Game of Jons

[Sandy Clegg]

 

Edited 14 September, 2023 - removed some waffle and added links.

This is part 2 of 3 in a series. For part one, go here:

In the previous post, Where Whores Go (maybe) I examined the possibility that George RR Martin may have embedded, into ASOAIF, some rather ‘out-there’ language clues around the theme of privies. Clues which hinge on the fact that Jon Snow’s first name is an American slang word meaning ‘toilet’ (i.e. ‘the John’). While it’s an odd conceit, we saw there there appear to be a number of thematic clues already alluding to this concept. So, do these amount to more than a coincidence? This post attempts to identify some more toilet wordplay links.

John /jon/ 

noun

1. A male proper name

2. (without cap) a lavatory (informal, esp US)

3. A prostitute's client (informal)

That's the dictionary entry that we'll need to remember going forwards.

Now, the Jon/privy symbolism doesn’t often appear within Jon chapters - not as much as we’d expect, at least. Maybe  GRRM feels that would be a little too ‘on-the-nose’. However, there is this. From Lord Commander Mormont in ACOK:

Quote

Jon shooed the raven of Longclaw. The bird hopped back to Mormont's shoulder, where it promptly shat. "You might have done that on Snow instead of saving it for me," the Old Bear grumbled. The raven quorked. - ACOK, Jon III

In fact, George uses the idea sparingly throughout the books. The essential thing is to not ruin the tone of the books by waving clues in our face. But taken as a whole, the books do contain some oddly specific words related to privies, in one form or another. More often than can be mistaken for coincidence, perhaps?  I’ll try my best to make a case for a systematic approach being used, but after that the penny is in the air.

So, what George has managed to do is smuggle in some of our present-day words for toilet, in odd places. Here are some of the privy words and their quasi-appearances in ASOIAF.

1. 'TOILET'

Naturally, toilet itself is absent from the book text- it's far too modern a word. However, Dolorous Edd’s last name - Tollett - is close to toilet. Just as he is ‘close to Jon’ (being his personal steward). That's wordplay clue number one (no pun intended).

Edd also seems to feel that he has the bad luck to be frequently used as a toilet:

Quote

Some dogs crawled atop me during the night. My cloak was almost dry when one of them pissed in it. Or perhaps it was Brown Bernarr. Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I'm back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me." - ACOK, Jon III

So a tick for toilet, albeit in George's own cryptic manner.  

2. 'THE LOO'

‘Loo’ is fairly modern, and a very common word here in the UK, but obviously it is never used for ‘privy’ in ASOIAF. It would be bizarre to find the word used like this in the books without breaking the medieval spell, just as it would be jarring to have characters use ‘cool’ or ‘dude’. Some words are off-limits in fantasy fiction. But to our crafty author, this is just another obstacle to overcome. Let’s look at this extract from Jaime’s first chapter in ASOS:

Quote

Jaime raised his hands so the other could see the manacles. "I'll fight you in chains. What could you fear?”

"Not you, ser. If the choice were mine, I'd like nothing better, but I am commanded to bring you back alive if possible. Bowmen." He signaled them on. “Notch. Draw. Loo—”

The range was less than twenty yards. The archers could scarcely have missed, but as they pulled on their longbows a rain of pebbles cascaded down around them. Small stones rattled on their deck, bounced off their helms, and made splashes on both sides of the bow. Those who had wits enough to understand  raised their eyes just as a boulder the size of a cow detached itself from the top of the bluff. Ser Robin shouted in dismay. The stone tumbled through the air, struck the face of the cliff, cracked in two, and smashed down on them. The larger piece snapped the mast, tore through the sail, sent two of the archers flying into the river, and crushed the leg of a rower as he bent over his oar. The rapidity with which the galley began to fill with water suggested that the smaller fragment had punched right through her hull. The oarsman's screams echoed off the bluff while the archers flailed wildly in the current. From the way they were splashing, neither man could swim. Jaime laughed.  - ASOS, Jamie I

There’s our ‘loo’, in the unfinished word ‘loose’. A very well-disguised inclusion, I think. This is followed by 'pebbles and boulders' splashing into the water below, which is possibly more toilet imagery. We even get a 'cluing' laugh from Jaime. So ‘loo’ is now accounted for.

