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Tag Archives: rereading sandor

The Wages of Sin: The Religious Imagery of Forgiveness in The Hound’s Last Scene

20 Tuesday Apr 2021

Posted by miladyofyork in General ASOIAF

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asoiaf, rereading sandor, sandor clegane, the elder brother, the hound

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A Brother’s Mercy by Allnamesinuse

The present essay is a Feature Commentary corresponding to the AFFC/ADWD portion of “The Will to Change: Rereading Sandor.”


The Hound is dead and Sandor Clegane is at rest, were the words the Elder Brother chose to eulogise our favourite non-knight in what was seemingly the end of the road for him. The interpretation some see here is that this is as close as GRRM can come to a “happy ending” for a character; a retirement to a quiet life at a place where he’s not likely to be disturbed isn’t a bad outcome for someone with a story tragic until the very end, they argue. Another popular interpretation is that reborn Sandor will become a warrior for the Faith of the Seven in some capacity, for which his last scene could be laying out the groundwork to build a Warrior’s Son storyline on later.

But neither fits in with his character growth arc nor with what his potential future role linked to the Starks could be. Sandor doesn’t have it in him to become a Lancel 2.0 and neither does he have it in him to be Elder Brother 2.0. It’s hard to imagine a man who refused all his life to take an oath of knighthood doing a complete U-turn and taking a religious oath. And yet, the imagery for his rebirth being a spiritual one is so overwhelming. How do we interpret this imagery without making it about the possibility of him becoming permanently tied to the Faith Militant?

As they say, the Devil is in the details. Or, in this case, in the details in the Elder Brother’s words. Hound: dead. Sandor: resting. It sounds like the good old Brother is speaking of two different people, and not about the same man with different names. Why this specificity in separating him in two different halves at this precise stage, though? If he wanted finality, he would pronounce both Sandor and the Hound dead instead of engaging in wordplay that allows him to circumvent the Thou Shalt Not Lie commandment and keep plausible deniability if he ever were to be confronted with accusations of playing loose with the truth.

Whilst reading the story of Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s most celebrated samurai, it caught my attention that there’s another way to look at Sandor’s last appearance, one more fitting into the redemption theme that runs throughout his storyline: forgiveness in the religious sense of the word. Miyamoto Musashi stood out as a larger-than-life figure amongst numerous other famous warriors not just because he had the skills with steel of an Arthur Dayne but also because he saw swordsmanship as a way of life, a path to walk in to achieve one’s best self, improving oneself along the way through combat and hardship. In the Way of the Sword, as he called it, knights are indeed not for killing, an idea Sandor would’ve scoffed at. But there’s a catch: in his beginnings, Musashi is like Sandor. To him, samurai are for killing.

Or at least that’s how the story goes in the most famous novel about him, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, which has one striking parallel that provides a different reading of Sandor’s death. The novel doesn’t cover all of Musashi’s life, only his youth, since he was a feral child with rage issues and suffering from family-related trauma up until his late 20s when he finally becomes the sword-saint of Japanese legend with a myriad duels to this name. The manner in which this change occurs is what caught my eye, because initially it looks so blatantly obvious that Takezo, as he was called then, is destined to be a brute samurai with excessive rage and aggressiveness that stays alive only because he’s too good with a weapon to die. He had no formal training by a sensei, no Martial Arts style, no self-control, no philosophy, nothing. Just plain ol’ fight and kill, all instinct, all impulse, which lands him in several clashes with the villagers and the law. Orphaned at 7, he grew up fostered at a temple, learning the handling of weapons more by himself than with an instructor, killing his first man at 13, slaying a giant in his early teens, going to fight at and lose a big battle, and ending up outlawed for killing his way back to his town from there.

So we have our first parallel with Sandor: highly effective and talented swordsman, big and incredibly strong, temperamental and mouthy, traumatised and in love with a woman he can’t have. An emotionally-damaged ball of destruction. It couldn’t go but from bad to worse from here onwards.

Then enters salvation in the form of eccentric Buddhist monk Takuan Soho, who looks more fit for breaking skulls than healing souls and stops Takezo in his tracks from going even further down this destructive path. Takezo is being hunted down by the local lord’s soldiers for trespassing the barrier set up on the road to catch fugitives from the recent Battle of Sekigahara that decided who would be Japan’s shogun, and for killing soldiers to return to his home village to deliver news to family about his missing best friend that’d gone to Sekigahara with him. The soldiers can’t catch him for dear life, so Takuan strikes a deal with the officer in charge: if he catches Takezo by himself, he’ll earn the right to decide what to do with him, deal? Deal!

The too-clever monk devises a way to use Takezo’s childhood friend, the girl Otsu, as bait to lure the boy into showing himself at the woods he’s hiding in. It works. Takezo is captured, and as per the agreement now Takuan can decide his fate. Ignoring everyone’s bloodthirsty demands for his head, Takuan decides to hang the boy from a tree by the waist:

He took hold of the rope after freeing it from the railing and dragged Takezō, like a dog on a leash, to the tree. The prisoner went meekly, head bowed, uttering not a sound. He seemed so repentant that some of the softer-hearted members of the crowd felt a bit sorry for him. The excitement of capturing the “wild beast” had hardly worn off, however, and with great gusto everyone joined in the fun. Having tied several lengths of rope together, they hoisted him up to a branch about thirty feet from the ground and lashed him tightly. So bound, he looked less like a living man than a big straw doll.

