the blind prophet Tiresias in the Land of the Dead, Odysseus digs a trench, which he then fills with the blood from the goat’s slit throat.  All the dead come charging for the fresh blood, and Odysseus must hold them back so that Tiresias can drink first.

Only after tasting blood can the dead hold speech with the living.

Some Martin scholars may use the presence of the goat in an argument promoting the theory of Jojen Paste.  The bloody stew is an ominous entrée with its “mystery meat” – Squirrel?  Rat?    The suggestion of squirrel meat “whispers” cannibalism, especially since the children of the forest and even Bran and his sister Arya, are compared frequently to squirrels.

“Rat” is a reminder of the “Rat Cook” and the severe penalties for violating the guest-host relationship.

Since the CotF are enmeshed in the godhood that punishes violators of these holy, sacred, yet unwritten laws, it is unlikely that they would serve Bran his friend Jojen, even if Jojen offered himself as a gift fit for a greenseer stewed to the tenderness Bran’s palate enjoys.

Bran grows in stronger the nearer he gets to the Cave of Skulls,  whereas Jojen weakens.  Of course, Bran’s connection to Summer is acute and somehow sustaining. Summer empowers Bran and gives him strength.  Bran is growing sturdier as opposed to feeble and atrophied.

Jojen is near death when they arrive at the Cave of Skulls, and although his health has seemingly improved while resting in the cavern, he is sullen, withdrawn, and melancholy.  His poor mental spirit only dooms a full recovery.

If Bran is as powerful as “all that”, he can very likely deplete Jojen’s life force without ingesting him on a spoon.

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12 hours ago, bemused said:

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BEMUSED SAID:

In the Dunk and Egg stories..mist is associated with Bloodraven who is believed to be able himself into a mist ,or use mist to obscure what he's doing. From The Mystery Knight...

Some claimed the King's Hand was a student of the dark arts who could change his face, put on the likeness of a one—eyed dog, even turn into a mist. Packs of gaunt gray wolves hunted down his foes, men said, and carrion crows spied for him and whispered secrets in his ear. and...

An army had appeared outside the castle, rising from the morning mists. ...

.... A single white dragon announced the presence of the King’s Hand, Lord Brynden Rivers.

Bloodraven himself had come to Whitewalls.

So I sense the presence of both Bran and Bloodraven in WF and later in the TWoW Theon chapter. If Bran is learning to magically manipulate mist, he's learning from an adept.

:bowdown:DEAR BEMUSED: :wub: This bit I am addressing is from Wizz-The-Smith bringing forward your most excellent observations made earlier in this thread.  We are going to be doing this as it is good form on other scholarly forums, especially those where so many contributors are sharing long, well-developed essays that need time to be read, studied, and reacted to by readers.

Since I have not thoroughly studied the Dunk and Egg stories, I value the information that you have generously shared here. It makes sense, and the progression of Bran’s powers mirroring his teacher’s is logical. :D

My original premise in documenting Bran acquiring his skills to become a presence in the mists and fog is borne from Bran’s 3EC dream in AGoT.

Martin employs the “grey mists” five times in Bran’s 3EC dream; thereby through repetition Martin seemingly designates them as symbolically meritorious.  The color “grey” is associated with House Stark and their banners, with the grey stone walls of Winterfell, with the statues in the crypts, with the landscape of the north, and with the direwolves of all but one “Stark” sibling, a few among many examples.   Throughout Bran’s dream, these mists serve as a protective “armor” that blankets Bran, keeping him safe from further harm during his “falling”, his “flying”, and his “landing”. 

Five examples from Bran’s 3EC dream follow:

GREY MISTS #1

“The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there”.

In the above passage, Martin mentions the “grey mists” for the first time in Bran’s 3EC dream.   The “grey mists”  whirl around Bran, spinning quickly, which hinders his ability to see the ground below him.  Bran feels himself plummeting, gaining speed, and death awaits him.  But the “grey mists” protect him from dizziness and confusion.

The grey mists and/or fog impedes clear vision, a theme reaffirmed in Theon and Arya’s POV’s later; since Syrio and the kindly man emphasized “seeing” what is there and not what the heart wants to see, Arya – and by association Bran, Theon, and others – may be “symbolically” blind to their own faults, or to the darkness of the paths they are taking. 

Martin repeats verbs in his comparisons of the mists/fog in other POV’s.

GREY MISTS  #2

“The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry”.

Not cry. Fly.

"I can't fly," Bran said. "I can't, I can't . . . "

How do you know? Have you ever tried?

