Lady Dacey Posted July 1, 2019 Author Share Posted July 1, 2019 On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: Arya is not literally dropping her eyes but, through the use of idioms, GRRM is telling us that the sword she hands to Ned is symbolic of the sword Ice / Eyes. By giving it up, Arya is afraid she is losing her eyes. This is relevant, I think, because we know that the Waif and the Kindly Man not only instruct her to give up her sword and other possessions, but they will soon give her a potion that causes temporary blindness. I love that you opened my eyes to the Ice/eyes connection over a year ago. And even being aware of it, I did not pick up on the beautiful: On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: Arya nodded, then dropped her eyes, ashamed. ... Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would ever hold it again. ... Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes. It seems almost as if all things Arya is giving up for the House of Black and White are things she has in the past given up for her fathers and family, which in my mind only reinforces her identity as a Stark. I don't need any more evidence to convince me that Arya is not actually becoming no one, but it's a nice connection to make. On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: Arya learns to develop her other senses during her Blind Beth interlude but we are all relieved when she passes a test (hitting the Kindly Man with a stick, similar to her attempts to hit Syrio Forel with a stick during her sword fighting lessons?) and a different potion is given to her to restore her eyesight. I'm excited to get there and have your input on what I've come up with! On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: I suspect GRRM wants us to compare any loss or reduction in the five senses across characters (...) The point may be that characters have to give up one of the five senses in order to develop greater abilities in using one of the other senses. How could I not? On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: In reading your good posts, another thing that struck me is the parallel to Arianne Martell. After her misadventure with Myrcella, her father imprisons her in a tower where no one speaks to her, similar to Arya's experiences in King's Landing and during her early days in the HoBaW. Instead of learning to be a waterdancer or a faceless man, Prince Doran's intent is that Arianne will focus on the game of cyvasse as well as books and maps. Maybe the choice of the name "Nymeria" for Arya's direwolf is a hint that we should be looking for parallels between the Dorne story and Arya's story. In TWOW, Reveal hidden contents Elia "Lady Lance" Sand, one of the Sand Snakes, is a lot like Arya. She is skilled at jousting and declares that she is not, and does not want to be, a lady. Absolutely yes! Spoiler Lady Lance is so rich with call backs to other characters it's hard to stop analysing her every action in trying to decipher her. To Arianne she represents her youger self, she was named after Elia Martell, to the reader she is an obvious Lyanna stand-in, and she is also similar/conected to Arya in many ways. On 7/1/2019 at 2:48 PM, Seams said: Arya successfully caught the mean old tom cat that may have been the kitten Balerion, once owned by Rhaenys. This might make Arya a symbolic dragon rider (or a skin changer), taking over the "riderless" Balerion from the departed Rhaenys. I think Arya is the most likely Stark kid to first see a dragon on page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 1, 2019 Author Share Posted July 1, 2019 On 6/29/2019 at 11:18 PM, Lady Dacey said: Rocks separate Arya and her loved ones: Arya parted ways with her direwolf Nymeria on the Kingsroad, but we only learn about it in Arya II: Quote "There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly." "We had to throw rocks," she said miserably. "I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn't want her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she'd have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so 'shamed, but it was right, wasn't it? The queen would have killed her." It is very hard for Arya to part with part with Nymeria in AGOT, and it’s impossible for her to give up Needle completely in AFFC. Arya decides she can’t throw Needle in the canal. When she is hiding it, this is the passage we get: Quote Polliver had stolen the sword from her when the Mountain's men took her captive, but when she and the Hound walked into the inn at the crossroads, there it was. The gods wanted me to have it. Not the Seven, nor Him of Many Faces, but her father's gods, the old gods of the north. The Many-Faced God can have the rest, she thought, but he can't have this. She padded up the steps as naked as her name day, clutching Needle. Halfway up, one of the stones rocked beneath her feet. Arya knelt and dug around its edges with her fingers. It would not move at first, but she persisted, picking at the crumbling mortar with her nails. Finally, the stone shifted. She grunted and got both hands in and pulled. A crack opened before her. "You'll be safe here," she told Needle. "No one will know where you are but me." She pushed the sword and sheath behind the step, then shoved the stone back into place, so it looked like all the other stones. As she climbed back to the temple, she counted steps, so she would know where to find the sword again. One day she might have need of it. "One day," she whispered to herself. And while Needle is hidden safely behind a rock, Nymeria was chased off with rocks for her own safety. @Lollygag this is what I was talking about on the other thread! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetsunray Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 On 6/28/2019 at 10:06 PM, Lady Dacey said: I’m convinced that it’s certainly one aspect of it. I don’t think that’s all though. I think it’s too much trouble to work so hard on parallels that are very, very systematic just for this reason. I mean, there would be no need to parallel the chapters in that very specific order (the five first with the five last, pair by pair), it would be enough to have Arya encounter again what she has faced before sprinkled through her journey… which does happen, all throughout the series, in the five books. I’m thinking there is something special with those ten chapters I selected, but I might be wrong. I really enjoy your company and input as we go through all of them and try to reach a conclusion. Thank you I agree that it's going somewhere and done with a literary purpose... Here's an idea (i haven't read the comments after your reply to me yet): one cycle took Arya away from WF, on a road that leads to not-Stark. This "recycling" may be intended to "cycle" Arya back to Winterfell and her family. ETA: which actually is comparable to a "dance", where the dancer has to go through certain movements ending up in a place far away from the original starting point, but then using the same dancing moves and patterns can end up back in the original location. It's counter-intuitive in a linear sense, for we expect to witness a "reversal", but dancing movements are not linear, they are cyclic, they repeat a pattern. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sleeper Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 One other common theme of these chapters is that Arya confronted by an authority figure makes a resolution about her attitude and future course. I can't say I am sold on this whole concept. The themes of isolation and exclusion are recurring in the entirety of Arya's arc and are integral to her circumstances and evolution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 2, 2019 Author Share Posted July 2, 2019 2 hours ago, The Sleeper said: One other common theme of these chapters is that Arya confronted by an authority figure makes a resolution about her attitude and future course. Welcome to our thread @The Sleeper. I definetely agree with you. On both second chapters Arya comits to obey and to comply with rules that are set by authority figures (her father and the kindly man). 2 hours ago, The Sleeper said: I can't say I am sold on this whole concept. The themes of isolation and exclusion are recurring in the entirety of Arya's arc and are integral to her circumstances and evolution. That's true indeed. I believe there are enough plot points that aren't recurring though, that come up in each pair I've selected, to make my point. Alas, it might not be true. After posting all the individual analysis I'm planning on a summary I hope will be helpful to clarify if I'm on to something or not. I hope to post Arya III / Cat of the Canals later today, and I hope you enjoy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sleeper Posted July 2, 2019 Share Posted July 2, 2019 17 minutes ago, Lady Dacey said: Welcome to our thread @The Sleeper. I definetely agree with you. On both second chapters Arya comits to obey and to comply with rules that are set by authority figures (her father and the kindly man) Not quite the point I was making. After all her obedience to the kindly man is conditional and is always testing the boundaries and challenging him. I was talking more about how she had been adrift and committing to a course of action regarding her future. ETA both those actions are centered around Needle. In the first case it is bestowed to her and furthermore trained in its use and in the second she is asked to throw it away, but simply sets aside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 2, 2019 Author Share Posted July 2, 2019 Arya III AGOT / Cat of the Canals AFFC This is the third essay I post on parallels in Arya’s chapters from the first and the last two books. A Feast for Crows doesn’t have a third “Arya” chapter, instead Cat of the Canals is told by Arya’s POV. The author is constantly playing with the theme of identity in the series, and hidden, fake and changing identities are common. Although Arya has taken several alias before impersonating Cat, hereto that hadn’t had an effect on her identity as Arya of House Stark, and never showed in inner monologue. It seems useful to compare her trajectory with Sansa’s, who has always been Sansa until being dubbed Alayne, the first and so far only fake identity she took on. The first chapter titled “Alayne” precedes that of Cat, and Sansa doesn’t ever reference herself by her given name, from the first word to the last. Arya, on the other hand, even if she is used to take on identities, struggles with being Cat fully, finally elapsing at the end of the chapter. Cat(s): Animal symbolism is rich in ASOIAF. There are the house sigils of wolf and lion and bear, the personal sigils of mockingbird and blackfish, the feral characters like the Hound and the Bull. Many readers have noted that cats are important animals in Arya’s story, like birds are for Sansa. The association with the (semi-)domesticated feline first appears at third Arya chapter of AGOT. It’s unmistakable, as the action is all about chasing cats. Following the parallels we have been exposing, it is no coincidence that this association will be reinforced in the chapter that should have been “Arya III” but is instead called “Cat of the Canals”. She actually makes this connection herself in the AFFC chapter, when she thinks her favorite cat in Braavos was: Quote a scrawny old tom with a chewed ear who reminded her of a cat that she’d once chased all around the Red Keep. Changing identities: I find it very interesting and deliberate that Arya actually pretends to be someone else for the very first time in the story during "Arya III", much before Yoren dubs her Arry: when Arya accidentally bumps into Myrcella and Tommen while chasing cats the royals mistake her for a boy and she immediately goes to one knee, taking the identity of a commoner as not to be recognized. Quote “What were you doing to that cat, boy?" Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her brother she said, "He's a ragged boy, isn't he? Look at him." She giggled. "A ragged dirty smelly boy," Tommen agreed. They don't know me, Arya realized. They don't even know I'm a girl. Small wonder; she was barefoot and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through the castle, clad in a jerkin ripped by cat claws and brown roughspun pants hacked off above her scabby knees. You don't wear skirts and silks when you're catching cats. Quickly she lowered her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe they wouldn't recognize her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame. The old fat septa moved forward. "Boy, how did you come here? You have no business in this part of the castle." "You can't keep this sort out," one of the red cloaks said. "Like trying to keep out rats." "Who do you belong to, boy?" the septa demanded. "Answer me. What's wrong with you, are you mute?" Arya's voice caught in her throat. If she answered, Tommen and Myrcella would know her for certain. When faced with either revealing herself or escaping, she chooses to keep her disguise up and runs away from two Lannister’s guards in order not to bring shame on her sister or Septa. Cat of the Canals, obviously, is the first Arya POV chapter that doesn’t use her name as a title, instead using the new identity she has taken, which indicates that “changing identities” has been taken to a new level now. That this upgrade happens in what was supposed to be “Arya III”, the chapters in AGOT she first ever took a new identity, does not feel like a coincidence to me. Nightmares: In common, both chapters also have the descriptions of nightmares right at their beginnings: Quote When they had first come to King's Landing, she used to have bad dreams about getting lost in the castle. Father said the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had been immense, an endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change behind her. She would find herself wandering down gloomy halls past faded tapestries, descending endless circular stairs, darting through courtyards or over bridges, her shouts echoing unanswered. In some of the rooms the red stone walls would seem to drip blood, and nowhere could she find a window. Sometimes she would hear her father's voice, but always from a long way off, and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow fainter and fainter, until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark. Talk about foreboding! Arya is a magical character from the very start, and there are many reasons to believe this dream is premonitory on some level. The getting lost and exploring of the deeper levels of the Red Keep that she dreamed about happens in this very same chapter, and Ned’s voice fading to nothing might signal his death. I haven’t touched upon it so far and probably won’t in the coming essays, but windows are an extremely important motif in Arya’s story, and their absence in the walls in her dream might mean so much it would be fruitless to start an analysis of that here (but very fruitful somewhere else I reckon). In AFFC that is what we get: Quote It made no difference whether she slept beneath the temple or in the little room beneath the eaves with Brusco's daughters, the wolf dreams still haunted her by night… and sometimes other dreams as well. The wolf dreams were the good ones. In the wolf dreams she was swift and strong, running down her prey with her pack at her heels. It was the other dream she hated, the one where she had two feet instead of four. In that one she was always looking for her mother, stumbling through a wasted land of mud and blood and fire. It was always raining in that dream, and she could hear her mother screaming, but a monster with a dog's head would not let her go save her. In that dream she was always weeping, like a frightened little girl. Probably not premonitory, but a flashback from the night of the Red Wedding, the nightmare is strikingly similar to the one in AGOT. There might be a case in saying that this dream in premonitory too, regarding a reunion with Lady Stoneheart and Lem or someone else wearing the Hound’s helm (even though LSH wouldn’t be able to scream). Whatever you believe to be the case, the resemblance can't be put aside. The major element in common here has to be her parents’ voices she can’t reach, a very strong and scary thing in itself, but there are others: the blood on her surroundings, the way the writing of sequence is paced, how she is helpless in the end. (Also, although Arya frequently had “wolf dreams” and sometimes states having had a bad dream, you know the only other time she has nightmare that is actually described in the books? That would be ASOS, Arya III.) The place she inhabits: Another interesting thing about this pair of chapters is the setting in which they happen. The Red Keep features heavily in Arya III in AGOT, being compared on text to an “endless stone maze”. Arya describes the ways she takes while following the cat she is chasing, and then when trying to escape Myrcella’s and Tommen’s guards. Similarly, Braavos is the star of the Cat of the Canals chapter, being described to detail by Arya. This attention to her surroundings isn’t present in other Arya’s chapters. We don’t get the detailed description of Acorn Hall, Lady Smallwood’s castle, nor one of the village she and Sandor spend weeks at while in the mountains of the Vale, for example. Winterfell isn’t described that much in Arya’s POVs except for the mention of the covered bridge, and is presented to us by other Starks, and we see the Kingsroad through Sansa’s eye, not Arya’s. Even Harrenhal, where she spends weeks/months, doesn’t get the same level of scrutiny as the Red Keep and Braavos do, only more vague descriptions of how big is and how grotesque it looks. The scum of the streets: Something that stands out as an echo between “Arya III” and “Cat of the Canals” is the presence of mummers, sorcerer and other such figures. While Arya was in the dark tunnels, she overheard a confusing conversation between Varys and Illyrio Mopatis. There were references to jugglers and sorcerers and magic, and oh so much precious information for us readers that Arya is oblivious to the importance. Quote She tried to remember the rest. She hadn't quite understood everything she'd heard, and now it was all mixed up in her head. "The fat one said the princess was with child. The one in the steel cap, he had the torch, he said that they had to hurry. I think he was a wizard." Even if she doesn’t understand it all, she is worried about it and when she gets back to the castle she is actually tries to report back what she heard to her father. She is unsuccessful, and Ned dismisses her worries, believing the men to be mummers. It is in the Cat of the Canals chapter that we see Arya finally interacting on page with true mummers and “magicians”. We also see her bringing back information to the kindly man every time she goes back to the temple after having left. In contrast with Ned, the priest actively listens to everything she brings to his attention, and tries to extract what is true information. If only Ned had been so careful… Well, we wouldn’t have a story to obsess over. Quote "Learn three new things before you come back to us," the kindly man had commanded Cat, when he sent her forth into the city. She always did. Sometimes it was no more than three new words of the Braavosi tongue. Sometimes she brought back sailor's tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching. Sometimes she learned three new japes or three new riddles, or tricks of this trade or the other. And every so often, she would learn some secret. Also, in both chapters we get a passing Daenerys mention that is quickly dismissed, first by Ned as a mummer’s show and later by Arya herself as a sailor’s tale. I’ll say once again, and I’m aware this getting boring now, but that’s my job here: these are the only two times the Targaryen queen is cited in Arya’s POV in the entire series. Ritualized cleanse: Arya finally leaves the dark hall, after overhearing a conversation between two unknown figures, through a sewer into the river. Instead of going straight back to the castle she chooses to strip and clean herself, swimming until she feels clean. Quote She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the river. She stank so badly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the riverbank as she dove into the deep black waters. She swam until she felt clean, and crawled out shivering. This is the first account we have in the books of Arya bathing of her own free will. We know later up the Kingsroad she will avoid bathing not to be discovered in her disguise as a boy, and after that she will dread being submitted to bathing because of the girly garments that usually accompany it. The only other time ever we see Arya bathing alone and willing is precisely in the Cat of the Canals chapter, when she arrives at the HoBaW and rids herself of Cat’s identity before becoming the acolyte. Quote Down in the vaults, she untied Cat's threadbare cloak, pulled Cat's fishy brown tunic over her head, kicked off Cat's salt-stained boots, climbed out of Cat's smallclothes, and bathed in lemonwater to wash away the very smell of Cat of the Canals. When she emerged, soaped and scrubbed pink with her brown hair plastered to her cheeks, Cat was gone. The King’s Landing river scene and the House of Black and White scenes are similar on many levels, and we get her taking off soiled and smelly clothing to “emerge” clean afterwards. In Braavos Arya let’s Cat go as she bathes, and I believe a case could be made for Arya shedding the identity of the “ragged dirty smelly boy” Tommen took her for to go back to the Red Keep as Arya Stark of Winterfell, her clothes dry and ready to assert her identity to the gold cloaks. Cheeky personality: After the long walk back to the castle, Arya is held outside by two gold cloaks that are guarding the gate she means to cross. She is annoyed by, but not scared of, the way they treat her: Quote Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a man would swat a dog. Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She danced back out of the way, untouched. "I'm not a boy," she spat at them. "I'm Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me my lord father will have both your heads on spikes. If you don't believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon Poole from the Tower of the Hand." She put her hands on her hips. "Now are you going to open the gate, or do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?" The self-assured way Arya interacts with the guards in the postern gate of the Red Keep really resonates very strongly with Cat’s personality. Or, on the contrary, as it has been suggested before by many readers, Cat is Arya Stark’s alter-ego; it’s the skin she feels most comfortable in among all the ones she claimed throughout her journey and the one that most resembles her true personality. I bet you Arya would have called the cold cloaks “camel cunts” if she already knew how to curse back in AGOT. Exploring the world: Another thing to consider is that Arya leaves the Red Keep for the first time in her third AGOT chapter, and walks through King’s Landing to get back to the castle. It’s probably the first time she wandered about an actual city unchaperoned, ever. Although Arya left the HoBaW for the first time at the end of the Arya II, it is only in the Cat of the Canals chapter we get Arya wandering around Braavos. I feel a sense of expanding horizons present in both chapters. Black brothers: I believe one of the most important parallels I’ll address in this set of chapters regards the Night’s Watch. It is in Arya III AGOT that Arya for the first ever interacts with a black brother, when she meets Yoren. Although Arya isn’t aware of it, Yoren’s death made it possible for Dareon leave Eastwatch and go to Braavos in the first place, as the singer was assigned by Jon Snow to take up the role of recruiter that used to be Yoren’s. Yoren had other roles as well, including that of Arya’s protector. There are a lot of things about Yoren’s and Dareon’s characters that are worth exploring, but for the sake of this work on Arya’s arc I will not dwell on that. I want only to stress it’s important to understand that in the story they act as foil for each other, working as inverse parallels to subvert expectations, and at the same time show just how much Arya has changed: Quote Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and unwashed clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name. "Yoren, as it please m'lord. My pardons for the hour." He bowed to Arya. "And this must be your son. He has your look." "I'm a girl," Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must have come by way of Winterfell. "Do you know my brothers?" she asked excitedly. "Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon's on the Wall. Jon Snow, he's in the Night's Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I'm Arya Stark." The old man in his smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. "When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap. While Arya can’t stop herself from rambling to Yoren, she has learned not to share all of her thoughts by the time she meets Dareon. Quote Cat was thinking about the fat boy, remembering how she had saved him from Terro and Orbelo, when the Sailor's Wife appeared beside her. "He sings a pretty song," she murmured softly, in the Common Tongue of Westeros. "The gods must have loved him to give him such a voice, and that fair face as well." He is fair of face and foul of heart, thought Arya, but she did not say it. To go blind: Back in AGOT, after her encounter with the royals, Arya manages to escape. She finds herself in a “pitch-dark cellar”, and when her eyes adjust she finds dragon’s skulls there. She tries to steady herself and overcome how frightened she is, but eventually leaves the room, frantic and afraid. From there she gets into a hall so dark she can’t see at all: Quote If the room with the monsters had been dark, the hall was the blackest pit in the seven hells. Calm as still water, Arya told herself, but even when she gave her eyes a moment to adjust, there was nothing to see but the vague grey outline of the door she had come through. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, felt the air move, saw nothing. She was blind. This is her first experience in complete darkness. Of course, in the last line of the Cat of the Canals chapter, Arya becomes blind for real: Quote When she woke the next morning, she was blind. I wanted to know just how many times the phrase “she was blind” shows up throughout the entire series, no matter what POV – and it’s just a few (link). I imagine many people liken this experience of walking in the dark and overhearing conversations a lot more with Arya’s first chapter in A Dance with Dragons, The Blind Girl. I used to too, but after careful rereading and comparing, I’ve come to a different conclusion. There is a reason Martin delivers the “she was blind” line here, and deals with being blind in the next chapter, and I hope to explore it in the next essay. It’s also curious, and maybe foreshadowing, that in AGOT Arya III, while trapped in the dark windowless hall, in the height of her despair but trying to calm herself and go on, she asserts: Quote All halls lead somewhere. If there is a way in, there is a way out. This applies to being blind, most obviously. But I put forward that it might apply to her stay in the HoBaW too, and to her apparent commitment to becoming faceless. On tone: Both chapters start with a light hearted tone, with Arya telling us she has caught all but one of the cats that live in the Red Keep in AGOT, and describing her daily life as Cat of the Canals in AFFC. If you love Arya the way I do, moments like that are a rare delight to read. We experience Arya being spontaneous and enjoying herself, being resilient but upbeat about it, and taking pride in her accomplishments. We walk around Braavos wearing Cat’s skin together with Arya in AFFC, and chase the “true king of the castle” with her in AGOT. It is the one cat she chases on page, the last one after she’s conquered them all. And we see her catching it and kissing it and losing it… Like she loses Cat in the end. Quote Her hands closed around him. She hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing aloud as his claws raked at the front of her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she kissed him right between the eyes, and jerked her head back an instant before his claws would have found her face. The tomcat yowled and spit. "What's he doing to that cat?" Startled, Arya dropped the cat and whirled toward the voice. The tom bounded off in the blink of an eye. The cat (Cat) desapears in "the blink of an eye". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 4, 2019 Author Share Posted July 4, 2019 I mean to post Arya IV / The Blind Girl later tonight. @Nevets is it ok if I tag you? You made to comparison between Arya III and The Blind Girl, so I would like to invite you the read my take on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seams Posted July 4, 2019 Share Posted July 4, 2019 I know that your focus is the parallels between the five Arya POVs in AGoT and the corresponding five "Arya" POVs in AFfC and ADwD. You can tell me if I'm wandering too far from the topic when I bring in other parallels; I may be treating this too much as a conventional re-read and not helping to discover the author's purpose in creating the five pairs of corresponding chapters across Arya's arc. But I can't help seeing other parallels. My hope is that these other parallels might shed light on the central comparison in this thread, among the five pairs of corresponding Arya chapters. I'll jot down some details that struck me. You can let me know if they are irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion (and that I should stop bringing up things like this). Cats One of the Gold Cloaks tells Arya that the old, one-eared black tomcat is, "the real king of this castle," referring to the Red Keep. He tells her a story of the cat snatching food out of Tywin's hand when he dined one night with King Robert. The tomcat leads Arya on a complicated chase through and around the Red Keep before she catches the cat and kisses it between the eyes. I believe the chase may represent a game of "Come Into my Castle," one of several games that GRRM has deliberately avoided explaining for readers. I believe that the fact that Tywin "lost" to this cat in a humiliating way - causing Robert to laugh hard - but Arya caught and kissed the cat, is symbolic of Tywin losing and Arya winning this game of thrones. (It's also interesting to note that King Robert seems to be a fan of Arya - appropriate, given her resemblance to Lyanna. I think the metaphor is that Tywin loses in his attempt to become the power-behind-the-throne while Robert and the "real king" tom cat are approving of Arya's skill at playing the Game of Thrones.) The moves made by the old tom cat in its attempt to escape Arya are almost exactly the moves she makes to escape Myrcella, Tommen, the Septa and the guards: Quote Left, then right, he went; and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought. Her hands closed around him. Quote As Godwyn reached for her, Arya moved. Quick as a snake. She leaned to her left, letting his fingers brush her arm, spinning around him. Smooth as summer silk. By the time he got himself turned, she was sprinting down the alley. Swift as a deer. The septa was screeching at her. Arya slid between legs as thick and white as marble columns, bounded to her feet, bowled into Prince Tommen and hopped over him when he sat down hard and said, "Oof," spun away from the second guard, and then she was past them all, running full out. The cat-king showed her around his castle (she says, "He had run her halfway across the castle ..." - maybe she saw the other half in her nightmares?) and may or may not have allowed her to catch him. She doesn't become the old tomcat or become king of the castle (at this point) but she kisses the cat's head at the place where a "third eye" would be located. The kiss between the cat's eyes may also echo her attempt to eat the worm from the eye socket of the Kindly Man. Arya's first encounter with Yoren in this chapter may add another layer of meaning to the cat symbolism. I think GRRM wants us to compare Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren - the rhyming names are a clue, but both Night's Watch brothers also serve as guides for young Starks. In Jon Snow's travel with Qhorin, he encounters shadow cats in various ways, learning about the way they may attack if hungry and about their scavenging from corpses. He compares a hunting shadow cat to flowing smoke. He also ingests meat and blood from a horse put to death after breaking a leg shying away from a shadow cat. (Jon doesn't often eat in the narrative, so it's significant when he does. I think this ingestion of horse blood and meat compares with Bran tasting horse flesh through the direwolf Summer when he emerges from the Winterfell crypt and with Dany eating the stallion heart to prepare for the birth of Rhaego.) When Qhorin leads Jon through the magic passage behind a waterfall and through a mountain, he says that a Night's Watch brother found the tunnel after following a shadow cat through the hidden entrance. My point: the quest that brings Jon together with Qhorin and the shadow cats is a turning point in his story, leading to the sacrifice death of Qhorin and to Jon Snow's undercover work with the Free Folk. Could GRRM be telling us that Arya's cat-catching work and her meet-up with Yoren are comparable to Jon's mission to infiltrate