The punishment is to leave him hanging like a Christmas decoration from the monastery’s tall tree until he dies, so everyone thinks. But Takuan has ulterior motives, and whilst Takezo is playing the part of the loudest tree decoration in history, the monk indulges in philosophising and verbal sparring with him:

“I would’ve been better off letting the villagers catch up with me. At least they’re human.”

“Was that your only mistake, Takezō? Hasn’t just about everything you’ve ever done been some kind of mistake? While you’re resting up there, why don’t you try thinking about the past a little.”

“Oh, shut up, you hypocrite! I’m not ashamed! Matahachi’s mother can call me anything she wants, but he is my friend, my best friend. I considered it my responsibility to come and tell the old hag what happened to him and what does she do? She tries to incite that mob to torture me! Bringing her news of her precious son was the only reason I broke through the barrier and came here. Is that a violation of the warrior’s code?”

“That’s not the point, you imbecile! The trouble with you is that you don’t even know how to think. You seem to be under the misconception that if you perform one brave deed, that alone makes you a samurai. Well, it doesn’t! You let that one act of loyalty convince you of your righteousness. The more convinced you became, the more harm you caused yourself and everyone else. And now where are you? Caught in a trap you set for yourself, that’s where!” He paused. “By the way, how’s the view from up there, Takezō?”

“You pig! I won’t forget this!”

“You’ll forget everything soon. Before you turn into dried meat, Takezō, take a good look at the wide world around you. Gaze out onto the world of human beings, and change your selfish way of thinking (…).”

Takezo is too combative for the monk’s lesson to easily penetrate his thick skull, so the back-and-forth continues for a good while:

“Just wait, Takuan, just wait! If I have to chew through this rope with my bare teeth, I will, just to get my hands on you and tear you limb from limb!”

“Is that a promise or a threat? If you really think you can do it, I’ll stay down here and wait. Are you sure you can keep it up without killing yourself before the rope breaks?”

“Shut up!” Takezō screamed hoarsely.

“Say, Takezo, you really are strong! The whole tree is swaying. But I don’t notice the earth shaking, sorry to say. You know, the trouble with you is that, in reality, you’re weak. Your kind of anger is nothing more than personal malice. A real man’s anger is an expression of moral indignation. Anger over petty emotional trifles is for women, not men.”

. . .

“It’s the same with your so-called courage. Your conduct up till now gives no evidence that it’s anything more than animal courage, the kind that has no respect for human values and life. That’s not the kind of courage that makes a samurai. True courage knows fear. It knows how to fear that which should be feared. Honest people value life passionately, they hang on to it like a precious jewel. And they pick the right time and place to surrender it, to die with dignity.”

Still no answer.

“That’s what I meant when I said it’s a pity about you. You were born with physical strength and fortitude, but you lack both knowledge and wisdom. While you managed to master a few of the more unfortunate features of the Way of the Samurai, you made no effort to acquire learning or virtue. People talk about combining the Way of Learning with the Way of the Samurai, but when properly combined, they aren’t two—they’re one. Only one Way, Takezō.”

Then, in pain and fearing that this torture will last much longer, Takezo finally sees the light. He declares to have understood how wrong he was, and begs to be taken down:

“Takuan! Save me!” Takezō’s cry for help was loud and plaintive. The branch began to tremble, as though it, as though the whole tree, were weeping.

“I want to be a better man. I realize now how important it is, what a privilege it is to be born human. I’m almost dead, but I understand what it means to be alive. And now that I know, my whole life will consist of being tied to this tree! I can’t undo what I’ve done.”

“You’re finally coming to your senses. For the first time in your life, you’re talking like a human being.”

“I don’t want to die,” Takezō cried. “I want to live. I want to go out, try again, do everything right this time.” His body convulsed with his sobbing. “Takuan . . . please! Help me . . . help me!”

Takuan refuses. However, he unwittingly makes it possible for Otsu to cut the rope and free Takezo. Boy and girl flee together, but become separated, and Takezo is caught by soldiers of the daimyo and taken before his lordship. Takuan interferes again by telling the daimyo that he was promised he’d decide Takezo’s punishment. Takezo is taken to a dungeon-like haunted room in the castle, where he’ll spend 3 years in solitary confinement, devoted to reading books on worthy subjects, a decision made by Takuan as part of his scheme to reform Takezo from the inside out:

“Think of this room as your mother’s womb and prepare to be born anew. If you look at it only with your eyes, you will see nothing more than an unlit, closed cell. But look again, more closely. Look with your mind and think. This room can be the wellspring of enlightenment, the same fountain of knowledge found and enriched by sages in the past. It is up to you to decide whether this is to be a chamber of darkness or one of light.”

When he reemerges from his confinement, Takezo is truly changed. He’s no longer full of rage and ready to kill anyone on sight, and tells Takuan he finally gets what he was trying to imprint on him when hanging from the tree: he was like a wild beast and now he’s human, and wants to be the best human possible. Takuan decides it’s time to release him:

“Even though you’ve had no one to converse with but yourself, you’ve actually learned to speak like a human being! Good! Today you will leave this place. And as you do so, hug your hard-earned enlightenment to your bosom. You’re going to need it when you go forth into the world to join your fellow men.”

