People as Weapons: Arms Part I - Trebuchets, Catapults, Spitfires

[Seams]

We know that white walkers turn people into weapons. I think they are in good company, though: high-born families in Westeros turn their children into weapons; people with money use sellswords as weapons; the Night’s Watch turns young men into “swords in the darkness;” the Faceless Men turn Arya into an assassin. This post may be the first of a series examining the ways that weapons and people overlap, personification of weapons as well as objectification of humans, or ways that people “become” weapons in the hands of their families and others who cultivate them over time.

The first overlap I noticed between humans and weapons is the area of arms. Of course I’m interested in the pun between arms that are human limbs and armament arms. But I’m also interested to determine whether there are patterns in the wordplay around arms. Not surprisingly, given the amputation of Jaime’s “sword arm,” my initial thought was to look for a pattern of association between disembodied arms and Lannisters.

I think there may be some correlation, but it’s not perfect. The astute reader immediately points out here that the disembodied arms of Othor and Jafer Flowers are the first tangible evidence of the return of the Others, and appear to have nothing to do with the Lannisters. (There are also a number of arm references in the prologue scene with the attack on Ser Waymar Royce.) But I’ll present the Lannister trebuchet and catapult examples I have gathered and see where they take me in consideration of the disembodies arms of the wights.

 

Some examples – Arms and Lannisters

 

After the crab feast where Lord Commander Mormont crushes a crab claw in his fist, Tyrion decides to visit the top of the Wall before he departs Castle Black to return south in the morning.

He passed a massive catapult, as tall as a city wall, its base sunk deep into the Wall. The throwing arm had been taken off for repairs and then forgotten; it lay there like a broken toy, half-embedded in the ice.

On the far side of the catapult, a muffled voice called out a challenge. "Who goes there? Halt!"

 

The muffled voice belongs to Jon Snow, of course. Jon and Tyrion start to chat, with Tyrion inquiring:

 

If I touch Ghost, will he chew my hand off?"
"Not with me here," Jon promised.

AGoT, Chapter 21, Tyrion

The conversation closes with Tyrion agreeing to do what he can to help Bran Stark, and Jon Snow responding by offering his bare hand for a handshake from one friend to another. The author says Tyrion feels “oddly touched” by the “flesh against flesh” gesture.

The imagery of the arm that needs repairs and the unexpected gesture of friendship suggests that Tyrion has been “disarmed,” I think. Instead of having his hand chewed off, Jon Snow prevents the direwolf from attacking Tyrion. Tyrion has agreed to help Jon’s brother, and nothing could be more appreciated or meaningful to Jon. This is a contrast to the amputation of Jaime’s arm, which is done with the deliberate intent of sending a “message” to Tywin. So the frozen and forgotten catapult arm may be a sign of peace (for the time being, anyway), but Jaime’s arm becomes a symbol for retribution and warfare.

The direwolf Ghost does not show the same restraint about chewing off a hand after Jon has finished taking his vow as a new member of the Night’s Watch, however:

And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like the trees . . .

The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black. "What's he got there?" asked Bowen Marsh, frowning.

"To me, Ghost." Jon knelt. "Bring it here."

The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly's sharp intake of breath.

"Gods be good," Dywen muttered. "That's a hand."

(AGoT, Chapter 48, Jon)

This hand is the hand taken from the “corpse” of Jafer Flowers, a member of Benjen Stark’s ranger group that had failed to return months earlier. It is part of the “people as weapons” motif because, later that night, it attacks Ghost and Jon and Lord Commander Mormont when Flowers arises as a wight. All that is know of Flowers is that he was probably an illegitimate child from the Reach. I can’t speculate that he is a Lannister bastard, although his given name is one of the closest matches we have seen for the name Joffrey (unless you see a close Frey / Joffrey connection).