3. 'THE CAN / THE DUNNY'

‘Can’ is also a N.American slang usage for privy, but since it also has a more common meaning - as in “I can swim” - I chose to not search there. ‘Dunny’ - the mainly-Australian slang word, is also absent (this is derived from the word ‘dunnekin’ -  meaning ‘dung house’). But the main character in the novella series - Dunk & Egg - is named Ser Duncan … Dun-can (dung can?). Thick as a castle wall. I’m not sure this gets a tick, but it’s worth a mention.

4. 'OUTHOUSE'

Outhouse is not found directly in the books, although during the last thread I was reminded by @Seams that outhouses often have a ‘moon-shaped carving’ in their doors, as we can see here, which are possibly being referenced in the Eyrie’s Moon Door. So places with moon doors are metaphorical outhouses/privies. One Arya chapter also has this:

Quote

The silver bracelet she'd hoped to sell had been stolen her first night out of the castle, along with her bundle of good clothes, snatched while she slept in a burnt-out house off Pig Alley. - AGOT, Arya V

It’s the only time “out” and “house” appear next to each other. And it’s near Pig Alley, which is notable as pigs are a Jon symbol … More on pigs later, though. 

5. 'THE NETTY'

This next one is odd. I suspect George had to do some research to find it, as it is not well-known (even in its native England).

In 2013 GRRM wrote the novella, The Princess and the Queen, which was later incorporated into Fire & Blood. In it, he introduces us to the character of Nettles the dragonseed, companion of Daemon Targaryen, who tames and rides the dragon Sheepstealer.

Quote

Nettles—whom the prince fondly called Netty—outlived her prince as well as his wife. Nettles and the Sheepstealer vanished before the war's end, and none could say where they went until years after. - Fire & Blood

Nettles, who we are told was called ‘Netty’ by Daemon. And sure enough, in the north-east of England we find this word:

NETTY

in British English - Northeast England dialect

- a lavatory, originally an earth closet

A local Geordie word, essentially. It’s a curious inclusion in our toilet list, found in an area of ASOIAF which is ‘removed’ from the main story … and as a nickname. Which is odd because the name Nettles already seems fairly nickname-ish. Why go to the trouble of mentioning Dameon's further abbreviation of her name - Netty - unless it helps George continue his toilet wordplay game?  What's more, Nettles was reportedly ‘filthy’ and ‘foul-mouthed’ (a potty-mouth).

If we take the above examples as being the result of ‘pattern-finding’ on my part, then sure - we can dismiss them as curiosities. Along with the examples mentioned in my previous post (chiefly ‘john and ‘lav’). But if we do accept them as deliberate inclusions on GRRM’s part (and I think they are), then it means we are faced with an intriguing prospect. Even if the above examples are nothing more than easter eggs, or an authorial amusement, we can draw three conclusions. Firstly, that George is a far more cunning ‘smuggler’ of word clues than we may have assumed so far (especially the ‘loo’ insert which made my jaw drop when I first saw it). And second, that he is prepared to go down some fairly obscure research paths (see ‘netty’) in order to accomplish his goal of seeding the idea that ‘Jon’ can be read as a metaphorical ‘John’ - an idea that has its culmination in ADWD with the ‘Where do whores go?’ riddle. I’ll get to the third conclusion soon.

My personal view is that these are too elaborate to be mere diversions. Once the Jon/John connection is made, GRRM is able to do something quite elegant. By using ‘imagery of the privy’, our author has the ability to encode clues, foreshadowing, etc. about Jon Snow without ever mentioning his name, or even have him present in the scene.