In his solitude, Takezo has acquired a keen sense of self-awareness, recognising he’s still full of rough edges that he needs to smooth out in order to better himself. He declares he will take to wandering through the country to learn the Way of the Sword and reach enlightenment and perfection as a swordsman. Pleased, Takuan and the daimyo tell him he’s been reborn and that, to befit his rebirth, he should leave his old identity behind:

“It’s all right for him to roam about while he’s still young,” said Terumasa. “But now that he’s going out on his own—reborn, as you put it—he should have a new name. Let it be Miyamoto, so that he never forgets his birthplace. From now on, Takezō, call yourself Miyamoto.”

Takezō’s hands went automatically to the floor. Palms down, he bowed deep and long. “Yes, sir, I will do that.”

“You should change your first name too,” Takuan interjected. “Why not read the Chinese characters of your name as ‘Musashi’ instead of ‘Takezō’? You can keep writing your name the same as before. It’s only fitting that everything should begin anew on this day of your rebirth.”

Thus Shinmen Takezo dies and Miyamoto Musashi is born. His is a spiritual rebirth, like Sandor’s, and it’s also very explicitly stated in the novel, with the priest present to pronounce Takezo dead and Musashi born, just like the Elder Brother pronounced The Hound dead and Sandor at rest.

“Now there’s only this sword,” he thought. “The only thing in the world I have to rely on.” He rested his hand on the weapon’s handle and vowed to himself, “I will live by its rule. I will regard it as my soul, and by learning to master it, strive to improve myself, to become a better and wiser human being. Takuan follows the Way of Zen, I will follow the Way of the Sword. I must make of myself an even better man than he is.”

Thenceforward, the new Miyamoto Musashi, once called a wild beast, a raging tiger, a demon, hated and feared by everyone for his viciousness and physical invincibility, travels across Japan following in the steps of a Hero’s Journey quest, dueling the baddies and the goodies, helping distressed damsels, old ladies, and children, learning various arts, carving statuettes of a goddess, opposing worthy and unworthy rivals, saving villagers from bandits, tilling the land… All the things you’d expect of a knight-errant or a lone gunslinger if this were a Western tale. He matures, his temper mellows, he masters his impulses, sheds his selfishness, and becomes a man admired and followed, and envied, too. All of which was only possible because one day a perceptive priest looked into his soul and, like a sword-polisher, took it unto himself to polish the rust off it by teaching him the meaning of compassion, of forgiveness, of second chances. It isn’t merely a symbolical transformation; it’s a literal one and very faith-driven.

Sandor Clegane may not change his name, or at least it doesn’t look likely that he would, but The Hound has been written like a separate identity that no longer belongs to him. There’s already been two Hounds since the original “died”: Rorge and Lem Lemoncloak. Can we interpret that becoming just Sandor Clegane is his “Miyamoto Musashi” moment? Indeed, there are enough clues to contend that the Quiet Isle story for his baptismal-like death & rebirth is meant to be interpreted through the lens of sacramental forgiveness.

The imagery is there, uncharacteristically obvious for an author prone to keeping readers stumbling in the fog through subtlety and writerly sleights of hand. It’s the Catholic rite of pardon for one’s sins whose elements and symbology Martin has borrowed for Sandor, namely: conversion, confession, penance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. They don’t necessarily follow in this order, as it depends on individuals, but they all are present in whichever order an individual case unfolds, and Martin, a cultural Catholic, is certainly familiar with the rite, not to mention that the Faith of the Seven is just Fantasy Catholicism with fewer bells and whistles.

Let’s start with conversion. Generally, this refers to baptism, a step necessary to become a Christian since the dawn days of the religion, but in terms of purely referring to the act of committing a sin or a crime this is about the realisation that what you have done has unjustly visited harm on others. Essentially, the first step towards forgiveness is acknowledging you did wrong and you are the one that must pay for. Conversion is the will to break the cycle and make amends.

When did Sandor “convert”? Though it came from a longer process of chipping away at his self and not an overnight decision, it was the moment he decided to cut cleanly and irrevocably with his former life as a Lannister strongman at the Battle of Blackwater. He had risen high in his liege’s household, benefitted from it financially and socially, and was allowed the lifestyle of a foster Lannister. In sum, even though he never embraced the Lannister ethos, he was nevertheless part of and participant in their morally-challenged sphere. He had, to use the Biblical phrase, “reaped the wages of sin.” Both his and the sins of his masters’ House. To illustrate this point, just one example: he accepts the cloak of a Kingsguard, a position only made possible because of Jaime and Cersei’s sin in having a bastard child to illegitimately place on the throne with the full backing of their House.

But there’s two major differences between the Foster Lannister and the True Lannisters: participation in the cycle and forgoing the fruits of one’s sins.

