[ADWD Spoilers] Theon Greyjoy

[Podrick + Arya = Win]

That's pretty harsh on Ramsay Snow. He IS technically human, so he DOES have a human's brains so we definitely should see him get some redemption. Why selectively provide a Theon redemption and not a Ramsay one.

No, he's a poor bastard kid. He didn't have the Winterfell background like Theon did. Of course he grew up to be like Roose 2.0 with a few bugs.

Poor poor kid.

[Talesta]

I thought Ramsay Snow killed the two kids, that were supposed to be "Starks".

Ramsay Snow came out with the idea and did most of the work. But it was Theon who made a final decision and gave the orders.

[Pale_Valkyrie]

Poor Ramsay Snow, Vargo Hoat, Mountain, Cersei, Tywin, Janos Slynt. I feel so bad for them. Can you imagine the childhood trauma they must have endured to make them what they are/were?

Some of these things are not like the other things, me thinks.

While my cup of sympathy do not runneth over for Cersei or Tywin (hell, let's include Joffery on that list, you KNOW he's got daddy issues), I've got a wee bit there, and I can understand how some people might have more. And I respect that. Because we're all different people, and we've led different lives, we identify with different emotional conflicts in the characters we read. Theon trips my sympathy trigger. Guilty. Unashamed.

Janos Slynt, Ramsay, Vargo Hoat, and the Mountain are all painted as flat characters. There's nothing we really know about them to give us a footwork to sympathize with. But you know what, if in the next book, GRRM brings it like he did with the Reek chapters, I'll give it a go, what the hell.

But I can't see that happening for Ramsay and the Mountain. They, I suspect, are sociopaths anyway, which puts them in an entirely different class of monster. We know Ramsay was the child of rape, and hates being a bastard, but I get more than just daddy-issues vibes coming off that guy. And we know the Mountain started off young.

[Red Sun]

I wrote it already in the "Winterfel Mystery Murders"-thread, but the reason why Theon is fascinating to me is the way how his flaws play out and the way how he has always been sort of weak. That makes for an interesting read. However, I don't think that he is that much different than Cersei for example, in that he is vain, petty and somewhat mean. They just have a different temperament, and Cersei's story is much more rooted in her being a woman.

[twist of cake]

Did not want to make a new thread for this but people saying he was gelded and I want to put forth the theory that he was rapped. When he said something was taken that could be whatever can be called butt virginity or whatever something he can't quite name because there is no name for it. It is also why he thinks he is no longer a man because he was treated like a woman.

When Roose was talking about Ramsay and the first Reek it did kind of sound like they had some sort of relationship going and Ramsay does call "my Reek" so Theon was just some poor bastard taking Reeks place.

And obviously whatever happened to him a lot of people know about it and yet two women offer themselves to him despite what they knew something that would be hard to do with a eunuch.

Castrating him basically makes Theon useless as a hostage because without being able to make heirs Pyke would have gone to his uncles anyway.

[The Oncoming Storm]

I hated him in ACoK, but he pulled a Jaime like a boss! Now he's one of my favourites. Poor, poor boy! He really needs a hug. I just have the feeling he won't live to the end. All his thoughts about how he's prefer a quick death to Ramsay, plus the North will never forgive him, even if Bran and Rickon come forth... I just hope he won't fall into that monster's hands again. I already wondered a dozen times when he wandered around in Winterfell why he doesn't just take that dagger and put and end to it... sad as it would be, I want him safe from Ramsay.

[lady crackhead]

Did not want to make a new thread for this but people saying he was gelded and I want to put forth the theory that he was rapped. When he said something was taken that could be whatever can be called butt virginity or whatever something he can't quite name because there is no name for it. It is also why he thinks he is no longer a man because he was treated like a woman.

When Roose was talking about Ramsay and the first Reek it did kind of sound like they had some sort of relationship going and Ramsay does call "my Reek" so Theon was just some poor bastard taking Reeks place.

And obviously whatever happened to him a lot of people know about it and yet two women offer themselves to him despite what they knew something that would be hard to do with a eunuch.

Castrating him basically makes Theon useless as a hostage because without being able to make heirs Pyke would have gone to his uncles anyway.

I'm beginning to think that maybe in language translations apart from English it seems like he was raped.

And obviously whatever happened to him a lot of people know about it and yet two women offer themselves to him despite what they knew something that would be hard to do with a eunuch.

What the...what? You don't know what to call anal rape & you can't name the something that would be hard to do with a eunuch. Funny.

