applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 13

Chapter 13 - The Black Bat

Previous: Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Oswell Whent

Last time, we discovered the common factor that connects Shagwell's morning star to Oswell Whent's sword. Both weapons were used in an attack that outwardly looked like friendly fire but really was not. From inside the Tower of Joy, Lyanna Stark skinchanged Oswell Whent and used his sword to surprise attack Arthur Dayne during Ned Stark's 1-vs-2 fight in order to save Ned's life. It created a situation that appeared to be friend-on-friend violence, but was really foe-on-foe violence when you correct for the fact that Lyanna was controlling Oswell's body.

Meanwhile in A Feast for Crows, the same kind of surprise happened to us as we read the Whispers scene in the chapter Brienne IV. Shagwell's violence to Nimble Dick seemed to be friend-on-friend violence, but it was really foe-on-foe violence when you correct for the fact that we were wrong that Nimble Dick was on Shagwell's side.

Here in essay Chapter 13, the Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol and its child symbols have survived the stresses of my symbolic interpretation all the way from their first definition in essay Chapter 6 to now, without ever needing to subtract from or change the original descriptions. Because I chose my words carefully when defining those symbols in the beginning, the symbols excluded more possibilities. And because they excluded more possibilities, they constrained my symbolic interpretation to a narrow path, guiding me to one precise possibility that correlates a great number of wide-reaching mysteries.

I refer to this cluster of mysteries as ASOIAF’s central mysteries, because they are all so tightly knitted together narratively, temporally, politically and more. It’s a feature of ASOIAF’s mysteriousness that suggests to me that this great number of wide-reaching mysteries can and will be correlated in the end by a small amount of surprising information. (Tower of Joy Ch. 4 - Establishing Our First Symbols)

Brienne is symbolic of Ned now in the same ways she was symbolic of Ned in the Chapter 6 description. The only differences are additive because we found more commonalities to strengthen the symbols. Podrick is still symbolic of Howland Reed, Pyg of Gerold Hightower, Timeon of Arthur Dayne, Shagwell of Oswell Whent, Nimble Dick Crabb of Ned's five slain companions, and the Whispers castle of the Tower of Joy tower. Mostly, the symbols are defined by what side of the fight the character was on, when the character died in the fight, and who killed him.

On top of those, the weapons of each character or group of characters in those symbols have commonalities that never needed to be subtracted from or changed in order to connect the weapon in one character's hand to the weapon in his symbolic counterpart's hand. Timeon's spear is still characteristically dornish like Arthur Dayne's Dawn is characteristically dornish, Pyg's broken sword is still a broken sword like Gerold Hightower's broken sword, and Shagwell's morning star is engaged in a surprise-unfriendly friendly-fire attack like Oswell Whent's sword is engaged in a surprise-unfriendly friendly-fire attack.

As Kingmonkey described all those years ago, there is indeed a pattern of events repeated in ASOIAF that’s connected to the core mysteries of the series — that is the core mystery of the series, in truth. The Tower of Joy ritual is creating ripples in the river of time, figuratively speaking, and making the event replay as echoes before and after. Although these ripples were not strictly magical, careful measurement of them told us all about the raindrops they originated from, and those revelations may now feel to us like a storytelling kind of magic. Ahem. My English teachers always told me to repeat at the end of an essay what I said at the beginning. So there, I hope I made them proud.

By preserving these fight-related details of the initial Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol, we were able to discover that Ned Stark used Ice at the Tower of Joy, Gerold Hightower broke his sword against Ice, Ned Stark killed Gerold Hightower, Gerold was the first kingsguard to die, Oswell Whent killed five of Ned's men, Ned Stark was in a 1-vs-2 fight against Oswell and Arthur, Howland Reed's mysterious intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, Lyanna Stark skinchanged Oswell Whent and attacked Arthur Dayne, Ned Stark killed Arthur Dayne next and then Oswell Whent last, and by the end of it all Ned Stark had killed all three of the three kingsguard himself.

It goes without saying, but that is a mountain of information about the Tower of Joy that we didn't know when we began, and has never been seen in ASOIAF discussions before. It's so much information that we're almost finished with the Tower of Joy mystery. But there's one more big question that needs to be answered. What did Howland Reed do to save Ned Stark's life at the Tower of Joy? Let's find out now!

Aim for the Head

One thing about the Tower of Joy mystery that has been the object of mild curiosity if not skepticism for readers like me is why Ned brought Howland Reed. The Tourney of Harrenhal story shows us plainly that Howland Reed was kind of a wimp. "He was small like all crannogmen," his daughter Meera Reed would tell Bran Stark some day. Howland didn't know how to swordfight. It's suggested that he had more experience pulling oars than riding horses. And the three boys who beat him up were all younger than him. They were 15 and he was between 16 and 21, his specific age currently unknowable.

They were none older than fifteen, yet even so they were bigger than him, all three. (ASOS 24 Bran II p281)

Granted, there were three of them, but can you imagine even the reserved and ordinary-sized Ned Stark losing as feebly as Howland did? Hardly. Granted again, Howland knows how to use a frog spear. Still, a frog spear seems weak against the swords that the three kingsguard are bringing to the fight. The wooden haft of that frog spear is going to get chopped up against two castle-forged steel swords and Arthur Dayne's veritable lightsaber. Ned and Howland must have known that. For all of the capabilities that we're told Howland possesses in the beginning of Meera Reed's tale, I can't shake the sense that Ned Stark bringing Howland Reed to the Tower of Joy fight just doesn't seem to fit. On top of that, Ned's thoughts indicate beyond a shadow of a doubt that Howland was so effective in the fight that he saved Ned's life? Time and time again this thought process leaves me aching to know... "How?!"

Ideas about how Howland saved Ned's life range as widely as you would expect, from the magic of the green men to the poison darts of the crannogmen. But now that we're on the other side of the Tower of Joy mystery, we know enough of what happened that we can satisfyingly answer this question using nothing but what we already know.

As our Podrick Payne≈Howland Reed symbol from essay Chapter 7 indicates, Howland being worse at direct combat than Ned is a characteristic of Howland that should be relevant to the Tower of Joy mystery, because it's preserved in Howland's symbolic counterpart Podrick Payne, who is worse at direct combat than Brienne the symbolic Ned. But until now, we haven't had a good answer for why the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is preserving that characteristic. Well, the answer is simply that Howland Reed did not directly partake in the Tower of Joy fight. He partook indirectly.

As the 2-vs-1 scenarios of Ned Stark and Brienne both show us, two people is enough to practically guarantee a kill against one person, absent some lifesaving intervention. Because two people can spread out and force the one person to expose his/her back to attack. So, since Ned brought 7 men to fight 3 kingsguard, that left 1 man, Howland Reed, free to do something else.

As Podrick Payne's stone throw suggests, Howland was the cause of a ranged attack against a symbolic Shagwell's head (Oswell's head). Howland Reed slipped past the 3 kingsguard while they were occupied with the other fighters. He entered the Tower of Joy and, knowing that Lyanna Stark is a powerful skinchanger, he instructed Lyanna to launch a psychic assault against Oswell Whent.

Why did Howland choose Oswell Whent instead of Arthur Dayne? Because unlike Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent was cynical. His dark humor is a clue to his cynical nature, and his cynicism made him the easier target for psychic domination. Lyanna was weak from childbirth herself, so even for a powerful skinchanger the easier target was the wiser choice in her condition. Besides, Oswell Whent's sword was just sharpened.

Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p354)

Little did he know he would soon be using it against Arthur.

With this concept of the Tower of Joy fight, I can see how the details of Podrick Payne's stone throw were symbolic of the details of Howland Reed's actions at the Tower of Joy. Both characters set into motion an attack against a Shagwell≈Oswell Whent symbol, and both attacks are happening from a distance and directed at the target's head. Shagwell's head got hit by Podrick's stone, and Oswell's head got hit by, well... Lyanna's anima.

Now let's update two of our Whispers≈TOJ symbols to see how they grew, and to test the symbol by finding out if this commonality can be put into falsifiable words.

Shagwell ≈ Oswell Whent

Shagwell and Oswell Whent are both:

A man who fights in a group of three men at a Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by a Ned symbol, whose name ends with “-well”, who has a reputation for dark humor, and who was removed as a threat to the Ned symbol during a 2-vs-1 fight by a ranged attack to his head that was sent because of something a Howland Reed symbol did.

Podrick Payne ≈ Howland Reed

Podrick Payne and Howland Reed are both:

A physically unimposing young man at the fight on the Ned symbol’s side, who is friends with the Ned symbol, who is worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol, and who prevented the Ned symbol from being killed in a 2-vs-1 fight by doing something that caused a ranged attack to an Oswell symbol's head and temporarily removed the Oswell symbol as a threat to the Ned symbol.

Oswell Whent, the Black Bat

Well folks, now that we know all the big stuff about the Tower of Joy, we can go back and appreciate more of the small stuff that we missed or didn't have time to look at. Let's do that now.

Oswell Whent's house sigil is the black bat of Harrenhal, and his black bat is displayed on his helmet in the Tower of Joy scene.

Across his whiteenameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p354)

This can establish Oswell Whent as a symbolic bat, just like the dragon sigil of the Targaryens often establishes Targaryens as symbolic dragons, and the wolf sigil of the Starks often establishes Starks as symbolic wolves.

In the Whispers scene, Oswell's symbolic counterpart — Shagwell — enters the scene in a unique sort of way.

From behind her came a rustling as a head poked down through the red leaves. Crabb was standing underneath the weirwood. He looked up and saw the face. “Here,” he called to Brienne. “It’s your fool.” “Dick,” she called urgently, “to me.” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV p293)

Shagwell pokes his head down and out of a weirwood tree, which means he must be hanging upside-down, just like a bat. So strengthens the symbolic relationship between Shagwell and Oswell through the principle: embodying a bat. We have Westeros.org's Sandy Clegg to thank for this catch. Updating the symbol once more...

Shagwell ≈ Oswell Whent

Shagwell and Oswell Whent are both:

A man who fights in a group of three men at a Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by a Ned symbol, whose name ends with “-well”, who has a reputation for dark humor, who was removed as a threat to the Ned symbol during a 2-vs-1 fight by a ranged attack to his head that was sent because of something a Howland Reed symbol did, and who is embodying a bat.

Whispers Underground

One of the long lasting questions about the Whispers scene is 'Why is it called the Whispers?' Not from an in-story standpoint, but from an out-of-story standpoint. Surely the author knows that the word whisper hearkens to one of the story's most famous mysteries, Lyanna's "Promise me, Ned" whispers.

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 4 Eddard I p35) Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 58 Eddard XV p527)

The in-story reason the castle is called the Whispers is because the wind passing through the caverns below makes a sound like people whispering. At the same time, there is a local legend that explains this ordinary phenomenon in an extraordinary way.

“His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.” (—Nimble Dick Crabb, AFFC 14 Brienne III p213)

According to the legend, the whispery sounds really are whispers, because Ser Clarence Crabb kept the reanimated heads of his defeated foes on shelves in the caverns, and they whisper to each other from time to time because, of course, a head has to entertain itself somehow.

On the surface, the legend is about learning from your enemies. A head is where a person's wisdom is stored. No doubt Clarence's past enemies provided good counsel against his new enemies. The weaker Clarence seems, the weaker they seem too, because they were defeated by him. Better for your legacy if people think you were defeated by an undefeatable foe. The implication may be that their counsel (and their egos) was a big part of how Clarence was able to defeat so many foes. On Clarence's part, it takes humility to recognize that there are things you can learn from the men you defeated, and even more humility (and a pinch of insanity) to recognize the value in keeping your defeated foes around so you can interrogate their wisdom again later. The metaphor for books is right under our noses, here. Ser Clarence seeks counsel with his home library of heads like we seek counsel with a home library of books. But there's more going on with this legend than an authorial instruction to read books more and master our egos.

The Whispers is the name of the ruined castle that stands on the surface of the land, and legend has it that there are whispers lurking beneath the surface of the land, too. With whispers above and beneath the surface, ASOIAF was showing us that the fight scene at the Whispers castle contains the wisdom we need to understand the fight scene at Lyanna's whispers, the Tower of Joy. Ser Clarence's whispering heads are symbolic books, directing the reader to take a closer look at books in general. When the reader applies that lesson to the book that's already in his hands, he may notice that the Whispers fight was a symbolic Tower of Joy fight lurking beneath the surface, waiting for the reader to spot the commonalities and work out what happened at the Tower of Joy.

[[ Some readers will say that I'm reading too much into it. 'Do you really believe GRRM meant for the whispering heads to be symbolic of books? And that was meant to make us look more closely at our AFFC book?' To respond I point out the absurdity of the inverse. Surely we can all agree that what books and Clarence's heads have in common is "stored wisdom." Do you really believe it's a coincidence that there is a metaphor for heeding stored wisdom (heads) referenced directly in the part of the stored wisdom (book) that we're investigating right now? As if GRRM didn't know readers would investigate the Tower of Joy mystery? Even now, after we achieved success with the mystery by looking closely at it (reading this essay series) for a long time? Not a chance. The story is cheekily reflecting the reader's situation back at him so completely that readers who still don't get it can seem dense to readers who do.

If you find yourself still not getting it, that doesn't indicate you're dumb. Your immovability from literal interpretation is as much a superpower as symbolic aptitude is, and the two traits are vital parts of one functional whole society. As I said before, literal interpretation must be the foundation for good symbolic interpretation. In modern readers there's a rush to do symbolic interpretation because it's abstract thinking and we associate that with intelligence, but we often mess it up by neglecting the literal interpretation that the symbolic interpretation stands upon.

The story's tendency to cause its audience to disagree along the line of literal versus symbolic interpretation is not a bug but a feature, for a variety of thematic reasons. GRRM has much to say in ASOIAF about the phenomenology of storytelling, but perhaps that belongs in a different kind of essay. ]]

What was she waiting for? Brienne told herself that she was being foolish. The sound was just the sea, echoing endlessly through the caverns beneath the castle, rising and falling with each wave. It did sound like whispering, though, and for a moment she could almost see the heads, sitting on their shelves and muttering to one another. “I should have used the sword” one of them was saying. “I should have used the magic sword.” (—Thoughts of Brienne, AFFC 20 Brienne IV p291)

Before Brienne entered the Whispers castle, the sound of the wind made her spooky, and for a moment she found herself imagining that the whispering heads are real. Just like Brienne, Ned's whisper event gave Ned the creeps too as he entered a castle.

Within, Ned passed two other knights of the Kingsguard; Ser Preston Greenfield stood at the bottom of the steps, and Ser Barristan Selmy waited at the door of the king’s bedchamber. Three men in white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. (—Thoughts of Ned Stark, AGOT 47 Eddard XIII p420)

As Ned walked from the Tower of the Hand to visit King Robert at his death bed in the Red Keep, he counted three men in white cloaks, meaning three kingsguard. So, too, went the count at the Tower of Joy. I might get a strange chill too if something reminded me of the time my sister stole a man's body to help me kill him. Let's update our Ned ≈ Brienne symbol accordingly.

Ned ≈ Brienne

Ned and Brienne are both:

A person who journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a Stark girl where he/she finds three men enemies, fights them, and kills them, and who is creeped out by a situation involving whispers as he/she is entering a castle.

With our newfound knowledge that Lyanna Stark was a skinchanger and what she did at the Tower of Joy, we have some compelling new answers to the question of what the promises were that Lyanna begged from Ned. "Promise me you won't tell anyone what I did to Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne" and "Promise me you won't tell anyone I'm a skinchanger."

A Clue from Sansa

During Sansa's time as a hostage in King's Landing, she was more or less confined to a tower room. In the aftermath of King Joffrey’s death, Sansa escaped King’s Landing with the help of Littlefinger. The news of Sansa’s escape eventually traveled to Sandor and Arya at the Inn at the Crossroads, but the story underwent some changes in the telling. Here's Polliver's version.

“What wife?” “I forgot, you’ve been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.” That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp. (ASOS 74 Arya XIII p843)

This tall tale seems to have been warped by the embellishments of bored smallfolk, or maybe it has been purposefully propagandized by the ruling family. On the bored smallfolk side of things, maybe Sansa’s wolf-bat transformation is derived from Sansa’s heritages in both House Stark (wolf) and House Whent (bat). On the royal propaganda side of things, maybe Cersei and the ruling House Lannister want to control the narrative of political events and who people consider the good guys and the bad guys. So, the tale turns Sansa into a literal monster, a wolf with bat wings, to make her seem villainous because that suits the idea that Sansa and Tyrion killed Joffrey.

Now that I know Lyanna skinchanged Oswell Whent at the Tower of Joy, I can see how this tall tale was a clue for that. Oswell Whent can be symbolized by a bat, because the Whent sigil is a bat. Since Sansa and Lyanna are both Starks, they can both be symbolized by a wolf. So this gossip about Sansa mirrors what actually happened at the Tower of Joy about sixteen years earlier. A wolf with bat wings flying out of a tower is a perfect representation of Lyanna Stark skinchanging Oswell Whent from inside the Tower of Joy.

Next: Chapter 14 - The She-wolf

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

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[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 12

Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star

Previous: Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Shagwell

In essay Chapter 10 we began looking at how the weapons in the Whispers scene are symbolizing the weapons in the Tower of Joy scene. There's one more weapon-to-weapon symbol we haven't looked at yet — Shagwell's morning star and Oswell Whent's sword. How is Shagwell's morning star symbolizing Oswell Whent's sword? That's the question we'll explore in this essay chapter.

A Pattern Between Patterns

Timeon is symbolic of Arthur Dayne, and Arthur Dayne's weapon and Timeon's weapon have dornish in common, because a spear and Dawn are characteristically dornish weapons.

Pyg is symbolic of Gerold Hightower, and their weapons have broken sword in common, because both of them have broken swords. Although Pyg's sword was broken from the start of his fight and Gerold's wasn't, their breaking doesn't need to have occurred at the same time in order for them to have brokenness in common. Their swords being in a state of brokenness at some point during the fight is enough of a commonality to seal the symbolic relationship, because the fight is the parent symbolic relationship, and the weapon symbols are happening beneath that umbrella, because weapons are fight-related.

Notice the progression of change that happened from the first weapon symbol to the second one. The first weapon symbol was easy because the spear and Dawn share the same commonality that their fighters do: dornish. Another thing that makes Timeon and Arthur's weapon symbol easy is that all of the information we need in order to see the commonality is contained in the story. The fact that Dorne is strongly associated with spears is contained explicitly in the story, and the fact that Dawn is strongly associated with Dorne is contained explicitly in the story, because Dawn originated in Dorne and House Dayne lives in Dorne.

The second weapon symbol was a little harder and a little less contained in the story. One reason it was harder was because before we could figure out what Pyg and Gerold's swords have in common we had to combine that question with another question about whether or not Ned Stark used Ice at the Tower of Joy. Ice's unbreakability is what clued us in that Gerold's sword broke against it, and that therefore what Pyg and Gerold's swords have in common is brokenness. So, another thing that made this symbol harder to figure out was that not all of the relevant information was explicitly contained in the story. Some of the information we needed was outside the story, and that information was the fact of our own curiosity about whether or not Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy. Or perhaps more specifically, that information was that our curiosity about whether or not Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy originates from George R. R. Martin, rather than from within ourselves.

Is it fair to say that the reader wanting to know the answer to a question is evidence that the question is contained in the story? If so, then the question isn't contained in the story explicitly, but implicitly. Apparently, something about the story's design implied to us that the question is relevant and the answer to it is interesting. And certainly the author could have written the story that way on purpose, because a good author knows how to suggest things without explicitly saying them. So yes, it is fair to say that the questions we generate about the story are contained in the story, they're just contained in the story implicitly rather than explicitly, through the art of suggestion. This sequence of reasoning is needed in order to notice that your own thoughts about the story are not entirely your own, are indeed contained in the story, and therefore can and perhaps should be treated as a part of the story that the answer to any given mystery needs to explain. That is to say, the answers to the question 'What happened at the Tower of Joy' need to include a good answer to the question 'Why do I want to know if Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy when that question is not asked anywhere in the story?' Or alternatively, 'Why did the author write the story in a way that caused me to want to know if Ned used Ice at the Tower of Joy?'

Certainly we have ourselves to credit for some of our own curiosity, but we must also credit GRRM, because it was his story that provoked that curiosity in us, after all, and he may likely have done that on purpose. When a storyteller says the hero has a magic sword and the hero fought a mysterious fight, that is predictably going to make the audience want to know if the hero used the magic sword in the mysterious fight.

To summarize, the progress of the weapon symbols is that they require us to relinquish to the author more ownership of our thoughts and perceptions about the story. So, if we want to figure out how the last pair of weapons are symbolic of one another, we can expect that we will have to relinquish to the author even more ownership of our thoughts and perceptions about the story. In other words, there is something we perceived about this part of the story that we think belongs to us, but really it does not entirely belong to us because the story made us perceive it and we haven't noticed that yet.

Surprisingness, Not Surprise

In his essays, fantasy author C.S. Lewis once wrote:

In the only sense that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the 'surprise' is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn't look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. (—Of Other Worlds, 1966)

One of the brilliant features of the design of the chapter AFFC Brienne IV is that, because the shock of Nimble Dick’s recontextualization from creepy betrayer to tragic victim happens to the reader through Brienne, there is never a moment when the reader has to confront the fact that his expectations about Nimble Dick were wrong. 'It was Brienne who was wrong, not me,' we can tell ourselves.

Admit it. As Nimble Dick walked into the ruined castle shouting "Halloooo, anyone there?", you were thinking to yourself 'This son of a dog is walking my girl Brienne right into a trap.'

After Brienne told him to stop shouting and Nimble Dick shouted again, you thought it again.

Then, when Pyg walked out of the bushes and Timeon climbed out of the well, you were thinking 'I knew it! It's an ambush. Nimble Dick is in league with the ambushers!'

Then, when Nimble Dick was standing under the weirwood tree and Shagwell jumped down beside him, you were thinking 'Nimble Dick set this whole thing up!'

Then, when Nimble Dick said "Here, it's your fool!" you thought Nimble Dick was terrorizing Brienne with his betrayal.

Then, when Brienne called Nimble Dick to come stand with her and Shagwell laughed, you thought the reason he was laughing at Brienne was because Brienne is too stupid to realize Nimble Dick changed sides.

And then when Shagwell swung his morning star and exploded Nimble Dick's knee in a mess of blood and bones, you thought 'What the heck is going on here? Was that friendly fire? Is this clown just so crazy that he would kill his partner in crime?'

As the fight unfolds, we're swept up in the action and carried along to its conclusion, depriving us of an opportunity to consciously notice that our expectations were unceremoniously obliterated like Nimble Dick's knee. And perhaps more to the point, depriving us of the chance to admit to ourselves that we're wrong and to take ownership of it by closely examining the situation. Being wrong is uncomfortable, so most of the time we're not likely to object when the winds of the plot blow past our wrongness. It takes a special and deliberate kind of curiosity to want to return to the scene of your own failure and meditate on what exactly happened to trip you up.

As we approach the scene now, we're looking at it in an emotionally detached way for the specific purpose of learning more about the scene it's symbolizing, the Tower of Joy. Fueled by curiosity for that far away mystery, any embarrassment we might feel about being wrong in the Whispers scene is lessened and easier to bear. 'Okay, so I was wrong about Nimble Dick.' I think to myself. 'Big deal? I really want to know what happened at the Tower of Joy. If that's all I have to admit to learn what happened at the Tower of Joy then I admit it gladly. What is Shagwell's morning star showing me about Oswell's sword?!

Well my loyal readers, now you're in the right frame of mind to work out the answer to that question. Because now you're searching for a way that the story is referring to you. As I said in essay Chapter 5, a story is a symbol of you. The subject of any story is always ultimately the person reading it, because stories contain lessons and you have to extract the lesson. When you don't see how a part of the story is referring to you then you have misread the story and you need to read that part again until you see it.

Believe it or not, what Shagwell's morning star and Oswell's sword have in common is found in your surprise. Yes, yours! And this is it:

The attack looked like friendly fire but it really was not.

This quality of Shagwell's morning star is shared by Oswell Whent's sword. If you want to think about how, stop reading now, then come back when you're finished thinking and continue reading.

...

During the 2-versus-1 fight with Ned Stark against Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent stabbed his sword into Arthur Dayne. The attack looked like friendly fire but it really was not.

Because, even though Oswell Whent looked like Oswell Whent, for that moment he was Lyanna Stark.

Next: Chapter 13 - The Black Bat

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

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Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 11

Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice

Previous: Chapter 10 - The Magic Swords Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Ice, the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of House Stark

The Turn

Was that too on the nose? Well, please forgive my clumsiness, for I am not as subtle as George R. R. Martin. As you might have noticed, my last sentence in Chapter 10 was a lie. Indeed, one of Gerold's opponents did own a Valyrian steel sword. Ned Stark was one of Gerold's opponents, and Ned Stark owned Ice.

In the Tower of Joy fight, Gerold Hightower broke his steel sword against Ned Stark's Valyrian steel sword Ice, and that's how Gerold was the first of the three Kingsguard to die. Pyg is symbolic of Gerold, and Pyg's broken sword in the Whispers fight is symbolizing that Gerold's sword broke in the Tower of Joy fight.

So, that answers the question that started this whole journey through symbolism. "Did Ned Stark wield Ice in the battle at the Tower of Joy?" Yes, to great effect.

Of course, we will have to test this hypothetical version of the Tower of Joy fight against the story to find out if the predictions it implies are accurate. That's how we'll be able to measure if this version of the Tower of Joy fight is correct or fan-fiction. We'll do that in this essay chapter.

If you're like me, you have a lot of questions now. Like "Did Ned break Gerold's sword on purpose?"

Of course not. Gerold's sword breaking against Ice was a completely unpremeditated accident. The honorable Lord Eddard Stark would never intentionally do such a thing to people who are holding his sister and her baby prisoner.

Forgive my sarcasm, it's a useful way to make a point sometimes. Of course Ned broke Gerold's sword on purpose. Breaking Gerold's sword was the reason Ned used Ice in the first place.

In Chapter 8 we learned that, because Brienne is symbolic of Ned in the Whispers chapter, Brienne's surprisingly villainous recontextualization in the Whispers chapter was hinting at a surprisingly villainous recontextualization of Ned Stark to come. Well, this is it. That's not to say either Brienne or Ned are now villains on the whole, but they're a darker shade of gray than we knew.

Ice is House Stark's ancestral sword, so it's safe to assume Ned knew it was unbreakable. Ned was counting on the breakability of Gerold's steel sword to deliver him a quick and decisive victory over Gerold. With Ned's three opponents being among the most formidable fighters in the kingdom, and his six companions comprised of five B-list fighters and a little crannogman, Ned knew that the clock in the fight favors his opponent's side. The longer the fight goes on, the worse his chances of victory become. Ned knew that he needed a strategy that would subvert the opponent's skill advantage and result in a kill quickly before his own men began falling like autumn leaves.

The 10,000 Foot View

At this point in the Tower of Joy symbol investigation, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol has matured to a stage where it can be advantageous for me to step back from the finer details and take a fresh look at the symbol from a 10,000 foot view (meaning from a very general perspective). A cheap and easy trick to achieve this view is to simply write out a short description of what happened in one scene, and then substitute the names of things in that scene with the names of their symbolic counterparts from the other scene. As always, it's important to focus my attention on the kind of information that defines the symbol — in this case, fightness. Let's do that now.

Here's a generalized description of the Whispers fight in terms of who killed who and when.

In the Whispers fight, first Brienne killed Pyg, then Shagwell killed Nimble Dick Crabb, then with the outside help of Podrick Payne, Brienne killed Timeon then Shagwell.

To learn more about who killed who and when in the Tower of Joy fight, I rewrite that sentence, but this time I substitute the names with their symbolic TOJ counterparts.

In the Tower of Joy fight, first Ned Stark killed Gerold Hightower, then Oswell Whent killed Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin, then with the outside help of Howland Reed, Ned Stark killed Arthur Dayne then Oswell Whent.

With this description of the TOJ fight, I have some big clues about what possibilities I should consider that I haven't paid attention to yet. For instance, Oswell Whent killing five of Ned's men is shocking. But since I know that the Whispers≈TOJ symbol as a whole is mathematically certain, I should assume the who-killed-who-and-when information that I don't know is constant with the same kind of information that I do know from the parent Whispers≈TOJ symbol.

Based on that description, it may be useful to imagine that the fight progressed in three stages: beginning, middle, and end.

In the beginning stage of the fight, it seems like Ned's plan from the start was to fight Gerold alone to get Gerold to break his steel sword against Ice. Because Gerold's swordfighting skill is almost certainly greater than Ned's swordfighting skill, this unscrupulous strategy may have been necessary for Ned to win. By fighting Gerold one-on-one, Ned ensures that all of Gerold's strikes will land on Ice, increasing the likelihood of breaking Gerold's sword and sooner. With the five men apparently engaged with Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne, Ned may have given them the assignment of keeping Oswell and Arthur occupied to give Ned time to break Gerold's sword and kill Gerold. With Gerold slain, the beginning stage ends and the middle stage begins.

[[ What I'm doing now is I'm taking the most definitive elements of the symbol and bringing the last remaining unknowns of that kind into alignment with them. Most of all, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is defined by who killed who and in what order, so some of the last remaining unknowns are "Who killed Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin, and when?" Since Nimble Dick Crabb is symbolic of all of those men, I should assume they died at the hands of the symbolic counterpart of the person who killed Nimble Dick Crabb: Oswell. (Shagwell killed Nimble Dick Crabb, and Shagwell is symbolic of Oswell.) Likewise, I should assume those five men died at a time between when the symbolic counterparts of Pyg and Timeon died, because that's when Nimble Dick Crabb died. The symbolic counterparts of Pyg and Timeon are Gerold and Arthur, so that means the five men died after Gerold and before Arthur. ]]

With this completed concept of who killed who and when, I can use it as a guide for figuring out the less definitive elements of the symbol. Before I do that, I'll take a moment to explain the finer details of why I can be confident that Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

Explanatory Power

If you have a collection of questions that you know were provoked by the text rather than by your overcurious imagination, and then you notice that one of the answers to one of those questions implies a viable and meaningful answer to all the other questions, too, then you're well justified to assume the one answer is correct. The reason is because explanatory power is a rare feature of answers. With any random question, most possibilities for its right answer do not inadvertently answer several other questions at the same time. When one does, you found an answer that has a lot of explanatory power. Here, one answer answered six questions, five of them inadvertently.

1. Did Ned Stark wield Ice at the Tower of Joy?

Yes.

2. What do Pyg and Gerold's weapons have in common?

They're broken swords, because Ned Stark wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

3. What was Ned's strategy at the Tower of Joy?

To break Gerold's sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

4. How was Gerold the first Kingsguard to die at the Tower of Joy?

He broke his sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

5. Why did Gerold's sword break?

Because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

6. Why were Ned's men distributed the way they were?

To improve the chances of breaking Gerold's sword, because Ned wielded Ice at the Tower of Joy.

In short, there are only two possible answers to the question "Did Ned wield Ice at the Tower of Joy?" If the answer is "yes," then all of these other questions are answered, too, and by the same answer. But if the answer is "no," then none of these other questions are answered. The answer "yes" has an amount of explanatory power over the situation that is so great that it is exceedingly unlikely to be incorrect, so I should suppose it is correct.

In the middle stage of the fight, now that Gerold is dead, Ned's plan might reasonably have been to rejoin the five men to finish off Oswell and Arthur. But Oswell and Arthur were deadlier against the five men than Ned might have hoped, because Oswell killed all five of them by the time Ned joined them, a feat that was probably only possible with the help of Arthur Dayne.

So in the middle stage of the fight, one glaring question I could ask is "Why did Oswell get all five of the five kills?" Or to put it another way, "Why didn't Arthur Dayne get any of the five kills?"

"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant. (ACOK Bran III)

Since Bran's memory shows me that Ned Stark considers Arthur Dayne the finest knight he ever saw, maybe Arthur was trying to win without killing anybody. Fatigue and injury can defeat a man as well as death can. It's a more difficult way to win, no doubt, but as we learned in Chapter 8, playing on hard mode is a regular way of life for the most valiant and honorable knights who ever lived.

In the end stage of the fight, Howland Reed is away but not gone, for some unknown reason. That leaves Ned to fight Arthur and Oswell alone. No matter which way Ned turns, his back is exposed to one of them. Ned chooses to attack Oswell first (a reasonable choice if Arthur is trying to win without killing). Then Howland Reed's mysterious intervention happens and temporarily disables Oswell. Ned seizes the moment to kill Arthur. Then Ned kills Oswell. End of fight.

Symbol Test - Pyg's Broken Sword ≈ Gerold Hightower's Broken Sword

If this concept of the TOJ fight is true, one prediction it could imply is that Arthur and Oswell, for some reason, were worse targets than Gerold for this sword-breaking strategy. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that Gerold was a better target for a sword-breaking strategy than Arthur and Oswell. So, what features of a man would make him a better or worse target for a sword-breaking strategy?

How about strength? The stronger a man is, the more likely he is to break his sword, all else being equal. Likewise, the weaker a man is, the less likely he is to break his sword.

There are three men who Ned could have chosen as his first target, because there are three Kingsguard, but Arthur Dayne's sword is unbreakable and Ned would know that. So really there are only two men who Ned could have believably chosen as his first target for a sword-breaking strategy. That leaves Gerold and Oswell.

If we research who is stronger between Gerold Hightower and Oswell Whent, and it turns out to be Gerold, that would match with our hypothetical version of the Tower of Joy fight and further prove its ability to accurately predict things in the story. But if Oswell is stronger than Gerold it would give us cause to think the sword-breaking part of our hypothetical Tower of Joy fight is wrong.

With the possibilities for what GRRM could have realistically written as the character who Ned chooses to target with a sword-breaking strategy specified to two: Gerold and Oswell, we're ready to do the symbol test. Now, to find who is stronger we must open our books and read these two scenes:

In A Storm of Swords 21 Jaime III (p.240), Jaime is swordfighting Brienne, and he is reminiscing about the strengths of other fighters.

In A Game of Thrones 39 Eddard X (p.354), Ned is remembering characteristics of Gerold Hightower.

If you want to do the test and think about it for yourself, do it now, then come back and continue reading.

She is stronger than I am. The realization chilled him. Robert had been stronger than him, to be sure. The White Bull Gerold Hightower as well, in his heyday, and Ser Arthur Dayne. Amongst the living, Greatjon Umber was stronger, Strongboar of Crakehall most likely, both Cleganes for a certainty. The Mountain’s strength was like nothing human. It did not matter. With speed and skill, Jaime could beat them all. But this was a woman. A huge cow of a woman, to be sure, but even so … by rights, she should be the one wearing down. (ASOS 21 Jaime III p.240)

In Jaime's fight with Brienne, Jaime remembers Gerold and Arthur for their strength, but not Oswell. Since all three of them were his Kingsguard brothers, Oswell shouldn't be far from Jaime's mind. Jaime's omission of Oswell seems noteworthy enough to suggest that Oswell, while undoubtedly strong, was less strong than Arthur or Gerold. So, between Oswell and Gerold, Gerold was the stronger man, at least according to Jaime and in the context of swordfighting.

A second opinion about Gerold that relates to his strength is available from Ned Stark himself, right at the beginning of his Tower of Joy fever dream.

Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p.354)

Fierceness connotates aggression and strength, two traits that would reasonably stand out in Ned's memory if Ned had once staked his life on those traits causing Gerold to break his sword against Ice.

The test was a success for our Whispers≈Tower of Joy symbol. The symbol implied a prediction about the comparative strengths of Gerold and Oswell and the prediction came true.

As you can see, not even the most minor details in the story are arbitrary. Gerold's famous ferocity certainly does some conventional storytelling work to give the character of Gerold Hightower flavor and distinguish him from other characters, but his ferocity is also a puzzle piece in this grand symbolism puzzle about what happened in the fight at the Tower of Joy. If you change this small detail of the story so that Gerold is not fierce and Jaime instead thinks Oswell is strong, the puzzle would not be as good, as big, or as cool as it is, and ASOIAF would be just a little bit less awesome. Yes, the small things matter!

For another example of storytelling economics at work, look no further than Gerold's age.

Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. (AGOT 39 Eddard X p.354)

GRRM could have made Gerold any age he wanted. So why did he make him old? Simple. Because Oswell is young, and Ice is big. The point being that Gerold's age is whatever GRRM needed it to be to best suit the secret of the Tower of Joy fight. Not only is Gerold's sword breakable, but being old means he's slower than Oswell, which Ned knows will make it easier to stay alive while he's waiting for Gerold to break his sword against Ice. So, Gerold's age is a second reason Ned chose to target Gerold instead of Oswell. Put simply, Gerold breaking his sword against Ice is the reason Gerold is strong and old both. GRRM needed Ned's decision to target Gerold first with a sword-breaking strategy to make good sense.

Two Ways to Kill a Dragon

With my knowledge of how Ice was used at the Tower of Joy, I'm now able to understand more of this exchange between Brienne and Nimble Dick.

"What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?” “Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.” That only made him laugh the louder. “Ser Clarence Crabb would have wiped his hairy arse with your Perfect Knight, m’lady. If they’d ever have met, there’d be one more bloody head sitting on the shelf at the Whispers, you ask me. ‘I should have used the magic sword,’ it’d be saying to all the other heads. ‘I should have used the bloody sword.’” Brienne could not help but smile. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but Ser Galladon was no fool. Against a foe eight feet tall mounted on an aurochs, he might well have unsheathed the Just Maid. He used her once to slay a dragon, they say.” Nimble Dick was unimpressed. “Crackbones fought a dragon too, but he didn’t need no magic sword. He just tied its neck in a knot, so every time it breathed fire it roasted its own arse.”

Like Ser Galladon of Morne, Ned Stark also used his magic sword once to slay a dragon. The dragon is House Targaryen. The slaying happened at the Tower of Joy when Ned defeated House Targaryen in war once and for all. And like Crackbones, the way Ned Stark defeated the dragon is that he used its own strength against it.

In Crackbones' situation, the strength of the dragon is its fiery breath. Crackbones tied its neck in a knot so every time it breathed fire it roasted its own arse.

In Ned's situation, the strength of the dragon at the Tower of Joy is Gerold Hightower's famous strength, because Gerold is fighting on behalf of House Targaryen. Ned used Ice so that Gerold had no choice but to risk breaking his steel sword against it when Ned swordblocks and parries his blows.

Whether or not Ned has ever heard of Ser Galladon or Ser Clarence, it would seem that Ned took a page out of both hero stories. By using his magic sword and using the opponent's strength against him, Ned combined the two dragonslayers' strategies to defeat a dragon of his own.

Now that I know what happened, I can return to the Whispers fight and gain a greater understanding of that scene, too.

[Pyg] jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword’s thigh.

This is the description of when Brienne killed Pyg. Pyg raised his broken blade to try to stop Brienne's blow from hitting his face, but as he went high she went low. Here, going high literally means going up, and going low literally means going down. It describes which directions they're moving their swords. But going high is a phrase that can also mean taking the morally good choice, and going low is a phrase that can also mean taking the morally bad choice. So, too, is the nature of the choices made by their symbolic counterparts when they fought. Ned used a morally bad strategy.

One Last Weapon

After you digest all of this, you should find yourself wondering... 'But what about Shagwell's morning star?' What were we talking about again? Ah yes, the three weapon symbols! There is one more weapon we haven't talked about yet, and that's Shagwell's three-ball morning star. Oh boy, we're getting close to the big stuff I don't want to share yet. I'm going to have to tip-toe in the next chapter. The symbolism of Shagwell's morning star is up next!

Next: Chapter 12 - Shagwell's Morning Star

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 10

Chapter 10 - The Magic Swords

Previous: Chapter 9 - The Fight and Fighters II Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Gerold Hightower

In Chapter 9, we learned something new about the Whispers scene by borrowing information from the Tower of Joy scene: Brienne was going to attack Shagwell first before Podrick's stone dazed Shagwell. The TOJ information we borrowed in order to learn that comes from Ned Stark's line in Bran Stark's memory that says "and he [Arthur Dayne] would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Though that line does not occur in the Tower of Joy scene in Ned's fever dream, it qualifies as Tower of Joy information because it tells us something about the Tower of Joy fight.

First Blood (Or, Good Old-fashioned Logic)

Because we proved our character symbols to a high standard of mathematical certainty (in Chapter 5), that helped us to remain confident that Brienne is symbolizing Ned Stark, Shagwell is symbolizing Oswell Whent, Timeon is symbolizing Arthur Dayne, and Podrick Payne is symbolizing Howland Reed. With newfound confidence in our symbols, it was easier to notice that an unknown in the Whispers scene can be filled in with a known from the TOJ scene. Until then, we had placed so much of our focus on what the Whispers scene has to teach us about the TOJ scene that we hadn't stopped to consider what the TOJ scene has to teach us about the Whispers scene.

After I knew that the TOJ scene is showing me that Brienne was going to attack Shagwell first, a realization began to dawn. (This part is difficult to follow, so pay close attention for a moment.) If Ned naming Arthur Dayne as the man who would have killed him shows me that Brienne would have named Timeon as the man who would have killed her, doesn't that suggest that Ned was in a two-versus-one scenario like Brienne was? After all, Ned naming Arthur showing me that Brienne would name Timeon is only significant because it tells me who Brienne was going to attack first — Shagwell — increasing my certainty of the Timeon≈Arthur symbol. It follows, then, that who Brienne was going to attack first being significant for understanding the Whispers fight is showing me that who Ned was going to attack first should be significant to me for understanding the Tower of Joy fight.

Think about it. How can who Ned was going to attack first be significant unless he was fighting more than one foe at a time? After all, if you're fighting one foe, there's no question who you're going to attack first. That's only a question if Ned was fighting two foes or more.

Granted, who Ned was going to attack first can be significant if Ned was fighting three foes or three hundred foes. But Brienne was fighting two. So, since it is significant no matter the plurality, I should assume the number of foes matches the number in its symbolic counterpart. To summarize, Ned wound up in a two-versus-one fight at the Tower of Joy just like Brienne did at the Whispers.

From there, I can deduce that the first Kingsguard to die in the Tower of Joy fight was Gerold Hightower. After all, how could Ned have wound up in a two-versus-one fight at the Tower of Joy if three foes were still alive? He can't, so one of them must have been defeated or dead. (In a fight to the death such as this, defeated almost certainly means dead.)

Coming at it from a second direction, how could Ned have wound up in a one-versus-two fight at the Tower of Joy if anybody on his side was still in the fight? He can't, because that would make it a two-versus-two fight. Therefore, all six of Ned's company must have been out of the fight by the time Gerold Hightower was dead, leaving Ned to fight Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne by himself.

Coming at it from a third direction, how could Ned have named Arthur Dayne as the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed if there were more than two Kingsguard alive? After Howland's intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, Ned still wouldn't have been able to single out the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed, because there would have been two foes remaining rather than one.

We already knew that Howland Reed survived the Tower of Joy fight, because he's still alive in the present day. But being out of the fight is almost but not quite the same thing as being dead. Howland is living proof of that. So, whatever the right explanation is for Howland's absence in the fight (or at least in this stage of the fight), I can be sure that he was alive. I can't say the same about the other five men in Ned's company: Martyn Cassell, Theo Wull, Ethan Glover, Mark Ryswell, and Lord Dustin. Their absence from the fight during Ned's two-versus-one scenario suggests that, by that time, they were dead.

This group of five men being dead by the time Gerold Hightower was dead perfectly matches the Nimble Dick Crabb symbol we established in Chapter 6. You may remember, after Brienne killed Pyg, Shagwell killed Nimble Dick. Let's look at that symbol again, and update it in bold to see how it grew since then.

Nimble Dick Crabb ≈ Martyn Cassell + Theo Wull + Ethan Glover + Mark Ryswell + Lord Dustin

Nimble Dick Crabb and this group of men are both:

‘Companions to the Ned symbol and Howland symbol who fight with them at the Tower of Joy symbol against three men enemies there [the Three Kingsguard symbol], who die in the fight because the Ned symbol should not have included them in the fight, who are dead in the fight by the time the Gerold Hightower symbol is dead, and who were buried there.’

With this straightforward sequence of highly probable inferences, I'm able to make a bold statement about the Tower of Joy that reveals surprisingly a lot:

Killing one Kingsguard cost Ned five men.

It makes sense that the first kill would be the most difficult, because the strength of a group is usually greater than the sum of the strength of its parts. To say the same thing from an attacker's perspective, the first reduction to the group's number is usually the greatest reduction to the group's strength. Even the harshest critic of the royalist side might appreciate that Lord Commander Gerold "The White Bull" gave a good accounting of himself before he died, at least in terms of his martial prowess. In a fight of seven against three, 5-for-1 is a great trade for the three. It evens up the fight.

But how can you be certain the Kingsguard who died first was Gerold Hightower?

I can't. All of this reasoning is happening in hypothetical space, because a symbol is just an idea. I'm building out the Tower of Joy fight by filling in its blanks with knowns from the Whispers fight, because that's what the Whispers≈TOJ symbol permits me to do. Certainty about these things will only arrive when, after I've built out the Tower of Joy fight with symbolic interpretation, the new version of the fight implies predictions about the story that prove to be accurate. (We'll identify and test those predictions later. Yes, you too!)

But inasmuch as I can be confident that I'm not crossing the boundaries of symbolic interpretation by supposing that, like Pyg his symbolic counterpart, Gerold Hightower was the first Kingsguard to die, my confidence comes from my recognition of the mathematical probabilities and improbabilities that underlie the whole set of symbols. The Whispers≈TOJ symbol is so well established that, wherever a fight-related detail is known in one scene and unknown in the other, it's mathematically more probable that the scenes match than that they don't match. (In addition to that, my confidence comes from a lot of experience doing symbolic interpretation upon ASOIAF in other mysteries, as well as some hard-won knowledge about how these mysteries resolve in the end.)

If that isn't the kind of answer you were looking for, you probably intuited the mathematical probabilities, too. In that case, the answer you were looking for is probably this: I can be certain the Kingsguard who died first was Gerold Hightower because of the intersection of these three things:

I know the number of foes at the Tower of Joy was three.

I know Ned, Oswell and Arthur are symbolized by Brienne, Shagwell and Timeon, therefore Shagwell and Timeon being Brienne's last two foes necessitates that Oswell and Arthur were Ned's last two foes.

I know Gerold is symbolized by Pyg, therefore Pyg being the first of the three foes to die at the Whispers necessitates that Gerold was the first of the three foes to die at the Tower of Joy.

[[ Let me be the first to confess that, besides the various relationships *between* the symbols, there is no rule or reason that says the details of one of these scenes must match the details of the other scene. Materially speaking, there is little or no good reason to suppose GRRM can't or won't have the corresponding details of the Tower of Joy scene play out differently to the Whispers scene. In The Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring it's entirely possible that GRRM will show us that Gerold was the second or third foe to die, that Ned did not wind up in a two-versus-one fight at all, and that Ned's memory about Arthur Dayne being the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed is a faulty memory.

This highlights that, at this point in the interpretation, the only principles directing the interpretation are the principles of symbolism. Gerold Hightower being the first foe to die at the Tower of Joy merely retains the relationships between the symbols in the overarching Whispers≈TOJ symbol. And since we know from the little bit of math that we did that it's astonomically improbable that the existence of the commonalities between the symbols is an authorial coincidence, we can know that the symbol set as a whole has the power to command details to exist and be true in the TOJ scene with inverse-improbability (AKA probability) proportionate to astronomical. In other words, if one fight detail in one of the two symbolized scenes turns out to not be present and true and in the same way in the other scene, the whole symbol set fails. And since I can be mathematically certain the whole symbol set is true and intentional on the part of the author, it's far more reasonable to assume the one detail matches the many than that the many mismatch the one.

The operative phrase is "in the same way." For instance, the way Podrick Payne is symbolizing Howland Reed is that he's a physically unimposing young man, who's friends with the Ned symbol, who's worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol, who does something in the fight that saves the Ned symbol's life. Therefore, details that are unrelated to that description, such as Podrick's stutter, are not details I should suppose are the same for his symbolic counterpart Howland Reed, regardless that speech pattern is unknown information about Howland Reed that I might want to know for other reasons. Our questions were "What happened at the Tower of Joy?" and "What did Howland Reed do at the TOJ that saved Ned's life?" Both of those questions relate to the fight. Our question was not "What was Howland Reed's speech pattern?" That question does not have anything to do with the fight. As our very first symbols indicated, the Whispers is symbolizing the TOJ exclusively as a fight, so "fightness" is the only kind of information the symbol permits me to take from one scene to fill in unknowns in the other scene. If the story ever gives me a reason why Podrick's stutter or Howland's speech pattern is related to the Whispers or Tower of Joy fight's fightness, those things will then qualify as fight-related.

As in philosophy, you keep track of your question in order to make sure whatever answer you find is actually an answer to that question. The underlying recognition is that sometimes it's hard to notice that an answer doesn't answer your question, because sometimes it's hard to know where the rubber meets the road in a question. This is often the case in questions for which philosophy, of all confounded things, needs to be enlisted to answer it. A truth seeker needs to take precautions against his stupidity of failing to notice where the rubber meets the road in his question, meaning where in the issue at hand his knowledge runs out. This ties back to Chapter 6 when I said it's important to suit your interpretation to a definition rather than suiting the definition to your interpretation. Even though there are many things in the Whispers scene that are not a fight, the Whispers≈TOJ symbol survives mostly through its fight. So, the fight is the definition we should suit our interpretation of the symbol toward. By constraining our attention to fight-related information, we're keeping track of the parent question we're asking of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol — "What happened in the Tower of Joy fight?"

In symbolic interpretation, we want to suit the way something is present and true in scene A to the way it is present and true in scene B, and vice versa. To complete the example, doing something in the fight to save a Ned symbol's life is the way Howland Reed is present in the Whispers scene despite not being present in the Whispers scene — he's Podrick Payne (symbolically). ]]

Collecting Our Thoughts

In Chapter 3 I said that the question that prompted me to write this series of essays was "Did Ned Stark wield Ice in the battle at the Tower of Joy?" Rest assured that I haven't abandoned that question or my promise to show and tell the answer to it. As unrelated to Ice as some of the topics we've covered may seem, like Brienne's misunderstanding of honor and who Ned and Brienne were going to attack first, all of the topics we're covering relate to and converge upon this matter about Ice. Moreover, the matter about Ice relates to and converges upon the matter about "What happened at the Tower of Joy?"

We learned that Howland Reed's intervention temporarily removed Oswell Whent from the fight, that Gerold Hightower was the first Kingsguard to die, that five of Ned's men died by the time Gerold died, and that Ned was fighting Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne by himself while Howland Reed helped from the periphery of the fight in some way.

That's an astoundingly specific description of the fight, considering that we knew almost nothing about the fight to begin with. I dare say nobody would have guessed these things about the Tower of Joy fight before now, because they seem so unlikely. Surely a safer bet would have been that, among the eight men total who died (5 rebels and 3 royalists), they died at a comparable rate. Perhaps a sequence of 2-for-1, 2-for-1, and 1-for-1 would be the most conservative bet. Or maybe even 3-for-1, 1-for-1, and 1-for-1, supposing that Arthur Dayne managed to outshine everyone else, being the best fighter alive wielding the best sword around.

But this? A 5-for-1 exchange followed by a 0-for-2 comeback where, with a little help from Howland, Ned killed the 2? That's incredible. If this news has no other effect on me, at the least it inflames my interest to know how Ned accomplished such an impressive combat feat. I have to know more of what happened! Thankfully, there are more things in the Whispers and TOJ scenes that are fight-related, and that we can use to grow our symbols, to make them more robust and useful for sussing out more of what happened in the fight at the Tower of Joy. Let's do it.

The Weapons

So far, all but one of the symbols we've found are made of people — Ned and Brienne, Podrick and Howland, Shagwell and Oswell, and so on. Whispers≈TOJ is the only one that isn't made of people. It's made of scenes, events, or places, however you want to think of it. What I'm trying to highlight is that anything can be a symbol. (Except a symbol. As I warned in Chapter 7, GRRM doesn't write symbols of symbols in ASOIAF.)

[[ I don't know why, but I would guess that's because a symbol that needs to be symbolized is a poor symbol. Perhaps the feeling is that the first symbolization of a thing should have already captured the thing's gist. ]]

Since the essence of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol is fightness, and weapons are fight-related, wouldn't it be cool if the weapons are symbolizing the other weapons? I mean, since the fighters are symbolizing the other fighters, and the combat is symbolizing the other combat, it would seem a big missed opportunity if GRRM didn't write it so that the weapons are symbolizing the other weapons. So, maybe he did! Let's look and see.

One weapon symbol is easy, because we already found it when we were making the Timeon≈Arthur Dayne symbol. Timeon's spear is symbolic of Arthur's sword Dawn, because they have dornish in common. A spear is a characteristically dornish weapon because it's the dornish peoples' favored weapon, and it's on the sigil of Dorne's principal house, House Martell, whose sigil is a sun impaled by a spear. Dawn is characteristically dornish because it's the ancestral sword of House Dayne, whose castle is in Dorne. As if to give the reader a freebie, the fighters and their weapons are united by the same commonality: dornish.

How about Pyg and Gerold? What do their weapons have in common? Pyg was wielding a broken sword at the Whispers, and, since no other information is available about Gerold's sword, except that it's a sword, a safe assumption is that Gerold Hightower was wielding an ordinary steel sword at the Tower of Joy. Castle-forged steel of the highest quality, no doubt. Nothing less would be suitable for a knight of the Kingsguard.

Finding the commonality between Pyg and Gerold's weapons seems easy, too, at first. Pyg has a broken sword and Gerold has a sword, so obviously they have "sword" in common. But remember, the other two Kingsguard have swords too, so "sword" isn't exclusive enough to specify the subjects of the weapon symbol to Pyg and Gerold.

So, besides "sword", what else do Pyg and Gerold's weapons have in common?

The only other material thing we know about either of their swords is that Pyg's sword is broken. We could get creative and delve into non-material things, like what the weapons do, how they're used, and dramas they're involved in. But before we do that we should exhaust the material realm first. (This ties in with the part in Chapter 7 when I said literal interpretation must be the foundation of symbolic interpretation.)

Pyg's sword is broken and Gerold's sword is not, as far as we know. Then again, Gerold was the first Kingsguard to die... What if Gerold's sword was broken? What if Gerold's sword breaking during the Tower of Joy fight is WHY he was the first Kingsguard to die? Well, that would be pretty dramatic, but it wouldn't make sense. Why not? Because none of Gerold's opponents owned a Valyrian steel sword.

;)

Next: Chapter 11 - Cold as Ice

Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Near a juncture where five alleys came together, the prince’s fall came to its bloody end. He crashed first onto a steep-pitched roof before rolling off to fall another forty feet amidst a shower of broken tiles. We are told that the fall broke his back, that shards of slate rained down about him like knives, that his own sword tore loose of his hand and pierced him through the belly. In Flea Bottom, men still speak of a candlemaker’s daughter named Robin who cradled the broken prince in her arms and gave him comfort as he died, but there is more of legend than of history in that tale. “Mother, forgive me,” Joffrey supposedly said with his last breath…though men still argue whether he was speaking of his mother, the queen, or praying to the Mother Above. Near a juncture where five alleys came together, the prince’s fall came to its bloody end. He crashed first onto a steep-pitched roof before rolling off to fall another forty feet amidst a shower of broken tiles. We are told that the fall broke his back, that shards of slate rained down about him like knives, that his own sword tore loose of his hand and pierced him through the belly. In Flea Bottom, men still speak of a candlemaker’s daughter named Robin who cradled the broken prince in her arms and gave him comfort as he died, but there is more of legend than of history in that tale. “Mother, forgive me,” Joffrey supposedly said with his last breath…though men still argue whether he was speaking of his mother, the queen, or praying to the Mother Above.

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 9

Chapter 9 - The Fight and Fighters II

Previous: Chapter 8 - Nimble Dick Crabb Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Ned and Brienne

In "Chapter 6 - The Fight and Fighters," we came upon some awkwardness about which character in the Whispers is symbolizing Arthur Dayne according to Ned Stark's line "and [Arthur Dayne] would have killed me but for Howland Reed." That awkwardness marks precisely where we should dive in deep. Let's do that now.

We've established that Podrick is symbolizing Howland Reed when he's throwing the stones. And we've established that Arthur Dayne is being symbolized in the Whispers scene, too, though we're shaky on who it is. One thing we can do to help us determine who it is is to preserve the relationship between the Arthur Dayne symbol and the Howland symbol. In order to preserve the relationship between the Arthur and Howland symbols, we should make sure the person at the Whispers who we have set as the Arthur symbol is the same person who would have killed Brienne but for Podrick's stonethrow.

When we tested our symbols, the test returned a result that indicates that the Whispers character who's symbolizing Arthur Dayne is not nobody and it's not Pyg, either, and that it could be either Shagwell or Timeon. The fight establishes that the greatest danger to Brienne is that no matter who she chooses to attack first, there will be somebody to attack her from behind. Though we can't say for sure that that danger necessarily would have resulted in her death if Podrick had not thrown the stone that dazed Shagwell, from a storytelling standpoint the author would have been obligated to have the attacker from behind successfully harm Brienne, so as not to contradict the danger that he himself established in the scene. That is to say, if there was no flying stone to save the day and Brienne came out of this murderer sandwich fine and dandy anyway, that would have been poor storytelling.

This echoes the point earlier that fiction can be read in the voices of both the characters and author. Here, we're using our understanding that the author wants to write a good quality story to narrow down the possibilities of what would have happened without Podrick's stonethrow.

Since the readers are not allowed to change, add, or remove words from the story, we're only allowed to reinterpret it, then in order for us to preserve the quality of this story we have to treat the danger of the attacker from behind as though it's significant. The more significant the danger is, the higher quality of a story this situation will have turned out to be. Since we can't know how high the quality of this part of the story will turn out to be, if we want to continue with our investigation we have to make an educated guess and then proceed as though that guess is correct.

[[ This is a part of my analysis method that I call George R. R. Martin Is A Good Writer. This sort of analytical move is far from fail-proof, but when used conservatively it can be a powerful tool for temporarily bridging gaps in knowledge with the hope that the knowledge that belongs in the gap will become more obvious after I get my footing on the opposite shore. Here, I'm relying upon a handful of things that are already true to remain true in and for this moment in the story. It's true that when a writer establishes a danger in a fight scene he better not contradict that danger without good reason lest he sabotage the quality of the scene, so it's a safe bet that this writer is not making so amateur a mistake. Likewise, it's true that GRRM is a good writer, so for any random part of the story it's a safe bet that he's not making any amateur mistakes. And it's true that outside of exceptional circumstances and most else being equal, one armed person will usually lose in a fight against two armed people. ]]

Then the question is, how high should we assume the quality of the story (or any part of it) is? To answer that question, I make an estimate based on the quality of the story as a whole. Since ASOIAF is an exceptionally high quality story in my opinion and the opinions of many millions others, and since ASOIAF has set a high standard of realism for itself (not to be confused with historical accuracy), especially in practical matters like fights, the best strategy for interpretation here is to assume the highest quality, and therefore the highest danger. And the highest danger that is possible to Brienne in this situation is death.

With the danger of the six o' clock attacker set to lethal, whether you think Arthur Dayne is being symbolized by Shagwell or Timeon depends upon your answer to this question: Do you think Podrick's stonethrow changed who Brienne would have chosen to attack first?

Brienne attacked Timeon first, so if you answered Yes, you think Brienne would have attacked Shagwell first and Timeon would have been the one behind her who killed her, making Timeon the symbolic Arthur Dayne. If you answered No, you think Brienne would have attacked Timeon first and Shagwell would have been the one behind her who killed her, making Shagwell the symbolic Arthur Dayne.

Now, here is the final step. This is the first and most essential thing ASOIAF asks us to do. Put yourself in the shoes of Brienne. In your imagination, fight the fight as it happened in the story from her perspective. No matter which way you turn, an enemy is at your back and will kill you from behind the moment you commit to attacking one or the other. Then the stone flies in and dazes Shagwell. Now is your chance! Safe from behind, you attack Timeon and kill him. With Timeon dead, Shagwell regains control of himself. Safe from behind, you attack Shagwell and kill him. Now it's fifteen years later and I ask you this question:

'Who would have killed you but for Podrick Payne?'

Who YOU consider the person who would have killed you depends on who YOU were going to attack first before Podrick threw the stone. Exactly! Whoever you were going to attack first, the person who would have killed you is the other enemy. If you were going to attack Timeon first, then your answer is Shagwell. If you were going to attack Shagwell first, then your answer is Timeon.

Pay close attention now, because here's the magic trick. Since Timeon is already symbolic of Arthur Dayne through their dornish commonalities, and Shagwell is already symbolic of Oswell through their commonalities, Ned naming Arthur Dayne as the man who would have killed him but for Howland Reed tells us that Brienne was going to attack Shagwell first!

Ah! Did you remember that symbols travel in both directions? Whispers≈TOJ is the same symbol as TOJ≈Whispers. That means that as long as there is enough exclusive commonality to hold firm each character in the Whispers scene as a symbol of each character in the TOJ scene, information can be borrowed from the TOJ scene to fill knowledge gaps in the Whispers scene just as reasonably as information can be borrowed from the Whispers scene to fill knowledge gaps in the TOJ scene.

This echoes my earlier point that GRRM's mysteries rely upon readers to succeed at making the outward trip through the symbol, and to fail to make the return trip through the symbol back to the scene of origin. It also echoes my earlier point that ASOIAF only yields its secrets to those who can reconcile two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides. Here, the opposing sides that were reconciled were the 'Brienne would have attacked Shagwell first' side versus the 'Brienne would have attacked Timeon first' side.

We come to rest upon one of the most significant things the Whispers scene is showing us about the Tower of Joy scene. Like Brienne at the Whispers, Ned's first choice of target rather than Howland's is what determines who Ned considers the person who would have killed him but for Howland Reed. Thus, Ned's enigmatic line about Arthur Dayne almost killing him but for Howland Reed has now been reintegrated with Ned's lived perspective in his fight at the Tower of Joy. He just needed somebody to put themselves in his shoes to understand him. That's us, baby!

The essence of the surprise here is about what the surprise is not. The surprise is not so much that Ned naming Arthur Dayne tells us that Brienne would name Timeon. The much bigger shock is that Brienne ending up in a two-versus-one scenario at the Whispers tells us that Ned ended up in a two-versus-one scenario at the Tower of Joy.

Sure enough, the two-versus-one scenario at the Whispers is a striking DIFFERENCE from what we know about the scenario in the Tower of Joy fight (that is, virtually nothing) and as I said at the end of Chapter 4, not every difference between the two things in the symbol needs to indicate something we don’t know about one or the other, but most if not everything we don’t know about one situation or the other that there is to be learned from the symbolic relationship will be found in their DIFFERENCES rather than their similarities. But because we have spent this analysis oriented to seeing the symbol in one certain direction (Whispers=TOJ), the reversal of direction may feel jarring.

Without a doubt, this is the moment in the essay when a skeptic of symbolic interpretation will probably be thinking 'Hey! You can't do that!' Nonetheless, it is a legal move in symbolic interpretation, and it stems from the same insight about the nature of symbolism that caused me to write out my symbols using the approximately equals sign. Symbolism inherently introduces the equals function, and the equals function is necessarily a two way street. Try saying A can represent or be substituted with B without saying B can represent or be substituted with A. It can't be done. To say one is to say the other.

In math we're taught that everything before the equals sign can be swapped with everything after the equals sign without changing or falsifying the equation one bit. It may sound like a meaningless thing to do since it doesn't change anything about the equation, but one thing it does change is your perception of it. Sometimes an equation is easier to understand or work with when you swap what's on either side of the equals sign — when you get a new perspective on it, you might say. The same things are true with symbols. Here, by swapping what's on either side of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol so that we're reading the situation as TOJ≈Whispers, we can more easily see that it's possible that Brienne's two-versus-one conundrum might be borrowed directly from the Tower of Joy fight.

More than that, with this shift in perspective on the symbol we can more easily sense how that would go a long way toward explaining the storytelling economics of the Whispers scene. Why did GRRM spend so many pages, words and effort telling us Brienne travels through the woods and kills three dirt bags at a ruined castle when I just did it in one sentence? Did we really need to have that description elaborated into a detailed chapter and fight scene? Well, if this one fight scene is secretly showing us two fight scenes through the coded language of symbolism, that's a stronger answer to the question of why GRRM spent so many pages, words and effort telling it to us. He's writing some cool symbolism for us to chew on, as we have been doing in this essay.

Conclusion

Like Brienne, during the fight Ned ended up in a situation where he had to choose between attacking Oswell Whent first or attacking Arthur Dayne first, and he chose Oswell. Then Howland Reed did his sneak attack, and Ned changed his choice to Arthur and killed Arthur. Therefore, whatever Howland did removed Oswell as a threat to Ned, at least momentarily.

Is that cool or what? It doesn't answer our original question about what Howland did, but it's a bold statement about the TOJ fight that tells us a dramatic moment in the TOJ fight, places specific characters in specific positions, and will guide us toward the right answer to those top level questions:

“What did Howland Reed do at the Tower of Joy?”

“How exactly did the fight play out?”

Symbol Test - Ned≈Brienne, Arthur≈Timeon, Oswell≈Shagwell

Now let's do a quick and simple test to see how well this interpretation predicts a part of the story that we don't remember. Recall, the ability to accurately predict things in the story that you don't remember is, from your own perspective at least, no different from predicting things in the story that haven't been written or published yet. The commonality between things you don't remember and things that haven't been published yet is of course things you don't know.

Supposing that the story may contain a convincing indication about who, between Timeon and Shagwell, Brienne meant to attack first before Podrick threw the stone that dazed Shagwell, can you come up with an idea about what that indication might be? Try it now.

For me, the first idea that comes to mind is the question of who or what Brienne was looking at just before Podrick's stone hit Shagwell. It stands to reason that whoever or whatever Brienne was looking at when she was deciding who to attack first is who or what she considered the biggest threat. Similarly, it stands to reason that in a two-against-one fight, the first person the One would attack is the person she considers the bigger threat of the Two, in order to minimize how effective the enemy's number advantage will be.

So, do you remember the last thing Brienne was looking at in the moment just before Podrick's stone hit Shagwell in the head? If not, that's perfect, because this is a great opportunity to complete your very own symbol test by rereading this moment in AFFC Brienne IV, p.295.

In the next chapter of this essay, we'll use what we've learned here about this dramatic standoff with Ned Stark against Arthur Dayne and Oswell Whent, and combine it with some more symbol work, to deduce more practical details in the Tower of Joy fight that have never been seen by readers before.

Next: Chapter 10 — The Magic Swords

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 8

Chapter 8 - Nimble Dick Crabb

Previous: Chapter 7 - He Would Have Killed Me But For Howland Reed Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

For this essay chapter, I recommend re-reading the ASOIAF chapter that we're looking at, AFFC 20 Brienne IV (p280), in order to reacquaint yourself with it so you can get the most out of the essay. AFFC 20 Brienne IV is very enjoyable as a standalone story, and many readers name this among their favorite chapters in the series.

At the end of chapter 5 we learned that Brienne's engagement with the Ser Galladon story is symbolizing our engagement with the Brienne story. Brienne improved her situation in the Whispers fight by noticing the commonalities between herself and a character in a story (Galladon), by taking feedback from Nimble Dick about what that story means (there's something wrong with honor and don't hold back your power when it counts), and changing her mind about not using her own magic sword before entering a dangerous situation at the Whispers. If Brienne is symbolizing us and Brienne had to change her mind to stop being wrong, it bears asking, how do we have to change our minds to stop being wrong? That's the question we're going to answer in this essay chapter.

Brienne's last minute choice to use Oathkeeper was a moment of great character progression for her. For the duration of the whole chapter, Brienne was very mistrustful of Nimble Dick, and then at the end she finally trusted him in a big way by letting him use her steel sword. Brienne was taking a big risk by arming Nimble Dick, because he could have used the sword to backstab her at a moment when she's vulnerable, such as during the fight. Brienne's mistrust is understandable when you consider her life experiences of being tormented and looked down upon by men. Because of Brienne's past, her character progression here is all the more impressive and meaningful. Due to Brienne's trust in Nimble Dick, Nimble Dick had the means to protect himself in what Brienne correctly thought could be a dangerous situation. So, contrary to Nimble Dick's criticisms that Brienne is too mistrustful, Brienne proved him wrong by trusting him when it really counts. In the end, it was the "mistrustful maid's" trust that saved Nimble Dick's life.

. . . It makes for a heartwarming interpretation. Perhaps in a more conventional series, that would be the deeper meaning behind this sequence of events. But in our story, Nimble Dick's life was not saved. Conventional storytelling wisdom suggests that GRRM should have written the story so that Nimble Dick was saved. Conventional storytelling wisdom says that GRRM should have written the story so that Nimble Dick uses the sword Brienne lent him to help Brienne win the fight. Better yet, Nimble Dick rather than Podrick Payne should have been the one to save Brienne, with the sword instead of a stone. That way, Brienne's survival would have been a direct consequence of her moment of character progression. But in our story, Nimble Dick died horribly before he even got to use the sword.

'So what does that mean about the other stuff?' I hear you wondering. 'Are you suggesting all that was wrong?' No, every sentence was true except the last one or two.

But, there are two basic categories of possibilities for why the story is written this way. The first is that Nimble Dick's death is meant to convey a theme or lesson about the harshness of life. Though the thematic progress before Nimble Dick's death was building up to a wholesome message, Nimble Dick's death afterwards seems to sabotage that message in a strong way that's hard to ignore. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that bad things happen and we shouldn't let that ruin the good things. In this category, readers are likely to remind us that GRRM is notorious for killing off his characters in order to depict the harshness of life alongside the beauty of life. In this category, we'll hear readers say things that sound much too glad about meaninglessness. 'Humans are crazy apes on a swirling ball of mud in a void of empty space, so you better wise up to the meaninglessness of life and learn to like it, because that's the hard truth.' If that is not a part of ASOIAF's philosophy, GRRM sure does a good job of making it seem like it is sometimes.

The second category of possibilities is that Nimble Dick's death, or more specifically the shock of it for the reader, indicates that the wholesome message contained in the build-up was not as wholesome as it seemed, and that we're profoundly wrong about something in our interpretation of the build-up. Readers who agree with this category of possibilities are likely to draw attention to the tragedy of Nimble Dick's death, as though a side character should be treated with that much importance. They may seem confused, as though they don't really know what their main point is. They're easy to push from one weakly argued point to another, and they can't really say what it is that we're all supposedly so wrong about. After listening to these readers long enough, they may seem driven by a shallow desire to be different for the sake of being different.

Which category of possibilities do you find yourself agreeing with more? Is Nimble Dick's shocking death conveying a lesson about the harshness of life? Or is Nimble Dick's shocking death showing us that there's something in our interpretation of the story that we're getting wrong?

It's possible to agree with both, because the first one could fairly be a subcategory of the second one. After all, not already knowing that life is harsh could be the thing in our interpretation that we were getting wrong. But, when you try to keep the two possibilities separate, it's worth noticing which one resonates with you more than the other.

For me, the second one resonates more. One reason is that one of the most thoroughly established ideas in ASOIAF is that perspective is everything. The chapters that make up the entire series are all written from the characters' perspectives, after all. Learning and remembering that everything written is subject to the narrator's unreliability is an omnipresent challenge in ASOIAF. When I hear the "harsh reality" possibility and its supporters treating Nimble Dick's perspective dismissively because he's not important enough, it's as if red lights and sirens begin flashing and blaring in my mind, saying 'Look over here!'

Granted, Nimble Dick Crabb is not a POV character, but at minimum he is a perspective. He has a particular personality, past, and motivational frame that cause him to see situations differently from the way, say, Brienne is seeing them. And since Brienne is the POV character of this chapter, we probably saw situations the same way Brienne did the first time around. ASOIAF has taught me that almost every perspective matters, no matter how unimportant the character seems. With great frequency, the key insights that the reader needs in order to make progress on whatever mystery is at hand are found by looking closely at a perspective that the readers dismissed as unimportant.

So, the more the readers treat Nimble Dick Crabb's perspective as unimportant, the more I suspect that Nimble Dick Crabb's perspective is important. This essay chapter is about putting ourselves in Nimble Dick Crabb's shoes to see what the story looks like to him, and comparing that to what the story looked like to Brienne and ourselves the first time we read it.

This Brienne chapter's dramatic through-line is the tense relationship between Brienne and Nimble Dick Crabb. Though their relationship is relatively straightforward, it's crucial to the Whispers≈TOJ parallel because it provides the biggest cues as to what the ever-so-elusive "moral of the story" is, and how we should try approaching the symbols. In the recipe of symbolic interpretation, if the symbols that we've been establishing thus far are the ingredients, then the moral of the story is the oven. So let's take some time to build our oven so we can put our ingredients inside and let them cook.

As Brienne and the gang travel to the Whispers, the reader comes to trust Nimble Dick less and less. Before we meet him, we already know that he tricked somebody ("fooled a fool"). We also know his name, and his name sounds unsavory enough to inspire mistrust, too — Nimble Dick Crabb. When we meet him, his personality inspires mistrust, too. He avoids answering questions, he speaks crudely, he's proud of swindling the fool by selling him an unhelpful map, and he withholds the information Brienne wants so he can get some money out of her. We mistrust Dick because he apparently tries to steal money from Brienne's bag while she's away. We mistrust him because he tries to scare Podrick with a horror story. We mistrust him because the journey is taking too long. We mistrust him because Brienne thinks the reason there's a badge torn off his clothes is because he's probably a deserter. We mistrust him because he wants to sleep in the same places where Brienne and Podrick sleep. We mistrust him because he's the only person in the group who knows the way in and out of this forest. We mistrust him because Brienne mistrusts him.

Maybe you didn't mistrust Dick for all of these reasons, but Brienne did. Since we received this chapter through the POV of Brienne, we tend to feel the same way about things that she does.

The scene where Brienne and the reader are introduced to Nimble Dick for the first time immediately depicts Nimble Dick as an unseemly man.

Someone was coming down the cellar steps. Brienne pushed her wine aside as a ragged, scrawny, sharp-faced man with dirty brown hair stepped into the Goose. He gave the Tyroshi sailors a quick look and Brienne a longer one, then went up to the plank. “Wine,” he said, “and none o’ your horse piss in it, thank’e.” (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

Nimble Dick is a ragged man with dirty hair who enters the tavern demanding wine and insulting the innkeeper. Right away, we're given only reasons to dislike him. Brienne feels the same way.

Brienne did not like the way his fingers played with that gold coin. Still … “Six dragons if we find my sister. Two if we only find the fool. Nothing if nothing is what we find.” Crabb shrugged. “Six is good. Six will serve.” Too quick. She caught his wrist before he could tuck the gold away. “Do not play me false. You’ll not find me easy meat.” When she let go, Crabb rubbed his wrist. “Bloody piss,” he muttered. “You hurt my hand.” “I am sorry for that. My sister is a girl of three-and-ten. I need to find her before—” “—before some knight gets in her slit. Aye, I hear you. She’s good as saved. Nimble Dick is with you now. Meet me by east gate at first light. I need t’ see this man about a horse.” (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

Nimble Dick's introduction in AFFC 14 Brienne III ends with Nimble Dick crassly evoking the image of Sansa being raped by a knight. With these words, Nimble Dick burns the image of sexual violence into our minds, establishing him as a man of questionable character (at best). If that wasn't enough, in the same breath Nimble Dick offends the ideal of knighthood by suggesting that a knight would commit rape. This is the Brienne chapter just before the one with the Whispers fight, so this is what sets the tone about who Nimble Dick is. He's an uncouth, opportunistic scoundrel. Even before he stepped onto the stage, one of the few things we knew about him was his name, and his name is Nimble Dick Crabb, for crying out loud. It sounds like the name of a C-list male porn star who has a reputation for pinching girls.

Bear in mind that we hardly know anything for certain about Nimble Dick's character yet. Most of what we know about him is superficial in nature — concerned only with appearances. In our logical minds, we will know that a person having dirty hair doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad person. We will know that a person having a sketchy name and nickname doesn't necessarily mean he has to be sketchy. Dick is short for Richard, which is a perfectly ordinary name. We will know that his regular patronage at a tavern that serves wine doesn't necessarily mean he's a drunkard. Having a drink or two every day doesn't cause drunkenness. We will know that jibes like the one Nimble Dick made to the barkeeper about her wine tasting like horse piss can be part of a friendly rapport rather than an insult, and that bartenders and their regular patrons often develop such a rapore. And we will probably be familiar with the old adage that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, at least not too strongly. People deserve a fair chance. But of course, our logical minds were not in charge the first time we read this chapter, because neither is Brienne's. First impressions last. Thus, in Nimble Dick Crabb, GRRM has created the perfect disguise for a hustler with a heart of gold.

Brienne spends almost the entirety of this long chapter trusting Nimble Dick as little as possible. To be fair to Brienne, Nimble Dick is rough around the edges. But if you reread the chapter with a critical eye and a mind to defend Nimble Dick, what you may see is that Nimble Dick had more cause to mistrust Brienne than Brienne had to mistrust Nimble Dick.

From the first moment Nimble Dick agreed to be Brienne's guide, she grabbed his hand threateningly and hurt him.

Crabb shrugged. “Six is good. Six will serve.” Too quick. She caught his wrist before he could tuck the gold away. “Do not play me false. You’ll not find me easy meat.” When she let go, Crabb rubbed his wrist. “Bloody piss,” he muttered. “You hurt my hand.” (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

Keep in mind that this is an old man who Brienne described in her thoughts as "scrawny." Though old age and small size don't necessarily mean he's harmless, rereading this chapter leaves me thinking 'Come on, Brienne. Get real.' The extent of her mistrust of Nimble Dick is absurd, and it's inappropriate from a warrior of her size and ability.

At first, Brienne told Nimble Dick that she was looking for her sister. After Nimble Dick said the fool had two girls with him instead of one, Brienne changed her story and said the other girl is her sister, too.

“Those two girls are my sisters.” “Are they, now? Poor little things. Had a sister once meself." (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

From Nimble Dick's point of view, Brienne's sisters apparently changed from a singularity to a plurality in the space of a minute. Based on this, Nimble Dick could probably tell that Brienne was lying to him about something regarding her relationship to the girls. In contrast, Nimble Dick was upfront about the fact that he never saw the girls himself.

“Two girls?” Could the other one be Arya? “Well,” the man said, “I never seen the little sweets, mind you, but he was wanting passage for three.” (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

At every turn of this journey, Nimble Dick tried to entertain the group with stories and songs. When the eeriness of the forest became overwhelming and nobody felt like singing, Nimble Dick sang anyway, apparently in an attempt to raise the group's spirits. It didn't work, but he tried.

Nimble Dick told about the histories of every rock and hill, and he shared the stories of them because this is his homeland. A person could hardly ask for a better guide than this.

Nimble Dick made every effort to be friendly with Brienne, but nothing could soften her heart. He cooperated with her demands even when he disagreed, he suffered the greatest discomforts, risks and privations out of anybody in the group, and he may very well have been telling the truth in the moments when Brienne was certain that he was lying. For instance...

Thiefy McFlour Hands

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. She had bought the flour from the cook at the Seven Swords the morning she rode out from Duskendale. “Dick meant no harm, m’lady.” He wriggled his flour-spotted fingers to show he held no weapon. “I was only looking to see if you had these dragons what you promised me. The world’s full o’ liars, ready to cheat an honest man. Not that you’re one.” Brienne hoped he was a better guide than he was a thief. “We had best be going.” She mounted up again. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

While Brienne was away from her horse, Nimble Dick took the opportunity to reach a hand into a coin bag in her saddlebag. Podrick saw him and called out. When Brienne returned, she found Nimble Dick with his hand covered in flour, marking him for a thief. Nimble Dick explained that he was only checking to make sure Brienne had the gold she promised.

I can see that Brienne doesn't believe him, because in her thoughts she calls him a thief.

Brienne hoped he was a better guide than he was a thief.

Brienne's thoughts explain the flour like this:

“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. She had bought the flour from the cook at the Seven Swords the morning she rode out from Duskendale. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Based on Brienne's thoughts here, we can see that Brienne foresaw the possibility that her guide might try to steal from her, even before she met him. She bought the flour the morning when she rode out from Duskendale, but at that point she hadn't met Nimble Dick yet. Still, she bought the flour as a protective measure against her guide's thievery. After she met Nimble Dick and bought his guidance to the Whispers, she poured the flour into the coin bag. She kept her least valuable coins in the bag and her most valuable coins on her person.

Because of Brienne's foresight and preparation, the reader comes away with the impression that Brienne has good judgement about Nimble Dick — he's an untrustworthy, selfish, sneaky, perverted creep who's willing to lie, cheat, and steal when he thinks he can get away with it and when there's something for him to gain. But when you look at the situation from the standpoint of Nimble Dick, his explanation may have actually been the truth. After all, Nimble Dick doesn't know if Brienne is good for the gold she promised him, because she never showed it to him. It's a lot of gold to him, and this is a long and uncomfortable journey, so his concern about payment is totally reasonable. Brienne has already paid him two silver and one gold coin for information, but one gold coin is a far cry from six.

Granted, reaching into her coin bag was the wrong way for Nimble Dick to go about learning if Brienne has the gold. He probably should have asked her politely to show him the gold she promised him.

But, imagine that he did. Imagine that Nimble Dick had approached Brienne respectfully and directly asked her to show him the gold to prove her ability to pay him. How do you think Brienne would have responded? Well, probably in the same ways that she responded to everything else Nimble Dick asked of her: By being snappy, short-tempered, prickly, suspicious, and altogether more unpleasant than she was to begin with. It's no wonder why Nimble Dick thought it would be better to simply check her coin bag while she's away. That way, she never has to know about it, and he can have peace of mind, knowing that he is not investing himself into a days-long trek through the woods just to be cheated out of payment at the end. She lied about her sisters already, she could lie about gold, too.

Brienne's line that she "hoped he was a better guide than he was a thief" convicts Dick of attempted thievery. But the equally viable flipside of that observation is that if Dick were truly trying to steal from her, he probably would not have been stupid enough to do it the way he did, in broad daylight while both group members were awake. That Dick checked Brienne's coin bag in the day time in full view of Podrick Payne while Brienne was awake and within shouting distance may demonstrate that Nimble Dick was not overly concerned with getting caught because he was not intending to steal in the first place. Additionally, inasmuch as getting caught reaching into Brienne's saddlebag could have resulted in costs of various kinds to Nimble Dick, the fact that he did it anyway can suggest that a counterweighing cost of greater proportion was at stake for Nimble Dick, which alludes to the points I made about six gold coins being a lot more money to Nimble Dick than it is to Brienne of Tarth, and about a days-long trek through the woods being a great investment of time, resources, energy, and opportunity cost for Nimble Dick.

The scene illustrates a problem with being too mistrustful. You can't learn if a person is trustworthy if you won't trust him with anything. Dick did everything a person in his situation could have done to assuage Brienne's worries about him, short of cowtowing, groveling, or flattering. But as a self-respecting man, he simply wouldn't be cowed. And as the ending shows, nothing except dying could earn him Brienne's trust. A lot of good her trust did him then!

An Honorable Gesture

Brienne sheathed Oathkeeper, gathered up Dick Crabb, and carried him to the hole. His face was hard to look on. “I’m sorry that I never trusted you. I don’t know how to do that anymore.” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

After the fight, as Nimble Dick lay dead, Brienne insisted upon burying him out of respect. Her thoughts show that she finally realized that he was trustworthy after all, even though he died before he could do anything in the fight to prove his trustworthiness further than he already had. Dick's brutal death shocked Brienne into sympathy for him and finally forced her feelings about him to be rejoined with reality.

Podrick helped her lower Nimble Dick into his hole. By the time they were done the moon was rising. Brienne rubbed the dirt from her hands and tossed two dragons down into the grave. “Why did you do that, my lady? Ser?” asked Pod. “It was the reward I promised him for finding me the fool.” Laughter sounded from behind them. She ripped Oathkeeper from her sheath and whirled, expecting more Bloody Mummers … but it was only Hyle Hunt atop the crumbling wall, his legs crossed. “If there are brothels down in hell, the wretch will thank you,” the knight called down. “Elsewise, that’s a waste of good gold.” “I keep my promises. What are you doing here?” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Brienne tossed two gold coins into Nimble Dick's grave in order to keep her part of the bargain ("Two if we only find the fool."). It's a sentimental thing to do. Hyle Hunt laughed at the gesture and said it's a waste of gold because Nimble Dick can't use it now. This exchange highlights that Brienne came to her senses about Nimble Dick too late. The futility of the gesture shows that it has nothing to do with helping Nimble Dick and everything to do with making herself feel better. This gesture tracks with the thematic question about honor. Because, while the gesture is undeniably good in spirit, it is useless or counter-productive in practice. So, too, goes the criticism against honor, that's made by Nimble Dick Crabb and by many readers.

Brienne channels the feelings that scare her through her honor. It's her way of avoiding processing her emotions so that she doesn't have to confront them. She feels romantic love for Renly but she fears it will never be returned because she's outwardly ugly, so she channels her love through honor and commits to protecting him for life. Similarly, she feels romantic love for Jaime but she fears it will never be returned, so she channels it through honor. Brienne swears to redeem Jaime's honor by finding Sansa and Arya. As with Renly and Jaime, with Nimble Dick Brienne feels a feeling that scares her — guilt for mistrusting Nimble Dick and getting him killed — so she channels that feeling through honor by giving due payment to his corpse. But obvious to most people, protecting Renly will never make Renly love her, redeeming Jaime's honor will never make Jaime love her, and giving two gold to a corpse she created is no real payment at all.

Brienne knows deep down that she killed Nimble Dick as much as Shagwell did, and that's what scares her. Had she seen Nimble Dick for who he really is, she would have recognized that rather than giving him a sword so that he can help in the fight, she should have protected him by entering the Whispers alone.

Brienne is not a knight, but inasmuch as she wants to be one, she should have remembered that knights protect the weak and innocent, no matter if the knight doesn't personally like that person. This was not Nimble Dick's fight to fight, it was Brienne's. Nimble Dick promised to take her to the Whispers, and that's what he did. Brienne did the right thing by sending Podrick away, but she failed to recognize that she needed to protect Nimble Dick, too. Brienne should have sent Nimble Dick away with Podrick, set Nimble Dick to guarding the entrance, the horses, or instructed him to stay out of the fight. What Nimble Dick would have done after that is Nimble Dick's prerogative, but Brienne needed to try to protect him in one of those ways.

Had Brienne not used her magic sword, Nimble Dick never would have known that she had a second sword, and Nimble Dick being unarmed would have been a great pretext for Brienne to use as the reason why he should not enter the Whispers with her. In this way, the magic sword had the power to save a life if only its owner had restrained herself from using it.

Nimble Dick's presence in the fight did nothing to help Brienne win it. Shagwell killing Nimble Dick didn't buy Brienne time to fight someone else, because Brienne didn't spend that time fighting anyone else. After Shagwell killed Nimble Dick, everybody stood around talking for a while before the fight began. Nimble Dick's knee and face didn't damage Shagwell's morningstar. Nimble Dick's dead body didn't even obstruct the bad guys from reaching Brienne. The entire situation and fight scene is written in such a way that it renders Nimble Dick's death absolutely unhelpful in any way to Brienne's victory. Yet, except for Podrick's stonethrow, Brienne won the fight by herself anyway. One potential meaning of all this is pretty straightforward in retrospect: Nimble Dick should not have been in the fight to begin with.

A Sword Too Many

It rained all that day. The narrow track they followed soon turned to mud beneath them. What trees they saw were naked, and the steady rain had turned their fallen leaves into a sodden brown mat. Despite its squirrel-skin lining, Dick’s cloak soaked through, and she could see him shivering. Brienne felt a moment’s pity for the man. He has not eaten well, that’s plain. She wondered if there truly was a smugglers’ cove, or a ruined castle called the Whispers. Hungry men do desperate things. This all might be some ploy to cozen her. Suspicion soured her stomach. For a time it seemed as though the steady wash of rain was the only sound in the world. Nimble Dick plowed on, heedless. She watched closely, noting how he bent his back, as if huddling low in the saddle would keep him dry. This time there was no village close at hand when darkness came upon them. Nor were there any trees to give them shelter. They were forced to camp amongst some rocks, fifty yards above the tideline. The rocks at least would keep the wind off. “Best we keep a watch tonight, m’lady,” Crabb told her, as she was struggling to get a driftwood fire lit. “A place like this, there might be squishers.” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Throughout this chapter, we see Brienne see Nimble Dick shivering in the cold, sleeping in the cold, sleeping in the rain, going hungry, and slumping over pitifully in his saddle. Instead of thinking he's hurting, hungry, and tired, she seems to think he's stupid.

Feelings of pity for Nimble Dick begin to creep into Brienne's heart, telling a story of a cold and hungry old man who has been pushed to the limit of what his body can tolerate. But immediately after her pity, it's as if some hateful propagandist steps into her thoughts to rewrite the story of what's obviously happening with Dick. Nimble Dick's shivering, slumping, and hunger are evidence of some great deception he's doing against her, she thinks. He must be very devoted to the ruse in order to go to all this trouble without complaint, but hungry men do desperate things, after all.

Many of the discomforts Nimble Dick suffered were unnecessary, and they were consequences of Brienne not trusting Nimble Dick enough to let him sleep in better conditions. Despite that, Nimble Dick managed to maintain enough good will to entertain the group with a spooky campfire story about a local monster called squishers. Still, it wasn't enough to charm Brienne or move her from her mistrust. If anything, the lie of the fable only made her more mistrustful.

Though Brienne finally trusted Nimble Dick at the end in a big way (she gave him a sword at a risky moment), all the mistrust that preceded that moment can cause a discerning reader to wonder if Brienne was really moved by trust at all, or by something else. Perhaps a self-interested wish not to face the danger alone.

I think the right answer is something inbetween. I think trust was not really what moved Brienne to give Nimble Dick the sword, and that Brienne also did not want to face the danger alone. It seems to me that most of the explanation for what happened is that after deciding to wield Oathkeeper, Brienne realized that she had a spare sword, and she saw no reason not to put the spare sword to use by putting it into the hands of Nimble Dick, who by all rights is a man grown.

In that interpretation, the availability of a spare sword is much of what caused Brienne's misstep. And Brienne's decision to use Oathkeeper is what created the availability of a sword. So, Nimble Dick's death relates to what we explored earlier from this chapter involving honor and Ser Galladon of Morne's magic sword. In a perverse way, it could be said that Nimble Dick sowed the seeds of his own death when he mocked Ser Galladon for not using his magic sword. If only he had known that Brienne would be so easily influenced by his comments. Uprightly, perhaps I should say instead that Brienne should not have been so easily affected by a little bit of mockery. The ease at which she was influenced to abandon her lifelong ideal of honor is constant with what I said about honor being a tool for self-comfort to Brienne.

Yet, there's another attitude in Brienne that's impossible to ignore because it features so prominently in this and many of Brienne's chapters, and I think it was at play in this situation, too. Nimble Dick is not merely a person who Brienne mistrusts, he's a person who belongs to an identity that Brienne mistrusts collectively.

If Brienne's encounter with Nimble Dick had been an encounter with Nimble Dick moreso than an encounter with a man, she might have seen him for who he really is — a personable, well-meaning, and amusing old coot who tells it like it is. True enough, some knight getting in Sansa's slit is an accurate summary of the horrors that can visit a highborn maid who doesn't have sufficient protection on the road, no matter how offensive Nimble Dick's language or chivalrous the knight's vows.

As if to dispel the last doubts about whether Brienne's adventure with Nimble Dick Crabb is meant to portray Brienne's mistrust of Nimble Dick Crabb alone or of Men The Collective, Brienne's mistrust of Nimble Dick Crabb licenses a simple description of this adventure that can scarcely be a coincidence on the part of the author: Brienne doesn't trust Dick.

In true fantasy form, through Nimble Dick Crabb's name the voice of the story cheekily transforms into the voice of the author. It's as if GRRM is claiming the last word in the argument about what this part of the story is really about between Brienne's mistrust of one man and Brienne's mistrust of all men. "Dick" can refer to Nimble Dick Crabb, or to men collectively, or to the male sex organ. The sentence remains true no matter which meaning we use. This relates to Brienne's sexual repression that I alluded to when I said Brienne's feelings scare her. The underlying recognition is that the author could have chosen any name imaginable for the character who guides Brienne to the Whispers after making a dick first impression of himself, yet he chose Dick, and he nimbly hid it between a Nimble nickname and Crabb — an animal as offputting as the offspring of a tarantula and a scorpion.

In contrast to GRRM's alleged tropebreaker habits, a surprising element of this recontextualization is that Martin adheres to the fantasy tradition of naming characters what they are, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's rabbit White Rabbit, C.S. Lewis's beaver Mr. Beaver, and J.K. Rowling's werewolf Professor Lupin.

Helpful Hand Or Murderous Mitt?

When Brienne approached a cliff to look over the edge of it, Nimble Dick walked over to point something out to her.

“That’s the old beacon tower,” said Nimble Dick as he came up behind her. “It fell when I was half as old as Pods here. Used to be steps down to the cove, but when the cliff collapsed they went too. The smugglers stopped landing here after that. Time was, they could row their boats into the cave, but no more. See?” He put one hand on her back, and pointed with the other. Brienne’s flesh prickled. One shove, and I’ll be down there with the tower. She stepped back. “Keep your hands off me.” Crabb made a face. “I was only …” “I don’t care what you were only. Where’s the gate?” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

This touch caused Brienne's flesh to prickle, and she thinks to herself "One shove, and I’ll be down there with the tower." This shows us in certain terms that Brienne thinks Nimble Dick may want to kill her.

Who am I to question Brienne's intuition? I'm not the one living out her scenario, she is. Surely that makes her a better judge of Nimble Dick than I am.

While that's a reasonable assumption in general, it's also reasonable to say that murder is far beyond anything Nimble Dick has done so far. Based on the sum of everything Nimble Dick has yet shown himself to be, Brienne's fear that he may want to murder her is paranoid. Maybe if Brienne hadn't treated him so poorly for the whole journey, she wouldn't have given him as much reason to resent her, and she wouldn't feel the need to worry so much.

There are two viable interpretations of Nimble Dick that are running through this whole chapter — the one in which Nimble Dick seems suspiciously like he's trying to lull Brienne into a sense of false security for some nefarious purpose, and the one in which Nimble Dick is genuinely trying to be helpful and friendly but Brienne's mistrust is inconsolable. The first interpretation is the one a first-time reader will have. The second interpretation may only become visible on a second or later reading, once the reader knows that the chapter ends with the murder of Nimble Dick and Brienne's guilt about not trusting him.

Brienne The Maid

Brienne paid the villagers a few coppers to allow them to bed down in a hay barn. She claimed the loft for Podrick and herself, and pulled the ladder up after them. “You leave me down here alone, I could bloody well steal your horses,” Crabb called up from below. “Best you get them up the ladder too, m’lady.” When she ignored him, he went on to say, “It’s going to rain tonight. A cold hard rain. You and Pods will sleep all snug and warm, and poor old Dick will be shivering down here by myself.” He shook his head, muttering, as he made a bed on a pile of hay. “I never knew such a mistrustful maid as you.” Brienne curled up beneath her cloak, with Podrick yawning at her side. I was not always wary, she might have shouted down at Crabb. When I was a little girl I believed that all men were as noble as my father. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Brienne's mistrust of men the collective is neither entirely misguided nor unsympathetically earned. She had a traumatic experience when Hyle Hunt and his friends played a cruel joke on her, for one thing. And as Nimble Dick himself implied, there are enough bad men in the world that even an elevated class of men who swore vows to protect women and the weak has its share of would-be rapers.

But at the end of the day, those are exceptions to the rule. Much of Brienne's internal struggle is that she needs to find the balanced medium between fully trusting and fully mistrusting every man she meets. She needs to learn discernment. Until she can do that, the blind spot that's being portrayed in Brienne in the situation where she got Nimble Dick killed will continue to characterize her experiences wherever they involve men.

A silver lining is that Brienne's contempt for men does not seem to automatically apply to young men such as her teenage squire Podrick Payne. Maybe, like Howland the shady crannogman and Ned the honor obsessed snow paladin, Podrick Payne will be the unlikely friendship formed that provides the falsification Brienne needs of the misandrist outlook she's flirting with.

Galladon's Honor, Tower of Joy Cues

To summarize what we've covered so far, let's put it all together as it relates to the Whispers≈TOJ parallel we're working on.

Brienne's contempt for Nimble Dick prevents her from having compassion for him.

Brienne's contempt for Nimble Dick prevents her from being honorable.

Being a man and named Dick, Nimble Dick is symbolic of men collectively.

Therefore, Brienne's contempt for Nimble Dick is symbolic of Brienne's contempt for men collectively.

Because we agreed with Brienne at first, Brienne is symbolic of the audience.

Therefore, Brienne's contempt for Nimble Dick is symbolic of the audience's contempt for men collectively.

Because the reader didn't notice the first time around that Brienne's mistrust of Nimble Dick comes from her hatred of men, it can fairly be said that what the story is suggesting is that, like Brienne, the audience has a deeply ingrained hatred of men, and that that's what prevents us from noticing that Nimble Dick is a trustworthy fellow, from making progress on the Tower of Joy mystery, and perhaps from making progress on other mysteries, too. Likewise, the story is suggesting that our hatred of men is what prevents us from understanding what's wrong with honor in the hypothetical match-up between Ser Galladon of Morne and Ser Clarence Crabb.

It's time we tie a bow on a thread we wove in Chapter 5. ‘What’s the matter with honor, then?’

The problem with Ser Galladon's honor is that, actually, there is nothing wrong with Ser Galladon's honor. Rather, there is something wrong with Brienne's (and the reader's) understanding of Ser Galladon's honor.

When Nimble Dick challenged Brienne about Ser Galladon not using his magic sword, Brienne answered "honor."

Crabb thought that was hilarious. “The Perfect Knight? The Perfect Fool, he sounds like. What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?” “Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.” (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Honor is the correct answer, so Brienne's intuition is good. But describing how the answer is correct is more difficult. Like Brienne, we may have a sense of certainty that honor is a good and worthwhile thing to strive for and that ultimately it pays off well, even for the person who's being honorable, but we may not be able to persuasively describe how that happens in a given situation.

To describe it, I'll draw from my background of video gaming. Indeed, I think much of my ability to work the literary puzzles in ASOIAF was developed when I was playing video games through my childhood and teens, and most people are familiar with video games these days, so I may as well do homage to the hobby.

Some video games allow you to select the difficulty level of the game. Typically, these difficulty levels are called Easy Mode, Normal Mode, and Hard Mode. Some games expand these options to four, five, or more, but these three are enough to make my point. Ser Galladon's decision to not use the Just Maid against mortals is like Ser Galladon choosing to play the game on Hard Mode. What do you think will happen to Ser Galladon's fighting skills when he gets used to playing on Hard Mode? Probably the same thing that happens to my skills when I change the difficulty level of a video game from normal to hard — his skills will improve in order to win.

As the tale goes, Ser Galladon of Morne is depicted as a world class fighter in his time. Needless to say, becoming a world class fighter is hard, and you know you're never going to do the things you need to do in order to achieve it unless you have to. So, if you're wise, you arrange your circumstances so that you have to. That's what Galladon was doing when he decided never to use the Just Maid against mortals.

Increasing the difficulty of anything can be dangerous if it isn't done selectively. After all, if Galladon were to restrain himself from using his magic sword while his opponent is an immortal, Galladon would surely be killed. Almost by definition, a fight against an immortal is not a winnable fight for a mortal. So, the principle should only be applied in situations that pose a survivable amount of danger. The risk of misusing the principle this way is why the principle tends to be intuitive to men and unintuitive to women. Men on average are more willing to take risks than women on average. But, when the principle is applied with wisdom, it is greatly productive. By neglecting to use his magic sword against mortals, Ser Galladon subjected himself to the maximum amount of danger that mortals can pose. Because of that, the only thing left to protect Galladon from defeat was his will to win and live. That's how Galladon's honor was the source of Galladon's valor, and that's one mechanism by which honor pays off in the end despite its cost early on.

This description of honor fits well with other details of the Ser Galladon story. In Ser Galladon's story, the Maiden fell in love with Galladon for his valor and rewarded him with the Just Maid. To put it another way, the reason Galladon received a magic sword was not that the Maiden fell in love with him, it was that he had valor. The Maiden just happened to be attracted to valor. Once he received the magic sword, he knew that its potency would degrade his valor if he became dependent on it, so that's why he refused to use it except against immortals.

The lesson Brienne took from the Ser Galladon of Morne story was approximately 'Forget honor, don't hold back your power when it really counts.' The irony of the situation is that if Brienne had not allowed herself to be persuaded off the code of honor that made her hero Ser Galladon honorable, then Ser Galladon's story would have prevented Brienne from getting Nimble Dick killed by giving him a spare sword.

Recall the story of Ser Goodwin's lesson to Brienne.

It may be that I will need to kill him [mysterious follower Hyle Hunt], she told herself one night as she paced about the camp. The notion made her queasy. Her old master-at-arms had always questioned whether she was hard enough for battle. “You have a man’s strength in your arms,” Ser Goodwin had said to her, more than once, “but your heart is as soft as any maid’s. It is one thing to train in the yard with a blunted sword in hand, and another to drive a foot of sharpened steel into a man’s gut and see the light go out of his eyes.” To toughen her, Ser Goodwin used to send her to her father’s butcher to slaughter lambs and suckling pigs. The piglets squealed and the lambs screamed like frightened children. By the time the butchering was done Brienne had been blind with tears, her clothes so bloody that she had given them to her maid to burn. But Ser Goodwin still had doubts. “A piglet is a piglet. It is different with a man. When I was a squire young as you, I had a friend who was strong and quick and agile, a champion in the yard. We all knew that one day he would be a splendid knight. Then war came to the Stepstones. I saw my friend drive his foeman to his knees and knock the axe from his hand, but when he might have finished he held back for half a heartbeat. In battle half a heartbeat is a lifetime. The man slipped out his dirk and found a chink in my friend’s armor. His strength, his speed, his valor, all his hard-won skill … it was worth less than a mummer’s fart, because he flinched from killing. Remember that, girl.” I will, she promised his shade, there in the piney wood. She sat down on a rock, took out her sword, and began to hone its edge. I will remember, and I pray I will not flinch. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Brienne's memory of Ser Goodwin's lesson served as a tie-breaker opinion on whether Ser Galladon is honorable or foolish to not use his magic sword against mortal men. So, Ser Goodwin is one reason Brienne didn't get the "good win." She won the fight, but it was a bad win because she got an innocent killed and she betrayed the ideal that her hero Ser Galladon stood for.

'But aren't you being too hard on Brienne?' I hear you saying. Indeed, Brienne was against three enemies at the same time. They were armed with some serious weaponry such as the spear and morningstar. They even had some scraps of armor. These three men are battle hardened from their time in the War of the Five Kings, so they probably have experience fighting. Additionally, the "magic" of Brienne's magic sword made a difference in the fight. As we can see in Brienne's attack against Pyg, Oathkeeper's exceptional sharpness is what allowed Oathkeeper to bite through all of Pyg's protection.

He jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword’s thigh. Pyg cut back wildly as his leg went out from under him. His broken sword scraped against her chain mail before he landed on his back. Brienne stabbed him through the throat, (...) (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

And as we can see in Brienne's fight against Timeon, Oathkeeper's exceptional sharpness is what allowed Oathkeeper to pierce Timeon's chain mail byrnie, and maybe his spear head, too.

She flew at Timeon. He was better than Pyg, but he had only a short throwing spear, and she had a Valyrian steel blade. Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. He wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chain mail byrnie he was wearing. Timeon was still trying to fight as she pulled her blade from him, its fullers running red with blood. He clawed at his belt and came up with a dagger, so Brienne cut his hand off. That one was for Jaime. “Mother have mercy,” the Dornishman gasped, the blood bubbling from his mouth and spurting from his wrist. “Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch.” She did. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

Brienne didn't use her sword against Shagwell, she killed him with a dagger, so there's no sword magic to see there.

So there! Oathkeeper's magical sharpness had a verifiable effect on the outcome of at least three things: The attacks against Pyg's leather, Timeon's chain mail, and Timeon's spear head. Oathkeeper's magical speed also certainly had an effect on the outcome of every swing, making each attack faster than it would have been if Brienne had used the sword made of regular steel.

However, at the end of all these Valyrian steel observations, the pertinent question is not really answered, is it?

The pertinent question is 'Would Brienne have won the fight without permanent injury if she had used the regular steel sword instead of the Valyrian steel sword?' I don't know the answer to that. And more to the point, neither does Brienne. The only way to know was to try it, and Brienne didn't try it.

Like my feelings about myself after I beat a video game on Normal Mode, a careful examination of Brienne's victory in the Whispers fight leaves me with the feeling that Brienne probably could have won reasonably well on Hard Mode, too, if she had tried. Thus, the victory loses some of its savor.

How much more skillful, knowledgeable, faster and precise do I become at a video game after I played it on Hard Mode compared to after I played it on Normal Mode? The difference in my abilities is quite noticeable when I do it, but that does require me to actually do it. Likewise, how much faster, stronger, knowledgeable, precise, and dare I say "valiant" would Brienne become if she were not using her magic sword against mortal foes? As in Galladon's irresistible valor, the difference is probably quite noticeable when she does it... but that does require her to actually do it.

'But aren't you being too hard on Ser Goodwin?' I don't hear you saying. Indeed, Ser Goodwin was probably not trying to teach Brienne a cynical lesson that brutality is a virtue in men. He was probably trying to scare her away from what he considers a young Tarth princess's foolish fixation on becoming a warrior. The intended message of Ser Goodwin's story may likely have been as straightforward as 'War is nasty business. You think you want to be a warrior, but you don't.' But as we acknowledged earlier about honor, describing the mechanism by which something is good and right is sometimes more difficult than knowing deep down that it is. With things as old and important as war and honor, the knowing is often within us long before a description arrives to justify it.

The Moral Of The Story

In the end, Brienne should not have used her magic sword in this fight, after all. She failed to uphold the knightly oath to protect the weak and innocent when she included Nimble Dick in the fight, because since Nimble Dick was a man and she didn't like him, she didn't recognize that he's somebody she ought to protect. Being no knight, it's an oath she never swore, so her hands are technically clean. Still, it's enough to render Lord Randyll Tarly's words prophetic by mortal standards.

“I have been sent to look for … for …” She hesitated. “How will you find him if you do not know his name? Did you slay Lord Renly?” “No.” Tarly weighed the word. He is judging me, as he judged those others. “No,” he said at last, “you only let him die.” (AFFC 14 Brienne III)

In essay chapter 5, I said well-done symbolic interpretation is uniquely marked by its explanatory power over not just the things in the story but also the story's effect on its audience. Symbolic interpretation's explanatory power over the story is not unique. Other kinds of interpretation can explain things in the story just fine. But there are some questions only symbolic interpretation can answer, and those tend to be the questions the audience is mostly asking. They're the story's mysteries, like "What do the Others want?", "Who is Azor Ahai?", and "What's up with Rhaegar?" So what really distinguishes symbolic interpretation from other kinds of interpretation is its explanatory power over the story's effect on the audience. It explains the story through its explanation of the audience.

For each reader, the most accessible part of the audience is him or her self. I have a depth of access to what I'm thinking and feeling that I can never have to what another person is thinking and feeling. The value of this access can be sabotaged, however, by not paying attention to myself or not being honest with myself. Accessing the answers to ASOIAF's most famous mysteries demands an amount of attention to and honesty with oneself that is rare, and that usually takes a long time to cultivate.

For instance, Brienne first told Dick that she was looking for her sister, and then after Dick said there were two girls instead of one, Brienne changed her story so that she's looking for her two sisters. Ask yourself if you noticed before I pointed it out that Brienne changed her story. Don't answer me, answer yourself. Did you really notice that? I didn't notice it until I reread these chapters with the specific goal in mind to look at situations from Dick's perspective instead of Brienne's. If you didn't notice it, are you able to admit that to yourself? Does your mind try to deny that you didn't notice it? Is it grasping for a rationalization? Is it making up a story or an excuse? Those are all things that my mind likes to do when it learns that it's guilty of some oversight or misapprehension, especially if the oversight reflects poorly on my values.

To find the answers to ASOIAF's mysteries, at minimum you have to be the kind of person who can admit to himself when his thoughts, feelings or expectations about the story were wrong. For better results, you also have to actively seek evidence in the story that you're wrong. For even better results, you have to do that when you're mostly right and only a little wrong. Your interpretive errors are perhaps your most potent clues about what the "moral of the story" might be, and that applies no matter how big or small the piece of the story you're handling is — one little sentence or the whole kit and caboodle.

After noticing that Brienne's easily detectable lie was probably noticed by Nimble Dick, too, and how it gives Nimble Dick reason to mistrust Brienne, and that I failed to notice it the first time around, that's enough of a cue from the story for me to start considering that this chapter's lesson to me, or "moral", has something to do with my failure to notice that Nimble Dick has good reason to mistrust Brienne. In a chapter that seems like it's about Brienne having good reasons to mistrust Nimble Dick, Nimble Dick having a good reason to mistrust Brienne is quite the reversal of my first impression. For a reader who's actively seeking evidence that he's wrong about something, this stands out in a big way. For a reader who isn't, it's easy to write it off.

'Maybe Brienne learned just now from Nimble Dick that her second sister is missing, too. Nimble Dick wouldn't be able to know she's lying.' Perhaps not, but then again, how could Brienne know the second girl is her sister too if she had no reason to think her second sister was lost before now? If before now Brienne apparently thought her second sister was safe and accounted for, wouldn't she have wondered at the identity of the girl her sister is traveling with? Some companion chance met on the road, most like. No matter how we look at it, Brienne's change of story should be more than a little fishy from the perspective of Nimble Dick.

Symbols Preserved in the Crypt: Nimble Dick Crabb ≈ Lord Dustin

Since this interpretation recontextualizes Brienne as less heroic than we thought, (which is another way of saying more villainous than we thought), and since Brienne is symbolic of Ned in the overarching Whispers≈TOJ symbol, this suggests that our feelings about Ned will be recontextualized the same way when we learn all there is to learn about the Tower of Joy.

As if to hint of a villainous recontextualization of Ned's actions at the Tower of Joy, Barbrey Dustin's anger toward Ned for getting her husband killed at the Tower of Joy became observable to the reader in ADWD, during her conversation with Theon in the Winterfell crypt.

“Ned Stark returned the horse to me on his way back home to Winterfell. He told me that my lord had died an honorable death, that his body had been laid to rest beneath the red mountains of Dorne. He brought his sister’s bones back north, though, and there she rests … but I promise you, Lord Eddard’s bones will never rest beside hers. I mean to feed them to my dogs.” (ADWD 41 The Turncloak)

This recontextualization of Ned is also present in this Whispers situation with our Ned symbol, Brienne. Just as Barbrey's perspective rubs against the reader's admiration of Ned for including someone in the fight at the Tower of Joy who died and was buried there, so does Nimble Dick's perspective rub against the reader's admiration of Brienne for including Nimble Dick in the fight at the Tower of Joy symbol, the Whispers, who died and was buried there.

In this way, our TOJ symbols successfully predicted the story again. And my analysis of it too, it would seem. I did not notice this connection to House Dustin until I was writing this essay chapter. Before then, Barbrey Dustin was the furthest character from my mind while handling the Whispers and Tower of Joy parallel. The frequency at which connections like this one occur to me used to shock me. But now, a couple of years after I've worked out most of ASOIAF's philosophy and mysteries, they occur to me almost every time I read a chapter. They're bound to occur to you more frequently too if you continue studying the story. But as you may now understand better from this essay chapter, you won't like everything you learn. My only promises are that my analysis and the answers therein will be true, will give you a greater understanding of the story, will accurately predict the future of the story, and will stand the test of time. I make no promise that they will be popular.

In my original interpretation, Brienne's decision to give Nimble Dick a sword was her moment of character progression. Ostensibly, Brienne had overcome her mistrust of men the collective and finally trusted man an individual. She was able to put aside the hatreds and resentments that cause her to see a collective when looking at an individual, and that's why she was able to see the individual for who he really is. But now that I know Brienne's decision was a failure of honor, which resulted in Nimble Dick's death, it puts a major damper on the character progression interpretation. By now we should be questioning if putting aside her hatred for men was really what caused Brienne to give Nimble Dick a sword at all.

Did Brienne really see Nimble Dick for the disagreeable yet ultimately trustworthy individual he is? Or was she compelled to give him a sword by some other reason?

There are two other main possibilities that I see for why Brienne gave Nimble Dick the sword. The first possibility is that Brienne was compelled to give him the sword by her fear of facing a scary situation alone. Descriptions of fear setting into Brienne are readily available to suit this possibility. For example, she begins to imagine that the eerie sounds that are coming from beneath the ground are indeed the severed heads from the Ser Clarence Crabb story, despite the fact that she invalidated those same fears when Podrick Payne voiced them. For another example, she gets a creepy feeling that causes her to hesitate just before she enters the Whispers.

The postern door resisted for a moment, then jerked open, its hinges screaming protest. The sound made the hairs on the back of Brienne’s neck stand up. She drew her sword. Even in mail and boiled leather, she felt naked. (AFFC 20 Brienne IV)

The second possibility is that Brienne was compelled to give Nimble Dick the sword because she considered him too weak to be able to harm her much with it anyway. I think this possibility is closer to the truth, because the order of events suggests that Brienne did trust in something about Nimble Dick. After all, Brienne gave him the sword before Podrick Payne had arrived with Oathkeeper. That means that Brienne gave Nimble Dick a sword while she was not yet armed with a sword of her own. What Brienne trusted in was Nimble Dick's weakness or incompetence with a sword — that he wouldn't be able to hurt her even if he wanted to and even while she's swordless. If that's the right explanation for why Brienne gave Nimble Dick a sword even before she had Oathkeeper in hand, then her size, strength, armor, and dagger may likely have factored into her decision, too.

Still, if Brienne thought Nimble Dick was so weak and useless with a sword, it's a wonder what she expected him to contribute in a fight. Because of this contradiction, Brienne appears to have little regard for Nimble Dick's life, because she's willing to put him in a great amount of danger for a small amount of advantage. What's more, because a sword is as much for self defense as for attack, she can comfortably deceive herself by telling herself that she's doing it to protect Nimble Dick.

If the lesson Brienne needs to learn is to overcome her hatred of men, and Brienne is symbolic of us, maybe we need to learn the same lesson to make progress on the Whispers≈TOJ parallel and then the Tower of Joy mystery.

However, you don't have to take that lesson. You could take a different lesson entirely. You could say it's not your fault that you didn't consider Nimble Dick's perspective because GRRM tricked you by writing the story a certain way. You could even say you disagree with my interpretation, denounce me as a fraud, and swear to never read my work again. That's all perfectly good and well.

One of the brilliant features of this chapter's design is that because the shock of Nimble Dick's recontextualization from creepy betrayer to tragic victim happens to the reader through Brienne, there is never a moment in the audience when readers are especially split between those who trash Nimble Dick and those who defend him. It's a rare monster who would speak ill of the innocent dead. Because we never had to confront the fact that we were wrong about Nimble Dick just like Brienne was, our wrongness is never exposed to other people, and we can hide it even from ourselves. In this way, the secrets that the situation has to teach us about ASOIAF are reserved for those rare readers who are genuinely seeking how the story got them to be wrong, in order to retrieve a moral of the story.

Independent of me, the fact remains that if you can't take a lesson from a story, and more specifically the right lesson, you're unlikely to ever solve its mysteries. And the degree to which an idea can imply accurate predictions about the story, particularly its future such as in answers to unresolved mysteries, is the degree to which the idea is right. That's all just a fancy way of saying I expect my analysis to mold in obscurity for a long time before the accuracy of the predictions contained within them are measured against the events in The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring and found to be majorly correct.

For those who are still reading, we know enough now about the moral of the chapter's story to return to applying our symbols between the Whispers and the Tower of Joy, and to learn much of what happened in the Tower of Joy fight. That's up next.

Next: Chapter 9 - The Fight and Fighters II

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 7

Chapter 7 - He Would Have Killed Me But For Howland Reed

Previous: Chapter 6 - The Fight and Fighters Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Howland Reed

In chapter 6 we ironed out many of the symbolic relationships between the fight at the Whispers and the fight at the Tower of Joy. Most of those symbols describe connections between people. Brienne is symbolizing Ned, Podrick is symbolizing Howland, and so on. There are even more symbols worth writing down. For instance, the audience is largely in agreement that the conspicuous weirwood tree in the Whispers scene is symbolizing a Stark girl, but there is a tension in the audience about which Stark girl the weirwood tree is symbolizing — Arya, Sansa, or Lyanna? This tension is no accident on the part of the author.

Much as I would like to incorporate the weirwood tree into these essays, they are already quite long and I need to resist the urge in order to keep the topic focused enough to hold the reader's attention.

[[ Indeed, in an ideal world I would incorporate every major mystery of ASOIAF into the analysis so that they can all conclude at the same time on the same spot and in the same way. GRRM has designed ASOIAF's mysteries in a way that makes that possible. My series Forest Love and Forest Lass is my attempt to do that, if ever I brave that beast again. In this essay series I have already failed to resist that urge and sneakily incorporated mysteries about the House of the Undying Ones and Rhaella Targaryen. If I ever get around to writing the Undying analysis then one day you will be able to reread this one and see where, how, and why I did that.]]

However else this Whispers fight is symbolizing the Tower of Joy fight, the meat of the symbol appears to be the fighters and the fight itself, because the fight scene is the big set-piece of the chapter that the rest of the chapter builds up to and supports. All of the chapter's narrative threads culminate in the fight scene. It's where the tension between Brienne and Dick resolves, it's where the suspense about who Brienne will find at the end resolves, it's where the suspense about who's following Brienne resolves, it's where the stakes peak, and so on.

I said that we have to be careful not to play fast and loose with words and their meanings, and that when we use a symbol in the definition of another symbol and then misuse it in that way, we break the definition of our own symbol and undermine the accuracy and quality of our interpretation. Now I'll add its optimistic counterpart: The ability to use symbols in the definitions of other symbols without rendering either symbol faulty for predicting the story has the same compounding effect, but in a supporting way. That is to say, a symbol that predicts the story proves itself useful and any symbols embedded in its definition useful at the same time.

The commonalities described in the Ned≈Brienne symbol are describing commonalities between Ned and Brienne. But because Ned was in the TOJ scene and Brienne was in the Whispers scene, the Ned≈Brienne commonalities are also Whispers≈TOJ commonalities. That means all the commonalities between Ned and Brienne can be added to the Whispers≈TOJ symbol to make it more robust. More than that, the Ned≈Brienne symbol is a component of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol necessarily, and to the exclusion of other symbols. That is to say, Brienne at the Whispers having enough in common with Ned at the Tower of Joy to establish her as a useful symbol of him for understanding the Whispers and/or the Tower of Joy does not necessarily establish her as a useful symbol of him for understanding other scenes in the story that have her or him. It's possible, but that possibility requires its own proof separate from the Whispers≈TOJ symbol.

The same is true with all the character symbols I've defined so far. They are all components of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol, and they make up a body of understanding that can be conceptualized as a Whispers≈TOJ canon. In the same way all the stories within ASOIAF as we understand them make up the canon of ASOIAF, all the symbols in the Whispers≈TOJ symbol as we understand them make up the canon of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol.

In a story's canon, words, once published, are never to be changed, added, or removed, only reinterpreted. Likewise in a parent symbol's canon, its child symbols, once established, are never to be changed, added or removed, only reinterpreted. For example, we're allowed to reinterpret the Arthur Dayne symbol as Shagwell instead of Timeon, and we're allowed to reinterpret the Oswell Whent symbol as Timeon instead of Shagwell, but we're not allowed to remove Timeon or Shagwell from the Whispers, or to add them to the Tower of Joy, or to remove Arthur or Oswell from the Tower of Joy, or to add them to the Whispers. The underlying recognition is that no kind or amount of reinterpretation will ever reasonably make the characters appear or disappear from a scene, because the literal interpretation is superordinate to the symbolic interpretation. However these characters, events, and images may be analogous to the reader or some lesson for him, the FIRST thing they must be is their literal selves. Timeon is Timeon, Oswell is Oswell, a spear is a spear, and so on. Literal interpretation needs to be the foundation, or starting point, of symbolic interpretation. This point is important for the symbolism of the weirwood tree if ever I get around to explaining that.

Indeed, a FULL description of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol contains ALL the commonalities in its child symbols, rewritten accordingly. I.E. From "The person who" to "The place where the person who". Because the Whispers and the Tower of Joy are places not people.

Now you may be wondering, 'But aren't you artificially bolstering your symbols by reusing definition components from one symbol to another?' The answer is no, for the same reason that it isn't artificially bolstering the truthfulness of the equation 1+2=3 by reusing the numbers 1 and 2 in the equation 1+2-3=0. The answers "3" and "0" are different and therefore warrant their own individual proofs, or trials if you will, regardless that 1 and 2 testify in both cases. Likewise, "Brienne≈Ned" and "Whispers≈TOJ" are different symbols and therefore warrant their own individual proofs, regardless that "kills three men enemies" testifies in both cases. Or to continue the courtroom metaphor, a witness is allowed to testify in multiple cases.

All symbols can be read and applied forward or backward equally validly. That is to say, Ned≈Brienne is the same thing as saying Brienne≈Ned. If I say them in reverse I'm just doing it by accident or to better describe which direction I'm applying the symbol. That's also to say, Ned at the TOJ can just as reasonably help us understand Brienne at the Whispers as Brienne at the Whispers can help us understand Ned at the TOJ. (This is what I meant when I said we would be jumping back and forth through the symbol to fill out the information we don't know. Like a game of literary sudoku, after you work out information in one place, you can work out information in another place.) That doesn't mean it will, but it can. GRRM's mysteries in particular often require the reader to travel through the symbol in both directions multiple times in order to extract insights from both applications and add them all together. I gather that GRRM relies upon readers to succeed at making the first, outward journey through the symbol, and to neglect to make the second, return trip back to the scene of origin.

Perhaps the most challenging thing we need to do in symbolic interpretation is to hold the fully described Whispers≈TOJ symbol in our minds, and, without losing or jostling the details, to overlay it onto one of those scenes or the other, in order to see where they don't match, where they may or may not match, and where they do match. We're looking for anything in the comparison that is surprising, awkward, or that stands out in any way, especially as compared to the audience's popular opinions and common arguments about the Tower of Joy.

In a song, the "songness" resides not in the notes but in the space between the notes. You can play a song anywhere on the instrument and it will sound "off" but recognizable as the same song, because the space between the notes stayed the same. Likewise in a set of symbols, we want to maintain the relationships between the symbols after we've defined them.

For instance, some of the relationships between the Ned symbol and the Howland symbol in both scenes are that they're friends, they're together at the fight, they're on the same side of the fight, and the Howland symbol is worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol is. ("Howland is worse than Ned" matches that "Pod is worse than Brienne.")

Notice that some of these relationships are not in the definition of the Ned≈Brienne symbol or the Pod≈Howland symbol. "Friends" is not there. "Worse or better at direct combat" is not there. Why? Because I simply didn't think of them at the time. This is precisely why we aim to preserve the relationship between the symbols more-so than the symbols.

We want to preserve the symbols, too, but like memorizing the notes of a new song, memorizing the definition of the symbols is the easy part, and if we forget them we can always check the paper (as long as we wrote it down!). The more challenging part is preserving "Friends" and "Worse or better at direct combat" before we noticed that those commonalities exist. Because the most important commonality could very well be one that we missed. This is not uncommonly the case in ASOIAF, because GRRM is very good at identifying what his readers are likely to overlook if he writes the story in a certain way, and he knows that those are the best places to hide his clues. By preserving as much of the relationship between the symbols as we can, we leave ourselves the chance later to spot commonalities that we missed. Let's update our Podrick≈Howland symbol to include those newfound commonalities and build up that symbol.

Podrick Payne ≈ Howland Reed

Podrick Payne and Howland Reed are both:

‘A physically unimposing young man at the fight on the Ned symbol’s side, who is friends with the Ned symbol, and who is worse at direct combat than the Ned symbol, and who does something that prevents the Ned symbol from being killed.’

To give you a counter-example, a relationship between Howland and Ned that is not preserved in the Whispers scene is that they met at Harrenhal. Podrick and Brienne did not meet at Harrenhal. What that means for our Tower of Joy investigation is that the fact that Howland and Ned met at Harrenhal probably doesn't effect the ability of the Whispers≈TOJ parallel to convey whatever it has to teach us about either the Whispers or the Tower of Joy. In other words, because the detail is not relevant in one scene and not preserved in the other scene, that's enough reason to assume it does not matter, at least for this investigation.

I should also curb my expectations about how significant the message of this parallel is likely to be. The Whispers is but one of half a dozen or more scenes paralleling the Tower of Joy drama to a degree of certainty between ninety-nine and a hundred percent. If we only come away from the Whispers≈TOJ parallel with one insight that gives us a minor course correction in our investigation of the Tower of Joy, then the Whispers parallel did its job. The author is in no hurry to dump the biggest revelations at the center of his magnum opus into our laps all in one parallel. We'll likely have to gather up the meager fruits from several parallels and put them together before we break significant new ground.

Sounds like a lot of work? It is. That's why these mysteries are decades old and despite ASOIAF becoming the biggest pop literature hit in the world most readers have given up on the mysteries and turned to chastising GRRM for not publishing the answers. But they say if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life. If you love symbolic interpretation you're just the right person to take up this toolkit and apply it to whatever ASOIAF mystery gnaws at you.

If you're new to symbolic interpretation and it seems daunting, just remember that essentially symbolism is nothing more than the property of substitution. When we say A is symbolic of B we're merely saying A can be substituted for B and B can be substituted for A. Not universally, but in some context. At minimum, that context is always the sentence, paragraph, scene, scenes, or chapter from which the commonalities that define the symbol were found. The contiguous range of that context is never more than the chapter. Parts outside of the chapter can be added to the symbol's context remotely through a recurring element such as a phrase, thing, image, or idea. If a phrase, thing, image or idea happens to be the title of the book or series, like "feast for crows" or "ice and fire", then the permissible context for the symbol is the whole book and the whole series, respectively.

While I find it helpful to curb my expectations during an investigation so that I don't become disheartened and throw in the towel, there's no need for you to curb your expectations about the things you're going to learn about the Tower of Joy in this essay series. The revelations are very satisfying in their drama and monumental in their implications. Since this series is a study in symbolic interpretation, I'm going to take my sweet time walking you through it and explaining the process in detail every step of the way. Before the end of it I will directly tell you the satisfying drama. However, with the monumental implications I will only help you figure them out yourself, albeit in as big a way I can without spelling out the answers walk you through the answers. If that sounds agreeable, let's ride on!

Symbol Test - Timeon≈Arthur, Podrick≈Howland, Brienne≈Ned

Now let's run that test I mentioned earlier, and see how well a few of our symbols predict the story. The test was the question 'Who would have killed Brienne if Pod hadn't thrown one or both of those stones?' If it was the Arthur symbol, that would match with Ned's line in Bran's memory that says:

"They called [Arthur Dayne] the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed." (ACOK Bran III)

There are four possibilities for the answer to that question: Pyg, Shagwell, Timeon, and nobody. If the answer turns out to be the character I put forward as the symbolic Arthur Dayne — Timeon — then the test proves the predictive power of the symbol (particularly the parts of its definition that are at play in the test) to a standard of 1/4, increasing certainty of the symbol by 75%, an increase to be compounded with any other tests we do for it. That would be a good increase for so simple a test. Now let's reread the scene and find out who it was that would have killed Brienne if not for Podrick Payne. (I don't remember, so we will find out together, and I'll accept whatever result the story returns.)

“Your turn,” she told Timeon, as the Dornishman pulled out a second spear, shorter and thicker than the first. “Throw it.” “So you can dance away and charge me? I’d end up dead as Pyg. No. Get her, Shags.” “You get her,” Shagwell said. “Did you see what she did to Pyg? She’s mad with moon blood.” The fool was behind her, Timeon in front. No matter how she turned, one was at her back. “Get her,” urged Timeon, “and you can fuck her corpse.” “Oh, you do love me.” The morningstar was whirling. Choose one, Brienne told herself. Choose one and kill him quickly. Then a stone came out of nowhere, and hit Shagwell in the head. Brienne did not hesitate. She flew at Timeon. He was better than Pyg, but he had only a short throwing spear, and she had a Valyrian steel blade. Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. He wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chain mail byrnie he was wearing. Timeon was still trying to fight as she pulled her blade from him, its fullers running red with blood. He clawed at his belt and came up with a dagger, so Brienne cut his hand off. That one was for Jaime. “Mother have mercy,” the Dornishman gasped, the blood bubbling from his mouth and spurting from his wrist. “Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch.” She did. Shagwell was on his knees when she turned, looking dazed as he fumbled for the morningstar. As he staggered to his feet, another stone slammed him in the ear. Podrick had climbed the fallen wall and was standing amongst the ivy glowering, a fresh rock in his hand. “I told you I could fight!” he shouted down.

After Brienne kills Pyg, there are two men remaining. No matter which way she turns, one man is at her back. Brienne has to choose which one to attack first, but no matter who she chooses in this scenario she will open herself to attack from the other one. Podrick's stone hits Shagwell in the head (ouch), knocks him to his knees and dazes him for the duration of her fight with Timeon. With Shagwell dazed, Brienne attacks Timeon.

It would be easy to criticize Brienne for not attacking Shagwell before Timeon, because a dazed opponent is a free kill. But if she had done that she would have exposed her back to attack from Timeon, who was not dazed. So attacking Timeon was the right choice.

At first glance, the stone saved Brienne from Shagwell. So, we could fairly say Shagwell is the one who would have killed Brienne from the back if Podrick had not thrown the stone. But since we don't know who Brienne would have attacked first if the stone hadn't been thrown, we don't know who Brienne's back would have been exposed to. It can just as fairly be said that the stone saved Brienne from Timeon, who would have killed her from the back if she chose to fight Shagwell first.

The test has returned two equally viable answers. Since Timeon is one of the two possible answers out of the four total, this test only increases our certainty of the Arthur≈Timeon symbol by 50%. It was good enough to exclude Pyg and nobody, but not good enough to narrow Shagwell and Timeon down to Timeon. If I have the Arthur Dayne symbol wrongly placed on Timeon, this result may indicate that it should be on Shagwell.

Since Arthur and Timeon still have Dornish in common, and since Dorne is one kingdom out of seven that GRRM could have made Timeon's homeland (14%), I'm going to proceed with Timeon as the symbolic Athur Dayne. A 50% result from this test multiplied by 14% from "Dornish" results in a 7% probability that these features of Timeon match those of Arthur Dayne by coincidence. That's very improbable. Put differently, there's a 93% probability that these features of Timeon match those of Arthur Dayne on purpose. (Disclaimer: I'm probably messing up some of the math in these essays because I haven't studied statistics, but the gist should be the same and I'll send a statistician to fix my work later.)

If the Arthur≈Timeon symbol becomes dysfunctional or if I get stuck in my investigation, I can always return to this spot and reconsider Shagwell. I call this "marking the forks in the road." Sometimes we have to back up to a fork in the road of possibilities and take a different viable path, so it's worth making a mental note of them.

[[ Another thing I can share about ASOIAF symbolism that will save you some headache — and this may be specific to ASOIAF and/or GRRM — is that there will never be a symbol of a symbol. For example, in this chapter Brienne is symbolic of Ned. But this chapter is also laden with clues that Brienne and Duncan the Tall have things in common (thick as a castle wall), and those commonalities could establish that Brienne is symbolic of Dunk. Likewise, Dunk is symbolic of Ned, because the Dunk & Egg stories are laden with clues about Dunk's commonalities to Ned. Since ASOIAF establishes both Brienne and Ned as symbols of Dunk, it can be tempting to add those commonalities to your Brienne≈Ned symbol to bolster it. But you can't do that. Not in this series, anyway. Brienne≈Dunk and Ned≈Dunk have to be treated like separate symbols. If you try to say Brienne≈Dunk≈Ned therefore Brienne≈Ned, you'll send yourself on wild goose chases. Brienne≈Ned needs to be established without using their commonalities to Dunk. At least in this Whispers≈TOJ symbol, it can be.

That said, a Brienne≈Dunk symbol may be able to teach us things about this chapter or Dunk & Egg or both. I won't go into that in this series, but if I tackle A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms this Brienne chapter may come up.

Another thing I can share about symbolic interpretation is that a symbol's purview does not extend beyond its parent symbol. If I want to establish Brienne≈Ned in another scene besides the Whispers or TOJ, I have to start from zero commonalities again and use only the commonalities provided in those other two scenes. Likewise, whatever message a symbol is sending to the reader, the message can not and will not extend beyond its parent symbol. I.E. The Brienne≈Ned symbol we established between the Whispers scene and the TOJ scene will only ever tell us things about the Whispers scene and the TOJ scene. If it seems like it is telling us about some other scene or situation besides those two, you can be certain you're chasing geese (wasting your time).

On the other hand, the purview of things you learn about the Whispers scene or the TOJ scene (from the Brienne≈Ned symbol or any other way) CAN extend beyond the Whispers and TOJ scenes. For a symbolic interpreter, that kind of discovery is the holy grail. A child symbol teaches you something about a parent symbol that teaches you the answer to a question you were actually asking from the beginning — a top level question. The first time that happens, you have your first complete model of how the story's symbolic revelations work from bottom to top. The things you can learn from that model will generalize to the rest of the story's mysteries, setting in motion a gradually snowballing effect of mystery solving by improving your understanding of the story's philosophy and your educated guesses. ]]

Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, in symbolic interpretation we're looking for awkwardness that emerges in a comparison between the two things in the symbol. In the Whispers≈TOJ symbol, its child symbols proved themselves to be accurately predictive of the story, but the test returned some awkwardness at the same time. The Arthur Dayne symbol became stronger for Timeon, increasing our certainty that Timeon is symbolic of Arthur Dayne, but not in every way we expected.

I expected that when I added Ned's comment about Arthur Dayne as criteria for the Whispers≈TOJ symbol, our hypothesized Arthur Dayne symbol (Timeon) would clearly be the same person who "would have killed [Brienne] but for [Podrick Payne]." But Timeon is not so clearly the person who would have killed Brienne but for Podrick Payne. Timeon and Shagwell scored equally in that regard. The answer to the question of who would have killed Brienne but for Podrick Payne seems to depend on who Brienne chose or would have chosen to attack first if Podrick had not thrown the stone.

Awkwardness is what we're looking for in symbolic interpretation, and this awkwardness in the Arthur Dayne symbol with Timeon and Shagwell marks precisely where we should dive in deep to see what we can learn. As seems to have become customary in this essay series, I'll do that two or three essay chapters later. It's time I deliver an analysis I promised at the end of chapter 5 about the drama between Brienne and Nimble Dick Crabb.

We've advanced our symbols to the point that we're ready to do the fun part of symbolic analysis — the part where we begin exporting details from one situation and importing them to the other to learn the things we want to learn. But before we do that I need to get the thematic analysis up to the same progress level. So let's spend the next chapter of the essay talking about the Whispers chapter in the more familiar styles of drama and theme.

If the chapter AFFC 20 Brienne IV has a theme, a lesson or a message, what is it? And how does that relate to our Tower of Joy investigation? Those are the questions we'll address next.

Next: Chapter 8 - Nimble Dick Crabb

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 6

Chapter 6 - The Fight and Fighters

Previous: Chapter 5 - Ser Galladon of Morne Beginning: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

Timeon

As Kingmonkey described in his essay, there are a variety of ways the Whispers fight is paralleling or alluding to the Tower of Joy fight. Now let's write down some of those symbols.

I normally do this part in my head because I'm lazy, but the process of writing down the commonalities that unify the symbols is critical in symbolic interpretation because the literal definitions of the words you use are the standards by which the symbol can be proven false. By neglecting to write out the commonalities that unify the two things in the symbol, the interpreter runs the risk of deceiving himself that the commonalities actually exist. If you can describe the commonalities in specific, carefully chosen words and those words can hold true throughout the entire interpretation, you (and your readers) can be confident that you're suiting your interpretation to the definition rather than suiting the definition to your interpretation.

Ned ≈ Brienne

I've already established that Brienne is symbolic of Ned. I improvised my definition of that symbol on the fly, but I think I can do better, so let me chisel that out now. Ned and Brienne are both:

'A person who journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a Stark girl where he/she finds three men enemies, fights them, and kills them.'

There are more commonalities between Brienne and Ned in these scenes that I could add to this definition to make the symbol more robust, like the fact that neither one of them come away from the scene with a living Stark girl, they both own a magic sword, and they're both especially concerned with being honorable. Additionally, both isolated buildings are in nature as opposed to a town or city. But this definition contains enough commonalities to exclude every other character and situation in the story except Ned at the Tower of Joy and Brienne at the Whispers.

For instance, the "fights them and kills them" part excludes another scene that seems to mirror the Tower of Joy, the scene where Ned is walking through the Red Keep to visit Robert at his death bed and along the way he sees three kingsguard that remind him of the Tower of Joy. Because, of course, Ned didn't fight or kill those three men.

So, contrary to criticisms that symbolic interpretation can be massaged into any interpretation the interpreter wants, which is true, the interpreter can also constrain his interpretation to tight, falsifiable standards. The tighter the standards, the tighter the symbols. The tighter the symbols, the surer the insights. A common mistake amateur symbolic interpreters make is they leave the symbols loosely described. Usually they are doing it subconsciously because they have some awareness that later on they will want to use different commonalities to describe them, and that's harder to do when you describe them in strict terms, so they will avoid doing that early on. But the strictness of the terms is an experienced and honest symbolic interpreter's best friend, because the strictness determines the exclusivity. The more of the story that is excluded from a symbol's description, the more certainly the part of the story that is not excluded is being referenced by the author on purpose.

So it's worth asking yourself "What is the most exclusionary part in my description of the symbol?"

If I had to guess, I think the most exclusionary parts of the symbol I described are probably "Stark" and "three". This is a big story, so it doesn't seem impossible that there is another place in the story where a person journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a girl. But having it be a Stark girl excludes girls from all other families. Since there are so many other families in the story, that reduces the probability of that scene's existence to near zero.

As if that wasn't enough... Although it seems incredibly unlikely that there is another place in the story where a person journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a Stark girl, fights men and kills them, it seems astronomically unlikely that there is another place in the story where a person journeys to an isolated building to retrieve a Stark girl, fights three men and kills them. Three is a specific number out of an infinitude of numbers. Even if we suppose that the author would never have used a number of people greater than twenty, the probability that it's a coincidence that the number he chose in the Whispers fight is the same as the number he chose in the Tower of Joy fight is one out of twenty, or five percent.

Compounded with the exclusiveness that the word Stark adds, we've successfully proven to an extreme standard that the probability that the Whispers scene mirrors the Tower of Joy scene by accident or coincidence is so small as to be indistinguishable from zero, and we only needed to use two of the twenty-four words from the symbol's description to do the proof. With this description we're well grounded in the text to call these two scenes parallels, or symbolic of one another, and to proceed with symbolic interpretation.

It's worth noting that a proof of a symbol only retains its strength inasmuch as the interpreter strictly adheres to the description's exact words and their exact meanings. Words often have multiple meanings, so there is wiggle room in the interpretation that way. But if, for instance, I begin saying with no textual justification that Jeyne Poole is a Stark girl because that's the identity Boltons forced upon her, I contradict my own proof and compromise my interpretation, because obviously Jeyne Poole is not literally a Stark and she is not referenced in these scenes. Readers can sense when an interpreter is doing this and it's much of what sours them on symbolic interpretation. If we want our symbolic interpretations to be taken seriously, we have to knock that off. (This is why I urge people to literally write out the descriptions of their symbols and update it as they go. It prevents us from deceiving others by preventing us from deceiving ourselves.)

Podrick Payne ≈ Howland Reed

Podrick Payne and Howland Reed are both:

'A physically unimposing young man at the fight on the Ned symbol's side who does something that prevents the Ned symbol from being killed.'

Yes, a definition of a symbol can have another symbol in it. Just remember that doing this multiplies any injuries caused to the definition by you playing fast and loose with the words and their meanings. That is, if you use the Ned symbol in your definition of the Howland symbol and then you break the Ned symbol, you broke the Howland symbol, too.

We might be able to add 'by the Arthur Dayne symbol' to the end of this definition. We'll have to return to this after we determine who in the Whispers fight, if anybody, is symbolizing Arthur Dayne [Timeon], and if he is the same person who would have killed Brienne if Podrick hadn't thrown one or both of those stones. (This will be a great test of the predictive power of our symbols. If the symbols we invented here can predict this detail of the story that we don't remember [Who would have killed Brienne?] then we have good grounding to assume the symbols can predict other parts of the story, even parts that haven't been published yet.)

The Whispers ≈ The Tower of Joy

The Whispers and the Tower of Joy are both:

'An isolated building in nature where the Ned symbol arrives with a group of men to retrieve a Stark girl, finds three men enemies there, fights them and kills them.'

This symbol is the parent of all the others we're describing. All of the other symbols can fairly be added to the description of this one to bolster it. In truth, the full description of the Whispers≈TOJ symbol contains all of its child symbols and their full descriptions. But we'll use this short version to keep it simple.

Pyg ≈ Gerold Hightower

Pyg and Gerold Hightower are both:

'A man who fights in a group of three men at the Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by the Ned symbol and whose nickname is a farm animal.'

Pyg's nickname is a bastardization of "pig", and Gerold's nickname is "The White Bull." Both pig and bull are four-legged farm animals who are farmed primarily for meat, but to keep the definition from becoming cumbersome let's leave off the other commonalities and just use "farm animal." As if to preserve in the parallel the difference in quality between these two men, bulls are regarded highly and pigs lowly. So, too, goes the comparison between Gerold and Pyg.

Timeon ≈ Arthur Dayne

Timeon and Arthur Dayne are both:

'A man who fights in a group of three men at the Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by the Ned symbol, and who is Dornish.

Attention is drawn in the scene to Timeon's Dornish heritage through his accent, his weapon, and his words. He speaks with a "dornish drawl", his weapon is a spear which is both the dornishman's favored weapon and the symbol of Dorne's principal house House Martell, he's compared to a snake in Brienne's thoughts when he makes his entrance from the well and snakes are a characteristically dornish animal, and his dying words are "Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch."

Likewise, Arthur Dayne is the only dornishman in the trio at the Tower of Joy.

Shagwell ≈ Oswell Whent

Shagwell and Oswell Whent are both:

'A man who fights in a group of three men at the Tower of Joy symbol and is killed by the Ned symbol, and whose name ends with "-well", and who has a reputation for dark humor.'

Jaime's memory of Oswell tells us that he had "black humor."

They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. (ASOS Jaime VIII)

Attention is drawn to Shagwell's black humor in virtually every sentence he speaks.

“I think I’m going to fuck you up the nose, wench,” Shagwell announced. “Won’t that be amusing?”

While it's true that all three of these men engage in this kind of black humor, Shagwell is the only one who is a literal fool, dressed in motly, and who explicitly lays claim to his humor and foolness. Additionally, Shagwell being a fool and therefore associated with humor is established repeatedly in the two chapters where Brienne and the gang approach the Whispers, because their guide Nimble Dick promised to lead her to a fool after Brienne said she was looking for a fool with a girl.

Nimble Dick Crabb ≈ Martyn Cassell + Theo Wull + Ethan Glover + Mark Ryswell + Lord Dustin

At the risk of giving away some of the surprise of the essay's eighth chapter, here's the Nimble Dick Crabb symbol.

Nimble Dick Crabb and this group of men are both:

'Companions to the Ned symbol and Howland symbol who fight with them at the Tower of Joy symbol against three men enemies there [the Three Kingsguard symbol], who die in the fight because the Ned symbol should not have included them in the fight, and who were buried there.'

Pyg + Timeon + Shagwell ≈ The Three Kingsguard: Gerold, Arthur, Oswell

At the risk of being redundant, here's the Kingsguard symbol. It might be useful to have these characters defined at the group level.

The groups Pyg + Timeon + Shagwell and Gerold + Arthur + Oswell are both:

'A group of three men enemies who the Ned symbol finds at the Tower of Joy symbol, who fight the Ned symbol and its group, and who are killed by them.'

Now that we're certain from all of these commonalities that the Whispers fight is symbolizing the Tower of Joy fight, we're probably going to feel overwhelmed by the number of commonalities and unsure about which commonality contains an insight we need about the Tower of Joy. Where should we aim our attention?

As a general rule, the commonality that contains the greatest insight or set of insights we need will be the commonality that is the biggest and most-encompassing. Here, the biggest commonality between the Whispers fight and the Tower of Joy fight is "fight." The nitty-gritties of the moment-to-moment combat at the Whispers fight are shown to us in detail, which contrasts starkly with how little we know about the details of the combat at the Tower of Joy fight. So, if the Whispers scene is showing us truths about the Tower of Joy scene, most of what it's showing us will probably be found in the combat-related things — the fight scene's "fight-ness". Some combat-related things are the weapons, the armor, the fighters, the attacks, the strategies, the positions of the fighters, who fought who, critical decisions, clutch saves, deciding factors, who died, who lived, who was injured, the role of environmental details like terrain and climate, and so on.

At this stage, we're ready to put our symbols to the test, to see how well they can predict facts about the story that we didn't notice or don't remember. You don't have to test your symbols, but every attempt to apply them is essentially a test of them, so we may as well call our first attempt to apply them a test. Let's do that in the next essay chapter.

Next: Chapter 7 - He Would Have Killed Me But For Howland Reed

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

Tower of Joy, A Study in Symbolic Interpretation - Ch. 5

Chapter 5 - Ser Galladon of Morne

Previous: Chapter 0-4 - Introduction

With love and respect, I must say there are many ASOIAF theorists, analysts, and influencers who frankly do not know what they're doing when they attempt symbolic interpretation. Many of them are completely confident in their great aptitude for symbolic interpretation, and have large, cultish audiences of their own who they teach their habits to. I hesitate even to call them methods. In such an environment, it can be hard to tell apart the sense from the nonsense, the researchers from the peddlers, and the theory from the analysis. Or to borrow a sentiment from Varys, Melisandre, and Littlefinger, it can be hard to tell apart who is seeing what's really there from who is merely seeing what they want or expect to see.

I bring up Varys, Melisandre and Littlefinger to show that this topic of symbolic aptitude is a core theme at work in ASOIAF. In this essay chapter I will show a demonstration of that theme at work in this Brienne chapter. Rest assured that this analysis is far from tangential to the rest of the essay series. It is essential to it.

My thesis for this demonstration is that well done symbolic interpretation is uniquely marked by its explanatory power over not just the things in the story but also the story's effect on its audience. That is why self-awareness is needed for symbolic interpretation. I need to observe my reaction to the story even while I'm having it, or at least to take a sober accounting of myself afterwards.

In this chapter, Brienne and Dick exchange stories about their hometown heroes. Dick tells about Ser Clarence Crabb, and then Brienne tells about Ser Galladon of Morne The Perfect Knight.

Dick still refused to believe that Brienne had never heard of Ser Clarence Crabb and his exploits. “Why would I lie?” she asked him. “Every place has its local heroes. Where I come from, the singers sing of Ser Galladon of Morne, the Perfect Knight." “Ser Gallawho of What?” He snorted. “Never heard o’ him. Why was he so bloody perfect?” “Ser Galladon was a champion of such valor that the Maiden herself lost her heart to him. She gave him an enchanted sword as a token of her love. The Just Maid, it was called. No common sword could check her, nor any shield withstand her kiss. Ser Galladon bore the Just Maid proudly, but only thrice did he unsheathe her. He would not use the Maid against a mortal man, for she was so potent as to make any fight unfair.” Crabb thought that was hilarious. “The Perfect Knight? The Perfect Fool, he sounds like. What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?” “Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.” That only made him laugh the louder. “Ser Clarence Crabb would have wiped his hairy arse with your Perfect Knight, m’lady. If they’d ever have met, there’d be one more bloody head sitting on the shelf at the Whispers, you ask me. ‘I should have used the magic sword,’ it’d be saying to all the other heads. ‘I should have used the bloody sword.’” Brienne could not help but smile. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but Ser Galladon was no fool. Against a foe eight feet tall mounted on an aurochs, he might well have unsheathed the Just Maid. He used her once to slay a dragon, they say.” Nimble Dick was unimpressed. “Crackbones fought a dragon too, but he didn’t need no magic sword. He just tied its neck in a knot, so every time it breathed fire it roasted its own arse.”

Part of what makes Galladon a hero is that he's honorable, and one of the ways he's honorable is that even though he has a magic sword, he hardly uses it. According to the tale, he never uses it against a mortal man because it would make the fight unfair.

Who knows how much of the Galladon story really happened? But that doesn't matter because the word "story" can but doesn't need to mean "fiction." Story is the root word of history, and we all understand that history is non-fiction even though it tells a story, and even though it tells a story like a story — with narrative structure, dramatic emphasis, omitting unworthy details while retaining ones deemed important, regardless that the events as lived contained no such favoritism for storytelling. A historical person's moment-to-moment reality was mostly filler like ours is. Story and history alike boil events down to their gist. Therein lies the essence of the meaning of the word story: gist. It's the actionable takeaway for the reader, also referred to as theme, symbol, lesson, teaching, didacticism, and moral of the story.

The actionable takeaway in Ser Galladon's story is approximately 'Great power is bestowed upon those who can bear great responsibility.' Galladon's valor earned him the magic sword, yet his honor prevents him from using it except when absolutely necessary. Nimble Dick points out the paradox:

"What’s the point o’ having some magic sword if you don’t bloody well use it?" “Honor,” she said. “The point is honor.”

Brienne responds that the point is honor. Like power and responsibility, honor is a lofty word that can mean too many things to mean anything, but one thing we're shown that it surely means in this Galladon story is fairness, particularly fairness in fights:

He would not use the Maid against a mortal man, for she was so potent as to make any fight unfair.”

So fairness in fights is the definition of honor we should use for interpreting this situation.

Dick responds with ridicule by describing a scenario where Galladon's restraint in a hypothetical fight against Dick's hero Ser Clarence Crabb has cost him his life:

That only made him laugh the louder. “Ser Clarence Crabb would have wiped his hairy arse with your Perfect Knight, m’lady. If they’d ever have met, there’d be one more bloody head sitting on the shelf at the Whispers, you ask me. ‘I should have used the magic sword,’ it’d be saying to all the other heads. ‘I should have used the bloody sword.’”

This shows us that Brienne and Dick extracted two different actionable takeaways, or lessons, from the very same story. It's as if ASOIAF is echoing critics who say that fans who do symbolic interpretation see whatever they want to see. This chapter is addressing that complaint, if we can take the lesson. Let's keep going and see if or how this magic sword drama resolves for these characters.

Brienne could not help but smile. “Perhaps,” she allowed, “but Ser Galladon was no fool. Against a foe eight feet tall mounted on an aurochs, he might well have unsheathed the Just Maid. He used her once to slay a dragon, they say.”

Brienne's response maintains Dick's hypothetical scenario, because we learned from Dick in the previous Brienne chapter that Clarence Crabb was eight feet tall and rode an aurochs. So Brienne didn't invent this foe, it's a description of Clarence Crabb specifically.

Her point is that Galladon would easily recognize that Clarence is a powerful enough foe that the magic sword will be needed. She adds that Galladon used the magic sword to slay a dragon, who, while mortal, is not a man, so Brienne has not contradicted her previous claim that Galladon did not use the magic sword against mortal men. Still, Ser Clarence is a mortal man, and if Ser Galladon had indeed used his magic sword against Clarence as Brienne suggests, he would have made himself less honorable of a hero in doing so.

So Brienne has successfully rebutted Dick's point, but at the cost of some of her hero's honor. This cost might imply that Galladon's honorable way was less perfect than his Perfect Knight nickname suggests. An attentive Brienne or reader can be left wondering 'What's the matter with honor, then?'

ASOIAF's subtext in this back and forth between Brienne and Dick seems to be 'There's something wrong with honor.', but for now, it leaves the question to us about what that thing is. This is quite a different takeaway than either Brienne's or Dick's, but in this form it is not actionable for us, so we're awaiting its resolution.

Brienne spots a mysterious man (Hyle Hunt) following the group at a great distance, and then she remembers this story about the time her master-at-arms tried to teach her a lesson.

They had not seen any sign of the man since leaving Lord Brune’s castle, but that did not mean he had given up the hunt. It may be that I will need to kill him, she told herself one night as she paced about the camp. The notion made her queasy. Her old master-at-arms had always questioned whether she was hard enough for battle. “You have a man’s strength in your arms,” Ser Goodwin had said to her, more than once, “but your heart is as soft as any maid’s. It is one thing to train in the yard with a blunted sword in hand, and another to drive a foot of sharpened steel into a man’s gut and see the light go out of his eyes.” To toughen her, Ser Goodwin used to send her to her father’s butcher to slaughter lambs and suckling pigs. The piglets squealed and the lambs screamed like frightened children. By the time the butchering was done Brienne had been blind with tears, her clothes so bloody that she had given them to her maid to burn. But Ser Goodwin still had doubts. “A piglet is a piglet. It is different with a man. When I was a squire young as you, I had a friend who was strong and quick and agile, a champion in the yard. We all knew that one day he would be a splendid knight. Then war came to the Stepstones. I saw my friend drive his foeman to his knees and knock the axe from his hand, but when he might have finished he held back for half a heartbeat. In battle half a heartbeat is a lifetime. The man slipped out his dirk and found a chink in my friend’s armor. His strength, his speed, his valor, all his hard-won skill … it was worth less than a mummer’s fart, because he flinched from killing. Remember that, girl.” I will, she promised his shade, there in the piney wood. She sat down on a rock, took out her sword, and began to hone its edge. I will remember, and I pray I will not flinch.

This memory of Ser Goodwin's lesson echoes much of the lesson Nimble Dick extracted from Brienne's story about Galladon — don't hold back when it counts. This gives Brienne a second opinion about the Galladon interpretation, making the tally two against one, and perhaps influencing her decision soon after.

She drew her sword. Even in mail and boiled leather, she felt naked. “Go on, m’lady,” urged Nimble Dick, behind her. “What are you waiting for? Old Crabb’s been dead a thousand years.” What was she waiting for? Brienne told herself that she was being foolish. The sound was just the sea, echoing endlessly through the caverns beneath the castle, rising and falling with each wave. It did sound like whispering, though, and for a moment she could almost see the heads, sitting on their shelves and muttering to one another. “I should have used the sword” one of them was saying. “I should have used the magic sword.” “Podrick,” said Brienne. “There’s a sword and scabbard wrapped up in my bedroll. Bring them here to me.” “Yes, ser. My lady. I will.” The boy went running off.

Before entering the Whispers, Brienne has a bad feeling and she remembers Dick's ridicule about Galladon not using the magic sword. At the last moment, she sends Pod to get her own magic sword, Oathkeeper, and she gives her regular sword to Dick, finally trusting him and in a big way, even if out of necessity.

Apparently, Brienne saw how Galladon relates to and can symbolize her and her present situation, both of them being an honorable knight or knight-like warrior with a magic sword that they restrain themselves from using. She recognized that this is a moment when the magic sword may really count for something, and I can see from the way the fight plays out that it does. Oathkeeper moves faster and cuts deeper than her normal sword would have. In a fight of one against three, every second counts.

[Pyg] jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword’s thigh. (...) I did not flinch, she thought, as blood ran red down her cheek. Did you see, Ser Goodwin? She hardly felt the cut. (...) Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. [Timeon] wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chain mail byrnie he was wearing.

In the end, Brienne achieved character progression by learning from a story, and she learned from a story by noticing how it's implicitly referring to her and her situation through commonalities like "Me and Galladon are knight-like", "Me and Galladon have a magic sword", "Me and Galladon are honorable", "Me and Galladon are against a dangerous foe."

Stories are for the living to take lessons from them or not and apply them in their lives or not. The subject of any story is always ultimately the person reading it. The characters whether fictional or historical will never benefit from the story, because they aren't real or they aren't alive. The story is there to benefit the person who's reading it, and that's why somebody went to the trouble to write it. As the great literary analyst Joseph Campbell put it, if you never make the connection to yourself, you have misread the story.

A great amount of text in this chapter is symbolizing and commentating on a main point of discussion its audience is having about it. The centerpiece of the chapter's drama is the fight, and the outcome of the fight is drastically changed by Brienne being able to notice the commonalities between her situation and the situation of the character in the story, to take a lesson from the story, and to negotiate her interpretation of that story with the interpretations of people who she dislikes and disagrees with. It probably goes without saying but I feel the need to point it out — this chapter was published before discussions about it happened. It was published before anybody had a chance to complain that symbolic interpretation is nonsense because the interpreter is just seeing what he wants to see. Yet somehow this chapter is still symbolizing that debate. That's incredible.

It suggests that the author knew that this chapter, as written, would evoke a discussion about symbolism in his audience. He likely knew that some readers would say "I think this scene is symbolic of the Tower of Joy and telling us something about it." He likely knew that other readers would respond with "I think you're just seeing what you want to see." And he provisioned the first group with a profound defense by hinging the chapter's main drama upon Brienne's engagement with a story, her noticing how the story symbolizes her through commonalities, and making an adjustment in her situation to improve her outcome.

Brienne seeing the commonalities between herself and Galladon and making an adjustment to improve her outcome is symbolic of readers seeing the commonalities between themselves and Brienne and making an adjustment in their situation to improve their outcome.

In the midst of a Tower of Joy investigation, our situation is a Tower of Joy investigation.

Therefore, Brienne seeing the commonalities between herself and Galladon and making an adjustment to improve her outcome is symbolic of readers seeing the commonalities between themselves and Brienne and making an adjustment in their real life situation to improve their outcome with the Tower of Joy investigation.

A Story Is A Symbol Of You

At this moment, you may be feeling the sensation that the story is looking at you or pointing at you, notwithstanding its lack of eyes and hands. The feeling may even be uncomfortable if it's new to you. 'Are you suggesting that the story knows that I'm investigating it for Tower of Joy clues?' you may wonder. Rest assured, the story has not suddenly become aware of you, or thinking, or sentient. It's just a stack of books. What really happened is that you became aware of yourself in Brienne.

Until now, you've been living out Brienne's life vicariously through her story. Although the experience hasn't made your hands dirty or your muscles sore like it has done to Brienne, it has made you immersed. Now, it's as if the you that lived out this Brienne chapter is being merged with the you that's analytically combing the story in an emotionally detached manner for clues about what happened at the Tower of Joy. Now that the two you's have been merged, suddenly the detached you is able to be held accountable for what the immersed you was feeling and thinking when it was reading this chapter, and that may feel scary. Your mind may be scrambling through the backlog of things you felt and thought while you were reading this chapter before, in order to change or erase things that might look bad. (Avoid doing that, if you can. Those things are among your most valuable clues for solving the Tower of Joy mystery.)

This new accountability may feel unfair. After all, those are two different you's, aren't they? In a sense, yes. But ultimately, no. Ultimately, there is only one you, and you're accountable for the things you felt and thought in one state of mind regardless if you entered another state of mind, if some time has passed, or if you disagree with yourself in the past.

You might be wondering, 'So what's the penalty? What's going to happen to me now that I'm being held accountable for my incongruencies when interpreting the story?' The answer is nothing will happen to you that you don't do to yourself. I'm not likely to jump out of the screen and get you. I wouldn't even if I could. If you have an incongruence in your thoughts and feelings, it's private, and you're entitled to it. Granted, an incongruence is hypocritical, almost by definition. That might get you into trouble somehow someday. But, you're entitled to your own troubles, too.

What I hope I'm highlighting is the truth of something I said earlier, or more particularly how obvious it is now that we've talked it out. The subject of any story is always ultimately the person reading it. For me, that's me. But for you, that's you! So if you want something to happen to you, such as to solve the Tower of Joy mystery, you're going to have to do it to yourself. I'm just the disembodied voice who will walk you through it, if you want me to.

How sure are you that you want to know the answers to the Tower of Joy mystery? Because the answers have a toll, and I don't just mean the time and effort it will take to read this series of essays. The toll I'm talking about is the emotional and psychological pain that accompanies a shift of tectonic proportion in how you see and feel about the entire story and everything in it, the sudden awareness that almost everything you thought and said about the story in the past was wrong and in the most humbling of ways. So, at the risk of sounding patronizing, it's worth asking yourself one last time, how sure are you that you want to know the answers to the Tower of Joy mystery? By choosing to continue reading this series of essays, you're electing to suffer any emotional and psychological pain that accompanies your awareness that you were wrong about the story in the past, in exchange for increased knowledge about the Tower of Joy mystery.

To conclude chapter 5, Galladon is symbolic of Brienne. Similarly, Brienne is symbolic of the reader. Brienne seeing the commonalities between herself and Galladon and making an adjustment to improve her outcome is symbolic of readers seeing the commonalities between themselves and Brienne and making an adjustment to improve their outcome with the Tower of Joy investigation. By depicting situations analogous to the reader's situation, the story symbolizes the reader. And because the story symbolizes the reader, symbolic interpretation can have explanatory power over the reader's reactions to and commentaries on the story. I think this, more than anything else, is what distinguishes symbolic interpretation from other kinds of interpretation.

[[ (These brackets mark sections that can be skipped. In them I will go on tangents that, while perhaps insightful, are entirely optional for understanding the essays. To skip them just scroll to the paragraph that ends with the bold closed brackets.)

Theme interpretation, for example, can have a great amount of explanatory power over the story by grouping together things that have something in common. For instance, theme analysis can show me that a theme of "situations that involve teeth doing violence to breasts" is "there's a door." As odd as it seems, it's true that wherever there's a situation that involves or refers to breasts being chewed or mutilated by somebody's teeth, there is also mention of a door, every time.

Why? Theme analysis of the story will never tell you the answer to why, it will only tell you that the commonality exists. The reader's job is to infer why. However, theme analysis of the audience's interpretations of the story will tell you the answer to why. Once you're applying theme analysis to the audience's interpretations of the story, you're doing symbolic analysis, or symbolic interpretation, sometimes called meta analysis. By my lights, theme analysis of the audience and symbolic interpretation are the same thing!

The underlying recognition is that a story is a symbol of real people in real life, and the person reading it is the first person the story symbolizes because he's the person reading it. Symbolic interpretation is the process of looking for interpretive errors that a significant portion of the audience have in common (mistakes that many of them are habitually making), and then assuming that the author provoked those mistakes on purpose, and then estimating a corrective value statement (an ethic) that can explain why the author wrote the story to provoke that interpretive error so consistently. Symbolic analysis begins on the axiomatic assumption that the author intentionally provoked the error in order to make his story into a good demonstration of the ethic. After all, if you want to teach the audience a lesson about how they're wrong about something important, you first have to get them to be wrong about it so you can catch them in the act. In symbolic analysis we're always hunting for the moment when the story got us to be wrong. We're actively seeking out a criticism of ourselves as if it's treasure, because in story interpretation, it is. Stories are fundamentally lessons. If you can figure out what makes something tick, you can then use that knowledge to figure out how it has ticked in the past and will tick in the future.

Imagine that a grandmaster engineer who has no concept of clocks or time is handed a working analog clock that is set to 10:05 and he is tasked with analyzing its machinery and accurately predicting which numbers the clock's hands will point to next. He will be able to say 11 and 6 before he will be able to say 10:06 o'clock. Such is the nature of predictions that are produced by symbolic interpretation. When you know the ethics that are making the story tick, you can predict its future behavior with remarkable accuracy, but you can't always put it into conventional terms.

For this reason, I sometimes think of symbolic interpretation as the process of returning credit to the author. You see, the audience tends to think their thoughts and opinions about the story are their own, but as your understanding of ASOIAF grows you'll see that much more of the audience's thoughts and opinions about the story than you imagined possible actually originated in GRRM when he wrote the story. The audience's opinions were caused by GRRM in the careful way he wrote the story. He wrote it with consideration to what an audience like us, with our generational attitudes and peculiarities, will think and feel about it. ]]

The next thing we need to analyze is the adjustment itself. The need to make an adjustment suggests that, before the adjustment, Brienne was doing something wrong. In her situation, what she seems to have been doing wrong was that she was restraining herself from using her magic sword Oathkeeper, or more generally, that she was handicapping herself by trying to be honorable. Since Brienne is symbolic of us through her engagement with a story, our need to make an adjustment suggests that, before the adjustment, we are doing something wrong. So our question now should be 'What am I doing wrong in my interpretation of the Tower of Joy mystery that is preventing me from solving it?'

Apart from neglecting symbolic interpretation or doing it with bad form, there is a more critical thing that readers are doing wrong in the interpretation of the Tower of Joy mystery (and every mystery, you'll come to see) that the reader needs to correct before the Tower of Joy mystery is likely to become solvable. The things readers are doing wrong in the interpretation of the Tower of Joy mystery are also being done in the interpretation of this chapter specifically, AFFC 20 Brienne IV. So, by building our understanding of this chapter, we can get a sense of how we're wrong about it, and then apply that model of our wrongness to the Tower of Joy mystery, too. This chapter analysis will drill directly into ASOIAF's actionable takeaway, or "moral of the story." That analysis will be chapter 7 of this essay. In chapter 6, let's iron out the details of our symbols in the Whispers≈TOJ parallel. Explanations are helpful, but sometimes the best way to teach something is to just start doing it.

Next: Chapter 6 - The Fight and Fighters

applesanddragons

[applesanddragons]

I cracked The Trident!

After thinking about it for months, yesterday I cracked the Battle of the Trident mystery!!! Today I spent an hour ironing it out in my ASOIAF notebook. The answers are cool and sad and dramatic and symbolic and all that fun stuff. It was the last central mystery I didn't know the answer to yet, so that's why it gnawed at me for the past 6 months or so. At the rate I'm going, maybe I'll write an essay about it in 3 years. -_-

If you want to take a crack at solving the Trident mystery yourself, the scenes I used to figure it out were:

ASOS Jon X: Mance Rayder vs Stannis's army (Mance is symbolic Rhaegar)

The Sworn Sword: Dunk vs Lucas "Longinch" Inchfield (Dunk is S-Rhaegar)

The Mystery Knight: Daemon "the Fiddler" vs Glendon (Daemon is S-Rhaegar)

I feel like I'm forgetting a scene but if I remember it I'll edit and add it here.

This goes without saying but I'll say it anyway. You also need to have a working knowledge of every scrap of information available in the main and extended book series about the Battle of the Trident. All the little commentaries the characters make.

That's all for now.

Mood: excited

[applesanddragons]

“Did you mark the trees?” Bran flushed. Jojen was always telling him to do things when he opened his third eye and put on Summer’s skin. To claw the bark of a tree, to catch a rabbit and bring it back in his jaws uneaten, to push some rocks in a line. Stupid things. “I forgot,” he said. “You always forget.” It was true. He meant to do the things that Jojen asked, but once he was a wolf they never seemed important. There were always things to see and things to smell, a whole green world to hunt. And he could run! There was nothing better than running, unless it was running after prey. “I was a prince, Jojen,” he told the older boy. “I was the prince of the woods.” “You are a prince,” Jojen reminded him softly. “You remember, don’t you? Tell me who you are.” “You know.” Jojen was his friend and his teacher, but sometimes Bran just wanted to hit him. “I want you to say the words. Tell me who you are.” “Bran,” he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. “Brandon Stark.” The cripple boy. “The Prince of Winterfell.” Of Winterfell burned and tumbled, its people scattered and slain.The glass gardens were smashed, and hot water gushed from the cracked walls to steam beneath the sun. How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again? (ASOS Bran I)

[applesanddragons]

Dutifully, Sansa kissed the old woman on the cheek. “It is kind of you to have me, my lady.” “I knew your grandfather, Lord Rickard, though not well.” “He died before I was born.” “I am aware of that, child. It’s said that your Tully grandfather is dying too. Lord Hoster, surely they told you? An old man, though not so old as me. Still, night falls for all of us in the end, and too soon for some. You would know that more than most, poor child. You’ve had your share of grief, I know. We are sorry for your losses.” Sansa glanced at Margaery. “I was saddened when I heard of Lord Renly’s death, Your Grace. He was very gallant.” “You are kind to say so,” answered Margaery. Her grandmother snorted. “Gallant, yes, and charming, and very clean. He knew how to dress and he knew how to smile and he knew how to bathe, and somehow he got the notion that this made him fit to be king. The Baratheons have always had some queer notions, to be sure. It comes from their Targaryen blood, I should think.” She sniffed. “They tried to marry me to a Targaryen once, but I soon put an end to that.” (—Sansa and Olenna, ASOS Sansa I)