Craster, the Old Bear and the mutineers

[The Fresh PtwP]

Just had some thoughts on the whole mutiny at Craster's and I came to the conclusion that:

Craster signed his own death certificate.

Mormont handled the situation very poorly.

I don't blame the mutineers that much.

After going through the Fist I would harbor massive resentment towards Craster.

Most of the mutineers were rangers so they know about Craster's "gods" AND he's got loads of food...yeah no, he has to go. Add that to the fact that Craster threatened them first and I completely see where the mutineers are coming from.

Now enter Mormont, the man who led them on this doomed expedition in the first place. I get he's pissed about the guest right breach but again Craster was charging them with an axe, what were they supposed to do? Mormont overreacted and made the situation that much worse by rattling off death threats. It's dishonorable, but I would've had some men raid the cellar, take the women, saddle up and gtfo. 

[Curled Finger]

I'm of a mind, hindsight of course, the Jeor Mormont may have known much more than we were let in on.  I'm not 100% behind your thinking that the rangers may have shared some of that intel.  It's a curious thing that Mormont allowed Craster to continue his unholy alliances. What really good reason was there for that?  Jeor seems to be an upright kind of guy, devoted to the NW, determined to lead them.  So why allow this human abomination to exist?  I get the reason given in story.  Fair at the time, but not after you learn all this stuff that happens afterward.  Jon's outrage at Craster's actions was good enough for Mance Rayder to include him on a limited basis in the circle of trust.  This tells me something is very wrong with Jeor's given excuse for not putting an axe in Craster's head instead of saying hello to the bastard.  

I am reminded of the Mormont house motto, "Here We Stand", in direct relationship to the events at the Fist of the First Men.  Jeor survived that massacre and had to know exactly what attacked his men.  Fast forward to Craster's and disbelievingly wonder at Jeor not killing him again.   

So while I don't necessarily support a mutiny I can understand your support thereof.  The part of me that still thinks the Old Bear had some grander, more noble design won't let go.  

[sweetsunray]

Craster broke the guest right, and the men were in their right to defend themselves, once he assaulted Clubfoot with his axe. Indeed, Mormont's reaction and judgment was well the wrong assessment.

That said, a number of the mutineers were part of original plot that Chett had cooked up at the Fist. And there are indications the survivors of the plotters (except for Sweet Donnel) planned to execute the orignial plan there, because all the horse were set loose. Chett's original plan at the Fist was to have some of them let horses loose and scare the camp, to create a panic and chaos. And then we learn after Sam managed to escape Craster's with Gilly that Craster's wives only found 2 horses, while the rest was gone (unless Edd & co cut them loose to prevent the mutineers from going after them). And they didn't jsut kill Craster and Mormont. They butchered wounded brothers and raped the women. Tht stuff is indefensible. 

As for Craster's larder: he still had food, more than the NW had with them, but it's wasn't full anymore. After the Fist there aren't any sheep, pigs and dogs anymore. He either butchered or offered them to the Others (Gosh I so want to see a flock of Ice Sheeps). The man is nearly jumping from joy over the fact that Gilly had a son. There's nothing to hunt in the forest either anymore - animals have been wighted as well. And I proposed that those black sausages may actually not even be "pig sausauges" but are "wight sausages". The Craster chapters hint heavily at cannibalism, which might actually be the sole way to survive the Long Night. 

[sweetsunray]

22 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

I'm of a mind, hindsight of course, the Jeor Mormont may have known much more than we were let in on.  I'm not 100% behind your thinking that the rangers may have shared some of that intel.  It's a curious thing that Mormont allowed Craster to continue his unholy alliances. What really good reason was there for that?  Jeor seems to be an upright kind of guy, devoted to the NW, determined to lead them.  So why allow this human abomination to exist?  I get the reason given in story.  Fair at the time, but not after you learn all this stuff that happens afterward.  Jon's outrage at Craster's actions was good enough for Mance Rayder to include him on a limited basis in the circle of trust.  This tells me something is very wrong with Jeor's given excuse for not putting an axe in Craster's head instead of saying hello to the bastard.  

I am reminded of the Mormont house motto, "Here We Stand", in direct relationship to the events at the Fist of the First Men.  Jeor survived that massacre and had to know exactly what attacked his men.  Fast forward to Craster's and disbelievingly wonder at Jeor not killing him again.   

So while I don't necessarily support a mutiny I can understand your support thereof.  The part of me that still thinks the Old Bear had some grander, more noble design won't let go.  