The only major link I can see between Ghost refraining from chewing off Tyrion’s hand but then bringing Jafer’s hand to Jon is that Tyrion is destined to be a very successful “acting” Hand of the King (serving in his father’s absence). Every king needs a Hand he can trust, right? But Jon seems to be a hidden, secret king. If people knew his secret, he would not be safe. So maybe the Others know his secret and the attack by the scary, bad hand is a symbolic way to undermine a future king. On the other hand (ha!), maybe the point of Jon's presence deterring Ghost from hand removal is to show the difference between Jon / Ghost and Robb / Greywind or even Arya / Nymeria: the latter two direwolves bite people's arms and hands; Jon takes a different approach to human-direwolf interaction.

The following example seems clearly linked to the scene where Ghost brings the disembodied hand to Jon Snow. Robb Stark has just won a brilliant victory over Lannister forces at the Battle of the Whispering Wood. When Theon recounts details of the battle to interested drinking buddies, he says, "The Lannisters must have thought the Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb's got in among them. I saw him tear one man's arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him." (AGoT, Catelyn XI)

Ghost retrieved the arm of the lost Night's Watch brother (turned into a wight by the Others) but Grey Wind creates a disembodied "Lannister" arm. To Theon, this seemed like a vivid example of why or how Robb’s team won the battle. The wight whose arm was retrieved by Ghost subsequently attacks Jon and Ghost, however, and Lannister allies subsequently attack and kill Robb and Grey Wind at the Red Wedding. Keep in mind, too, that the arm retrieved by Ghost had originally been the arm of a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, before he became a wight. Of course, we will eventually see Jon’s sworn brothers turn on him and attack him at the end of ADwD.

The idea of this disembodied Lannister arm coming back to haunt the Young Wolf may be a good explanation for the line, "Jaime Lannister sends his regards." Jaime’s amputated arm was his king-slayer arm as well as his sword arm; symbolically, the King in the North is slain by the same king-slaying Lannister "arm."

The next example shows that Tyrion can be very smart about the use of an “arm” in warfare. It wasn’t his idea to stockpile wildfire, but he immediately grasps the value of it as a weapon and devises a way to ensure that it is used effectively.

"Oh, and one more thing. The alchemists will be sending a large supply of clay pots to each of the city gates. You're to use them to train the men who will work your spitfires. Fill the pots with green paint and have them drill at loading and firing. Any man who spatters should be replaced. When they have mastered the paint pots, substitute lamp oil and have them work at lighting the jars and firing them while aflame. Once they learn to do that without burning themselves, they may be ready for wildfire."

Ser Jacelyn scratched at his cheek with his iron hand. "Wise measures. Though I have no love for that alchemist's piss."

"Nor I, but I use what I'm given."

ACoK, Chapter 20, Tyrion

Which finally brings us to Jaime and the amputation of his sword arm. First, consider some of the foreshadowing in the dialogue leading up to the cutting of his arm. Brienne and Jaime argue about whether he should carry a sword once Jaime’s cousin, Ser Cleos Frey, has died. The two soon engage in all-out combat:

“You can stand a watch without weapons.” She rose.

“Chained to a tree? Perhaps I could. Or perhaps I could make my own bargain with the next lot of outlaws and let them slit that thick neck of yours, wench.”

“I will not arm you. And my name is—”

“—Brienne, I know. I’ll swear an oath not to harm you, if that will ease your girlish fears.”

“Your oaths are worthless. You swore an oath to Aerys.”

 

…

He managed to jerk her dagger from its sheath, but before he could plunge it into her belly she caught his wrist and slammed his hands back on a rock so hard he thought she’d wrenched an arm from its socket.

The image of Brienne nearly wrenching Jaime’s arm from the socket strongly recalls the scene Theon described, where the direwolf Grey Wind tore a man’s arm from his shoulder. It makes sense to compare Grey Wind and Brienne: Grey Wind was bonded with Robb Stark and helped him in battle; Brienne is sworn to Catelyn Stark and would do battle to help her lady achieve her goals. She doesn’t sever the arm here, but she comes close.

Then Brienne, of Team Stark, and Jaime, of Team Lannister, find that they are both victimized by people playing both sides. Just before Vargo Hoat directs that Jaime’s arm be cut off:

“And what of brave Lord Vargo?”

