Arya / No One / and the Water Motif in Braavos

[Ice Turtle]

One new quote, about Arya, water and Jon:

"Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at the heart of the godswood." For some reason I absolutely love this sentence - Jon watches and Arya watches Jon. Jon never knew his mother and after he took Black he was forsaken to have lover wife or daughter, Arya was always absolutely most important female in his life.

This one is not about water, but I always wondered how people interpret it:

"He found himself outside the city, walking through a world without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters; together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes."

One off topic note, someone should make a thread about Tyrion and pennies. There is dwarf's penny, Penny and now sun described as penny for no reason at all.

[Sandara Stark]

Water frozen into the solid state turns to ICE.

[evita mgfs]

One new quote, about Arya, water and Jon:

"Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at the heart of the godswood." For some reason I absolutely love this sentence - Jon watches and Arya watches Jon. Jon never knew his mother and after he took Black he was forsaken to have lover wife or daughter, Arya was always absolutely most important female in his life.

This one is not about water, but I always wondered how people interpret it:

"He found himself outside the city, walking through a world without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters; together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes."

One off topic note, someone should make a thread about Tyrion and pennies. There is dwarf's penny, Penny and now sun described as penny for no reason at all.

:bowdown: :bowdown: Wow! Good catch! I am going to have to broaden my look from just Arya to include the other Starks. For the Re-read thread, I thought we need to follow all the POV - since the topic is Direwolves, Dragons, Mormont's Raven and Cats. Afterall, Khaleesi has those dragon eggs we will need to follow, as well as Tyrion's obsession with dragons. He even reads a book on dragons on his way to the Wall! I guess we just never know where Martin is going to slip in his little gems, do we?

Awesome, ICE Turtle. You are on a roll. How do you quote in those boxes? Am I supposed to do that too?

[evita mgfs]

Water frozen into the solid state turns to ICE.

:bowdown: SANDARA STARK, Welcome! No one has developed this yet - we have been following tears so many other water related images and suggestive language, we did not get to the ice connection - only superfluously. Feel free to expand and join the discussion. We invite newbies to share - your ideas are always fresh! Keep it up and hone your posting skills here.

[Little Wing]

:agree: I agree. :bowdown: Little Wing! And as an agent of Him of Many Faces, Arya is not unlike Hermes, who leads the dead to the Underworld. And speaking of those crypts, I am obsessed with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and so much reminds me of incidences in Martin's ASoIaF, which gives me hope that those crypts will open to yield up their dead, and a scene will transpire that will speak to the Book of the Dead in The Odyssey. Odysseus must visit Hades domain, where he holds speech with the dead, and some are his very own comrades who fell at Troy, or who were killed on their journeys home after the war.

Odysseus must speak to the blind prophet Tiresias, who knows all in both life and death, even though he is blind [Maester Aemon / Blind Beth.] He speaks to Achilles [Rhaegar], King of the Elysian Fields, Agamemnon [Robert - both were deceived and urged to die quicly by their wives]; his mother Eurycleeia [ Lady Catelyn] who dies of a broken heart in his absence [poor Odysseus weeps for he does not know his mother is dead - he tries to hold her three times, and three times she slips through his arms :crying: ]. Oh, and I sometimes think Odysseus is like Tyrion, for Odysseus is not handsome nor buff and hot like Achilles, but he could speak and wiggle his way out of danger, and so on. Odysseus is Brains to Achilles' Brawn- like Tyrion and his Bronn! Tee Hee. :eek:

But I would love to meet some of those dead Stark Kings of Winter and Lords of Winterfell. It would make for a good read! :drool:

Edited for typo errors

Hm... the Odysseus visiting the dead story makes me think of Jon in this role... Especially if he's the one to go to the Land of Always Winter :eek: but this is not the topic, so off I go :laugh:

:leaving:

[Little Wing]

:bowdown: LITTLE WING: I already addressed your post, I just wanted to make sure to invite you to our reread. We cannot do it without you, Little Wing. I may have missed a post from you because somewhere in my mind I thought I read that you were interested in being a part of the reread. Maybe it was in another thread. Sorry if I am a little daft. :blushing: I accidently sent FLORINA STARK 20 Pm's by accident because my computer froze, and impatient me! I hit the enter button 20 times! Dah! :bang:

You are invited to join a thread Florina Stark and The Pack Survives are getting together for a reread of ASoIaF. Our topic is going to be: Direwolves, Dragons, Mormont's Raven, and Cats. Doesn't that sound like fun? :drool: I will PM more later.