On the first point, we have Cersei and Tyrion. Each one has deeply felt personal wounds often viewed as having been inflicted by another Lannister, their father Tywin. But instead of breaking the cycle, seek personal happiness outside Tywin’s sibling rivalry dynamic used to manipulate and control his children, or take any of thousands of other possible paths, the only thing Cersei and Tyrion (and to a lesser extent Jaime) do is perpetuate more of the same in an ever-escalating conflict destined to end in a self-inflicted Rains of Castamere on their own House. If Sandor were to act as a True Lannister, he would be involved in a Cersei/Tyrion-like struggle with Gregor. He’d burn larger villages than Gregor, rape more and younger women than Gregor, etc. He’d do this in an effort to gain Tywin’s favour as a means of destroying his brother just as the Lannister sibling dynamic plays out. But Sandor never entered this spiral of destruction despite his fratricidal hate for Gregor. He never identified with the aggressor and became an instrument of perpetuating the cycle in his heart. He accepted that the world was brutal and unfair, that it wasn’t a song, and did what he had to do to survive. He sinned in service to House Lannister, but there was punishment and suffering for him in those sins for his whole life.

On the second point, not a single True Lannister entertains giving up the spoils of sin. Giving up worldly possessions, paying restitution above and beyond what was stolen, exceeding the threshold of one’s wrongs in repenting—these are the core of every religious form of sin and forgiveness. But what do the Lannisters do? Cersei uses her own children to grab power that doesn’t belong to her or her House and allows the realm to be drowned in blood for the prize of having a Lannister on the throne; Jaime is all “I’ll confess to the incest and then marry Cersei while Tommen rules,” showing a willingness to be originator, enabler, and beneficiary of his family’s machinations; Tyrion the circus clown in exile wants to ravage Westeros with dragonfire, to rape his sister and become Tywin 2.0 in Casterly Rock. There is nothing but pure obsession with the spoils of sin amongst Tywin’s offspring.

On the other hand, the Foster Lannister took the first and mandatory step as well as the second on the Blackwater when he broke away and gave up all claim to Lannister spoils. He gave up a comfortable lifestyle and a plum position, and took nothing with him that he earned through the Lannisters. True, he did have the gold from the Hand’s tournament, but that was his outside of Lannister service and legitimately earned, and even that was taken away, too. His break is thus absolute, he can’t look back.

Confession comes next. We don’t know what Sandor told the Elder Brother, but it’s not that hard to guess the things he may have said in confession at the Quiet Isle. How? By looking at what he tells Arya at the cave after winning his trial by combat against Beric:

“You killed Mycah,” she said once more, daring him to deny it. “Tell them. You did. You did.”

“I did.” His whole face twisted. “I rode him down and cut him in half, and laughed. I watched them beat your sister bloody too, watched them cut your father’s head off.”

It’s curious that, of all horrible things he must have witnessed in his former life, it’s these three specific crimes that torment Sandor: killing an innocent boy, and standing by as an innocent man was executed and an innocent girl was abused. All these three crimes sprout from Lannister sins.

In the Catholic rite, penance is the repudiation of one’s own sin and an acknowledgement that one must satisfy for them. It won’t do to go about it in a spread-out evenly and generalised way but accepting that it’s been you who sinned. Sandor is judged guilty by association by the Brotherhood Without Banners and he rejects the more outrageous attempts by them to make him pay in Gregor’s stead, but he does accept the sins he feels were his, too, not just his former masters’. Killing Mycah wasn’t his idea, but he was the executioner. Beheading Ned wasn’t his doing, but he had a role in the downfall of House Stark. Beating Sansa black and blue he never did, but he witnessed it and couldn’t save her like he thinks he should have. How can he make amends and give satisfaction for them, then?

It’s at this point when the road to redemption becomes even more blatantly religious in-world. For his sin of killing an innocent boy on royal orders, Sandor is judged by the faith of Rh’llor. Note that, in spite of the dozens of charges the BwB hurl at him, it’s Mycah the only accusation that sticks and that Sandor must make amends for with his own life were he to perish in the trial by combat he’s sentenced to. And also note that the accuser who is able to bring him to task where the others have failed is Arya.

Arya is the recipient of Sandor’s confession to his three crimes. Arya is friend, daughter, and sister to all three victims. And so Arya is the one to figuratively throw the gauntlet at Sandor and demand satisfaction. But, for all she tries her damnedest to be his judge, jury, and executioner at once, she ends up becoming Sandor’s act of public penance.

Lem grabbed her wrist and twisted, wrenching the dagger away. She kicked at him, but he would not give it back. “You go to hell, Hound,” she screamed at Sandor Clegane in helpless empty-handed rage. “You just go to hell!”

“He has,” said a voice scarce stronger than a whisper.

The trial was meant to punish Sandor for the sins of House Lannister undistinghsably from who committed which. But Sandor had lived his life already under penalty for those very sins. In Catholic theology, the wages of sin are death—as in damnation—and suffering. When Thoros says he’s a man enduring Hell, he’s referring to this suffering. Sandor’s face is a punishment. Serving those who enable Gregor to continue perpetrating the same crimes he’s done to Sandor has been a punishment.

Look at it like this: what’s more important to the three True Lannisters? Beauty, sword, Casterly Rock. Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion each define themselves by these things respectively, which they have by birth or think are theirs by birth. And what happens? GRRM plays God, and Cersei ends up fat, shaven, and walking her sagging naked body through the streets, Jaime ends up a one-handed cripple, and Tyrion ends up a destitute slave in Essos. Some readers see in this a punishment for their sins, Jaime even says at one point that the loss of his hand is retribution for tossing Bran from the tower. But the Lannisters still cling to the spoils earned with the crimes of their House: As of ADWD, Cersei is most likely far from humbled by her experience and may stage a vengeful comeback, the supposedly on a path to redemption Jaime is still serving as (and reaping the benefits of being) Lord Commander of his bastard’s Kingsguard even as he severs ties with Cersei, and Tyrion is most definitely scheming a vengeful comeback. They want to claim the whole kingdom as a reward for confessing their sins, they want others to suffer as a result of their supposedly redeeming confessions.