“Shall I sing you a verse of ‘The Rains of Castamere’? The goat won’t be quite so brave when my father gets hold of him.”

“And how will he do that? Are your father’s arms so long that they can reach over the walls of Harrenhal and pluck us out?”

“If need be.” King Harren’s monstrous folly had fallen before, and it could fall again.

ASoS, Chapter 21, Jaime

As with the Red Wedding, Tywin’s long arms are a result of using other people to do the killing he wants done. Gregor Clegane tortures and murders Vargo Hoat. Roose Bolton kills Robb Stark just after Catelyn notices the hidden chain mail on Bolton’s arm. Jaime is the one who loses and arm, but the disembodied arm symbolizes Tywin’s methods for eliminating people who get in his way. As I have written elsewhere, I believe Tywin even killed Joffrey, using Ilyn Payne as his go-between while Tywin literally wore a glove to keep his hands clean. Even with his army, Tyrion describes Tywin sitting like a statue on horseback, watching instead of participating in the battles where he commands. The army and the individual surrogates are all people Tywin has carefully selected and shaped into his personal arsenal of weapons.

Joffrey is both a virgin in the use of weapons and a virgin who does not live to experience the bedding portion of his own wedding celebration. Although he brags at Winterfell that he has a real sword while the Stark boys are still using wooden practice swords, the extent of Joffrey’s sword use is threatening a butcher’s boy and cutting up a rare and valuable book. Earlier, he also shot a mother cat with an arrow. Tywin doesn’t see Joffrey as a valuable weapon, after a scene in which Joffrey contradicts Tywin’s direction about how to rule. Before Joffrey leaves the scene, however, he is present as King’s Landing comes under attack by Stannis Baratheon and his (offstage) mother and Tyrion allow Joffrey his first and only experience with combat, giving him a turn directing the use of trebuchets nicknamed “the Whores”:

“Mother promised I could have the Whores,” Joffrey said. …

“The Whores are yours.” It was as good a time as any; flinging more firepots down onto burning ships seemed pointless. Joff had the Antler Men trussed up naked in the square below, antlers nailed to their heads. When they’d been brought before the Iron Throne for justice, he had promised to send them to Stannis. A man was not as heavy as a boulder or a cask of burning pitch, and could be thrown a deal farther. Some of the gold cloaks had been wagering on whether the traitors would fly all the way across the Blackwater. “Be quick about it, Your Grace,” he told Joffrey. “We’ll want the trebuchets throwing stones again soon enough. Even wildfire does not burn forever.”

(ACoK, Chapter 59, Tyrion)

So the only practical weapon use of Joff’s short life involves the use of a disembodied throwing arm in the form of a trebuchet. The Lannister arm strikes again. There is also personification at work here again, with the weapons given a pejorative nickname constantly used for the sex workers found throughout the SevenKingdoms and Essos. The ammunition for the weapons is also small folk, as Joffrey has executed a group of merchants known as the Antler Men who had conspired to support Stannis Baratheon instead of remaining loyal to Joffrey. But how useful is it to hurl human bodies at the enemy? Tyrion treats Joffrey’s turn as a battle commander as an unimportant interlude before the trebuchets are needed again for real combat operations.

There is wordplay throughout the books around whores and horses, and I suspect that the author has set up here the opposite of a Trojan horse scenario: instead of an effective invasion of Troy with live soldiers inside of a wooden horse, Joffrey is so inept that he has loaded dead bodies into “whores” and thrown them outside the city. The kid just doesn’t “get” how to conduct a war. (In fact, with the Antler Men as ammunition, is there an allusion here to the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene in which the absurd French defenders hurl farm animals over the castle walls at the absurd English attackers?)

 

Throwing, Grasping, Slashing, Stabbing

I realize that Lannisters use other types of weapons – Jaime is obviously a talented swordsman and he killed King Aerys with a sword. (In a future post, I’ll discuss ways swords are also associated with human arms.) Tyrion uses a crossbow to kill Tywin. Cersei slaps people. So one place where this initial post falls short is that I focused too quickly on throwing arms without fully considering other things that human arms can do.