Thank you so much evita, I did say that I want in on the Direwolf thread of yours :) I'll gladly do the Cats bit, I'm in their heads and I am the official Cat Whisperer :smug: but just analyzing Arya's chapters with you guys shall suffice - looking forward to it, of course! :thumbsup:

Oh, and on topic, I think Arya_Nym has already drawn a parallel to Arya resembling a Child of the Forest... the Children had Wood Dancers, a militant order so it seems, and some people on Heresy threads theorize that those same Wood Dancers later became the Others, but that's another topic. I just wanted to maybe associate the Water Dancer/Wood Dancer - water/earth - Arya/Nymeria pairs. Only... don't know where to go with it, or what to infer from it :dunno:

ETA: Just a little observation: Arya could be seen as fluid in her relationships and abilities - easily makes friends, easily learns all kinds of skills and is fluid in languages although they do give her a hard time :laugh: but, again like water, she is persistent in going further, making her way through great obstacles, just like water gets everywhere in time...

[Ice Turtle]

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this, but Arya like to swim, but she actually hates taking baths as a child.

[evita mgfs]

Thank you so much evita, I did say that I want in on the Direwolf thread of yours :) I'll gladly do the Cats bit, I'm in their heads and I am the official Cat Whisperer :smug: but just analyzing Arya's chapters with you guys shall suffice - looking forward to it, of course! :thumbsup:

Oh, and on topic, I think Arya_Nym has already drawn a parallel to Arya resembling a Child of the Forest... the Children had Wood Dancers, a militant order so it seems, and some people on Heresy threads theorize that those same Wood Dancers later became the Others, but that's another topic. I just wanted to maybe associate the Water Dancer/Wood Dancer - water/earth - Arya/Nymeria pairs. Only... don't know where to go with it, or what to infer from it :dunno:

ETA: Just a little observation: Arya could be seen as fluid in her relationships and abilities - easily makes friends, easily learns all kinds of skills and is fluid in languages although they do give her a hard time :laugh: but, again like water, she is persistent in going further, making her way through great obstacles, just like water gets everywhere in time...

:bowdown: :bowdown: LITTLE WING: I think getting a little off topic is okay - it happens with me all the time. I start seeing connections to other works I have read that remind me so very much of Martin, and I do think the mythology is relevant because Arya is a composite of several gods in the Olympian Pantheon, for she is associated with water, like Poseidon, and if she wargs a sea creature, she will be even more like him. Howlan Reed has to be in on this as well. ARYA NYM found really good evidence regarding his talents to control, or become a part of, the natural elements, all associated with water.

So you are the cat lady. I should have guessed with your former avatar of the Halloween pussycat.Well, I am the dog lady, I guess. I do have a cat as well, but he is 20 years old, and I wake up everyday to check that he is still alive. I finally figured out that he is deaf. He doesn't even blink when I call "Here kitty, kitty". I think we have all the bases covreed, for I believe someone said they are fond of Mormont's raven, and I enjoy the tricksy bird as well. I am interested in following those dragon eggs because I never payed too much attention to them on past rereads.

Do you have a link for ARYA NYM's thread. I can easily do a search as well.

I agree that Arya is fluid in her relationships and abilities. We have really fleshed out the water associations. I will be surprised if it is all a red herring, but Martin seems to have a vocabulary for every important character and a vocabulary that describes the different locations we visit with the author. I am looking foprward to it as well.

Now you are the Bat Lady! Tee Hee! :devil:

[Dark Heart]

:bowdown: :bowdown: Exellent post, Dark Heart. I love how you connected Jaqen to water. I did as well in my post on alcohol - and Jaqen also says a man will "weep", a reference to tears again. I really think we are proving that this water motif is not just a crack pot theory. It is really going somewhere, and some of it has to be intentional on Martin's part. :dunno:

I've seen the alcohol post.

But I'm trying to find few more examples before I reply to it. :)

Sorry, I'm still sort of on this Howland connection kick. We've already seen Arya dancing in trees which recalls the crannogmen running on leaves. But both Howland and Meera are said to breathe mud. Now we have this where hot air and smoke are coming through the tunnel, Arya holds her breath but she's also kissing the mud and crying...two things which usually require breathing. Can she breathe mud?

Well, she did say could taste mud. So, maybe she had swallowed some?

And I think you are right with your Howland connection kick.

IIRC, People call them "mud eaters" and in the next Arya's chapter we have her thinking that Weasel have been eating mud again.

One new quote, about Arya, water and Jon:

"Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at the heart of the godswood." For some reason I absolutely love this sentence - Jon watches and Arya watches Jon. Jon never knew his mother and after he took Black he was forsaken to have lover wife or daughter, Arya was always absolutely most important female in his life.