In part one we used Val (reversed as ‘lav’) as our ‘Jon proxy’ - in that scene, Jon was actually present, to provide useful contrast. This time, Jon will be ostensibly absent as we take a look at the prologue from AFFC and examine:

Pate, the Pig Boy

Quote

If I hit him in the mouth with my tankard, I could knock out half his teeth, Pate thought. Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of a thousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always managed to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, and pompous septons who beset him. Somehow his stupidity would turn out to have been a sort of uncouth cunning; the tales always ended with Spotted Pate sitting on a lord's high seat or bedding some knight's daughter. But those were stories. In the real world pig boys never fared so well. Pate sometimes thought his mother must have hated him to have named him as she did. - AFFC, Prologue

We end up at the AFFC prologue once more. Well, we don’t spend much time with Pate before he is killed (and replaced) by the Alchemist, but what we do learn paints a rather sorry, unimpressive picture. A not-very-adept novice, yet to earn a single chain, who spends his time hopelessly mooning over the serving girl, Rosie. Like his namesake, the Pig Boy of the stories, he’s not too bright. Unlike that Pate, however, the Pate of AFFC does not ‘win out’ over anybody.

Let's see how George might have encoded some language clues, to connect Pate to ‘Jon the John’. And even before we get to those, we already have a little bit of crossover. How so? Well, it’s useful, I think, to look at our main POV characters in terms of ‘key features’ which can help to identify when they are being referred to - symbolically - elsewhere in the books. For Jon, there is a single phrase which rings out when we think about him: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” It's a phrase used in Jon's chapters over thirty times. Of course, this is more a reference to his being naive when it comes to certain ‘ways of the world’, not his actual intelligence. Jon is a pretty bright guy, in many ways. But for the purposes of signifying Jon, it is a very useful motif to bear in mind, because compounding the symbolism makes it easier to discern deliberate authorial choices. This makes the final words that Pate hears more interesting:

Quote

He was halfway down the alley when the cobblestones began to move beneath his feet. The stones are slick and wet, he thought, but that was not it. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. "What's happening?" he said. His legs had turned to water. "I don't understand.”

"And never will,” a voice said sadly. - AFFC, Prologue

For those who have been reading @sweetsunray's essays on her blog about the Ice Blood Seal, you may be aware that George seemingly uses pigs to signify or foreshadow wights/undead figures somehow. It's another one of those 'authorial conceits' that you just kind of have to go with and follow the symbolism to see the logic for yourself. And Jon is very much looking like a (temporarily?) undead figure at the beginning of TWOW.

And the toilet symbolism? A few pages previously, we got this scene:

Quote

A butcher's cart rumbled past Pate down the river road, five piglets in the back squealing in distress. Dodging from its path, he just avoided being spattered as a townswoman emptied a pail of night soil from a window overhead. When I am a maester in a castle I will have a horse to ride, he thought. Then he tripped upon a cobble and wondered who he was fooling. There would be no chain for him, no seat at a lord's high table, no tall white horse to ride. His days would be spent listening to ravens quork and scrubbing shit stains off Archmaester Walgrave's smallclothes. - AFFC, Prologue

Well, more pigs first. The five piglets bring to mind the 'five little piggies' which we sing about as children when counting out toes, just as Pate does with Rosey:

Quote

He even loved her toes. One night she'd let him rub her feet and play with them, and he'd made up a funny tale for every toe to keep her giggling.

Toes/piggies are a symbolic connection worth exploring in more detail, perhaps. Next, he narrowly avoids getting covered in shit - which would have made him a toilet of sorts - followed by a pessimistic summary of his situation, which I will provide in brief:

• No chain
• No seat
• No ‘white horse’

All conjuring up, in combination, a cryptic image of a toilet.

And here is that third conclusion I wanted to draw. George’s wordplay riddles, once you see them, usually raise a smile. I don’t think that’s accidental.

So Pate will never ‘be’ a Jon. He can only be a ‘symbolic’ Jon Snow for the purposes of whatever riddle George has laid out for us. For those looking for one more language clue to tie Pate to Jon, let’s glance at some other slang synonyms. Our list is almost exhausted, but we still have a few:

toilet (noun)

colloq.  loo, lav, dunny, smallest room, superloo, throne, little boys’ room, little girls’ room
slang  bog, kazi, crapper, can, cottage, head or heads (nautical), thunderbox, thunder bucket ;

In nautical terms, head or heads can refer to the ship’s toilet, originally named because sailors would prefer to shit off the prow, where oncoming waves were more likely to wash off the poop (and thereby the stink) that inevitably clung to the wood. And yes, we’ll get to thunder bucket in our final instalment.