When I went back and looked at the prologue of AGoT, for instance, there are numerous references to tree branches as grasping arms or hands:

Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.

(AGoT, Prologue)

Attacks by the disembodied arms of the wights seem more like these grabbing branches, trying to strangle and choke their victims. So it may be just the uses of arm-like weapons such as spitfires, catapults and trebuchets – throwing arms – that seem to be uniquely associated with Lannisters.

It may be another flaw here that I have presumed that hands and arms are synonymous. At one point, I tried to keep track of references to Jaime’s maimed appendage and found that it is sometimes referred to as an arm and sometimes as a hand. It is also called a stump sometimes, which is interesting to consider alongside the reaching and grabbing tree branches in the prologue scene. There is probably a pattern to the references, and I would need to do another re-read to sort out the arm / hand code.

I have been examining GRRM’s use of wordplay and deliberate parallels long enough though, that I suspect he does want us to compare Lannisters and wights on some levels. I see very strong implications of Tywin using his immediate and extended family members as weapons, for instance, and certainly the White Walkers also turn human beings into weapons. For what it’s worth, I also noticed recently that Tywin + Cersei = Winter + Ice (with two letters left over). And keep in mind that hands of gold are always cold.

[House Cambodia]

A lit crit of the first order - marvellous stuff!

[House Cambodia]

On 02/05/2016 at 7:58 PM, Seams said:

Tywin + Cersei = Winter + Ice (with two letters left over).

"Tyri" would kind of do the job, ahem.

Tywin Tyrion Cercei

[Knight and Dayne]

Great stuff amigo, a hell of a read.

Any thoughts on maimed hands? It's a pattern I've given a good deal of thought to. Jon, Catelyn, Davos, Jaime, Theon, Victarion, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting have hand or arm injuries that seem to symbolize major changes to their characters. They're all POV's too, which really makes me think there's some purpose to all of it.

"Hand of the King" turns out to be a very precarious title as well. All of Aerys' hands (except for Tywin!!) ended up worse for the wear, as did Ned and Tyrion. I think there's a lot your analytic could do with that notion: Tywin, the once and future Hand of the King. 

[Seams]

1 hour ago, Knight and Dayne said:

Great stuff amigo, a hell of a read.

Any thoughts on maimed hands? It's a pattern I've given a good deal of thought to. Jon, Catelyn, Davos, Jaime, Theon, Victarion, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting have hand or arm injuries that seem to symbolize major changes to their characters. They're all POV's too, which really makes me think there's some purpose to all of it.

"Hand of the King" turns out to be a very precarious title as well. All of Aerys' hands (except for Tywin!!) ended up worse for the wear, as did Ned and Tyrion. I think there's a lot your analytic could do with that notion: Tywin, the once and future Hand of the King. 

I have often wished that someone would make a giant spread sheet with deaths and injuries on it, so we could better analyze the meaning of beheadings, leg injuries, lost eyes, etc.

The thing that seems most important about hand injuries seems to be who inflicts the damage: Stannis cuts off Davos's fingers and Davos becomes unwaveringly loyal to Stannis; Grey Wind bites off a couple of The Greatjon's fingers and he becomes Robb's biggest supporter. The wildlings maim Qhorin Halfhand's hand, and he gives up his life so that Jon can join the wildlings. A lot of the people with hand injuries seem to be dedicated to service of a king or queen - I would include Coldhands in this, if we see Bran on an arc to become some kind of King. Jon Connington's dying fingers also fall into this category although, interestingly, he seems to have contracted grey scale from rescuing Tyrion, not from his lifelong work in service of the Targaryens.

But this analysis doesn't always seem to work. Maybe there's a difference for hands or fingers lost altogether, or those injured by a weapon (is a direwolf a weapon?) or in defense against attack, and those injured by fire or in some other way. And maybe "self-inflicted" hand wounds are different from injuries resulting from someone else.