And later we have "Calm as still water".

Yes, there's a strong connection between Arya, Jon and water.

This one is not about water, but I always wondered how people interpret it:

"He found himself outside the city, walking through a world without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters; together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes."

One off topic note, someone should make a thread about Tyrion and pennies. There is dwarf's penny, Penny and now sun described as penny for no reason at all.

Interesting description.

I'm not sure how to see it. The best I can do is connection of both wolves and Silent Sisters with death.

Silent Sisters take care of the dead and wolves are, in many cultures, seen as connected to the underworld and death.

But now that we are talking about things being gray, Maesters are also gray.

Hm, Tyrion and pennies.

Wasn't there some tree with nailed pennies on it too?

[Little Wing]

Unfortunately, have to run for the time being, so can't make sure if this is the thread where Arya_Nym made the Children parallel, but I think it'll come in handy anyways, comparing Bran and Arya.

I'm both a cat and dog lady (have two dogs and two cats myself) but, yeah, right now I'm the bat-cat Halloween lady :laugh: talk to you later, will be back!

[evita mgfs]

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this, but Arya like to swim, but she actually hates taking baths as a child.

:bowdown: Good Observations again ICE TURTLE. That Arya - she is such a paradox. She saves lives, yet she then takes lives. Typical that she loves to swim but hates baths. Since she is a part Tullly, it seems natural that she would take to water with ease.

in

In ACoK, she excuses herself from bathing because she was afraid she would reveal that she was really a girl and not Arry. And she needs a bath because she has fleas. I itched every time she mentioned the fleas. Yuch! :ack:

Have you read any of the Hunger Games trilogy.

In Catching Fire, Finnick is from the district that is associated with water, and his weapons are the trident and a net, judt like Jojen and Meera. Arya threw her little three-pronged fork into the canal. But she can always gain another one. :dunno:

[boojam]

:dunno: We were addressing a water motif, and since we have all been posting on other threads about Nymeria, for there are several, including one specifically on the Direwolves of House Stark, are comments concerning Nymeria and Arya are all there. You will find that in those posts, we came to a consensus that Arya and water are connected, and we wanted to explore it in this thread.

The point I was bringing up was that Arya tossed all her "attire" into the waters, what she wore from Westeros, and in this the WATER served as amniotic fluid and she is symbolically reborn, IMO, as a servant of Him of Many Faces. She returns to the HoB&W naked as a newborn babe.

I am not much taken by the water motif, George does stuff like this and then it sums up to nothing.

It's been my hunch all along that Arya is a piece of the 'Great Conspiracy' that involves not only her but also Dany and Tryion. That she was shadowed by Jaquen , on purpose, from KL, which is why he always knew who she was (it was no slip by Gendry or Hot Pie that leaked that) and explains why Jaqen was with the Yoren's crew (I don't believe he was ever in the dungeons at KL, he joined that group on his own , which for a FM would have been easy). His mission was to 'size up' , give Arya the coin and set her the test of making it to Braavos on her own.

I think the FM are taking orders from the Varys-Illyrio conspiracy which may be a bigger conspiracy than even Varys-Illyrio even know.

I don't know , but I have this guess that something BIG is afoot that involves Dany, Tryion and Arya.

Arya's FM training is just a tool for her arsenal, and I think the FM intend it to be that way. (Somehow I think Jaqen will come back as a player too.)

So Arya keeps this connection with Nymeria and Needle because it's her identity, and I also think the FM want it that way no matter what they say.

The heck with the water!

[evita mgfs]

There's a bit of a connection that I don't think has been brought up before. Howland visits the Isle of Faces, Arya is in Braavos at the HoB&W on the Isle of the Gods. There may be some similarities to be taken from Arya's journey and Howland's journey as told in the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree.

As a side note, this from the Knight of the Laughing Tree Story...Meera is cut off at "Neck". Old Nan was cut off at a story that seemed rather important. Wonder what Meera was going to say before Bran urged her on.

:bowdown: :bowdown: DR. PEPPER, this is a really good obvservation, one I missed, so thanks for pointing that out. I hate it when people get cut off - and never pick up again. Isn't it like that in real life as well? That is one of the reasons I love Martin. He taps into so many "real" things that happen in life, and it is so easy to relate to the situations and characters. And then I get caught up in the story, and forget about what wasn't finished. Old Nan gets cut off when she is telling Bran about the Others as well.