So it can be said that the Lannisters aren’t being punished so much as suffering the natural consequences of their choices. Unrepentant is the key difference. While one is unrepentant there is no punishment, just suffering. Suffering ought to lead to reflection. Reflection to an understanding of cause and effect and a sense of humility and responsibility. Reflection then leads to being repentant for one’s role. Only afterwards is suffering really punishment from one’s own POV. The only other way it can be punishment is when it is imposed by an authority and proclaimed punishment.

What about Sandor? How does he define himself? Strength. Outwardly, he boasts to Sansa that all he needs is a longsword, that strong arms rule the world, the weak should just give up and go belly up, et cetera. All bravado, but this holds a seed of truth inside for him, given that he was burnt young, innocent, and powerless, and only survived because he grew up tall as a tree and made himself useful to Lord Lannister… and his penance hits him right in the core. How so? Because he’s made to use his strength to serve the purpose of paying back his debt.

In ASOIAF, the ultimate forgiveness mechanism for crimes is the Night’s Watch. The entry fee is giving up all claims to anything of worldly value, all allegiances and connections and riches, and the post entry reward is selfless service. So, following this in-world model, we already have established that Sandor met the first requisite (give up anything of value) when he broke away at Blackwater, so the forgiveness implied by the results of the trial by combat and Arya’s choice there was earned well before their last scene at the Trident plays out. So, what remains is the second requirement to reach forgiven status.

The Hound goes thus to protect Arya to make up for the sin of his role in Ned’s downfall, and by extension his role in Sansa’s abuse as well because House Stark’s downfall left her defenceless under the grip of Sandor’s masters. Granted, it didn’t start as selfless service, because he did kidnap her in retaliation for his gold and had intentions to ransom her to her family, but the pragmatics of that are self-evident: he clearly couldn’t just show up at Robb’s camp to offer his services and expect to be taken seriously without a bargaining chip the Northerners won’t ignore. Arya became truly his penitent service when she lost her bargaining chip value to him courtesy of the Red Wedding and he still continued to protect her until he can’t go on anymore due to the wound to his leg.

On the surface, you could argue his is the same kind of punishment as Jaime’s loss of a hand: cut him at the leg and he’s no longer the Hound. But it goes beyond such a superficial reading, because if for Jaime it’s merely the start of a path he may or mayn’t ultimately walk to completion, for Sandor dispossessing him of the last vestige of his past life at the hands of current liegemen of his former masters inflicting a crippling blow to the physical strength he so much relies on is the end of the road (for now, at least). By the time he is abandoned on the banks of the Trident, he’s been surrounded in the imagery of forgiveness of two of the three main religions in ASOIAF plus one:

  • As per Beric and Thoros, the Lord of Light has given him back his life, which implies forgiveness because the crime he was tried for was of the a life for a life, blood for blood sort.
  • As per Lord Eddard’s beliefs, Arya’s refusal to carry out Northern justice after hearing his confessions and looking him in the eye implicitly lays out that the Old Gods also give him back his life.
  • We could argue there’s a fourth religion involved: the Faceless Men, because by taking him off her prayer, Arya extended forgiveness in the name of the God of the Many Faces.

Now it’s time for the Faith of the Seven to have their turn at placing Sandor’s soul on the measurement scales and deciding whether he’s forgiven or condemned, and here subtlety goes out the window. GRRM lays out the religious imagery of forgiveness and redemption rather thick on the entire Quiet Isle sequence, starting well before we see the place, well before we find out there’s a Gravedigger there. Just look at these lines from the conversations that Brienne and Septon Meribald have on the road:

“Why do they call it the Quiet Isle?” asked Podrick.

“Those who dwell here are penitents, who seek to atone for their sins through contemplation, prayer, and silence. Only the Elder Brother and his proctors are permitted to speak, and the proctors only for one day of every seven.”

A vow of silence is an act of contrition, a sacrifice by which we prove our devotion to the Seven Above. For a mute to take a vow of silence would be akin to a legless man giving up the dance.”

. . .

“Faith,” urged Septon Meribald. “Believe, persist, and follow, and we shall find the peace we seek.”

Penitence, atonement, finding peace… All the elements of being granted forgiveness. Martin couldn’t have made it clearer if he had placed a Here Be Redemption neon sign at the entrance to the Quiet Isle.

We can infer that Sandor confessed to the EB, either as he lay dying on the Trident or once he arrived to the QI, for otherwise the EB wouldn’t know all he knows about his life and in such detail. It’s relevant to highlight how the Elder Brother refers to the Hound as he pronounces him dead in contrast to how Brienne refers to him:

“I know a little of this man, Sandor Clegane. He was Prince Joffrey’s sworn shield for many a year, and even here we would hear tell of his deeds, both good and ill. If even half of what we heard was true, this was a bitter, tormented soul, a sinner who mocked both gods and men. He served, but found no pride in service. He fought, but took no joy in victory. He drank, to drown his pain in a sea of wine. He did not love, nor was he loved himself. It was hate that drove him. Though he committed many sins, he never sought forgiveness. Where other men dream of love, or wealth, or glory, this man Sandor Clegane dreamed of slaying his own brother, a sin so terrible it makes me shudder just to speak of it. Yet that was the bread that nourished him, the fuel that kept his fires burning. Ignoble as it was, the hope of seeing his brother’s blood upon his blade was all this sad and angry creature lived for . . . and even that was taken from him, when Prince Oberyn of Dorne stabbed Ser Gregor with a poisoned spear.”