the wildlings? As you point out, Arya takes on new identities in both of her POVs, similar to Jon's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing presence among the wildlings. Jon and the reader knows that Jon is really still loyal to the Night's Watch - this model is reassuring when we watch Arya bury her sword and assert that she is No One. The author seems to be telling us that you can learn a lot from cats, but you don't have to be one. It's interesting, though, that Ygritte tells Jon that cremation isn't mandatory because there are, "worse places to end up than the belly of a shadowcat." Ygritte, who initially reminds Jon of Arya, sees her after-life destiny as being inside of a cat. (Although Jon will actually cremate her body at Castle Black.) changing identities It's interesting that Myrcella, the guards at the Red Keep and Yoren all mistake Arya for a boy in this chapter. If she has a rebirth here, apparently that new birth results in a boy baby. On 7/2/2019 at 5:49 PM, Lady Dacey said: I believe a case could be made for Arya shedding the identity of the “ragged dirty smelly boy” Tommen took her for to go back to the Red Keep as Arya Stark of Winterfell, her clothes dry and ready to assert her identity to the gold cloaks. Because the guards and Yoren both mistake her for a boy after her swim in the river, I don't think the swim had the full effect of shedding the dirty boy identity. One of the guards asks whether her father is a rat catcher, so she must still look fairly ragged. Maybe this point belongs in the cat section, but I wonder whether we need to see Arya's cat connection here and in AFfC as a parallel with Catelyn, whose nickname is Cat. In the AGoT POV, there is background reference to Catelyn as Yoren delivers the news that Lady Stark has taken Tyrion hostage at the Inn at the Crossroads. There may also be a parallel in Ned's secret journey down from the Red Keep to the brothel to meet Catelyn, contrasted with Arya's journey from the dragon skull dungeon and well through the sewage outfall and then up the hill to the Red Keep. Later in the books we will see Catelyn make the trip up the path to the Eyrie but the downward journey is seen in a later Alayne POV. I think GRRM wants us to see Arya's cat expertise and eventual cat identity as echoes of Catelyn. The three separate instances of being mistaken for a boy, however, seem like a Brienne allusion. Skipping down to: Ritualized Cleanse Your post led me to notice for the first time that Arya's swim after emerging from the sewer echoes this early speech from King Robert: "You need to come south," Robert told him. ... "and the girls, Ned!" he exclaimed his eyes sparkling. "I swear, women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle. Even in the streets, it's too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but it's all the same when they start sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked." The king laughed heartily. (AGoT, Eddard I) I had noted the irony that Catelyn's body will be pulled out of a river after she dies at the Red Wedding, and that Cersei will walk naked through the streets of King's Landing during her walk of shame. Arya's participation in ironically fulfilling Robert's description had escaped my notice until now. Black Brothers On 7/2/2019 at 5:49 PM, Lady Dacey said: It is in Arya III AGOT that Arya for the first ever interacts with a black brother, when she meets Yoren. Although Arya isn’t aware of it, Yoren’s death made it possible for Dareon leave Eastwatch and go to Braavos in the first place, as the singer was assigned by Jon Snow to take up the role of recruiter that used to be Yoren’s. Very nice catch! This strengthens the Qhorin / Yoren comparison because Jon Snow kills Qhorin and Arya doesn't kill Yoren by she does kill Dareon. One is a recruiter and the other is an oathbreaker and a deserter. One tangent that might help us to put the five paired POVs into perspective: Dragons The imagery of Arya sneaking into the dark basement rooms reminded me of Quentyn Martell using subterfuge to get to Dany's dragons to try his luck at becoming a dragon rider. After Arya successfully catches the elusive king cat, don't you know she finds herself in a room with dragon skulls. Then she finds herself observing (we believe) Illyrio and Varys emerging from a well. There is imagery of flames licking the air and wisps of smoke that tie the torchbearer to visions of dragons and Illyrio and Varys seem to be supporters of Targaryen restoration, in one form or another. We have no reason to believe that Arya wants to be a dragon rider, and she gradually falls behind as Illyrio and Varys (if that is who they are) take a different route out of the tunnels. But I bet this dragon-taming (dragon-freeing? dragon-observing? dragon-encountering?) episode will also have a parallel in that "Cat of the Canals" AFfC chapter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 10, 2019 Author Share Posted July 10, 2019 Sorry for annoucing I'd post something and then disappear, real life has been crazy and held me away for longer than I'd hope. Before I post Arya IV, I'd like to elaborate a little on the lovely post @Seams has shared, On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: I know that your focus is the parallels between the five Arya POVs in AGoT and the corresponding five "Arya" POVs in AFfC and ADwD. You can tell me if I'm wandering too far from the topic when I bring in other parallels; I may be treating this too much as a conventional re-read and not helping to discover the author's purpose in creating the five pairs of corresponding chapters across Arya's arc. i'm very much convinced the bolded is a thing, but it may as well not be a thing... so it's very helpful that you bring more parallels to light to help us figure out if the pattern I spotted is real, and if it isen't, if there is any pattern at all. On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: My hope is that these other parallels might shed light on the central comparison in this thread, among the five pairs of corresponding Arya chapters. I'll jot down some details that struck me. You can let me know if they are irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion (and that I should stop bringing up things like this). Please do not stop bringing up anything! It is relevant if you think it is and I really like it when different posters work together. Your contributions have been so very valuable, do not presume to withold your thoghts from us! On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: The moves made by the old tom cat in its attempt to escape Arya are almost exactly the moves she makes to escape Myrcella, Tommen, the Septa and the guards It's not just in the movments that Arya resembles this tom in the chapter in question. On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: She doesn't become the old tomcat or become king of the castle (at this point) but she kisses the cat's head at the place where a "third eye" would be located. The kiss between the cat's eyes may also echo her attempt to eat the worm from the eye socket of the Kindly Man. This kiss feels very significant to me and I'm not sure why, so I figured I'd explore it a little bit. Just like Arya kisses the tom imediately before it escapes, Ned kisses Arya on the brow before he dismisses her from his chambers. I believe GRRM is really working to make us think of the connections between Arya and this cat/cats with this chapter(s). Kissing on the brow is not very common in the novels and Ned kisses Arya's brow twice, once in his POV and once in Arya III Quote Yoren eyed Arya. "One best spoken in private, m'lord, begging your pardons." "As you say. Desmond, see my daughter to her chambers." He kissed her on the brow. "We'll finish our talk on the morrow." Just to roll with it a little: other brow kisses include Catelyn (she wants to kiss Rob on the brow but doesn't, she does kiss her father on the brow and witness her brother do the same); Daenerys and Drogo (only after Drogo is injuried and helpless); Tyrion greeting Myrcella; Shae and Tyrion (which could be meaningful for the interpretation of their relationship, because brow kissing seems to be very related to family and fraternal love otherwise); Tyrion and Penny; Ellaria and Doran; and finally Cersei and Tommen. Cersei and Tommen jump to my eyes because they are another pair of parent and child in the Red Keep, like Ned and Arya, and specially because both times she kisses his brow kittens are mentioned: Quote "Mother? Did I say something wrong?" Cersei kissed her son's brow. "You said something very wise, sweetling. Now run along and play with your kittens." AFFC, Cersei IX Quote Tommen was fishing for cats when his mother returned to him. Dorcas had made him a mouse with scraps of fur and tied it on a long string at the end of an old fishing pole. The kittens loved to chase it, and the boy liked nothing better than jerking it about the floor as they pounced after it. He seemed surprised when Cersei gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his brow. "What's that for, Mother? Why are you crying?" AFFC, Cersei X On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: He compares a hunting shadow cat to flowing smoke. He also ingests meat and blood from a horse put to death after breaking a leg shying away from a shadow cat. (Jon doesn't often eat in the narrative, so it's significant when he does. I think this ingestion of horse blood and meat compares with Bran tasting horse flesh through the direwolf Summer when he emerges from the Winterfell crypt and with Dany eating the stallion heart to prepare for the birth of Rhaego.) When Qhorin leads Jon through the magic passage behind a waterfall and through a mountain, he says that a Night's Watch brother found the tunnel after following a shadow cat through the hidden entrance. So rich! I believe there is a lot to make from the Jon/Arya being guided by cats. Are cats reliable animals? On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: Arya's participation in ironically fulfilling Robert's description had escaped my notice until now. mine too! On 7/4/2019 at 8:19 PM, Seams said: We have no reason to believe that Arya wants to be a dragon rider, and she gradually falls behind as Illyrio and Varys (if that is who they are) take a different route out of the tunnels. But I bet this dragon-taming (dragon-freeing? dragon-observing? dragon-encountering?) episode will also have a parallel in that "Cat of the Canals" AFfC chapter. This is great stuff. I believe it's no coincidence that "dragon eggs hatching" and "the princess is with child" come up in these two chapters We know the two events (Daenerys becoming pregnant and later being able to hatch dragons) are deeply connected. That Arya becomes a metaphorical or symbolic dragontamer is very interesting. I have stated before I believe she will be our first Stark POV to see or interact with dragons, and not only because of geographical reason, but mainly literary reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 10, 2019 Author Share Posted July 10, 2019 Arya IV AGOT / The Blind Girl ADWD As we know, AFFC and ADWD were originally meant to be one book, and this is why I think it’s fair to consider parallels