The cold in the darkness may suggest imminent death if Bran does not fly, for many of those who die “feel the cold”.

Note the second time “grey mists” are referenced, as well as the “whispering voice”- we have both a visual image and an auditory image.  Martin evokes all the senses during this fall, even our own feelings of fear regarding falling.

***********************************

GREY MISTS #3

“Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. "The things I do for love," it said.

“Bran screamed.

“The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran's shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone”.

A face swims up out of the grey mist, and we know the implication of this shining golden light and the words, “The things I do for love.”  Bran is remembering that because of Jaime Lannister’s push, Bran would not be falling.

The crow orders Bran not to think of that, and when the crow lands on Bran’s shoulder and pecks at him, the golden face disappears.

The crow wants Bran to concentrate all his energies on flying, not reliving his fall.  He can visit the memory later when the situation is not as dire as this.

The grey mist appears for the third time, and it seems to bring the image of Lannister to light, but it still safeguards Bran as he falls.

GREY MISTS #4

“Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow, tearful”.

Teaching you how to fly.

"I can't fly!"

Note for the fourth time “the grey mists” are referenced, this time “howling” around Bran as he plunges toward the earth below.  The fact that Martin personifies the grey mists with “howling” suggests the howling of the direwolves of House Stark, which leads credence to this “grey mist” being somehow aligned with a Stark force, since it is represented as “grey” and howls like a wolf.

GREY MISTS  5

“The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, . . .”

Martin mentions the “grey mists” for the fifth and final time, 

and these mists “shudder,” “swirl”, and “rip” just like a VEIL, so Bran, via the protective veil, is returned safely to his bed in Winterfell.

·        I like the idea of Bran and his teacher working together to manifest the fog and mists.

·        In Homer’s Odyssey, Athene hides her beloved Odysseus in a grey mist.  Zeus seduces Danae and impregnates her as a “shower of gold”.  Dracula takes the form of a mist to visit his victims.

·        I theorize, perhaps wrongly, that BR’s mist protects Bran from certain death at the end of his fall, a fact that suggests BR’s powers  are limited:  he cannot prevent Bran’s crippling.  However, BR’s powers do allow him to spare Bran from the jaws of death.

·        Even though saving Bran’s life sounds like a great feat of wizardry, I do not think that either Bran or his teacher will be able to work their magic to save the lives of those they love in other circumstances.  Bran has free will, and it was Bran’s choice, ultimately, to “fly”, not “die”.  Does that make sense?

Continuing with your commentary,

BEMUSED SAID:

I haven't settled on one or the other of the following in my mind, yet , but it seems that either

 (1) what had been impossible for Bloodraven (Bran is told he will not be able to make himself heard) becomes possible through their joint efforts... or that

 (2) Bran's talent as a greenseer is so prodigious he will be able to surpass his master.

Perhaps it's a little of both, because even if Bran should eventually surpass BR, I don't think it will be quite yet ... And of course, even their joint efforts still might not be enough to allow them to be heard, generally. ...Theon's fragile mental state, now so open to / aware of the supernatural, makes him an ideal recieiver for Bran's transmissions, but the spearwives standing behind him don't hear Bran.

·        You are the scholar who rightly cautioned me about my assumption that Bran’s powers will exceed his teacher’s.  I rather did an about face and quit saying as much in my analytical commentary.  You said that “it is not a race”, I paraphrase your exact words.  I concluded that your arguments made sense.  My wording is/was flawed.  Now I try to address Bran’s advancement as a result of his teacher’s guidance and I emphasize “my take” on how greenseers access their powers.

·        If “most” of BR has gone into the trees to be part of the godhood, then BR’s essence and all his knowledge and wizardry will be manifested in Bran through his connection with the weirwoods, and all other reservoirs of knowledge attributed to the singers and their greenseers.  Does that make sense?

·        Jojen says to Bran,  “. . . the trees remembered all their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world.  Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods.  The singers believe they are the old gods” [ADwD 450].

·        Another scholar on westeros whose username I cannot recall said that Bran cannot absorb BR’s essence/knowledge until BR dies.  I pondered this for quite a while, and I decided that Martin clearly informs the reader through Leaf that BR has given himself to the godhood in present time.  Leaf to Bran: “Most of him has gone into the tree . . .” [ADwD  449].

·        Upon the death of his body, Bloodraven in his entire will merge with the trees, and very likely remain in his beloved ravens as a shadow on their souls, and perhaps other elementals.