“You sound as if you pity him,” said Brienne.

“I did. You would have pitied him as well, if you had seen him at the end. I came upon him by the Trident, drawn by his cries of pain. He begged me for the gift of mercy, but I am sworn not to kill again. Instead, I bathed his fevered brow with river water, and gave him wine to drink and a poultice for his wound, but my efforts were too little and too late. The Hound died there, in my arms.

“It is true, then,” she said dully. “Sandor Clegane is dead.”

“He is at rest.” The Elder Brother paused.

So here we have a figure of authority from the Faith describe Sandor Clegane (notice that this is how he calls him) as a “sinner who mocked the gods” and therefore in need of repentance and atonement, in contrast to how Brienne calls the Hound (also notice that this is how she calls him) a criminal she must execute, as she explicitly tells Brother Narbert. The law of men (the Crown) that Brienne represents has condemned Sandor, but the law of the gods (the Seven) that the EB represents has declared him “at rest.” And by this pronouncement of peace, we can only conclude that Sandor has met the confession requirement.

And the EB does have the authority to pronounce ego te absolvo. Traditionally, the Father Superior of a Catholic monastery can hear confession and absolve people same as an ordained priest, and the EB is just a Father Superior with a Fantasy name. That alone would give him the authority. The arrival of Septon Meribald to the QI for specific confession purposes is intriguing, because it seems to imply that in-world only Septons can hear confession:

He turned to Septon Meribald. “I hope that you have time to absolve us of our sins. Since the raiders slew old Septon Bennet, we have had no one to hear confession.”

That is true in real-life Catholicism, too, because not every priest has the authority to hear confession. However, Catholic canon law says that although only authorised priests can administer the sacrament of confession & absolution, any priest can hear the confession of a dying person because the danger of dying unconfessed trumps canon law. Sandor was dying (he thought) when the EB found him, so to consider the EB hearing his “final words” a valid confession is reasonable. And in any case, Meribald’s presence in the QI for the specific purpose of absolving the monks of their sins extends to Sandor in his capacity as a novice monk. The wording in the above passage is specific about absolution for this very reason.

Also, although we don’t know if Sandor and Meribald ever talked off-screen, we can’t ignore the symbolism of Meribald’s companion, Dog, being present when the good Septon hears confession:

“I shall make time,” said Meribald, “though I hope you have some better sins than the last time I came through.” Dog barked. “You see? Even Dog was bored.”

We can infer what penitence was imposed on Sandor after confession by looking at what he wears when he reappears on the QI. Would someone like him agree to wear monastic clothes if he’d not been talked into it? It had to be willing. His stay at the monastery itself is, going by my Miyamoto Musashi parallel, like staying secluded in the dungeon to study and reflect. His true penance is what he’s learning to do there: he’s been made a gravedigger.

… and higher still they passed a lichyard where a brother bigger than Brienne was struggling to dig a grave. From the way he moved, it was plain to see that he was lame. As he flung a spadeful of the stony soil over one shoulder, some chanced to spatter against their feet. “Be more watchful there,” chided Brother Narbert. “Septon Meribald might have gotten a mouthful of dirt.” The gravedigger lowered his head. When Dog went to sniff him he dropped his spade and scratched his ear.

“A novice,” explained Narbert.

Sandor Clegane, the man who lived by the sword and who left the dead to be food for dogs and wolves, is taught to give people humane burial. Let’s have a closer look at who the first grave he’s seen digging is for:

“Who is the grave for?” asked Ser Hyle, as they resumed their climb up the wooden steps.

“Brother Clement, may the Father judge him justly.”

“Was he old?” asked Podrick Payne.

“If you consider eight-and-forty old, aye, but it was not the years that killed him. He died of wounds he got at Saltpans. He had taken some of our mead to the market there, on the day the outlaws descended on the town.”

“The Hound?” said Brienne.

“Another, just as brutal. He cut poor Clement’s tongue out when he would not speak. Since he had taken a vow of silence, the raider said he had no need of it.

Sandor Clegane, the old Hound and the first of them all, is burying a victim of the new Hound. This is extremely significant, and from what the EB says, burials are Sandor’s primary occupation at the monastery:

“Too many corpses, these days.” The Elder Brother sighed. “Our gravedigger knows no rest. Rivermen, westermen, northmen, all wash up here. Knights and knaves alike. We bury them side by side, Stark and Lannister, Blackwood and Bracken, Frey and Darry. That is the duty the river asks of us in return for all its gifts, and we do it as best we can. Sometimes we find a woman, though . . . or worse, a little child. Those are the cruelest gifts.”