Well, Jeor knows that Craster takes newborn sons out in the woods as some sort of offering to his gods, and has a notion that those gods are the Others. But that doesn't mean he knows that those sons are turned into Others. Imo Jeor thinks that those babies are fed to wights by the Others or something. So, no, he doesn't have the knowledge to blame Craster for the wights and Others. Heck, at least they had a rest there. And then there's cog-dis of course too. But yeah, overall he's a bit of a wuss suffering from cog-dis (including at the Fist)

[Curled Finger]

49 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Well, Jeor knows that Craster takes newborn sons out in the woods as some sort of offering to his gods, and has a notion that those gods are the Others. But that doesn't mean he knows that those sons are turned into Others. Imo Jeor thinks that those babies are fed to wights by the Others or something. So, no, he doesn't have the knowledge to blame Craster for the wights and Others. Heck, at least they had a rest there. And then there's cog-dis of course too. But yeah, overall he's a bit of a wuss suffering from cog-dis (including at the Fist)

Thanks sweetsunray.   I am not clear about what I think Jeor may have known, I just can't see this lovely man we all have a soft spot for allowing even the senseless sacrifice of children.   I'm aware that I have an unreasonable need for the Old Bear to be more than he appears to be, but still this permission (for lack of a better word) he gives to Craster (oh yuck and the incest, too) just seems so out of character for him.  

[JLE]

I mean, *we* don't know in ASOIAF that Craster's sons actually BECOME new Others. We only know that it may be what Craster's women believe (even then it's not clear to my memory whether they expect the dead sons to become Others, or walking-dead wights, I shall have to re-read the passage) - and that the show picked up on that comment and made it show-canon.

However I think it will not turn out to be book-canon: George has said that the Others are something else entirely, something completely alien to human life - not made from actual humans: dead people become wights, not Others.

Although the thought of a horde of zombie babies is also scary enough in its own way...

Mormont is probably more of the opinion that "unwanted children being left out to die" is already a fairly typical custom in deprived areas, especially rural areas where the idea of an orphanage is not practical - generally thought of as "sad but necessary" - and decided for himself that this is Craster's take on it, and that it has nothing to do with the Others or wights. And that in all probability if unwanted babies are exposed, their fate will more likely be to be prey for wild beasts: indeed it's highly probable that the wildlings themselves *already* do the latter, if they have more children than they can support, and none can be found to adopt an unwanted one.

[Yaya]

i just re-read these chapters of the watch being at crastors.
the wives know the sons are others, i really really read that in the following:

"
“Quick,” the raven said. “Quick quick quick.”
“Where?” asked Sam, puzzled. “Where should I take her?”
“Someplace warm,” the two old women said as one.
Gilly was crying. “Me and the babe. Please. I’ll be your wife, like I was Craster’s. Please, ser crow. He’s a boy, just like Nella said he’d be. If you don’t take him, they will.”
“They?” said Sam, and the raven cocked its black head and echoed, “They They They”
“The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the sons."

[The Fresh PtwP]

Regardless of if the babes become Others or not, Craster is still strengthening the enemy, enough so that the Others are willing to leave him be. That alone warrants an axe to the head IMO.

6 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Craster broke the guest right, and the men were in their right to defend themselves, once he assaulted Clubfoot with his axe. Indeed, Mormont's reaction and judgment was well the wrong assessment.

That said, a number of the mutineers were part of original plot that Chett had cooked up at the Fist. And there are indications the survivors of the plotters (except for Sweet Donnel) planned to execute the orignial plan there, because all the horse were set loose. Chett's original plan at the Fist was to have some of them let horses loose and scare the camp, to create a panic and chaos. And then we learn after Sam managed to escape Craster's with Gilly that Craster's wives only found 2 horses, while the rest was gone (unless Edd & co cut them loose to prevent the mutineers from going after them). And they didn't jsut kill Craster and Mormont. They butchered wounded brothers and raped the women. Tht stuff is indefensible. 

As for Craster's larder: he still had food, more than the NW had with them, but it's wasn't full anymore. After the Fist there aren't any sheep, pigs and dogs anymore. He either butchered or offered them to the Others (Gosh I so want to see a flock of Ice Sheeps). The man is nearly jumping from joy over the fact that Gilly had a son. There's nothing to hunt in the forest either anymore - animals have been wighted as well. And I proposed that those black sausages may actually not even be "pig sausauges" but are "wight sausages". The Craster chapters hint heavily at cannibalism, which might actually be the sole way to survive the Long Night. 

To me all the actions after Mormont's death remind me of Ned's quote about deserters being the most dangerous of men. While i'm not defending their acts I will say they are no more disturbing than other soldiers unsupervised actions in the WoFKs. Soldiers are the dogs of war an at that moment they had no leash. Maester Aemon was absolutely right that the NW lacked honest men to keep the rogues in line. 

[sweetsunray]

6 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

I just can't see this lovely man we all have a soft spot for allowing even the senseless sacrifice of children.   I'm aware that I have an unreasonable need for the Old Bear to be more than he appears to be, but still this permission (for lack of a better word) he gives to Craster (oh yuck and the incest, too) just seems so out of character for him.  

Well in aCoK, he left the axe on the table, while Craster lay snoring upstairs, implying he wished those women would take it and kill him.

But the major cause of his cog-dis about Craster is imo because of his repsonsibilities imo. He needs to learn about Mance's army, find missing rangers, and then after the Fist ensure the survival of the remaining men. Craster's home gives them a chance to rest up after that grueling march, and he lingered there even likely to give stragglers the chance to turn up alive there. And he knows that while they're at Craster's the wights don't even bother them. 

Yes, Craster is a horrible man, but if you lead hundreds of men and end up trying to return with as many survivors as you can (in the number of 50 men), what would your priority be? The horrible man offers true sanctuarity for the wounded and tired to rest and recuperate enough to make it to the Wall. No, they don't get proper food from him. But they can rest up, because somehow this horrible man and his wives who don't kill him in his sleep are left alone by wights and Others. They are so desperate in his mind imo that he doesn't dare to risk it. Samwell's POV reflects a similar cog-dis. He knows Craster is horrible, and that some wounded died from starvation at Craster's, and yet equally it's better than nothing. 

[sweetsunray]

45 minutes ago, The Fresh PtwP said:

Craster is still strengthening the enemy, enough so that the Others are willing to leave him be. That alone warrants an axe to the head IMO.

And yet, Craster extends that sanctuary to the men. Only a 1/6th of the men at the Fist made it to Craster's, while they were being hunted and chased by wights and Others. Men died of exhaustion on the flight (forced marches) from the Fist. And then you come at a place and your men finally are being left alone by wights and Others. 

Again, Mormont has no idea that the Others are actually strengthened by Craster's. All he knows is that he gives babies, sheep, dogs and pigs up to the enemy as some type of offering (very likely assumes the wights eat those), and because of it his terrain is left in peace by the enemy, a peace that Mormont and his 50 survivors are in dire need of. Mormont can fear that if he axes Craster, the sanctuary is over, and they will be chased by wights and Others again. This is a situation comparable to someone who plays both sides in a war. Let's say you lead a bunch of men of the resistance, who managed to flee and survive an attack and hunt on your head quarters by Nazis. But there's this collaborator who allows you and your men to hide at his property, while he wines and dines the Nazis. And if you kill the collaborator you'll only end up bringing the Nazis down on you and your men while you're weak, severely outnumbered and defenseless. You kill the collaborator who betrays you to the Nazis, not the one who's willing to hide you in his cellar and gives you a chance to escape unnoticed so you can fight another day. 

[JonSnow4President]

Remember that Mormont giving any inkling of knowing that Craster supports the Others is a show construct.  In the books, Jon never brings up Craster's blue eyed gods to Mormont. 

[sweetsunray]

18 minutes ago, JonSnow4President said:

Remember that Mormont giving any inkling of knowing that Craster supports the Others is a show construct.  In the books, Jon never brings up Craster's blue eyed gods to Mormont. 

Mormont has an inkling that Craster offers his sons as some type of sacrifice to his gods in the woods. The rangers know it vaguely (and Benjen would have filled him in). There's the Samwell-Craster confrontation after Gilly birthed a son and Samwell says they could take the boy to the Wall and rear him there with Mormont as witness. But I certainly agree that Mormont's interpretation of the "offerings" would lean to practicing infanticide, by leaving a newborn son out in the woods to die by the elements (and that those elements include wights feeding or Others killing it), and not giving sons up to turn into Others. And indeed the show overstated what Mormont knew or realized. Mormont's book behavior paints a man who sees Craster as a wildling who practices infanticide and incest and has some superstition about the gods leaving him alone (which seems to be the case, for a while). He offers Craster and his wives shelter at the Wall, but Craster refuses. He hopes the women take the axe and their justice against their brutal father-husband. He does not want to take the man's leftover food which he needs to to feed his family, while profiting from a period of rest, and probably thinks Craster won't survive for long much.

[Seams]

I just did a close reading of the ACoK chapter where Jon meets Craster for the first time (ACoK, Jon III) and I went ahead and re-read the mutiny chapter (ASoS, Samwell II) as well. The thing that struck me most about these was the allusions to what we know or infer about Lyanna Stark's story - Gilly asking Jon Snow to save her soon-to-be newborn baby; similarly, Mormont bleeding from a stab wound to the belly and pleading with Sam to get his son to the Night's Watch just before he dies.

When Craster hears Jon Snow's name, he notes that it is a bastard name and makes a point of saying that he marries all of his wives so he has no bastards. Is he passing judgment on Jon Snow's father, whoever he might be? The story is that Craster's father was a man of the Night's Watch, and that the NW refused Craster's mother when she tried to give the boy to them. So Craster has grown up with a resentment of men who father bastards and refuse to take responsibility for them. In his eyes, this is worse than his own acts of incest. Not so different from the Targaryen point of view, although many Targs seemed to have no reservations about fathering bastards.

Eventually, the acting "Lord" of House Mormont will be Lyanna Mormont, named after Lyanna Stark.

(I don't know whether Sam Tarly plays the role of Ned Stark, cradling the dying LC Mormont in his arms, or the role of Lyanna's lover, as he will eventually become the lover of Gilly. Sam does wear a floppy hat in this chapter, which is associated with Aegon V Targaryen.)

I think the skulls at the entrance to the keep foreshadow that Craster and Mormont will die there together: Craster wears sheepskins and one of the skulls is a ram (sheepskins are pretty strongly associated with wildlings in general) and the other skull is a bear skull.

The other thing that struck me about these chapters is that Mormont takes young men from all over Westeros (and beyond) and enlists them in the Night's Watch. Some of the men who come to him have been virtually forced into service due to wrongful conviction, a choice between taking the black and harsher punishment, or because they are impoverished and living on the streets of Flea Bottom. I think the author wants us to see that Craster and Mormont are participating in the same continuum of sacrificing boys in slightly different ways. And I suspect that he wants us to be mad at both Mormont and Craster.

Mormont gives Craster an axe, which seems to be associated with marriage - Areo Hotah marries his axe, and there are symbolic "wedding" ceremonies involving Asha Greyjoy and Brienne with axes. (Later, Mormont says that the axe should be called "Answered prayer" and that Craster's wives should use it to kill Craster. But the axe had been Mormont's before it belonged to Craster. Does Mormont have a death wish for himself? If I recall correctly, he is disappointed after that prologue chapter about the bear hunt that the men are unsuccessful in shooting a bear.)

In her axe-catching scene, Asha Greyjoy also produces a dirk from her shirt after introducing her "husband," the axe. She says that the dirk is her suckling babe. Craster is stabbed to death by a guy named Dirk. I think GRRM's point is that Craster IS killed by a suckling babe, like the babes he has been sacrificing to the woods. (Although the blade is wielded by one of the boys Mormont has taken along on a hardship / suicide mission.) So it's the symbolic revenge of the babies and boys when both men die, if that's any comfort.

Another layer of symbolism is between Craster's Keep, which Dolorous Edd believes is built out of Craster's shit, and the Wall, which is built out of magical ice. We know that the Wall is weeping a lot and Jon describes brown rivulets coming from Craster's earthen dike, undermining the defenses. The wildlings seem to have many methods of going over, around or through the Wall, so the defenses are not as effective as the Night's Watch would like to think. And we are told that Castle Black has no defenses if approached from the south.

Craster invites the Night's Watch men into his compound and they end up killing him. Mormont allows the wighted remains of Jaffer Flowers and Othor into Castle Black and they try to kill him. Jon invites wildlings into his compound, and the Night's Watch brothers end up killing him. Hmm. So there's one difference - what will the wildlings do for Jon, since the pattern doesn't seem to hold with the invited "guests" turning on the host?

I gotta say, I think it's going too far to say that the mutineers were justified. As I read that mutiny chapter, Craster was pointing at the rude Night's Watch men with his axe and telling them to get out of his house. But he hadn't attacked them or threatened violence, unless I'm forgetting the details already. The murder, rape and plunder perpetrated by the Night's Watch mutineers is completely awful, even if you think Craster is a giant jerk-face loser.