Those women didn't actually want to have sex with him, you might have noticed. And they don't know he's a eunuch (if he is a eunuch). And no one else who wasn't in the Ramsay circle would, either.

Castrating him basically makes Theon useless...

He wasn't castrated. And if he was left with just his balls, technically he might still be able to have an heir.

[lady crackhead]

I hated him in ACoK, but he pulled a Jaime like a boss! Now he's one of my favourites. Poor, poor boy! He really needs a hug. I just have the feeling he won't live to the end. All his thoughts about how he's prefer a quick death to Ramsay, plus the North will never forgive him, even if Bran and Rickon come forth... I just hope he won't fall into that monster's hands again. I already wondered a dozen times when he wandered around in Winterfell why he doesn't just take that dagger and put and end to it... sad as it would be, I want him safe from Ramsay.

Everyone wants to hug Theon now that he can't press his boner against them.

I want to see him rule the 7 at the end, just to see the massive nerd implosions it would cause.

[Sword in the Morning]

Theon's arc is tragic but he's going to pay the price.

...the iron price. :cool4:

Anyways. Theon-haters want him dead because he dared to stab the Starks in the back. That's it. Especially when they had actually liked him. And so they hardened their hearts against this youth they had once held affection for, and said "so be it. may he die for his sins."

And then... this. This awfulness. He was shattered into a million pieces, his manhood stolen from him (both figuratively and perhaps even literally) and turned into a weak, pathetic shell of a man living in fear. No one deserves that.

[Sun]

Theon used to be a hateful villain, now he's a pathetic, broken villain. But he's still a villain. I haven't seen him think or feel anything even resembling remorse over his betrayal of Rob and his sacking of Winterfell.

[King_In_The_North]

Theon used to be a hateful villain, now he's a pathetic, broken villain. But he's still a villain. I haven't seen him think or feel anything even resembling remorse over his betrayal of Rob and his sacking of Winterfell.

He didn't sack Winterfell, that was Ramsay, and he DID show remorse.

[Sun]

He didn't sack Winterfell, that was Ramsay, and he DID show remorse.

He showed remorse over his downfall as a result of his actions, but not over his betrayal of Robb and killing the smallfolk of Winterfell. His betrayal was heinous, & his suffering though terrible, does not equal redemption, it just equals pain.

[Talesta]

He showed remorse over his downfall as a result of his actions, but not over his betrayal of Robb and killing the smallfolk of Winterfell.

Hmm, really? Even as the Prince of Winterfell he never felt completely at peace with his own actions. I thought, in aDwD chapters his remorse over everything he had done to Starks and Winterfell is so obvious, it takes a considerable effort not to notice it.

[Pale_Valkyrie]

I thought, in aDwD chapters his remorse over everything he had done to Starks and Winterfell is so obvious, it takes a considerable effort not to notice it.

This, times a billion. I've seen multiple people suggesting that Theon does not show remorse in this book, and it makes me wonder how they expect remorse to be expressed. Like, were they waiting for him to say, "I feel remorse," out loud, to the weirwood?

[tyrions sliced nose]

Mostly in the next book im looking forward to seeing him and Asha are together and how thats going to pan out. I love asha and her POV.

Will one of the uncles try and get them or pay for them? Or do they escape and even help stannis(assuming Ramsey lied about stannis.

I dunno but im really anxious to see where this goes.

[snowzombie]

What Theon did in ACoK seemed like such a betrayal...I wonder how it's going to read on television. I know he'd been emasculated by everybody - the Starks, his sister, his dad - and he had something to prove. But I remember thinking, "What a dick!" I wanted to see him get his. But then GRRM starts dropping little comments through out the text, "Theon Greyjoy? Oh, he's just having his skin flayed very slowly in a dungeon by a sociopath." And, "A strip of leather fell out of the letter." Oh look, it's part of Theon's finger lying on the table!

I started thinking, "OK, I hate the guy but not like that. No one should be flayed. Except Joffrey." But even Joffrey, we know his mom made him into a monster....no, on second thought, fuck that kid. He should have died much slower, though seeing him choke to death on HBO is going to rule. All the, "they killed Ned people!" non-readers are going to love the Purple Wedding. Probably not enough to forgive GRRM for the Red Wedding, though.