Then the reference for ‘pate' - which many of you will already know - gives us:

pate  noun (old or humorous)

1. The crown of the head, esp when bald
2. The head
3. Intelligence (figurative)

Pate = head = toilet = john = Jon

And one last clue for Pate. In China, a widespread form of toilet used to be a kind of seat above a pig sty, known as a ‘pig toilet’. One of the earliest known examples of recycling, possibly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet

What Pate’s prologue story ultimately has to tell us about Jon is not completely clear, although I may have some inklings. But I think we are, at the very least, being told here to draw parallels, and ponder further. George’s invisible hand has been encouraging us, via language clues and symbolism, into thinking of privies. And by extension, Jon. His fate is somehow being encoded within the text, smuggled via intricate language clues into places we would least expect to look. The 'wherever whores go' riddle answer clinches the connection for me.

Finally, on the subject of smuggling, here are some of Davos’ thoughts about Dragonstone:

Quote

Davos had often heard it said that the wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel as common masons did, but worked stone with fire and magic as a potter might work clay. But now he wondered. What if they were real dragons, somehow turned to stone?

"If the red woman brings them to life, the castle will come crashing down, I am thinking. What kind of dragons are full of rooms and stairs and furniture? And windows. And chimneys. And privy shafts.” - ASOS, Davos V

A dragon with a privy indeed. But I don’t think this is simply a Jon clue. In fact, I think this points to a larger conceit that George wants us to think about, one that has its roots in the Jon / john idea. The idea that a building in his world might occasionally be a character metaphor. That we have not just privies, perhaps, but also castles, inns, farmhouses etc. … being used as symbolic stand-ins. These thoughts continue in part three here:

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Seams]

If you're going to look at toilet, loo, can, etc. for wordplay possibilities, I think you have to take a closer look at privy, which is used often in the books.

I think there is wordplay on privy and vyper. A privy has been built on the spot where Jaime took his king's guard oath, reinforcing his "shit for honor" theme. 

Jaime was betrothed to Lysa, who flies out the moon door. Since he has shit for honor and the Arryn words are "As High As Honor," it would be interesting to figure out the underlying meaning.

Since Tywin and Jaime and Tyrion are closely associated with shit, I would want to know how they relate to a theory of Jon as a toilet symbol.

I would also want to see thoughts about Great Jon Umber and Jon Arryn in relation to the "john as toilet" motif. 

None of this contradicts your careful analysis, I just see a much broader shit motif that could help to sort out the toilet symbolism. 

I do have doubts about Pate the novice as a symbolic or parallel Jon Snow character. He is probably an allegorical character, but I don't see strong Jon Snow evidence in him. Maybe some Tyrion parallels or irony, though. 

[Sandy Clegg]

11 hours ago, Seams said:

Jaime was betrothed to Lysa, who flies out the moon door. Since he has shit for honor and the Arryn words are "As High As Honor," it would be interesting to figure out the underlying meaning.

So, 'shit for honour' and 'as high as honour' could have as simple a connection as a certain meaning of the word 'high'. In one sense it can refer to an unpleasant smell, especially of meat rotting. My thesaurus gives this:

12: meat going 'high'
bad, off, rotting, smelling, smelly, gamy, decayed, putrid, rancid

Jamie's rotting dismembered hand might be a fitting image to add here - the hand which he used to associate with his skill with a sword, and therefore his 'knightly honour':

Quote

The days and the nights blurred together in a haze of pain. He would sleep in the saddle, pressed against Brienne, his nose full of the stink of his rotting hand, and then at night he would lie awake on the hard ground, caught in a waking nightmare. Weak as he was, they always bound him to a tree. It gave him some cold consolation to know that they feared him that much, even now.

As a side note, this image of being 'bound to a tree yet still feared'. Might this be relevant in the recent Wall thread, with Others being bound to weirwood trees within the Wall as a source of warding power? Just an idle thought ...

11 hours ago, Seams said:

Since Tywin and Jaime and Tyrion are closely associated with shit, I would want to know how they relate to a theory of Jon as a toilet symbol.