We don’t know if Sandor participates in the preparation of bodies for burial, but it wouldn’t be out of bounds to assume that it may very well be a part of his duties as gravedigger. If so, then the idea of this being his penance picks up steam. He does have other humble duties, too, like serving at the table:

The last of the food had been cleared away by the novices whose task it was to serve. Most were boys near Podrick’s age, or younger, but there were grown men as well, amongst them the big gravedigger they had encountered on the hill, who walked with the awkward lurching gait of one half-crippled.

He’s counted amongst “the novices whose task it was to serve.” Service is, indeed, what the Seven have imposed on Sandor via the Elder Brother as the way to make up for his sins, and his primary duty is laying to rest all those who this war has taken away, impartially and humanely, regardless of allegiance. Why this specific service, though? The EB’s words summing up Sandor’s former life illustrate the motive:

“I know a little of this man, Sandor Clegane. He was Prince Joffrey’s sworn shield for many a year, and even here we would hear tell of his deeds, both good and ill. If even half of what we heard was true, this was a bitter, tormented soul, a sinner who mocked both gods and men. He served, but found no pride in service. He fought, but took no joy in victory. He drank, to drown his pain in a sea of wine. He did not love, nor was he loved himself. It was hate that drove him. Though he committed many sins, he never sought forgiveness. Where other men dream of love, or wealth, or glory, this man Sandor Clegane dreamed of slaying his own brother, a sin so terrible it makes me shudder just to speak of it. Yet that was the bread that nourished him, the fuel that kept his fires burning. Ignoble as it was, the hope of seeing his brother’s blood upon his blade was all this sad and angry creature lived for . . . and even that was taken from him, when Prince Oberyn of Dorne stabbed Ser Gregor with a poisoned spear.”

Ser Kevan’s snarky words to Cersei about rabid dogs being the fault of their masters is precisely why Sandor felt no pride in serving House Lannister. Thoros and the EB coincide in considering this service his personal Hell, which only prolonged his childhood suffering well into adulthood. But he’d never sought—or found—atonement for his sins by breaking clean with his lieges, settling instead for stubbornly adhering to his own moral code and refusing to give in to the toxic dysfunctionality of Lannister dynamics. The Hound wouldn’t have sought forgiveness, that man had to die, and so he did:

That was another shock. “How did he die?”

“By the sword, as he had lived.”

There’s a very unsubtle baptism imagery wrapped around the Hound’s death: that of rebirth by water. In Catholic theology, the whole point of using water is to signify purification from evil, the cleansing of our outward actions, and the passage to spiritual rebirth:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

(John 3:3-5)

According to the EB himself, this is what he did first when he found a dying Sandor:

“I came upon him by the Trident, drawn by his cries of pain. He begged me for the gift of mercy, but I am sworn not to kill again. Instead, I bathed his fevered brow with river water, and gave him wine to drink and a poultice for his wound, but my efforts were too little and too late. The Hound died there, in my arms.”

The good Brother isn’t lying when he says the Hound died there, he’s simply speaking in religious metaphor. Circling back to Catholicism as our model for understanding the Faith of the Seven, this religion considers the act of baptism the birth of a “new man” to replace the “old man,” and goes as far as actually using death as a metaphor for this transformation, as this Biblical passage shows:

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

(Romans 6:4-6)

Thus, baptism by water is the symbol of the death and burial of the old man who led a past life without forgiveness. Which also explains why the Elder Brother tells Brienne he personally “buried” the Hound:

“I buried him myself. I can tell you where his grave lies, if you wish. I covered him with stones to keep the carrion eaters from digging up his flesh, and set his helm atop the cairn to mark his final resting place.”

And it also explains why the EB chose to bury the Hound’s “flesh” (his armour, sword, possessions, probably some of his literal flesh if he cut or cauterised his leg wound) and erect a grave. He wanted to make it as literal and irreversible as humanly possible that the Hound was well and truly dead, and have the fact sink in both into Sandor’s mind as well as the mind of anyone who ever came asking. And to drive across the point that he’s talking about a rebirth, the EB also tells Brienne about his own transformation after he “died in the battle of the Trident” fighting for Rhaegar:

“Instead I woke here, upon the Quiet Isle. The Elder Brother told me I had washed up on the tide, naked as my name day. I can only think that someone found me in the shallows, stripped me of my armor, boots, and breeches, and pushed me back out into the deeper water. The river did the rest. We are all born naked, so I suppose it was only fitting that I come into my second life the same way.”

He underwent the same process of being bathed in river water and ending up half-dead on the same isle where he’d be saved and given a second chance at life. He’s now in a position to give Sandor the same opportunity, and did so doubly, saving both his physical body by healing him from a wound that, as per his reputation, not even maesters would’ve healed, and most likely his soul too, by pushing Sandor towards a path of atonement that would lead to reconciliation. His involvement in the man’s rebirth makes it possible to pronounce Sandor Clegane finally at peace instead of dead like he didn’t hesitate to do for the Hound:

“It is true, then,” she said dully. “Sandor Clegane is dead.”

“He is at rest.”