·        I have toyed with the idea that Bloodraven may have taken steps to ensure that his spirit will live on even after his death, and perhaps the direwolf Ghost is the piece to the puzzle I have been forming.  If BR warged the male direwolf that impregnated the female direwolf that gave birth to a litter with an albino pup, might Ghost be a worthy beast fit for a “king”? . . .  and a vessel for BR to continue as a presence at the side of Jon Snow, who may represent “fire and ice”?  With Ghost/BR, part ice and part fire, at his side, Jon Snow will have even more plot armor.

·        I realize my ideas are fantastical, and that Jon’s warg is married to Ghost, as they are one.  However, if Jon wargs Ghost and then must return to his “cold” and maybe “dead” body, then Jon and his direwolf warg will reanimate its host, leaving a vacant Ghost for BR to take as his final life.

·        This feeds into my other favorite crackpot idea:  if the dragon blood of BR marries the wolf blood of the north, perhaps Ghost will be reborn with wings and breathe fire as well.

·        BR as warg will maintain his humanity and not disappear into the beast as has been suggested elsewhere in the novels.  BR is a greenseer, and his powers are more than a mere skinchanger who controls multiple beasts.

BEMUSED SAID:  Theon's fragile mental state, now so open to / aware of the supernatural, makes him an ideal recieiver for Bran's transmissions, but the spearwives standing behind him don't hear Bran.

Your wording reminds me of “Receiver of Memory” from The Giver by Lois Lowry: Bran is similar to Jonas and Lord Brynden is similar to “The Giver”:

“Jonas begins training under the present Receiver of Memory, an older man whom Jonas calls The Giver. The Giver lives alone in private rooms that are lined with shelves full of books. Jonas' training involves receiving, from The Giver, all of the emotions and memories of experiences that the people in the community chose to give up to attain Sameness and the illusion of social order” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver].

 

BEMUSED SAID:

I think this sensitivity to the supernatural traces back to his true dream of the feast of the dead before the sack of WF, and that dream was surely influenced by Bloodraven, since it showed him deaths he could not have heard of. Following the dream...

Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls.A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. ... ... The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword**, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. ... ... On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited. Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands.

This is a precursor of what is to come for Theon in ADWD in Winterfell.

** Why is "Stark's sword" included here ? No Stark sword is visible, and Ned's sword went with him to King's Landing. But Theon has seen Ned use his sword to mete out justice after Ned passed judgement... and I think he has a sense of what judgement and justice would be appropriate in his own case. In ADWD, at "Ned's tree", he doesn't ask for forgiveness... “A sword, that’s all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek.”

Still, considering what happens after Bran is fed the weirwood seed paste (and it's only that), I do think Bran will be progressing by leaps and bounds... After returning to his sleeping chamber, disconnected from the tree, he has a "dream" that is no dream, but a spontaneous re-connection to history witnessed by the WF heart tree.

:cheers:GREAT CATCH with Theon’s mention of the sword in the items in a series construction.  I think you are on to something because Martin does a lot with omissions, many that the readers completely overlook.  For me, Martin omits mentioning Arya’s Myrish mirror, which she does not return to after receiving a new face.

After all her training before the mirror, the fact that she does not race to look at her new identity is a telling omission.  I think it speaks to Arya’s growing magic – as she is able to see beneath false faces and perceive what is in the heart.

I found some notes that dovetail with your ideas:  Martin’s use of the verb “leech” and mists and such in Ned’s dream:

Martin’s Clever and Significant Word Choices:  Leech

Martin’s verb choice is quite a gem in Eddard’s thoughts of his fading memories:  “but the years LEECH at a man’s memories” (AGoT 424). Martin uses the intransitive form of the verb “leech”, which means “to draw off or deplete a supply of something” (Encarta Dictionary).  Thus, as the years pass, time “depletes” Ned’s store of recollections, specifically the knowledge of the faces of the six men, along with Eddard, who confront the three of Aerys’ kingsguard at the Tower of Joy.  Later, “leech” will appear in other connotations in Martin’s novels.

In ADwD, Martin describes how all color has been leeched out off Winterfell.

Grey / Mists / Shadow / Dreams

Martin’s word choice to describe sections of Eddard’s dream are reminiscent of Bran’s 3EC dream:  “In the dream they [the men at the Tower of Joy] were only shadows, grey wraithes on horses made of mist” (425). “Greys” and “mists” are words that appear in Bran’s prophetic dream, and Martin describes a “grey mist” that surrounds Bran and protects him on his symbolic journey with his spiritual guide, the three-eyed-crow.  “Grey” is associated with the Starks, the Stark House sigil, the Stark direwolves, and the banners of the Starks.  The “grey” is oft used to describe the scenery around the north.  Moreover, “mists” appear with the white walkers and the wights.