Well, the origin of Tyrion's 'Where do whores go?' riddle/mantra is Tywin's death on the privy, and I've discussed in my other thread how Jon is the most likely resolution to that riddle - because of the dual meaning of 'John' as a toilet and a customer of sex workers. But Tyrion being in charge of the cisterns is surely relevant somehow, perhaps in future books?

11 hours ago, Seams said:

I would also want to see thoughts about Great Jon Umber and Jon Arryn in relation to the "john as toilet" motif. 

Hmm. Well I was saving this for a future post but let's see.

I think the most important thing we have to do with these 'toilet wordplay puzzles' is to above all view them through the lens of humour. George is probably having, as I've mentioned in other posts, enormous fun in the creation of these odd little mysteries. Yes, they are slightly 'fourth-wall' breaking. But I think that's something we should expect from the man who has hidden muppets and the Three Stooges into the names of minor characters. George has a curious sense of humour - we just need to attune to it and appreciate it.

So, we can read the Smalljon and the Greatjon as symbolic toilet references, once we say their full names out loud:

• the Greatjon Umber
• the Smalljon Umber

Via a tiny shift in emphasis we get:

• a Great 'John Number' = number two, when going to the john (toilet)
• a Small 'John Number' = number one, when going to the john (toilet)

Number ones and number twos. 

11 hours ago, Seams said:

I do have doubts about Pate the novice as a symbolic or parallel Jon Snow character. He is probably an allegorical character, but I don't see strong Jon Snow evidence in him

Pate is a pig boy as in 'swineherd' rather than 'looking like a pig', which is something I only really appreciated recently. And we can see one clear reference to Jon as a 'friend of pigs' in his relationship with Sam, who is dubbed 'Ser Piggy'. And as steward Jon spends his time washing Jeor Mormont's smallclothes just as Pate does with Archmaester Walgrave. When Sam arrives at Oldtown he even makes friends with Pate, mirroring his attachment to Jon. Ser Piggy leaves one pig boy/swineherd figure behind him at the wall, only to find a replacement in his new lodgings. 

There's a lot more to the Pate/Jon symbolism if I ever get time to write it up fully. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Evolett]

8 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Well, the origin of Tyrion's 'Where do whores go?' riddle/mantra is Tywin's death on the privy, and I've discussed in my other thread how Jon is the most likely resolution to that riddle - because of the dual meaning of 'John' as a toilet and a customer of sex workers. But Tyrion being in charge of the cisterns is surely relevant somehow, perhaps in future books?

It's difficult to approach this without considering the associated symbolism. I'll sum up a number of relevant symbols:

- shit for honour (someone who has shit for honour is dishonourable)

- shit turns to gold (shitting gold, shit has great value)

- gold and whores (buried trreasure) buried beneath a privy/chamber pot

- whores as secret treasure

- golden hands

- the difference between latrines, privys and chamber pots

- perhaps also significant: lavatory stems from lavare meaning "to wash." A lavatory is a washroom for washing and washerwoman is a polite way of saying "whore."

 

The difference between latrines, privys and chamber pots stood out to me recently. Latrines we see in the story are usually public affairs such as the laterine ditches dug for the use of camped armies. Contrasting this are privys and chamber pots, both private affairs. The privy is a fixed installation leading to drains/sewers, while the chamber pot is mobile and must be emptied to prevent it from overflowing.

In relation to Jamie having shit for honour and the spot where he was knighted transformed into a latrine at Harrenhal, this could merely be symbolic of the public perception of his dishonourable character - the public latrine symbolizing the dishonourable act of kingslaying. It's public knowledge, no secret. His once secret affair with Cersei is no longer a secret either. 

When Tyrion escapes to the Second Sons, he's given some advice that supports this view:

Quote

Stay inside as much as you can, and shit into your bucket. Too many eyes at the latrines.

 

This sets up an interesting connection between the toilet motif and eyes / seeing.  Presumably latrines are not suited to clandestine activities, neither would one hide anything valuable there, but a privy or a chamber pot could serve these purposes as we see with Rugen's gold coin hidden beneath a chamber pot and the buried treasure /whores beneath a privy entrance. The following passage from the Whitewalls Tourney combines all three - the dragon's egg as a valuable object, the privy and seeing + the dwarf:

Quote

“Who took the dragon’s egg? There were guards at the door, and more guards on the steps, no way anyone could have gotten into Lord Butterwell’s bedchamber unobserved.” Lord Rivers smiled. “Were I to guess, I’d say someone climbed up inside the privy shaft.” “The privy shaft was too small to climb.” “For a man. A child could do it.” “Or a dwarf,” Dunk blurted. A thousand eyes, and one. Why shouldn’t some of them belong to a troupe of comic dwarfs?

 

 So, a potential greenseeing reference here. Additionally, this seems to circle back to Tyrion and Penny who are a little troupe of comic dwarfs and by extension to Tysha, worth lots of silver and a gold coin and origin of the question "where do whores go"? 

 

Golden hands

8 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Jamie's rotting dismembered hand might be a fitting image to add here - the hand which he used to associate with his skill with a sword, and therefore his 'knightly honour':

Quote

The days and the nights blurred together in a haze of pain. He would sleep in the saddle, pressed against Brienne, his nose full of the stink of his rotting hand, and then at night he would lie awake on the hard ground, caught in a waking nightmare. Weak as he was, they always bound him to a tree. It gave him some cold consolation to know that they feared him that much, even now.

As a side note, this image of being 'bound to a tree yet still feared'.

Jamie's stinking, rotting hand as a representation of his soiled knightly honour is an important clue methinks. Jamie's stinking hand is replaced by a gold hand (or turns to gold), a kind of parallel to Tywin's shit turning into gold. What happens when "soiled honour" turns into gold? Do golden hands become "stranglers?" (Tyrion strangling Shae with a necklace of golden hands). Jamie bound to a tree while wearing his stinking hand may tie into the "seeing latrine eyes" and Bloodraven /greenseeing reference in connection with the privy shaft above. Perhaps hands are generally part of the puzzle. The gold coin beneath the chamber pot in Rugen/Varys quarters is an old Gardener coin depicting a hand. Note here too we have an "all seeing" motif in the form of the spymaster Varys. Cersei wanted Jamie to take the position of Hand. Tywin, with all his golden Lannister symbolism was a "golden Hand," Jon Arryn was Hand to Robert. It was he who negotiated Robert's marriage to Cersei and advised on Jamie staying in the Kingsguard. So he basically facilitated Lannister attachment to the throne. 

Secret Treasure

How all this relates to the John/Jon toilet motif I can't say. What seems most relevant to me is the idea that privys can contain or conceal buried treasure/secret treasure. So far we've seen gold/shit, a golden coin depicting a hand, whores and a dragon egg. Jon had hardly any gold currency to spare so he definitely doesn't shit gold but he's found buried treasure, the obsidian cache. He has a symbolic toilet in the form of Edd at his disposal though, as well as a whore (Satin). Jeyne who spent time in LF's brothels and who has been warned by Theon that she'll be labled a whore if she does not go on being Arya, is on her way to Castle Black. Are Satin and Jeyne "hidden treasures"? The NW will soon be short of food/grain (the Gardner coin). He will come into contact with Dany /ride a dragon at some point. Having been born on a "midden heap," Gilly's baby could be relevant (in the German version, Gilly's name translates to "Goldie").
Jon's associated with two greenseers, if that's part of it. Perhaps these are all ingredients he must collect to accomplish his mission.

Contemplating this list reminds me of Littlefinger. Perhaps the link between the "jon" motif and Jon Arryn isn't Jon Arryn himself. Maybe its the Lord Protector of the Vale and master of the Moon Door "outhouse" that's significant, now held by Littlefinger. He doesn't shit gold, he breeds it. He has several brothels with hundreds of whores at his disposal. Sansa is his "buried treasure." He has amassed grain (the Gardner coin symbol). Sweetrobin may be the magical greenseer element. He has everything in abundance, except for a dragon. To conclude, there may be a not so obvious cyvasse game going on between LF and Jon, both still in the process of setting up their pieces for the near future. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by Evolett

[Equilibrium]

There is a great quote about hands and shit AGOT Eddard XV

Quote

The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit.

And I think as a term connected both to the hands and shit "wiping" deserves a closer look

Edited September 21, 2023 by Equilibrium

[Sandy Clegg]

2 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

And I think as a term connected both to the hands and shit "wiping" deserves a closer look

If we want to go there sure we can. As I go through these motifs I'm trying to build up keywords that connect to Jon, and these involve so far: fools, privies, dogs or wolves, maidens, and of course: snow.

As Jon is the centre of this cryptic vortex, we need to think laterally and look at snow parallels just as we've looked at fool/privy parallels. Flour for snow is one such parallel, as we see played out literally in this memory from the Stark kids' past:

Quote

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. - AGOT, Arya IV

Privies are also tied via wordplay to purses (here to mean women's private parts):

Quote

"While we are speaking of amusement, I heard a curious tale from Lord Buckler's steward. He claimed that you had put a tax on women's privy purses."

"It is a tax on whoring," said Tyrion, irritated all over again. And it was my bloody father's notion. "Only a penny for each, ah . . . act." - ASOS, Tyrion V

So a (privy) purse filled with flour (snow) would be a nice cryptic Jon symbol, as we see here. Connected to a scene of bladder-emptying and yes - wiping  

Crabb showed his true colors the next day, when they stopped to water the horses. Brienne had to step behind some bushes to empty her bladder. As she was squatting, she heard Podrick say, "What are you doing? You get away from there." She finished her business, hiked up her breeches, and returned to the road to find Nimble Dick wiping flour off his fingers. "You won't find any dragons in my saddlebags," she told him. "I keep my gold upon my person." Some of it was in the pouch at her belt, the rest hidden in a pair of pockets sewn inside her clothing. The fat purse inside her saddlebag was filled with coppers large and small, pennies and halfpennies, groats and stars . . . and fine white flour, to make it fatter still. - AFFC, Brienne IV

Brienne 'the maid' has flour in her purse - or 'snow in her privy', instead of the hoped-for dragons that Nimble Dick seeks.

Flour/snow of course conjure up 'ghostly' images which are also relevant to Jon's story, as TWOW will possibly pick up his story in un-death, if we assume that he will live on in spirit form until he can be resurrected somehow. GRRM will then take opportunities to paint little scenes which incorporate such imagery, as in this account from The Mystery Knight:

"His bride was deflowered by a scullion at the Twins, they say. She would creep down to the kitchens to meet him. Alas, one night that little brother of hers crept down after her. When he saw them making the two-backed beast, he let out a shriek, and cooks and guardsmen came running and found milady and her pot boy coupling on the slab of marble where the cook rolls out the dough, both naked as their name day and floured up from head to heel."

Naked and covered in flour - whilst on a marble slab, such as where an autopsy might be performed. Using the term 'pot boy' could be yet another wordplay reference to 'chamberpots'. 

 

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Sandy Clegg

[Seams]

10 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

shit "wiping" deserves a closer look

Especially if there is wordplay on "wiper" and "viper." 

Quote

He never heard his father speak the words that condemned him. Perhaps no words were necessary. I put my life in the Red Viper's hands, and he dropped it. When he remembered, too late, that snakes had no hands, Tyrion began to laugh hysterically.

Storm, Tyrion X

 

[Equilibrium]

You know what else can be useful, term "padded" that signifies both insulated and way someone walked and probably has rich etymological connections as well.

[Sandy Clegg]

On 9/19/2023 at 8:44 PM, Evolett said:

It's difficult to approach this without considering the associated symbolism. I'll sum up a number of relevant symbols:

- shit for honour (someone who has shit for honour is dishonourable)

- shit turns to gold (shitting gold, shit has great value)

We can also turn to another obsolete term for excrement, from around Shakespeare's time: Sir-reverence

Honour is just one of the synonyms for reverence which can be found. And the term sir-reverence (very fitting as Jaime is a knight) came to be used as a euphemism for poop.

Sir-reverence

noun

1. obsolete —used as an expression of apology before a statement that might be taken as offensive

2. obsolete : human feces .... also : a lump of human feces

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sir-reverence

Shit for honour indeed!