Jon's hand, burned when he uses fire to defeat the wight that had been Jafer Flowers, I interpreted as a sword going through the process of annealing. (Metal is alternately heated and then plunged into water in the process of shaping and working it. This prevents the metal from becoming brittle as it is bent and hammered.) When Jon starts to desert the Night's Watch after Ned's death, the author describes Jon putting his hand into a pool of melted snow to cool off the still-painful burn. (A tangent: I think this pool symbolism also explains why it is Jeyne Poole that is raped by her "husband" Ramsay and by Theon at Ramsay's command. Theon is a symbol of the sword Ice, and Ramsay is an evil weapon of some kind, probably being wielded by Roose Bolton.)

Theon's fingers are cut off by Ramsay and, as Reek, he becomes sickeningly loyal to Ramsay out of fear that he will be hurt again. So that fits in with the first theory about loyalty to the person (king) who takes your fingers. But Lady Hornwood eats her own fingers after being forced to marry Ramsay Snow. It took me awhile to figure out the difference, but I think she (along with some other characters, such as the Greatjon,) symbolizes the North. By eating her own fingers, she is denying Ramsay the loyalty that she had willingly yielded to the Starks. In this case, she may also be denying him her hand in marriage. By taking control of her own fingers, she is opting out of the pattern of becoming loyal after a hand injury. Of course, she dies before Ramsay can inflict any further damage on her.

Note: In the "Six Pups In the Snow" direwolf reread, a few of us debated whether it makes a difference that the person's fingers were cut off for a just reason (Davos really had been a smuggler; the Greatjon really had said something treasonous) or whether the dismemberment was unjust (Ramsay is just sick when he flays and cuts off Theon's fingers). But I don't know if this is relevant after all. Ramsay and the people around him rationalize that Theon is being punished for invading Winterfell.

This gets off the subject of hand injuries per se, but we do see Theon starting to recover his wits and to run from Ramsay at the end of the last book. Because I've persuaded myself that Theon represents the sword Ice, I think his ability to escape from Ramsay may have to do with Tobho Mott's line about the old Valyrian Steel swords "remembering" and refusing to change: the red colored blade that Tywin wanted didn't turn out exactly as he had wanted - the grey remained even after Mott melted down Ice to make two new swords. Or the fact that Theon was Reek when he was injured might mean that Theon is still relatively intact as a human being, and Reek was the one who was loyal to Ramsay. When Lady Dustin takes Theon into the special, symbolic Stark forge that is the Winterfell Crypt, Theon is repaired and emerges to the godswood where Bran calls to him, symbolically taking up his father's sword.

Catelyn is injured when she grabs the blade of the dagger wielded by the Catspaw who has come to (apparently) kill Bran in his bed. I haven't sorted this one out entirely but, in a weird way, this injury is also self-inflicted. One of Catelyn's alternate names is Cat. So we see Cat's hand being injured by Cat's paw. There may be a clearer interpretation if we ever find out who sent the catspaw, or maybe GRRM wants us to focus only on the symbolism of Cat's hand vs. Cat's paw.

I wish I knew how or why Tywin was such a successful Hand of the King. There is symbolism around him that indicates he is made of stone, which might mean he is part of the "What's dead can never die" symbolism. But there is also a lot of symbolism around the Starks being made of stone, so I'm not sure that explains Tywin's ability to survive. He is killed by the only other guy we have seen who is a brilliant hand of the King, so maybe it's a case of hand to hand combat! (Ha!) Tywin also uses other people's hands to do his dirty work - including, I think, Jaime to kill Aerys, Roose Bolton to kill Robb Stark, etc. In this cluster of hand symbols, I think we have to examine Cersei burning down the Tower of the Hand. She believes she can function as Queen Regent without a hand at all. That doesn't seem to work out too well for her, but maybe we'll know more when TWoW comes out.

I'm sure there are depths and nuances of hand injuries that I haven't begun to understand, but these are some of my thoughts so far.

[Aryya Stark]

Fascinating stuff. As I was reading I remembered Donal Noye and Ser Jacelyn Bywater, both armless, both loyal, honorable men. I have no clue what this all means but you could be on to something .

I wish we could put together a list of everyone with hand injuries. At least on my next rereads I will be making a point of noticing all the hand injuries.