BEMUSED SAID: 

Since you bring up the Mercy chapter for comparison, I was just thinking about it the other night, having recently learned that it was intended to be included as Arya's last chapter in ADWD, but was pushed forward to TWoW at the last minute. So the WF mist and the fog in Braavos would have been experienced in closer relation to each other by the reader....The "Prince of Winterfell" chapter, with all of its grey, grey, grey = Stark, Stark, Stark imagery, would have come first, as well as " the Turncloak" and possibly "Theon" , in both of which we at least have the reminder that Jeyne's eyes are not grey.(Those chapters are split by "A Ghost in WF" , which has no direct reminder..but it does have references to Ned, and Stark ghosts.)

On the Arya side of the comparison, "The Blind Girl" and "The Ugly Girl", with the night wolf and the spontaneous warging of the cat were always designed to come first.

!! Spoilers for mercy chapter ahead !!

For me, it was instructive to look at all the references to fog in order.

She could see the green water of the little canal below, the cobbled stone street that ran beneath her building, two arches of the mossy bridge… but the far end of the bridge vanished in greyness,

I see this as a long-term foreshadowing. It's logical (for me) to make the extension from her building, to her street, herbridge. This is the path leading away from the buildling that houses her now. Two arches of the bridge are visible, her life in Westeros and her life in Braavos - distinct from each other, but part of the same bridge that she must cross, vanishing into (leading to) Greyness - her identity as a Stark.

The mists seemed to part before her and close up again as she passed.

Says to me that she's aware she's on a secret mission, her approach to and departure from any given spot are cloaked in fog and because the word "mists" is used, I certainly wouldn't rule out that she has some assistance.. but whose, exactly, is a mystery.

Braavos was a good city for cats, and they roamed everywhere, especially at night. In the fog all cats are grey,Mercy thought. In the fog all men are killers.

She had never seen a thicker fog than this one.

The cats are important ..she's been "Cat" and has seen through the eyes of "Cat", as well as the eyes of the cat in Pynto's.. she used knowledge gained as "Cat" to escape as The Ugly Girl. In the dark, in fog, even with Mercy's face, dressing as "Cat" might be a good escape plan.

In "The Queesguard" chapter, we find an echo : Barristan and Skahaz meet at night, in secret...

“A cat?” said Barristan Selmy when he saw the brass beneath the hood. When the Shavepate had commanded the Brazen Beasts, he had favored a serpent’s-head mask, imperious and frightening.

“Cats go everywhere,” replied the familiar voice of Skahaz mo Kandaq. “No one ever looks at

them.”

"In the fog all men are killers." Shows that she already knows she will cause a man to be seen as a killer..her killer. She will create another kind of fog to assure it. ... "She had never seen a thicker fog than this one." may again suggest she has some unseen help.

Mercy passed an old man with a lantern walking the other way, and envied him his light. The street was so gloomy she could scarcely see where she was stepping.

Having some familiarity with the Tarot, the old man immediately made me think of the Hermit - among the various meanings: inwardly seeking your path, seeking enlightenment, being on a solitary journey. Because he's going the other way , it portends that Arya will have to change direction at some point. In Arya's present, she has a mission to accomplish, but she can "scarcely see where she's stepping" - she's not yet 100% sure how she'll do it.. Unlike the Ugly Girl's mission, there's no time to observe habits, etc.. she'll have to identify an opportunity, or create one quickly.

The last bridge was made of rope and raw planks, and seemed to dissolve into nothingness, but that was only the fog. Mercy scampered across, her heels ringing on the wood. The fog opened before her like a tattered grey curtain to reveal the playhouse.

This bridge is not a bridge that's made to last .."Only the fog" makes it seem to lead into nothingness..( Perhaps only the fog makes her appear to be no-one) She has no concerns now about the fog (if she ever did have) but the tattered curtains suggest shredding or dissolving and show that things will now become clearer for her. The playhouse is her stage in a sense, and she's making her entrance.

(Eventually, we get to "The gods have given me a gift.") From here on, she's completely at ease, even a bit reckless in the fog.. the real fog is her friend and she's confident of the fog she's creating.

Mercy took him by the hand, led him through the back and down the steps and out into the foggy night.

Hand in hand, they went racing through the fog, over bridges and through alleys and up five flights of splintery wooden stairs.

So, yes I do think Bran might be keeping tabs on her , but I think Bloodraven was doing so long before Bran got to the cave of the CoTF.