You know, I love that map of Braavos. I am sure you have seen it. Wow, the detail. And that is just ONE of the locations I have seen. I hope the book of maps is not too awfully expensive. I will have to save my pennies because I definitely want the book. I was disappointed that they did not have the Titan of Braavos where Arya entered. It looked like that section was marked off - maybe not completed yet because it is a proof, yes? But that map shows how Braavos is surrounded by water. It is like Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, "Water, water, everywhere!"

BTW, I love your avatar. It is so vibrant, and purple is my favorite color. It makes me happy.

Look forward to hearing some more of your awesome insights.

[ARYa_Nym]

Comparisons of The Black Swan/Swan Lake:

In the movie as well as the play the Black Swan is the more powerful and seductress force. She is the manipulator.

- Odette (Nina), the innocent, yet cursed White Swan;

- Odile (Lily), the temptress, the plotting, evil twin, Black Swan;

- and Prince Ziegfried (David), the doomed lover.

"But the Black Swan, Odile, offers something that the other genteel princesses do not; a full-on seduction. The ballet generally calls for the same dancer to perform the White Swan and the Black Swan. Where Odette is light and delicate, Odile is powerful and commanding. Odette’s dance with the Prince is demure and elusive, while Odile’s is sexy and provocative."

Swans have two colors-black and white just like what Arya wears as a FM.

Where the Woman in White marks a mysterious but important character and the Lady in Red indicates the sexy yet morally questionable one, the Woman in Black is almost always scary and menacing.

TV Tropes mentioned how the movie had the trope of the dead girl.

· That Woman Is Dead:

Erica: What happened to my sweet girl?

Nina: She's gone!

Jaqen called Arya sweet boy. The old man in the Peach called Arya his sweet peach.

The waif told her that she must be blind until darkness is as sweet to her as the light is so there's the black and white symbolism there.

“How long must I be blind?” she would ask. “Until darkness is as sweet to you as light...”

Jaqen told her that Jaqen was as dead as Arry and Arya once said that Arya Stark was dead. As well as Cat when the water washed off her identity.

It was mentioned how swans are usually portrayed as peaceful but when they get angry they can cause quite a ruckus.

In Black Swan Nina is told by her instructor that she does not have what it takes to be the Black Swan. The KM is often telling Arya that she does not have what it takes to be one of the FM which makes Arya want it more and try to work harder.

Nina is overwhelmed by her insecurities and her strive for perfection. Arya also has had insecurities and had a need to please the KM but she's not to the point where it's a serious problem like with Nina. Nina's instructor is trying to get her be more wild like Odile but the KM is trying to subdue Arya's wildness with getting her to be more disciplined.

When Nina takes drugs she is able to let go and in some glimpses the viewer can see her turning into Odile the Black Swan. She told her mother:

Erica: Do you have any idea what time it is?

Nina: [drunk] Uh... late?

Erica: Where have you been?

Nina: To the moon!

Lily: And back.

There are a lot of mirrors shown in the film as we see Nina's transformation into her role. Arya has her Myrish mirror where she must learn to rule her face in order to assume her future roles.

· Becoming the Mask: Happens to Nina—Maybe. Too much in this movie depends on your interpretation to say for sure.

· Beneath the Mask: Nina. It's made clear that she has a repressed side. Her normal self is represented by the "white swan". On the other hand her repressed side is represented by her black swan persona.

Lost In Character: One possible interpretation of Nina trying so hard to be the Black Swan, is she utterly loses herself in the part.

All of the above tropes can potentially apply to Arya's arc.

Nina is also a dancer as a ballerina. Arya is associated with being a water dancer and as of late wood dancer.

Their legs are important:

“Skinny as they were, her legs were strong and springy and growing longer every day. She was glad of that. A water dancer needs good legs. Blind Beth was no water dancer, but she would not be Beth forever.”

Balance is also important which Arya learned from Syrio. She utilized it again in order to not spill Roose's drink because he would flay her if she did and the KM's exercises.

"Once she almost fell headlong down the steps, but Syrio Forel had taught her balance in another lifetime, when she was the girl called Arya, and somehow she recovered and caught herself in time. "

The recurring idea that in order to assume the role Nina must dance like no one is watching. That will allow her to loosen up.

A good quote:

Yet I understand why people are afraid of leaving the shallows. I'm also torn between staying mostly neatly, cleanly dry in the wading pool of life, and getting drippily, messily wet in the boundless sea where the Wild Things prowl.

hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2010/12/the-meaning-of-black-swan-for-me-at-least.html

Arya would be the opposite because she likes to get wet in the sea and if anything would be more the Odile (Black Swan) than Odette (White Swan).