But back to Theon. It was like wish fulfillment, seeing the villain get his comeuppance. Be careful what you wish for. GRRM definitely made me feel sorry for Theon, those chapters were just so....I remember the first one starting with him eating live rat and me wondering who the POV was, and the slow dawning realization that it was in fact Theon....great writing. GRRM gave him quite the redemption arc in ADwD, wherein he's able to redeem himself in his own eyes and regain a sense of self.

Now I'm starting to wonder what's in store for Ramsay. Probably a swift death:(, but hopefully of the Tywin Lannister variety:).

[tyrions sliced nose]

Oh man i wanna see Ramsey get his so bad, Theon should slice his weiner off.

I dont know who i want more to give it to him Jon or Theon?

[Beagle_alarm_clock]

To paraphrase Juvenal, 'this is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.' Theon isn't redeemed of his misdeeds via suffering. One is redeemed, if they can be, by positive choices and actions. Affecting a change from within and manifesting it without. Even so, nothing really washes away one's past. One always carries it unless they are a sociopath.

Theon is a tragic figure, and sympathetic because of the context of the cultural in which he exists. The primary social mechanisms are family bloodlines and among the Ironborn, exhibitions of aggressive deeds, earned glories against enemies.

Though he was young man when he made his fell choices, at first he was but a boy handed over to an enemy as a hostage. He is called a ward, but it's just a euphemism. He grows up with role models that exhibit and teach traits that he admires, he experiences a family he wants to be part of. I believe his desire is for a family, more than a House. Ned was not a cruel man and surely treated him with dignity, but he was also Ned and a Stark and so he would have been cold and distant and pragmatic about the possibility one day having to kill this kid. He's just a game piece. The Stark children would have been another matter, especially Robb. His closest friend is someone that Westeros and Ironborn culture would require him to perhaps some day kill and would require no less from Robb. That would be considered normal. So he grows up alone, wanting what he can never have and then returns to his "real" family and finds out he can never be one of them either. They despise him. He is literally nothing to anyone. He has no identity in a world where all of that is eminently important. His identity problems started way before Bolton got his mitts on him. The foundation for a personality split was already there.

So in his tragic folly he tries to win all. He wants Winterfell for what it was to him growing up, (even if it was mostly a self-delusion) though he knows he can never really have it. He wants his blood family's respect though he can never really have it. Once he takes the moral step of turning on the Starks then the other atrocities are easier. He's already in. He's committed. Nothing about his plan or it's "success" brought him any comfort and he is not a person who murders kids and shrugs it off. He's a fairly pathetic figure, trapped without any good choices and not the life experience to have the wisdom to accept certain realities and not cause more damage by trying to materialize delusions as reality. He foolishly thinks he can purchase an identity and a family and get Winterfell and his past back, though twisted. Some many old tropes apply... can't go home again, wanting his cake and eat it too, etc.

He's one of Martin's best characters. He is tragic and later pitiable. He has done things that shouldn't be easily forgiven... but we can understand how he got there and that makes a damned good arc.

I don't know if he will be "redeemed" or not. But at the least I suspect he will be wiser and sometimes that's all that can be salvaged out of the mistakes we make.

[Pilz]

Well said. Outstanding analysis! I was trying to think how to put my feelings into words, and you did just that.

[Chirios]

What Theon did in ACoK seemed like such a betrayal...I wonder how it's going to read on television. I know he'd been emasculated by everybody - the Starks, his sister, his dad - and he had something to prove. But I remember thinking, "What a dick!" I wanted to see him get his. But then GRRM starts dropping little comments through out the text, "Theon Greyjoy? Oh, he's just having his skin flayed very slowly in a dungeon by a sociopath." And, "A strip of leather fell out of the letter." Oh look, it's part of Theon's finger lying on the table! I started thinking, "OK, I hate the guy but not like that. No one should be flayed. Except Joffrey."

Nowhere near as bad. The TV show has gone to great lengths to make him "sympathetic", mostly by making Robb and Maester Luwin dicks.

Anyway, Theon is to be pitied, but he is in no way redeemed. Redemption requires actively attempting to make amends for the wrongs you've committed. Theon hasn't ever in my memory admitted that what he did was wrong, instead saying: at one point the Starks were kind of mean to me, justifying destroying their home, killing people I've grown up around, and murdering two children whose mother I had slept with. Now that he's been tortured he regrets the loss he's suffered, but I don't think he's regretted what he's done, morally I mean, not simply thinking it was stupid. In a different story, he'd get some form of justice, but this is ASOIAF, so he'll get tortured by a complete monster and never atone for his crimes.

Sad really.