All excellent points, Bemused.  I appreciate that you have taken the time to share with us as you always have meaningful commentary and on-point evidences.

Please share with us any of your threads that may be inspiring for us to read. 

I know that I have my own theories about the Stark in Winterfell, but that does not mean that I devalue your theories in favor of mine own.  I definitely think that you make a compelling argument for Benjen as the Stark who has been hiding in WF for some time.

Regardless of whether or not Bran is the reigning Stark or Benjen, in truth, either way, our summations do acknowledge a Stark presence on the WF property.

I do not have to be right.  Wait – I take that back.

 In cases when grammar and usage are involved, I may seem unreasonable and firm on my observations.  But my years of teaching writing, and practicing the craft, has infused me with a passion for preserving our English language.  For instance, a poster tried to tell me that “him” was the subject of a sentence.  Moreover, he/she claimed that Martin’s use of parallel structure in the sentences of a short paragraph were evidence of to whom the author was referring.  All three sentences presented not one parallel element.  Obviously, the poster was volleying jargon, tossing out terminology about which he/she knew absolutely nothing.

Since Martin’s parallel structure in descriptive sentences is a contributor to the brilliance of his prose narratives, I get heated when pretenders try to take me to school at Martin’s expense.

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On ‎01‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 10:23 AM, bemused said:

Thanks, Wizz ...  I have been looking in from time to time, but often refrain from posting, because I don't want to be a Debbie Downer... ;) .. and my readings often take a slightly different turn. I have no desire to play resident contrarian pain-in-the-neck.

Note I say "slightly" different, because I agree Bran's abilities are prodigious - I just don't see him as being quite so powerful so soon, and think it makes more sense dramatically, if it's a bit more touch and go as to whether Bloodraven can prepare Bran in time for his greatest challenges.

Of course, that means I think this thread is sometimes stinting in it's recognition of Bloodraven. <_<

I had this example pop up at me again, in the process of doing something else. It' the scene from ACoK, Theon V.- After having his dream of the dead, and abusing Kyra in an attempt to dispel it ...

Yet even then, he could not sleep.
Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls. A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. He watched the forest go from grey to green below him as light filtered through the silent trees. On his left he could see tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s sword, Stark’s gods. This is their place, not mine. I am a Greyjoy of Pyke, born to paint a kraken on my shield and sail the great salt sea. I should have gone with Asha.
On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited.
Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands. The miller’s boys had been of an age with Bran and Rickon, alike in size and coloring, and once Reek had flayed the skin from their faces and dipped their heads in tar, it was easy to see familiar features in those misshapen lumps of rotting flesh. People were such fools. If we’d said they were rams’ heads, they would have seen horns.

Hey bemused!  Haha, you're not a Debbie-Downer, your posts are very welcome.  I know what you mean though, if a thread has a certain flow to it, to go against the grain a little can result in no replies and can seem perhaps negative.  However, Evita and I would like to promote different opinions throughout the thread and you are always polite, with textual evidences to voice your thoughts.  This is a seldom researched subject, and many an analytical eye is required to try and half way suss this out, you are a well informed member and I respect your opinions. [Even if I don't agree with small % of them :)]

I like your breakdown of the above text, I agree that BR is a prime suspect for any inhabitant of that wind.  As you mention he is watching Bran.  And I liked all your other thoughts, the sword etc.... another cool post!

I haven't had much time over the weekend, but wanted to check in and express my appreciation for your posts.  You mention the stinting on BR in this thread, I agree we should be looking more at his influence, that's kind of why I posted your previous thoughts.  So much Bran stuff that perhaps we have overlooked him sometimes.

However, I have posted quite a lot about BR in the wind, 'whispering through trees, making cloaks become half alive, half blind and knife references' these all scream BR to me.  I've posted about the 'half blind' reference in Braavos regards the mist etc..........  I think it's mostly BR until Bran is with him, then Bran appears in the wind straight away. [Jon VII ADWD]  And I do think we should be looking for a 'teacher and student scenario'.  Perhaps two possibilities of a presence in the text?  You are right, BR is key to what we are looking for here!  Including perhaps similar textual clues, 'ghostly fingers' etc..

I get the impression you are open to some of this when there is an 'in' so to speak, the magic of WF or the Wall etc...... I agree to a certain extent, but see a lot of clues for BR in the wind away from said magic places, as quoted above. Do you see BR in the windy text I submit?  If so, they are not at these 'magic' locations and may require some ideas to be bounced off one another. :)     

Anyway, I will always pay heed to your thoughts and think your BR ideas can be of great use to us!  :D

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