[Little Wing]

:agree:

That is outstanding and quite a find, Arya_Nym! I loved the Black Swan. If Arya can reconcile black and white within herself that would make her quite...zen?

[rivergirl]

Ice + Fire = Water

Super-flimsy train of thought here, but Arya seems pretty watery to me, more so than any other character. She's changeable, fluid and, above all, a "water dancer." If you're one for the R+L=J theory, that could explain why Jon is closer to Arya than any other Stark. The two of them are similar, a mixture of Ice and Fire.

In any case, water is definitely a mixture of Ice (the Starks, the Wall and the Others) and Fire (the Targaryens, the dragons and Azor Ahai) so even if it's not directly related to Arya, those two elements have to come together eventually. The fact that Arya/No One is currently hopping around in Braavos on islands surrounded by said water could be symbolic of something. I have no idea what that something is, though. Possibly her Starkish Icyness being melted away and leaving her separated from her family and home by the Melted Essence of Stark? When she was surrounded by Ice back in Winterfell, she was Arya Stark. Now, with the ice having melted, she's No One.

[Little Wing]

Not flimsy at all - maybe the many associations of Arya with water in the text are a foreshadowing that Arya will be one of those that are left in the wake of the clash of Ice and Fire... It will definitely be sink or swim then, and Arya is a good swimmer ^_^

[rivergirl]

Arya having to sink or swim is a definite possibility. After all, she's been drifting around Westeros doing very little for a while now. Maybe the fact that she's finally gone across to Braavos, where she is being much more useful, is a sign that she's had enough of letting the tides take her and is going to rise to the challenge and find a way (seemingly through becoming Faceless and mostly renouncing her perilous name) to stay afloat until she can swim home.

[ARYa_Nym]

:agree:

That is outstanding and quite a find, Arya_Nym! I loved the Black Swan. If Arya can reconcile black and white within herself that would make her quite...zen?

Thank you. & yes it might be that she needs both sides in order to each achieve her balance.

I forgot to mention that Aegon also supposedly has water associations and the first time we see him is on a boat.

"He is here. Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid.

As for the Targaryens they have been known to like hot baths.

Dany liked the sea.

She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air…It made her feel small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion…

But Viserys didn't.

"You are blood of the dragon," he had screamed at her. "A dragon, not some smelly fish." He was a fool about that, and so much else, Dany thought."

Dany saw the dragons being willing to hunt over water as them becoming more bold.

"Drogon has no taste for this wet creeping...her black dragon had been the first to try his wings above the water, the first to flutter from ship to ship...The flying fish no sooner broke the surface of the water than they were enveloped in a lance of flame, snatched up, and swallowed."

"She found Rhaegal asleep beside the pool, a green and bronze coil basking in the sun...she saw pale wings, in the far distance sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day."

They don't like rain though.

"He saw no sign of dragons, but he had not expected to. The dragons did not like the rain."

Jorah mentioned dragons taking krakens from the sea.

“In the Seven Kingdoms, there are tales of dragons who grew so huge that they could pluck giant krakens from the seas.” Dany laughed. “That would be a wondrous sight to see.” “It is only a tale, Khaleesi,” said her exile knight. “They talk of wise old dragons living a thousand years as well.

This line Tyrion said makes me think of the COTF/greenseers and the last of Aemon.

"Most of the stories you hear about dragons are fodder for fools. Talking dragons, dragons hoarding gold and gems, dragons with four legs and bellies big as elephants, dragons riddling with sphinxes..."

Unrelated but I thought this was interesting:

"...Drogon leapt from her shoulder. He flew to the top of the ebony-and-weirwood door, perched there, and began to bite at the carved wood."

[evita mgfs]

Wow! I just woke up and checked this thread - and did I have a big surprise. So many awesome posts again! This will take me a while to digest; I must focus - and as you may have noticed, I think everyone deserves a reply from me, although I need to formulate these before I post, so please forgive me while I take some time to do so.

Until then, I owe you all a reply and mean to do so: LITTLE WING, ARYA NYM, BOOJAM, and ROSE RIVERS, I OWE YOU. (in the nicest way possible for I am duly humbled and impressed by all the replies here.)

BTW, LITTLE WING, my cat lady, call me blind. I just noticed your bat is really a CAT with with wings. Counterpoint to the WINGED WOLF of House Stark, yes? (in a figurative and symbolic way, not in a literal sense). "Meow!" and "Woof", from the dog lady.

Until then, I send love from our girl Arya, the Littlest of Mermaids. :grouphug: :wub: :bowdown: . And from Jaqen, this: :cheers: