Becoming No One: Rereading Arya II

[brashcandy]

Welcome to the second thread for the Arya reread project which is run by Rapsie, Lyanna Stark and myself.

Our aim in this project is to thoroughly analyse Arya's story line throughout the five novels, looking specifically at character development, foreshadowing and symbolism, and gender issues. We appreciate that Arya is one of the more popular characters in ASOIAF, but we also believe that such popularity has contributed to critical neglect of her arc, hence the need for this reread.

We are not invested in either of the two frequent depictions of Arya within the fandom as "awesome badass supergirl" or "psychotic child soldier". As such, participation in this reread means a commitment to unpacking these cursory portrayals with studied interpretations that always refer back to textual evidence. We welcome any insight from other critical sources such as mythology, history, literature and literary theory.

For those now joining us, we are currently at Arya IV in ACOK. Feel free to jump into the discussion on this chapter, or to broach a point in one of the earlier discussions.

I have posted the previous chapter summaries and analyses below for easy reference. Above all, please be mindful that this is a serious thread which is following a set schedule. Focus should therefore be kept to the current chapter as much as possible, with no in-depth discussion of upcoming plot points.

(Rereading Arya I)

AGOT

AGOT Arya Chapter 1 : Summary and Analysis

AGOT Arya Chapter 1: Discussion Overview

AGOT Arya Inbetween Chapter 1 and Chapter 2: Summary and Analysis: Summary and Analysis

AGOT Arya Chapter 2: Summary and Analysis

Arya Chapter 3: Summary and Analysis

Arya Chapter 4: Summary and Analysis

AGOT Arya Chapter 5: Summary and Analysis

AGOT Arya Overview: Summary and Analysis

ACOK

ACOK Arya 1: Summary and Analysis

ACOK Arya 2: Summary and Analysis

ACOK Arya 3: Summary and Analysis

[brashcandy]

ACOK – Arya IV

Summary

This chapter begins with a deceptively pleasant riverbank setting until the reality of the war makes itself known soon after:

It seemed a peaceful place … until Koss spotted the dead man. “There, in the reeds.” He pointed and Arya saw it. The body of a soldier, shapeless and swollen. His sodden green cloak had hung up on a rotted log, and a school of tiny silver fishes were nibbling at his face. “I told you there was bodies,” Lommy announced. “I could taste them in that water.”

Yoren directs some of the men to search the dead man for anything valuable, whilst he and others go looking for a suitable path around the river. He decides to head north, where he remembers a lordling has a seat with a stone holdfast. He hopes to trade their possessions for a boat to continue the journey to the Wall. The boat trip would take them to Harrentown, and Yoren states that they could find shelter at Harrenhal as Lady Whent has always been a friend to the Watch. This alarms Hot Pie, who believes that Harrenhal has ghosts, prompting Arya to remember one of Old Nan’s tales:

… Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up. Arya didn’t really believe that, and anyhow it had all happened a long time ago. Hot Pie was being silly; it wouldn’t be ghosts at Harrenhal, it would be knights. Arya could reveal herself to Lady Whent, and the knights would escort her home and keep her safe. That was what knights did; they kept you safe, especially women. Maybe Lady Whent would even help the crying girl.

As they begin their way towards the town, there are ominous signs of desertion: empty houses and fields of wheat and corn with no one tending. It all culminates in their arrival at the town where there is no living soul in sight. Yoren sends Arya along with Lommy, Hot Pie and Gendry to see if they find any boats.

As they rode between the silent white houses, gooseprickles crawled up Arya’s arms. This empty town frightened her almost as much as the burnt holdfast where they’d found the crying girl and the one-armed woman. Why would people run off and leave their homes and everything? What could scare them so much?

They soon discover that all the boats are gone; Arya kneels by the water and plunges her face directly into it to wash off the dirt and grime. She wishes that she could take off her clothe and bathe and thinks of swimming all the way to Winterfell. A search of the boathouses turns up only some useless materials and a mother cat with her new born kittens.

They return to the main group and Yoren secures everyone in the stone holdfast for the night. Arya is wary of staying there and protests to Yoren, but Yoren asserts that the Night’s Watch takes no part and no one’s their enemy. Arya astutely thinks that no man’s their friend either. A little while after the animals are secured in the barn and everyone has eaten and is asleep for the night, Arya’s thoughts prove prophetic. She wakes from her sleep after dreaming of a wolf howling and knows immediately that something is wrong. This is soon confirmed by the horn blowing of one of the sentries, signaling danger.

Arya climbs up the walls of the holdfast and sees a large host of riders, burning the town as they make their way towards them:

A column of riders moved between the burning buildings towards the holdfast. Firelight glittered off metal helms and splattered their mail and plate with orange and yellow highlights. One carried a banner on a tall lance. She thought it was red, but it was hard to tell in the night, with the fires roaring all around. Everything seemed red or black or orange.

Yoren calls down to the riders, and tells them that they are with the NW and have no part in the war. He holds up his black cloak as proof, but the knight insists that it might actually be black for House Dondarrion as Beric’s sigil is a purple lightning bolt on a black field. Arya remembers that Sansa’s friend Jeyne was in love with Beric:

It seemed a thousand years ago now, something that had happened to a different Arya Stark the Hand’s daughter, not Arry the orphan boy. How would Arry know lords and such?

The knight continues to insist that the gates be opened to the Holdfast, but Yoren asks to speak to who’s in charge. Amory Lorch comes forward, declaring himself as “bannerman to Lord Tywin of Casterly Rock, the Hand of the King. The true King.”

Arya wants desperately for Lorch to realize that they pose no threat, but when Gendry tells her that he doesn’t think Lorch cares, she looks into the knight’s face and realizes it’s the truth. Lorch tells his men shortly afterwards to “storm the walls and kill them all.”

A deadly battle begins and Arya is in the midst of it, stabbing men as they try to climb over the walls whilst screaming Winterfell. There are too many men to fight though, and Yoren tells her to gather the boys and get out, using the trapdoor under the barn to escape. As she’s running with Gendry and the other boys, she spies the little girl sitting in the midst of the chaos and drags her along with them. The girl refuses to walk and Gendry returns to lift her up. The barn is a burning hell of fire and smoke, and Jaqen shouts to Arya to free him from the wagon. She runs outside to get the axe that Gendry had used earlier, hacking at a knight who tries to grab her. Reentering the barn and tossing the axe into the wagon, she then makes her own escape:

Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in her mouth but she didn’t care; the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life. Under the earth was the air was cool and dark… A dozen feet down the tunnel she heard the sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell. Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say.

[brashcandy]

Analysis

Character Development:

The overbearing sense of unease and imminent danger finally breaks in this chapter, with all the terrifying violence we could have expected. I think it represents once and for all the end of Arya’s innocence, and the beginning of her exploration with true darkness, both in herself and others.

Sensing danger: We see Arya’s intuitive ability to detect that something is not right or that danger is approaching. She objects to them staying in the holdfast, and wakes up in the night after a dream of a wolf howling. The latter one in particular appears to be evidence of her warg identity, and the remaining link with Nymeria. But it’s not just Arya’s wolf sense that is under development in the chapter; she also shows quite an astute awareness that Yoren’s dependence on the neutrality of the NW is ultimately hollow.

The real purpose of knights: We might as well have had Sandor Clegane in this chapter instead of back of in KL haranguing Sansa. Arya displays the same kind of essential naivete about the role of knights, imagining that upon arrival at Harrenhal they would form an escort for her back to Winterfell as their duty was to protect the weak, especially women. At this point in the story even Sansa had been long disabused of this notion. Arya’s realization is just as bloody and painful as the one her sister endures. Amory Lorch’s order to kill them all is delivered in a bored tone, and Arya recognizes that it doesn’t matter whether the men know they are weak or not. In this world, the weak do not receive special treatment; Yoren’s plea for neutrality is worthless and knights are for killing. As Lorch puts it: “Young boys and old men die the same.”

The forming of the pack: The developing relationship between Arya and her new pack continues. Although she’s still reticent concerning her background, she fights alongside Hot Pie and Gendry returns to help her with the little girl when they have to flee. Despite these new alliances however, Arya’s main allegiance remains to Winterfell. It’s what she screams as she’s fighting, symbolizing the kind of primal bond that exists between the Stark children and their home. In moments of danger when one is reacting on instinct, this is what escapes: the connection one has to what matters most, family and roots. These things mean something to Arya, and she’s fighting for them too.

War is hell: For Arya and the rest of her pack this is the true moment of facing the brutal reality of war and fighting. Death no longer takes the form of bodies in the river, or in shallow marked graves; it is now an active menace in the shape of knights who are willing to kill everyone in their way. The indiscriminate burning only adds to the terror of the night. When Hot Pie tells her he doesn’t know to fight, she wants to tell him that it’s easy, but experiences a momentary flash of panic when she sees hand reaching over the walls. It is once again Syrio’s words that give her courage: “Fear cuts deeper than swords.” In this space, one’s personal responsibility also ceases to matter:

Arya jumped over a dead boy no older than Jon, lying with his arm cut off. She didn’t think she’d done it, but she wasn’t sure.

The comparison of the boy to Jon underscores the dehumanizing aspect of war, and its inherent tragedy. This boy could have been Jon, but there he is lying dead on the ground, and Arya doesn’t even know if she was the one who killed him.

A heroine who cries: Arya’s heroics are on full display in this chapter – she draws Gendry away from the fighting, drags the little crying girl with them, and helps to free Jaqen and the others from the fire. Although she had earlier expressed frustration with the little girl and had no reason to help the men in the wagon, she still risks her life to save them. I believe it speaks to Arya’s sense of right and wrong, where she may not be naturally empathetic like her sister, but it’s her appreciation for justice that inspires her to act. Leaving a defenseless child alone to die would not have been just, and no matter the depravity of men like Biter and Rorge, it wouldn’t have been right to leave them to burn with no means of helping themselves. She is not inspired by sentimentality for the most part, but by a sense of fairness. At the end though, Martin plays with our traditional expectations of heroic deeds. Not only has Arya played a part in releasing three dangerous men, but there’s no appeal to emotions of happiness or satisfaction on the part of the character or the readers. Arya manages to escape the fires, but even beneath the earth the terrible smoke reaches her. The heroics are less about what Arya has achieved and more about what she’s lost, a theme that grows stronger throughout the novel. The final words in the chapter perfectly encapsulate the futility and hopelessness she feels.

Foreshadowing/Symbolism:

• The association between Arya and water continues in this chapter. She draws comfort from its coolness and at one point watches as Kurz catches fish from the river:
  

Arya saw how he did it, standing over a shallow pool, calm as still water, his hand darting out quick as a snake when the fish swam near. It didn’t look as hard as catching cats. Fish didn’t have claws.

A bit of ironic foreshadowing considering that Arya (as Nymeria) will be the one to pull Cat’s body from the river? There’s also her wish to swim home to Winterfell, which could foreshadow her ultimate crossing of the water to reach another refuge in Braavos.

• She again makes another descent into darkness in this chapter when she drops into the tunnel under the barn. Inside the tunnel she experiences relief from the hell above her, and tastes the mud, water and worms in her mouth. For Arya, these tastes represent life, perhaps symbolic of her finding life in death – and foreshadowing her role with the FM.
  

Gender:

Arya continues to masquerade as Arry the Orphan boy – an identity that now seems distinct from Arya of House Stark, as she observes that Arry would not know of any Lords or noble Houses. She’s also still instinctively rebelling against gender norms, when she pulls cook duty, but wants to know why she can’t split the wood like Gendry.

[KittensRuleBeetsDrool]

The real purpose of knights: We might as well have had Sandor Clegane in this chapter instead of back of in KL haranguing Sansa. Arya displays the same kind of essential naivete about the role of knights, imagining that upon arrival at Harrenhal they would form an escort for her back to Winterfell as their duty was to protect the weak, especially women. At this point in the story even Sansa had been long disabused of this notion. Arya’s realization is just as bloody and painful as the one her sister endures.

I want to comment on this, because I think it is an interesting point. Arya is just as naive as Sansa about knights. Sansa is the one who catches flak for it, partly because her character is more overt about romanticizing knights and partly because we see her interacting with Sandor Clegane, who does her best to disabuse her of any romantic knightly notions. Also, Sansa is being abused by knights (in the Kingsguard). Arya got to hold on to her naivete a bit longer.

I find it interesting that three of Ned's children that we've seen - Arya, Sansa, and Bran - all have these romantic notions about knights. They couldn't all have been listening so closely to Septa Mordane (Arya didn't like her, and Bran wasn't her pupil). I wonder how three northerner kids wound up with this idealized notion of knights which existed only in the south? Was it Catelyn's influence? She doesn't seem to be that much of a romantic. We know that Ned wanted both his daughters to make southern marriages - perhaps this was his way of making them accept their destinies? "You'll marry handsome knights?" Did he want a southern girl for Bran at one point?

[brashcandy]

Yeah, it's interesting KBRD. I think it might partly be due to the fact that knighthood isn't entrenched in the North, and therefore it would be easy for all the children to have these very idealised and romanticised ideas about these figures. And what this chapter highlights too is that Arya was also very keen on Old Nan's tales, so she wasn't completely separate from the world of story telling that we tend to associate with just Bran and Sansa.

[Vuron]

I want to comment on this, because I think it is an interesting point. Arya is just as naive as Sansa about knights. Sansa is the one who catches flak for it, partly because her character is more overt about romanticizing knights and partly because we see her interacting with Sandor Clegane, who does her best to disabuse her of any romantic knightly notions. Also, Sansa is being abused by knights (in the Kingsguard). Arya got to hold on to her naivete a bit longer.

You say that Arya is naive about knights, but she seems to embody the ideals of what she sees as a true night. Her protecting the little girl and freeing the prisoners are examples of the "duty was to protect the weak, especially women". This becomes a reoccurring theme throughout her later chapters in Braavos. She sometimes interferes to protect the weak and other times has an internal conflict when she wants to help, but can't.

[DrunkSister]

a little hank of blond hair tied up with a red ribbon.

Evidence that courtly love and ladies favor are typical of the setting and not something silly only naive girls dream about.

“Thing is, the folks who lived here were at war, like it or no. We’re not. Night’s Watch takes no part, so no man’s our enemy.”

Either this conflict is worse in this respect than any other in living memory of Westeros, or Yoren is naive.

She must have slept, though she never remembered closing her eyes. She dreamed a wolf was howling, and the sound was so terrible that it woke her at once.

IS she warghing or are The Old Gods warning her? I mean, is it any different to hear a wolf than to hear Syrio or Ned?

Arya notches a respectable body count here, she goes from simply defending and stabbing without intent to kill to aiming for the kill to lashing out with an axe from pure instinct. At the same time, she is SO incredibly brave. She represents Warrior, while in Bravos she will be learning to represent Stranger. I wonder where one ends and The Other begins.

Arya grabbed Gendry by the arm. “He said go,” she shouted, “the barn, the way out.” Through the slits of his helm, the Bull’s eyes shone with reflected fire. Why is he the Bull here, has he turned savage from the fighting, like Sandor/Hound? He is yet again connected to fire, DUN DUN DUN!

The whole picture of desolation is for me evocative of 'zbeg' - a traditional running away of the christian villagers before the Ottoman armies during the border clashes of Ottoman and Habsburg empires. The way Yoren and NW conscripts act reminds me of novels about resistance movements during WWII.

I am interested in what it reminds other people of because my impressions are not what GRRM had in mind.

[The Sleeper]

Sansa, Arya and Bran are respectively 12, 9 and 7 at this point. They 've grown up with old Nan's tales and ser Rodrick Cassel who is in fact, a knight and happens to uphold those ideals. Sansa just happened to interact with the usual kind sooner. Also Arya remarked on this once, as a circumstancial piece of information. There is no other refference to indicate the sort of fascination Bran and Sansa have with knights. Besides she has already encounterd ser Meryn and Lady Whent is a potential ally.

Also, I disagree that she is not naturally empathetic. She immediately thinks that Lady Whent might be able to help the little girl, in the next chapter she will be the one looking out for her, she feels sorry for her attacker as she was killing him, she feels horror for the animals being burned and saves Rorge, Biter and Jaqen for the same reason. We see her actions completely at odds with the death wishes she has expressed on occasion. Her sense of right and wrong stems from her empathy, which is why she feels outraged when she experiences cruelty.

I kind of thought that Arya was two people duing the fight. On the outside she was this determined combatant who held her composure, helped Hot Pie, lead the few she could gather to an escape, dragging little Weasel along and went back to rescue the three from being burnt to death. On the inside she watched detached with horror and confusion at all the pointless death that happened around her.

I also thought there was a biter irony on Maritn's behalf, how much death and suffering came about from one of Arya's most heroic and selfless acts.

[brashcandy]

Sansa, Arya and Bran are respectively 12, 9 and 7 at this point. They 've grown up with old Nan's tales and ser Rodrick Cassel who is in fact, a knight and happens to uphold those ideals. Sansa just happened to interact with the usual kind sooner. Also Arya remarked on this once, as a circumstancial piece of information. There is no other refference to indicate the sort of fascination Bran and Sansa have with knights. Besides she has already encounterd ser Meryn and Lady Whent is a potential ally.

The argument was never that she had the same level of fascination, but that we see the same kind of naivete.

Also, I disagree that she is not naturally empathetic. She immediately thinks that Lady Whent might be able to help the little girl, in the next chapter she will be the one looking out for her, she feels sorry for her attacker as she was killing him, she feels horror for the animals being burned and saves Rorge, Biter and Jaqen for the same reason. We see her actions completely at odds with the death wishes she has expressed on occasion. Her sense of right and wrong stems from her empathy, which is why she feels outraged when she experiences cruelty.

It's a subject worth thinking about for sure. I do believe her empathy flows from that sense of justice and the need for fair play though. My point that she was not "naturally empathetic" was to contrast with what we see with Sansa for example. Arya can obviously show care and concern but there's a dispassionate quality to it.

I kind of thought that Arya was two people duing the fight. On the outside she was this determined combatant who held her composure, helped Hot Pie, lead the few she could gather to an escape, dragging little Weasel along and went back to rescue the three from being burnt to death. On the inside she watched detached with horror and confusion at all the pointless death that happened around her.

Yeah, it did have that sense to it. She's participating in the violence, but she's also horrified by the carnage of it all. The ending of the chapter underscored this as well.

[KittensRuleBeetsDrool]

That is what I meant - that Arya has the same level of naivete regarding knights as Sansa and Bran did. And for all we know, Robb and Rickon might also have a certain level of naivete as well but since they are not POV characters, and Rickon is only three, we don't get to see it. ETA: Jon was also naive, but it showed up in his perception of the Night's Watch - brave black-clad men serving the realm! Then reality intervened.

I'm also thinking that maybe Arya is getting disabused of other idealizations as well. She named her wolf Nymeria - after a warrior queen. If Sansa has been disabused of the idea that being a Lady was a wonderful thing, perhaps we are seeing the same with regard to Arya and what her wolf's namesake stands for? (I don't mean the actual historical figure Nymeria, who I actually think did a great thing for Dorne's women by introducing Rhoynish customs, and allying with the strongest native Dornish house.)

[The Sleeper]

That is what I meant - that Arya has the same level of naivete regarding knights as Sansa and Bran did. And for all we know, Robb and Rickon might also have a certain level of naivete as well but since they are not POV characters, and Rickon is only three, we don't get to see it.

I'm also thinking that maybe Arya is getting disabused of other idealizations as well. She named her wolf Nymeria - after a warrior queen. If Sansa has been disabused of the idea that being a Lady was a wonderful thing, perhaps we are seeing the same with regard to Arya and what her wolf's namesake stands for? (I don't mean the actual historical figure Nymeria, who I actually think did a great thing for Dorne's women by introducing Rhoynish customs, and allying with the strongest native Dornish house.)

It comes down to age and previous life experiences. You'll notice that they all echo Ned's beliefs. His disillusionment is about the current practitioners of the institution not the institution himself. If you'll recall Ned considered the old Kingsguard to be a shining example to the world. Ned was pretty much the man who needed to believe in ideals and would continue to do so, even knowing that he was the last man on earth to adhere to them.

Aa for the second part, I just don't see it. We have yet to see any reference to the historical figure of Nymeria by Arya, but Nymeria the biggest, baddest wolf in the woods, the leader of the pack, the top of the food chain is reinforced as her ideal as the series progresses, which is very natural considering the frequency with which she finds herself the victim of circumstances.

It's a subject worth thinking about for sure. I do believe her empathy flows from that sense of justice and the need for fair play though. My point that she was not "naturally empathetic" was to contrast with what we see with Sansa for example. Arya can obviously show care and concern but there's a dispassionate quality to it.

They way I see her system of values goes like this. "Us vs them" and "kind vs cruel" are in a race about which comes first and "right vs wrong" lags a bit in the distance in the sense that it is malleable to fit the other two. In her head of course it is all jumbled together. It seems to me that way because there seems to be a need to provide aid (and to redress cruelty) that overrides everything else, even concerns about personal safety. In this chapter we have two instances: she drags along Weasel, which is an easy one. She is defenceless and innocent. But she also saves Jaqen, Biter and Rorge at even greater personal risk. General consensus for two out of those three is that the world would have been better off if she had left them to burn. There other instances I can think of, but it might be better to watch for them as we come across them at their respective chapters.

About the dispassionate quality. Both Arya and Sansa have found themselves in circumstances that require them to curb their natural imulses. Arya is focused and goal oriented and becomes increasingly so as the series progresses. Still I think the motivation is emotional in nature and extremely strong at that.

Which reminds me.

We have arrived at Arya's second (or third, or fourth) kill. The uncertainty of that number speaks volumes. She starts calm and self-composed, giving Hot Pie instructions and guiding him through the fight and seems to act for the most part thoughtfully, perceptively and with anticipation. Still the overall chaos overwhelmes her and she seems to do these things on auto-pilot, retaining the recollections of a confused witness with flashes of things that made an impression and the rest are all jumbled up together. We also see with the battlecry "Winterfell" that she feels she is fighting for a cause.

[DrunkSister]

We have arrived at Arya's second (or third, or fourth) kill. The uncertainty of that number speaks volumes. She starts calm and self-composed, giving Hot Pie instructions and guiding him through the fight and seems to act for the most part thoughtfully, perceptively and with anticipation. Still the overall chaos overwhelmes her and she seems to do these things on auto-pilot, retaining the recollections of a confused witness with flashes of things that made an impression and the rest are all jumbled up together.

Contrast with battle of Helm's Deep. Gimli and Legolas never lose count.

Both Tolkien and GRRM are good writers, Tolkien had been a soldier in WWI and must have known horrors of war, he was in the ditches, he lost friends...

Yet, I do not recall Tolkien writing anything about the broken men (unless you count in the Feanorions, I don't). To GRRM that is one major motive: there are no heroes, war is hell, and those who go through it are forever changed.

Tolkien wrote about corruption (desire for the ultimate weapon/being fed lies by the enemy and loosing hope/giving into despair and seeking death) but not in this way.

Why? What has changed? Maybe because of the increasing mechanization of war GRRM feels the need to show us the bodies in the 'collateral damage'? Or the evolution of the genre went from romantic idealization to gritty realism? I dunno.

~~~

I think Arya's lack of empathy for the broken, crying child is normal. She is too young to understand and deal with it. We don't see anybody else helping the matters either.

Sansa might have more patience with the child (as demonstrated with Lolys and Sweet Robin) but Sansa at that point is at least 13. Those years matter.

OTOH why are we pitting them against each other?!

[brashcandy]

~~~

I think Arya's lack of empathy for the broken, crying child is normal. She is too young to understand and deal with it. We don't see anybody else helping the matters either.

Sansa might have more patience with the child (as demonstrated with Lolys and Sweet Robin) but Sansa at that point is at least 13. Those years matter.

OTOH why are we pitting them against each other?!

Not what we're doing at all, Mirijam.

[Ragnorak]

This chapter continues the horror movie like setup from last chapter. They are in a peaceful serene setting shattered by a dead body. The immediate threats from last chapter have diminished to be replaced with an eerie quiet and a ghost town.

Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up. Arya didn’t really believe that, and anyhow it had all happened a long time ago.

This is effectively what happens inside the holdfast. They went to sleep "safe" and were dead and "all burnt up" by morning.

This is another chapter where we see Arya's lessons at work, her learning through observation (such as catching the fish), and we continue to see the scenery painted with a mix of all her senses.

The water lapped softly around her legs. A few lantern bugs were coming out, their little lights blinking on and off. The green water was warm as tears, but there was no salt in it. It tasted of summer and mud and growing things. Arya plunged her face down into it to wash off the dust and dirt and sweat of the day. When she leaned back the trickles ran down the back of her neck and under her collar. They felt good.

This stood out because it really is in contrast to everything she was feeling at the time. The sense of forboding at the abandoned village vanishes. The Isle of Faces is in the middle of that lake and it makes me wonder. Howland Reed made his journey there before ending up ay Harrenhal for the tournament in the false Spring and we see a bit of an emphasis on the reeds in the opening of the chapter.

Reeds grew thick in the shallows along the banks

“There, in the reeds.” He pointed, and Arya saw it.

The mud also fits with what we see from Meera and Jojen. The mud also ties in with the Old Gods more with the contrast of earth and fire at the end of the chapter. The fire above is death and the mud below is life.

Especially with the running theme we've developed so far I suspect that we have a Bloodraven warning that wakes her here:

She must have slept, though she never remembered closing her eyes. She dreamed a wolf was howling, and the sound was so terrible that it woke her at once.

It also marks what I think is her first wolf dream. This strikes me as something Arya could figure out through mundane observation but given her distraction by this lake with teh Isle of Faces at the center the choice of somehow makes me question if there isn't something more to it.

"They took the boats.” Somehow Arya knew it was true

There's also a good deal of animal references in the chapter and an awareness on Arya's part of the animals feelings as well.

This seems very much like a something but I don't quite know what to make of it. New life even amongst destruction? I know I'm missing something.

and a mother cat with a litter of new-born kittens

We've also got a potential Tully reference (or House Bywater but I don't see that connection)

a school of tiny silver fishes were nibbling at his face

There's also three snake references. Technically two snake references in natural surroundings and one serpent reference amidst destruction. They are also separated by water and fire.

Arya saw a water snake skimming across the surface, ripples spreading out behind it as it went.

his hand darting out quick as a snake when the fish swam near. It didn’t look as hard as catching cats. Fish didn’t have claws.

Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men.

[DrunkSister]

brashcandy,

I read it that way, sorry.

As far as I know teenage years are precisely the period when empathy develops fully, so the age difference between Arya and Sansa makes the comparison meaningless.

Unless you are claiming that GRRM is contrasting their reaction on purpose, of course.

[Daphne23]

They way I see her system of values goes like this. "Us vs them" and "kind vs cruel" are in a race about which comes first and "right vs wrong" lags a bit in the distance in the sense that it is malleable to fit the other two. In her head of course it is all jumbled together. It seems to me that way because there seems to be a need to provide aid (and to redress cruelty) that overrides everything else, even concerns about personal safety.

I agree with the point about Arya's hierarchy of world-views. It seems to me that her empathy, unlike Sansa's, can be rather selective, which is not always a bad thing. Arya is deeply locked into a justice/injustice dichotomy, while Sansa's sense of morality seems to me to be more flexible. Again, I'm not saying that either of these attitudes is better than the other and the age difference between the sisters undoubtedly contributes. Arya's clear sense of us/them helps her when she is defending the weak and the oppressed, but sometimes I worry that she cannot see past her ideas of good and bad and feel sympathy for people other than those on 'her side.' In contrast, Sansa is sometimes paralysed by uncertainty, and fails to do the right thing because she can't decide what's best, but this allows her to construct more complex assessments of those she encounters.

Re. the crying girl, Arya is unable to understand why the girl cannot behave rationally or act as she does, and why she cries when it has no ostensible purpose:

Why does she have to cry all the time?

she glanced down to discover the crying girl clutching her. "Get away!" She wrenched her leg free. "What are you doing up here? Run and hide someplace, you stupid."

For a nine-year-old, I don't think Arya's attitude is out of the ordinary, and although I think some nine-year-olds would show more empathy, she is in a very frightening situation and I can't really judge her for thinking of herself first. I guess my concern with Arya is that she shows no signs of moving past this stage; that a few books down the line she still seems to be in 'arrested development', which I think is a big theme in her arc. I certainly don't think this would have happened if she'd had a normal environment in which to grow up, and it definitely seems to be a response to trauma rather than something which is innate in her, though.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lovely analysis brash. Difficult chapter to make something of, apart from it first being so haunting and later on an action chapter full of horrors.

Sansa, Arya and Bran are respectively 12, 9 and 7 at this point. They 've grown up with old Nan's tales and ser Rodrick Cassel who is in fact, a knight and happens to uphold those ideals. Sansa just happened to interact with the usual kind sooner. Also Arya remarked on this once, as a circumstancial piece of information. There is no other refference to indicate the sort of fascination Bran and Sansa have with knights. Besides she has already encounterd ser Meryn and Lady Whent is a potential ally.

Not to get ahead, but I'd advise you to hold your horses on this one, as there are more comments in Arya's future chapters that she still believe knights stand for "right", too. :)

While Arya has a natural inclination to dislike people associated with the Lannisters, she is far from disabused of the notion that knights shouldn't be the ones protecting old ladies, children etc. Sansa may be more overt about it, but Arya shares the same sentiment.

[Lummel]

...Arya continues to masquerade as Arry the Orphan boy – an identity that now seems distinct from Arya of House Stark, as she observes that Arry would not know of any Lords or noble Houses. She’s also still instinctively rebelling against gender norms, when she pulls cook duty, but wants to know why she can’t split the wood like Gendry.

although this masquerading is undercut by her shouting Winterfell as a war cry several times during the fight at the Holdfast.

Contrast with battle of Helm's Deep. Gimli and Legolas never lose count.

Both Tolkien and GRRM are good writers, Tolkien had been a soldier in WWI and must have known horrors of war, he was in the ditches, he lost friends...

Yet, I do not recall Tolkien writing anything about the broken men (unless you count in the Feanorions, I don't). To GRRM that is one major motive: there are no heroes, war is hell, and those who go through it are forever changed.

Tolkien wrote about corruption (desire for the ultimate weapon/being fed lies by the enemy and loosing hope/giving into despair and seeking death) but not in this way.

Why? What has changed? Maybe because of the increasing mechanization of war GRRM feels the need to show us the bodies in the 'collateral damage'? Or the evolution of the genre went from romantic idealization to gritty realism? I dunno...

I think the difference is simply because JRRT did expereince the western front during WWI and so he takes refuge in his fantasty pseudo saga violence as away of escaping the reality he lived through. JRRT wouldn't have wanted to know about broken men - in the british army some were shot, postomous pardons are still being given out to men who even in retrospect were clearly suffering from psychological tramour and in a less well policed army would have simply run away.

GRRM hasn't been in combat and can draw on sources to try and to create a visceral experience for the reader. He doesn't have a real expereince that he needs to contend with.

Anyway saying goodbye to all that its a nice chapter for foreboding opening there with the dead body, the taste of dead men in the water. We see what kind of war this is too. Plundering the corpses - we've moved on from Gendry preventing the crystal from being taken from the child's grave in Arya I ACOK. Still the message of the chapter is that they are, mostly, dead people walking.

The natural world is there as a contrast to the human violence. Life continues. Everything appears safe and normal. This heightens the impact of the human interactions I feel and helps creates that unearthly still sensation to the landscapes they are travelling through.

There's an example of a non-wildling using the term crow to refer to a member of the Night's Watch coming from the knight in the spiked helm, something to remember in those Pink Letter threads.

[Lummel]

...While Arya has a natural inclination to dislike people associated with the Lannisters, she is far from disabused of the notion that knights shouldn't be the ones protecting old ladies, children etc. Sansa may be more overt about it, but Arya shares the same sentiment.

Makes perfect sense to me. The children all grew up together and listened to the same stories and had similar experiences. It would be downright weirdly inexplicable if she had the Sandor Cleglane attitude towards knights.

Mind you Arya isn't alone in her faith in cult of chivalry. There are plenty of references to other people believing in different aspects of the knightly code from "The Hedge Knight" onwards. There's a classic coming up in the next chapter from Lommy Greenhands. All of which is undercut by the real behaviour of knights in the series note Koss being killed when he throws down his weapon at the end of this chapter.

I love ser Amory Lorch's boredom, a really nice touch. He's not enraged, battle hungry or driven. No. He's bored. And all these people are going to die. It's just his job and what he does. He shows less passion than the man who gives out parking tickets.

[Lyanna Stark]

I love ser Amory Lorch's boredom, a really nice touch. He's not enraged, battle hungry or driven. No. He's bored. And all these people are going to die. It's just his job and what he does. He shows less passion than the man who gives out parking tickets.

Yep, I think it highlights that the real horrors of war are often perpetrated by the people who simply don't care. It's such a chilling chapter too, since clearly Amory Lorch does not care whether the dead are old men or boys, they just need to be dead, and his job is then done.

Regarding Arya's and Sansa's belief in knights, it's also worth noting in this context that Yoren himself seems to believe in a sort of code of conduct in the "Watch takes no part" mantra. Yet what we are witnessing here is a society falling apart. The "normal" rules don't apply and in war, everything goes. The crueler and more ruthless, the more efficient you are. This seems to be the Tywin Lannister approach, so extremely efficient in the short term.

And we also have lots of Lannister references in this chapter. Joffrey is named as the "true king" by the aggressors, Arya sees a Lion banner, there is Lannister name dropping, Amory Lorch is a Lannister bannerman and Arya even thinks of the Hound when she thinks of the burning in the barn. Lots and lots of associations with destruction, burning and scourging with the Lannisters and the Lannister approach.

On the flipside, you have the water, the life giving mud which smell of life and Arya thinks she can swim through the warm calming water to Winterfell.

For a nine-year-old, I don't think Arya's attitude is out of the ordinary, and although I think some nine-year-olds would show more empathy, she is in a very frightening situation and I can't really judge her for thinking of herself first. I guess my concern with Arya is that she shows no signs of moving past this stage; that a few books down the line she still seems to be in 'arrested development', which I think is a big theme in her arc. I certainly don't think this would have happened if she'd had a normal environment in which to grow up, and it definitely seems to be a response to trauma rather than something which is innate in her, though.

She does cry in the end though, although Arya herself thinks she cannot tell for whom. Yet as readers, I think we know it's because it's an extremely frightening situation. Arya asks the little girl why she is crying, but really what perhaps we should ask is why is Arya not crying. Arya's reaction, as you point out, seems like arrested development, or complete suppression. She's bottled up her feelings.