between “The Blind Girl” and Arya IV. It’s hard to compare these two chapters because Arya IV only spans a few hours, while The Blind Girl develops the plot a whole lot and does a ton of world building, but there are parallels to be found none the less. More importantly, while in AGOT Arya is a sheltered nine-year-old highborn girl escaping a castle, and she ignores the circumstances that have caused her father’s downfall – when we get to ADWD Arya is a savvy elven-year-old spy-in-training. Therefore, I find it is fair to compare what is happening in King’s Landing around the time Arya IV takes place, even though we don’t see those events through Arya’s eyes, with what is happening in Braavos while blind Beth in wandering the city. If we look at Arya’s character, I believe these two chapters are a lot about resilience. Arya is facing her first big trial in Arya IV, and what a trial it is: escaping the Red Keep after witnessing her father’s men dead or fighting for their lives, then killing a boy and having to deal with that on top of it. She manages to escape against all odds, because of her inner discipline, careful consideration of the situations she faces and her ability to keep calm and focused. In The Blind Girl Arya goes through what is the most exhaustive trial she has encountered yet as a consequence of vaing killed Dareon: she is blind and often beaten. Once again we see she power through. Arya IV in AGOT starts all fun and excited: Arya is getting better at the water dance and believes she is going to Winterfell soon. Things quickly turn sour when Lannister men come to get her and she has to leave Syrio, sure he is about to die. The Blind Girl starts on a different tone, it’s melancholy and the pace is much slower. What do these chapters do have in common? Exploring the five senses: Quote "And to him I said, 'Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,' and the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword." Arya screwed up her face. "I don't understand." Syrio clicked his teeth together. "The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said 'her,' and that is what the others saw. Are you hearing?" Arya thought about it. "You saw what was there." "Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth." “Look with your eyes” is a crucial lesson Arya learns early on in her journey never to leave her again. Her careful consideration of situations or “looking with her eyes” is what saves her when she can recognise that the men wearing Winterfell attire by the Wind Witch aren’t really her father’s men, for example. This lesson comes up many many times throughout all the book in the series. Arya relies a lot in her ability to see, but she doesn’t develop the other senses Syrio alluded to until she becomes blind for real in the HoBaW. It isn’t easy and Arya suffers a lot before she discovers the how to use her other senses, but she finally does learn a lot: Quote Hear, smell, taste, feel, she reminded herself. There are many way to know the world for those who cannot see. (…) "You have five senses," the kindly man said. "Learn to use the other four, you will have fewer cuts and scrapes and scabs." She could feel air currents on her skin now. She could find the kitchens by their smell, tell men from women by their scents. She knew Umma and the servants and the acolytes by the pattern of their footfalls, could tell one from the other before they got close enough to smell (but not the waif or the kindly man, who hardly made a sound at all unless they wanted to). The candles burning in the temple had scents as well; even the unscented ones gave off faint wisps of smoke from their wicks. They had as well been shouting, once she had learned to use her nose. This knowledge she only comes to aquire in The Blind Girl is hinted at as a possibility in Arya IV. Syrio is very explicit about using all senses, but whereas we do witness Arya "looking with her eyes" many times, the other senses are mostly forgotten untill she loses her sight. Stick fighting: We get detailed description of stick-fighting in both chapters. Though Arya trains with Needle a lot throughout the series, she usually doesn’t have anyone to practice with. The only two occasions she describes herself engaged in what is a swordfight of sorts are in Arya IV and The Blind Girl. Quote "High," Syrio Forel called out, slashing at her head. The stick swords clacked as Arya parried. "Left," he shouted, and his blade came whistling. Hers darted to meet it. The clack made him click his teeth together. "Right," he said, and "Low," and "Left," and "Left" again, faster and faster, moving forward. Arya retreated before him, checking each blow. "Lunge," he warned, and when he thrust she sidestepped, swept his blade away, and slashed at his shoulder. She almost touched him, almost, so close it made her grin. A strand of hair dangled in her eyes, limp with sweat. She pushed it away with the back of her hand. "Left," Syrio sang out. "Low." His sword was a blur, and the Small Hall echoed to the clack clack clack. "Left. Left. High. Left. Right. Left. Low. Left!" The wooden blade caught her high in the breast, a sudden stinging blow that hurt all the more because it came from the wrong side. "Ow," she cried out. She would have a fresh bruise there by the time she went to sleep, somewhere out at sea. A bruise is a lesson, she told herself, and each lesson makes us better. Syrio stepped back. "You are dead now." Arya made a face. "You cheated," she said hotly. "You said left and you went right." "Just so. And now you are a dead girl." "But you lied!" "My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not seeing." "I was so," Arya said. "I watched you every second!" "Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the sword, it is time for listening now." In ADWD, this is what we get: Quote She was running the ball of her thumb across the most worn of them, trying to decide which king it showed, when she heard the door opening softly behind her. "Who is there?" she asked. "No one." The voice was deep, harsh, cold. And moving. She stepped to one side, grabbed for her stick, snapped it up to protect her face. Wood clacked against wood. The force of the blow almost knocked the stick from her hand. She held on, slashed back… and found only empty air where he should have been. "Not there," the voice said. "Are you blind?" She did not answer. Talking would only muddle any sounds he might be making. He would be moving, she knew. Left or right? She jumped left, swung right, hit nothing. A stinging cut from behind her caught her in the back of the legs. "Are you deaf?" She spun, the stick in her left hand, whirling, missing. From the left she heard the sound of laughter. She slashed right. This time she connected. Her stick smacked off his own. The impact sent a jolt up her arm. "Good," the voice said. The blind girl did not know whom the voice belonged to. One of the acolytes, she supposed. She did not remember ever hearing his voice before, but what was there to say that the servants of the Many-Faced God could not change their voices as easily as they did their faces? Besides her, the House of Black and White was home to two serving men, three acolytes, Umma the cook, and the two priests that she called the waif and the kindly man. Others came and went, sometimes by secret ways, but those were the only ones who lived here. Her nemesis could be any of them. The girl darted sideways, her stick spinning, heard a sound behind her, whirled in that direction, struck at air. And all at once his own stick was between her legs, tangling them as she tried to turn again, scraping down her shin. She stumbled and went down to one knee, so hard she bit her tongue. There she stopped. Still as stone. Where is he? Behind her, he laughed. He rapped her smartly on one ear, then cracked her knuckles as she was scrambling to her feet. Her stick fell clattering to the stone. She hissed in fury. "Go on. Pick it up. I am done beating you for today." Sorry for the long quotes, but I feel they are earned. Syrio says left but goes right, and he is trying to teach Arya not to hear his commands, but to see (and foresee) his movements. The kindly man laughs behind Arya, but he isn’t there, which means when it comes to this fight Arya can’t trust her ears either. The two scenes have several similarities and echoes, with all the “left” “right” “left” “right” and the deceiving opponent, for example. One thing that stands out to me is, together with the lefts and rights, is the clacking onomatopoeia (which isn’t present in any of Arya’s chapter in the entire series) makes this two scenes very resonant of one another, even if they are paced somewhat differently. Martin is very intentional with his uses of figures of speech, and onomatopoeia is a very singular one, that tends to make readers feel really “inside” a scene even if there isn’t a lot of detailed description or atmosphere building beforehand. It’s almost as if we actually hear the sound of the sticks hitting each other around us as we read. Arya the warg: Quote "Fear cuts deeper than swords," she said aloud, but it was no good pretending to be a water dancer, Syrio had been a water dancer and the white knight had probably killed him, and anyhow she was only a little girl with a wooden stick, alone and afraid. She squirmed out into the yard, glancing around warily as she climbed to her feet. The castle seemed deserted. The Red Keep was never deserted. All the people must be hiding inside, their doors barred. Arya glanced up longingly at her bedchamber, then moved away from the Tower of the Hand, keeping close to the wall as she slid from shadow to shadow. She pretended she was chasing cats… except she was the cat now, and if they caught her, they would kill her. Moving between buildings and over walls, keeping stone to her back wherever possible so no one could surprise her, Arya reached the stables almost without incident. The resonance between Arya IV and The Blind Girl could not be more in our faces than Arya thinking she is “only a little girl with a wooden stick”. Martin could have gone with “a practice sword”, “a wooden sword” or “a stick sword”, but he chose to leave the sword out and call it a “wooden stick” on this instance. Arya is feeling small and paralyzed, after all, even Syrio, who was a water dancer, didn’t make it alive. How could a little girl with a wooden stick manage to stay alive then? It is by becoming a cat. Martin chooses to word it so that we don’t get “she pretended she was the cat” (that would have been fitting with the Cat of the Canals chapters) but “she was a cat”, which is fitting for the chapter in which she skinchanges into a cat for the first time. Cats signal a promotion in this pair of chapters: Syrio Forel becomes the first sword of Braavos because he can see a common braavosi cat for what it was, and Arya gets her eyes back after she see through a common braavosi cat who it was that was beating her. It is warging a cat that Arya gets to move on from blind Beth, moving to the next stage of her training, while in the Red Keep it is being a cat that Arya overcomes her fear and starts to move again. There is a scary possibility posed here: if they catch her they will kill her. This begs the question: what would the priests of the HoBaW do should they find out Arya is a skinchanger? Candle and stick: When discussing Arya III and Cat of the Canals, I brought up that the phrase “she was blind” is unique to that pair. Arya is “blind” in the third chapter when she descends into the tunnels under the Red Keep, the hall after “the room with the monsters”. In Arya IV, aftet she finally overcomes her fear and begins to make plans to escape the castle, Arya first goes to the stables, where she finds dead men, among them a groom she used to play with, Desmond and Hullen. She retrieves Needle and some other possessions, and tries to saddle a horse, but a stable boy comes in her way, and in trying to defend herself using her sword, she kills him. After killing the stableboy, Arya chooses to go back to the dark hall where she’d been blind the chapter before. Only this time, before Arya goes into the hall, she snatches two candles from the Sept. At first I thought this was odd and didn’t line up with her being blind in The Blind Girl, but then I realized I was wrong. While the candle does give her the confidence she needs to cross the windowless hall, it makes her much more vulnerable than the last time she was there: Quote The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She held Needle in her left hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist. Hot wax ran down across her knuckles. The entrance to the well had been to the left, so Arya went right. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of snuffling out her candle. She heard the faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a pair of tiny glowing eyes on the edge of the light, but rats did not scare her. Other things did. It would be easy to hide here, as she had hidden from the wizard and the man with the forked beard. She could almost see the stableboy standing against the wall, his hands curled into claws with the blood still dripping from the deep gashes in his palms where Needle had cut him. He might be waiting to grab her as she passed. He would see her candle coming a long way off. Maybe she would be better off without the light… A candle in the darkness will create a halo of light around the bearer, which will make possible to see within its reach. A stick serves a similar purpose, allowing blind people to perceive obstacles within a close perimeter. While the stick helps Arya to move around, just like the candle did, it also makes it impossible for her to go about without being heard. Quote Last of all she grasped her stick. It was five feet long, slender and supple, thick as her thumb, with leather wrapped around the shaft a foot from the top. Better than eyes, once you learn how to use it, the waif had told her. That was a lie. They often lied to her, to test her. No stick was better than a pair of eyes. It was good to have, though, so she always kept it close. Even with light in her hands, Arya is symbolically blind when she crosses the hall to leave the castle behind. The candle proves an useful tool none the less, so Arya does not blow it out. Memories and smiles: Immediately after Arya thinks about blowing off the candle, this ensues: Quote Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly Arya remembered the crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this place, she told herself. She'd been just a little girl the first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd been no bigger than Rickon was now. They'd only had one candle between them, and Bran's eyes had gotten as big as saucers as he stared at the stone faces of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their feet and their iron swords across their laps. We get a long and adorable memory of Arya playing with her siblings in the crypts, the one where Jon is covered with flour, and it concludes like that: Quote The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no more terrors for her. In The Blind Girl we witness this scene: Quote The dead men had their own smell too. One of her duties was to find them in the temple every morning, wherever they had chosen to lie down and close their eyes after drinking from the pool. This morning she found two. (…) The second body was that of an old woman. She had gone to sleep upon a dreaming couch, in one of the hidden alcoves where special candles conjured visions of things loved and lost. A sweet death and a gentle one, the kindly man was fond of saying. Her fingers told her that the old woman had died with a smile on her face. I have no idea what this means, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t include it. Is Arya being compared with the old woman? Is Martin saying that in leaving the Red Keep Arya was symbolically dying? Or that Arya will only die when she is very old? I’m lost guys, but it does feel like these two passages resemble each other in an intentional way. The sealord and the mermaid: There are two events that don’t take place during Arya IV in AGOT, but just before and immediately after, in Eddard XIV and Sansa IV respectively, I feel are being paralleled in The Blind Girl. Quote "The Sealord is still sick." "This is no new thing. The Sealord was sick yesterday, and he will still be sick upon the morrow." "Or dead." "When he is dead, that will be a new thing." When he is dead, there will be a choosing, and the knives will come out. That was the way of it in Braavos. In Westeros, a dead king was followed by his eldest son, but the Braavosi had no kings. "Tormo Fregar will be the new sealord." "Is that what they are saying at the Inn of the Green Eel?" “Yes.” The kindly man took a bite of his egg. The girl heard him chewing. He never spoke with his mouth full. He swallowed, and said, "Some men say there is wisdom in wine. Such men are fools. At other inns other names are being bruited about, never doubt." He took another bite of egg, chewed, swallowed. "What three new things do you know, that you did not know before?" "I know that some men are saying that Tormo Fregar will surely be the new sealord," she answered. "Some drunken men." Do I even have to start? This whole situation has been compared with Robert Baratheon dying in AGOT a thousand times by a thousand readers. I’m tired now to write about it… But it’s there. Quote "This is good to know. What else?" "The Merling Queen has chosen a new Mermaid to take the place of the one that drowned. She is the daughter of a Prestayn serving maid, thirteen and penniless, but lovely." "So are they all, at the beginning," said the priest. This is a bit of a stretch, but I propose the mermaid stands for Jeyne Poole. While the new Mermaid is the daughter of a Prestayn’s serving maid, and we know Prestayn be a noble house, Jayne is the daughter of the Stark’s steward. Petyr Baelish, who is connected with the braavosi galley The Merling King, takes charge of Jayne, who is then a twelve year-old. In the Cat of the Canal chapter Arya tells us that Merling Queen walks about Braavos with her Mermaids, young maidens in the blush of their first flowering who hold her train and do her hair. Of course, same as the Mermaids are being trained to become courtesans, Jeyne will be trained in a brothel to become Ramsay’s bride. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetsunray Posted July 10, 2019 Share Posted July 10, 2019 Regarding the cats' importance... we gradually see that build up with Arya using cats' eyes to see when she's blind. Combined with her squirrel references and her climbing, her visiting the hidden tree village of the Lady of the Leaves... we get so many references to Children of the Forest with Arya. Heck, think of Weasel. This little orphan she cares for in aCoK for a chapter is very much a projection of Arya, and she runs off into the forest (a child of the forest image). After which Arya adopts the name Weasel even. So, much of her being linked to cats, is not only imo because of a tie to her mother, but Arya being likened by George to a CotF. Also the stick training while blind ties Arya to Symeon Star Eyes, who couldn't see and used a double bladed stick to fight. Now, gonna read the chapter IV analysis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetsunray Posted July 10, 2019 Share Posted July 10, 2019 11 hours ago, Lady Dacey said: I have no idea what this means, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t include it. Is Arya being compared with the old woman? Is Martin saying that in leaving the Red Keep Arya was symbolically dying? Or that Arya will only die when she is very old? I’m lost guys, but it does feel like these two passages resemble each other in an intentional way. Yes, very interesting. To me it seems to indicate Arya may die in peace with a smile on her face, remembering the past. On the other hand, timeline wise this would be during Sam's voyage from Braavos to Oldtown. On that bit of the trip Maester Aemon dies, with a smile on his face, remembering the times he was a child, talking of Egg. And head-shaved Arya is an "egg". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilekless Posted July 10, 2019 Share Posted July 10, 2019 Just discovered this gem. Great work! It’s always interesting to see different patterns through her life and bringing them together. Can’t wait for next ones!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seams Posted July 10, 2019 Share Posted July 10, 2019 16 hours ago, Lady Dacey said: Candle and stick: When discussing Arya III and Cat of the Canals, I brought up that the phrase “she was blind” is unique to that pair. Arya is “blind” in the third chapter when she descends into the tunnels under the Red Keep, the hall after “the room with the monsters”. In Arya IV, aftet she finally overcomes her fear and begins to make plans to escape the castle, Arya first goes to the stables, where she finds dead men, among them a groom she used to play with, Desmond and Hullen. She retrieves Needle and some other possessions, and tries to saddle a horse, but a stable boy comes in her way, and in trying to defend herself using her sword, she kills him. After killing the stableboy, Arya chooses to go back to the dark hall where she’d been blind the chapter before. Only this time, before Arya goes into the hall, she snatches two candles from the Sept. At first I thought this was odd and didn’t line up with her being blind in The Blind Girl, but then I realized I was wrong. While the candle does give her the confidence she needs to cross the windowless hall, it makes her much more vulnerable than the last time she was there: Quote The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She held Needle in her left hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist. Hot wax ran down across her knuckles. The entrance to the well had been to the left, so Arya went right. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of snuffling out her candle. She heard the faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a pair of tiny glowing eyes on the edge of the light, but rats did not scare her. Other things did. It would be easy to hide here, as she had hidden from the wizard and the man with the forked beard. She could almost see the stableboy standing against the wall, his hands curled into claws with the blood still dripping from the deep gashes in his palms where Needle had cut him. He might be waiting to grab her as she passed. He would see her candle coming a long way off. Maybe she would be better off without the light… ... Memories and smiles: Immediately after Arya thinks about blowing off the candle, this ensues: Quote Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly Arya remembered the crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this place, she told herself. She'd been just a little girl the first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd been no bigger than Rickon was now. They'd only had one candle between them, and Bran's eyes had gotten as big as saucers as he stared at the stone faces of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their feet and their iron swords across their laps. We get a long and adorable memory of Arya playing with her siblings in the crypts, the one where Jon is covered with flour, and it concludes like that: Quote The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no more terrors for her. In The Blind Girl we witness this scene: Quote The dead men had their own smell too. One of her duties was to find them in the temple every morning, wherever they had chosen to lie down and close their eyes after drinking from the pool. This morning she found two. (…) The second body was that of an old woman. She had gone to sleep upon a dreaming couch, in one of the hidden alcoves where special candles conjured visions of things loved and lost. A sweet death and a gentle one, the kindly man was fond of saying. Her fingers told her that the old woman had died with a smile on her face. I have no idea what this means, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t include it. Is Arya being compared with the old woman? Is Martin saying that in leaving the Red Keep Arya was symbolically dying? Or that Arya will only die when she is very old? I’m lost guys, but it does feel like these two passages resemble each other in an intentional way. The dark hall (A) through which Arya passes during this escape and the area of the HoBaW temple (B) where people lay down to die both seem comparable to the Winterfell Crypt (C) and the long gallery (D) at the Red Keep, filled with Targaryen scaled armor, through which Ned passes on his sojourn with Littlefinger to meet Catelyn at the brothel and, later, through which Sansa passes with Ser Dontos to escape King's Landing and meet Littlefinger on his ship in the harbor. All of these chambers are liminal spaces that allow a character to pass from one situation to another very different situation. GRRM does seem to be comparing "captivity" (such as Sansa's situation as a hostage) and life; while escape is compared to a welcome, self-inflicted death (in the case of the smiling old woman). GRRM uses flashbacks or dreams to convey "even though this character is in place X, I want readers to think about place Y." So Arya's recollection of the Winterfell Crypt is a huge clue for us that the dark hall is parallel to the Winterfell crypt. Some years ago, I remember realizing that the Winterfell crypt is a kind of forge (I think it was initially in a discussion of Tobho Mott and the possibility of a "hot tomb" anagram hidden in his name). The weapons being forged in the crypt are young Starks who go down there to play among the old swords and old lords and kings. Jon Snow is covered with flour (flower) to indicate his transformation into a ghost. Since his direwolf is named Ghost, and Jon is a warg, perhaps the symbolism is that Jon Snow has been transformed into a direwolf weapon. It's interesting that Arya is passing through a similar space while burning her hand with hot candle wax. She is being forged into a new weapon. Similarly, Bran and his travel companions hibernate in the Winterfell crypt before emerging for their journey with swords taken from the tombs. Bran describes the torches casting shadows of the direwolves against the walls, causing them to look huge. Maybe this symbolizes Bran and Rickon being forged into giant, shadowy direwolves. When Sansa passes through the long gallery, she says in her POV that the torches bring the suits of armor to life as she and Ser Dontos pass by with the flames. Very much a symbolic hatching of dragon eggs, imho. The old woman on the dreaming couch, with the special candles that conjure visions, doesn't initially sound like a person being transformed into a weapon. But what do the Faceless Men do with the faces of the people who die in the HoBaW? Use them as assassin disguises. Forging weapons. Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. (AFfC, Arya II, Chap. 22) There is a strong connection between smiling and swords. Or, at least, between smiling and the sword Needle. But one of Theon's nicknames is Smiler and his horse (who caught fire and presumably died when Ramsay took over Winterfell) was named Smiler. At one point, Stannis offers Jon Snow a choice between two men, a smiler and a slayer, to become the new Lord of Winterfell. So there are layers of meaning in smiling that I don't yet understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 On 7/10/2019 at 10:33 AM, Dilekless said: Just discovered this gem. Great work! It’s always interesting to see different patterns through her life and bringing them together. Can’t wait for next ones!! thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 On 7/10/2019 at 4:52 PM, Seams said: The dark hall (A) through which Arya passes during this escape and the area of the HoBaW temple (B) where people lay down to die both seem comparable to the Winterfell Crypt (C) and the long gallery (D) at the Red Keep, filled with Targaryen scaled armor, through which Ned passes on his sojourn with Littlefinger to meet Catelyn at the brothel and, later, through which Sansa passes with Ser Dontos to escape King's Landing and meet Littlefinger on his ship in the harbor. All of these chambers are liminal spaces that allow a character to pass from one situation to another very different situation. GRRM does seem to be comparing "captivity" (such as Sansa's situation as a hostage) and life; while escape is compared to a welcome, self-inflicted death (in the case of the smiling old woman). Even though Arya is often reiterating her “choice” to stay at the HoBaW, I believe we are not meant to take her words (the words she utters to the priests) at face value. Her inner monologue gives away that the crucial reason for her to stay is that she believes she has nowhere else to go and no one else to resort to. I read Arya’s time in the HoBaW as a metaphorical form of captivity, and I believe many literally clues support my interpretation, for example the fact that the temple is windowless. Windows are very, very important in Arya’s story: she often enters and escapes places through them, instead of using the doors avaliable (the “easy” or “expected” way to get in and out); she often stares through windows, and there is always something important about this scenes: she meets Jon by the window of the covered bridge, she longs for Winterfell looking through the window in her room in King’s Landing, she witnesses the arrival of the Mad Huntsman carrying the captured Hound through a window... These are just some example from the top of my head. Maybe after finishing this project I’ll dedicate a topic to common motifs in Arya’s journey… Anyway. On liminal places and self-inflicted death: death is a necessary step before re-birth. This is a theme in the books, of course, but Arya’s journey is full of very important clues on the subject… in ACOK Arya is awoken by the silence that comes from the death of Pread, who had been coughing all night. She then helps with the burial of Pread and tosses acorns over his grave, with the stated hope that an oak tree may grow to mark the place of death. New life is nourished with his dead body. (On a side-note, of course this also ties with the belief of the Old Gods religion that when you die you become one with nature, living in the streams and wind and trees, which we have seen firsthand is a simple truth in the mystical world of ASOIAF in the Vyramir prologue). Later in ASOS Arya will wear the infamous acorn dress and become “the maiden of the tree”, which further strengths her path of death and rebirth. Yeah, I guess we can interpret Arya’s stay in the HoBaW as the self-inflected death from which she can be reborn. On 7/10/2019 at 4:52 PM, Seams said: It's interesting that Arya is passing through a similar space while burning her hand with hot candle wax. It never occured to me that this connects Arya with Jon... There is just so much to explore. Arya's burned hand is also her right hand (she had Needle drawn in her left hand and holds the candle above her head with her right hand). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 Arya V AGOT / The Ugly Little Girl ADWD Anyone with me still? I’m tired. Cansada. Dood moe. I’ve been rereading these ten chapters for so long now, I’ve read them all so many times. Sorry if I’m not very eloquent with this one, I’ll mostly let the quotes speak for themselves I guess. Arya V makes me sad from the very first line to the very last. The situation is hopeless, Arya is helpless. King’s Landing is unwelcoming and claustrophobic, the people range from rude to downright mean. The people of the city likely look at her with suspicious eyes because Arya is then a slip of a girl who speaks weird (due both to being northern and highborn) wearing garments much too fine but dirty and starved nonetheless. As much as Arya has told us she loved nothing more than to be underfoot and mingle with the common people of Winterfell, the experience in King’s Landing is traumatizing, and it ends with her father beheaded. Oh joy. In A Dance with Dragons the waif describes how people will react to the ugly little girl Arya will become after she changes her face for the first time: Quote "Women will look away when they see you. Children will stare and point. Strong men will pity you, and some may shed a tear." For reasons very different than a destroyed face, this sounds very similar to what Arya experiences in King’s Landing. I find the overall tone of The Ugly Little Girl chapter to be rather analogous to that of Arya V. Arya is in the HoBaW because is certain she has nowhere else to go. Life is easier now than when she was blind, but she doesn’t feel very comfortable – and yet goes through with all that is asked of her. Though not helpless anymore, she is more hopeless than ever before. She experiences physical pain and nightmares; she is questioned and constantly told she doesn’t have what it takes to be in the only place that has been a steady roof over her head in years. Spoiler I love Arya, and I’m oh so glad to have the Mercy chapter to settle my poor heart a little. I can envision a better future for her after reading it. She is interacting with people outside the temple again, she has made friends, and she reclaims her identity! Sweet and sour: Lemon cakes are a food strongly associated with Sansa, and for good reason (link). In The Ugly Little Girl Arya is given a potion just before she undergoes a magic transformation, and she is struck by how tart it is. The lemon-like sourness makes her think of "a girl who loved lemon cakes": Quote To the girl he said, "Drink this," and pressed a cup into her hand. She drank it down at once. It was very tart, like biting into a lemon. A thousand years ago, she had known a girl who loved lemon cakes. No, that was not me, that was only Arya. Of course this is a reference to Sansa, and I’m not disputing that. But it’s something else, too. Every line in these books has layers upon layers of meaning, and because I’ve been working on parallels between these chapters for weeks, I can’t not see that this mention of lemon cakes also falls into the pattern. It’s a nod to Arya V, the only other instance where Arya thinks about lemon cakes, ever (link). When musing about how she’s been managing to feed herself while on the streets of King’s Landing, Arya fears the pigeon she's been eating could be making her sick, and then contemplates: Quote Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn't so bad. It usually had barley in it, and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and sometimes even apple, with a film of grease swimming on top. Mostly she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten a piece of fish. In fact, lemons come up very scarcely in Arya’s whole story. She only thinks about the fruit in her inner monologues in Arya V and The Ugly Little Girl, both times prompted from external stimuli (there is the lemon tart she could not steal moments before she wishes for the lemon cake in AGOT, and the magical tart drink she is given in The Ugly Little Girl). The word comes up a handful of times in A Storm of Swords while Arya is in the company of Lem Lemoncloak, but that is all (link). In contrast lemons feature in several POVs: Jon, Catelyn, Tyrion, Cersei, Davos, Samwell, even Jaime, and of course Aero, Arianne and Daenerys. I mean, it's a common fruit. It's an intentional choice from the author to include it like that in Arya's story. There are several people more qualified than myself to discuss the symbolic meaning of lemon cakes and lemons, but I’m sure it’s very intentional that it shows up only precisely in these two moments when it comes to Arya. Both times she is experiencing the "sour" side of life, and this is just beginning to scratch the surface of where this could lead us. Lemon cake offsets the sourness of fresh lemons with sugar... But sweetness is usually not a good thing in ASOIAF, especially not in Arya’s story. Arya’s target The binder salesman has been compared with Petyr Baelish by many a reader. There are several reasons for that, one of them being his physical description, which includes a pointed beard (link). I do subscribe to that interpretation, and I believe there is more to it. As I said before, layers upon layers of meaning. Arya never interacted with Baelish on page and she never thinks about him… But the one time she notices him, even if she doesn’t know his name, happens in Arya V, on the steps of the Sept of Baelor: Quote Arya recognized the Hound, wearing a snowy white cloak over his dark grey armor, with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw Varys the eunuch gliding among the lords in soft slippers and a patterned damask robe, and she thought the short man with the silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had once fought a duel for Mother. We know Arya doesn’t judge people based on appearance, but that’s the account she gives us of the man she is supposed to kill: Quote He has no courtesy, she thought, watching him go. His face is hard and mean. The old man's nose was pinched and sharp, his lips thin, his eyes small and close-set. His hair had gone to grey, but the little pointed beard at the end of his chin was still black. Cat thought it must be dyed and wondered why he had not dyed his hair as well. One of his shoulders was higher than the other, giving him a crooked cast. There is another important character in Arya V AGOT that Martin describes as having some similar traits: Yoren. Bear with me, please. I’m not suggesting that the braavosi binder is to be really compared with Yoren, or that he represents to Arya something similar to what Yoren once did. I believe this is one of Martin “handwaves” for us to pay attention to the systematic parallels between the ten chapters I’ve been analyzing. Arya V and The Ugly Little Girl both give us similar images of men: pointed, twisted, crooked, hard and mean, eyes small and squinting. Quote Arya saw the matted greasy hair, the patched, dusty black cloak that covered his twisted shoulders, the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she remembered the black brother who had come to visit her father. Beheading and defacing: There are some unsettling similarities in the scenes where Ned is beheaded and in the scene Arya loses her face to get a new one. This particular parallel remind me of the stick fight parallel: there are some things that appear in both scenes which are very similar, but that are inserted in different contexts and have a different meaning. When Arya witness her father being brought to the steps of the sept to confess, Martin seeps the text with a strong sense of anxiety and nervousness, an agitated and frantic quality. Arya’s changing of her face, on the other hand, seems to be a calm moment, all measured actions and soft voices. There is anxiety there too, though. Arya is tough as nails, but she is not in a comfortable, nice and happy situation there. I will bring the quotes and you tell me what you think: Quote The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. "Shut your mouth and close your eyes, boy." Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a… a noise… a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once. That was Ned's behading... Now for The Ugly Little Girl parallel: Quote "Sit," the priest commanded. She sat. "Now close your eyes, child." She closed her eyes. "This will hurt," he warned her, "but pain is the price of power. Do not move." “Close your eyes” is not a particularly uncommon command/phrase in the books, and it’s present in several different POVs (link). The only stances these words are ever uttered towards Arya, though, happen in Arya V and The Ugly Little Girl (link). And of course what follows her closing her eyes in AGOT hurts much more deeply than having her forehead slashed. In A Game of Thrones, Arya opens her eyes to finally recognize Yoren. He then giver her Needle back, and drags her to a doorframe where he cuts her hair to give her a new identity, that of Arry. Quote As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head from side to side, but he had her by the hair, so strong, she could feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears. This is what follows in ADWD: Quote Still as stone, she thought. She sat unmoving. The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered. We are aware that Yoren is cutting Arya’s hair, but the parallels and inversions are there just next to each other. Arya would throw herself backward and kick when Yoren approached with the knife, but sat unmoving when the kindly man did the same. Oh, Arya and identities… of course it is a theme, maybe the theme of Arya’s entire arc. But there are things unique to these two situations. There is a blade involved in the getting of a new identity. There is the change in actual physical appearance, the first of many haircuts; first (of many??) new faces. Both times Arya is stepping up to a new, unexplored territory: while we already discussed that she disguised as a boy to escape Tommen and Myrcella, it’s different now because she will have to pretend for the first time to be someone else for a long time, keeping up the façade continuously; and obviously in ADWD Arya experiences a true magic transformation that allows her to take a different appearence for the first time. Another thing to notice in the same passage is the taste of salt. Arya cries on many occasions, but not once does she comment on the taste of tears, except when Yoren yanks at her hair to cut it of. Tears and blood taste salty in her mouth when she faces the blades that change her identity, and the only other instance in the entire series she tastes salt in when saltwater sprays on her face (link). I invite you to read the final moments of Arya V and the face-changing passage in the books, because I did not want to bring excessively long quotes. Maybe you'll agree with be, maybe you think I'm streatching the connections too thin. I don't know. I see it... I see a link between the moment Ned is beheaded and Arya is given a new face. After I went through all of this, I decided it would be necessary to see if Spoiler I could find the same richness in parallels between Arya’s first chapter in A Clash od Kings and the Mercy chapter from Winds of Winter. I did not. Not at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetsunray Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 Great work behind all of this @Lady Dacey There is something in the back of my mind about these 5 aGoT and 5 of aFfC and aDwD combined. We know that initially Mercy was meant to be included in aDwD. It's one of his earliest written chapters for years. I know you tried to do a comparison between aCoK's first chapter with Mercy, but the Ugly Little Girl does not end with her getting the face, does it? It continues: with her nightmares, and then finally her murder of the insurance guy, and her returning to the kindly man and getting her face back. Could that be analogues to some of the first chapters in aCoK, where she's plagued by nightmares and the "thief" theme continues. This ends with Yoren given her a spanking but also recognizing the pain of her loss of her father? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Dacey Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 4 minutes ago, sweetsunray said: It continues: with her nightmares, and then finally her murder of the insurance guy, and her returning to the kindly man and getting her face back. Could that be analogues to some of the first chapters in aCoK, where she's plagued by nightmares and the "thief" theme continues. This ends with Yoren given her a spanking but also recognizing the pain of her loss of her father? An instersting possibility! I shall look into it before starting to write a conclusion. Initially I had thief/stealing as a parallel between Arya V and The Ugly Little Girl, because: Quote Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to remember why. If she did not get out soon, she would have to take her chances with the gold cloaks. which ties to what the kindly man tells her in ADWD Quote "The golden dragon of Westeros," said the kindly man. "And how did you come by this? We are no thieves." "It wasn't stealing. I took one of his, but I left him one of ours." I ultimately decided agaist this particular parallel precisely because the stealing/thief shows up in other places of Arya's arc where they seem more significant. You've opened my eyes to a new possibility though, and I'm curious to see what I can find once I dive into Arya I in ACOK. I have read this chapter before, when I tried to find parallels either with the Mercy chapter or Arya I in AGOT and ADWD, but found nothing. Now I'll have a completely different outlook on it... I'm excited. Thank you for the insight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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