The Elder Brother is simply following the “old man” vs “new man” religious phraseology when he makes this Sandor vs Hound distinction that Brienne doesn’t grasp. With the inclusion of this scene between the EB and Brienne that serves no other purpose than to let readers know the fate of Sandor Clegane, Martin has written him to be the only character in ASOIAF that is surrounded by the imagery of forgiveness from three major religions, a fact that isn’t accidental but has to serve a plot purpose. You don’t simply have a character be forgiven by Rh’llor, the Old Gods, and the Seven (and the God of Many Faces for additional pathos) for no reason and no future completion at all. We don’t know yet whether Sandor’s story will ultimately have him serve a new master or continue as a freelance non-knight, his own dog as he put it, but one thing this theme of tripartite forgiveness makes clear is that he won’t serve a bad cause ever again. Forgiveness, for Sandor Clegane, means service, specifically service that he can take pride in and pay it forward, just as the Elder Brother has found pride in being a healer famous for saving hopeless cases, making use of an ability he’d not have been able to if not for his second life. Clegane’s redemption arc is one of service and protection, one that makes use of his natural talents, so it makes literary sense that henceforward there’d be a continuation of this pattern but with the inclusion of a worthwhile cause.

Murder as a plot device and its impact on bias

05 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by brashcandie in General ASOIAF

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agot, analysis, rereading sandor, sandor clegane, the hound

bubug

Official poster by the artist Bubug for the Rereading Sandor project 

In 2015, Pawn to Player embarked on another major reread project, this time centred on Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound, who plays a prominent role in the narrative and character development of the two Stark sisters, Sansa and Arya. The project was conducted at the Westeros.org forum, and led by our resident Sandor expert Milady of York, whose essay we are featuring below.  Joining in the project as co-hosts were myself and PTP member Doglover. As outlined in the introduction to our examination of the Hound’s character:

In starting this reread, our central preoccupation is with discussing Sandor on his own terms and for his own sake. By this we mean to establish the authority of Sandor’s viewpoint: delving inside the man’s unique characteristics, the conflicts, the controversies and, of course, the connections he is able to foster with others. We fundamentally believe that while the Hound may be dead, Sandor Clegane is still alive, and still has a significant part to play in how the rest of the drama unfolds in Martin’s fantasy epic. The Will to Change is concerned with his personal journey, with looking at the experiences that have defined the man we meet, but also at the ones that eventually challenge and transform him.

It’s taken a while, but we’ve finally uploaded our Sandor reread summaries and analyses here at the blog for readers to easily access (see top menu). There’s a wealth of valuable insight contained in this material, pertaining to the central POV characters that Sandor interacts with, and crucially, for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the man himself, who occupies pride of place as one of Martin’s most vivid and memorable secondary character portrayals. An examination of the infamous non-knight elucidates core themes of the ASOIAF universe and challenges readers to reassess our first impressions and biases, leading to a greater appreciation for the complexity of human nature and interaction that make the series such a hallmark of the fantasy genre.

The following essay was completed as part of the Rereading Sandor project, written as a “Featured Commentary” in the A Game of Thrones section.  It offers very relevant insight into how child murder functions as a mechanism to elicit varying reactions and degrees of empathy from readers, via our identification with the victims of the crime, and how it factors into the redemptive arcs of the perpetrators of these violent acts in different ways. We hope you enjoy reading it and welcome your feedback.

 

FEATURED COMMENTARY:

Murder as a plot device and its impact on bias

To the extent that I’ve been able to make the characters real, people invest in them emotionally, they identify with them, and they like or dislike other of the characters. They argue about them—I find that very gratifying. It’s one of the things that suggests to me that what I’m doing with the characters is working. When I hear from different fans who have varying opinions about a character, about who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy, and who they’d like to live and who they’d like to die—it’s not always the expected ones, and they disagree sharply with each other. That’s a good sign. In real life, people don’t always like the same people. People make moral judgments that differ sharply with each other—witness some of the arguments we see going on about the current election. People should respond to fictional characters in the same way. If you introduce a character who everybody loves, or who everybody hates, that’s probably a sign that that character’s a little too one-dimensional, because in real life there’s no one that everybody loves, and there’s no one that everybody hates.

—— George R. R. Martin, in an interview

by Milady of York

When discussing personal change-based arcs in ASOIAF like those of Sandor, Jaime and Theon, the most divisive topic is probably that of child-killing. In broad strokes, the diverging sides will argue either in favour of discernment through attenuating surrounding circumstances and contextual liability, or will argue based on questions of morality and justice that provide cause for impeaching and judging them. However, there’s one factor that doesn’t get discussed as much yet does have considerable influence on the matter on a meta-conscious level, and that does mould people’s opinion to variable extents, wheresoever they may stand.

This factor carries the name of Identifiable Victim Effect that psychologists have given it, and is really more comprehensible than its scholarly-sounding classification tag implies. In fact, some might already know of it from somewhere by name or by description.

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

This phrase mistakenly fastened onto Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin, but likely from earlier and by someone else, condenses quite well what the Identifiable Victim Effect is and also gives the phenomenon its pop-culture denominator of A Million is a Statistic: it refers to the natural tendency of individuals to sympathise with, defend and offer greater aid when a specific, visible and identifiable person—the “victim”—is observed under hardship, as contrasted to a large, vaguely defined and unseen group of several people undergoing the same hardship, as clinical therapist Rebecca Collins explained it, because of proximity, for these “vivid, flesh and blood-victims are often more powerful sources of persuasion than abstract statistic.”

The same researcher also points out that this doesn’t end at simply empathising with and helping the victim, but is furthermore a two-pronged effect: its other spearpoint is directed at the perpetrator. There’s greater motivation towards doing something to them in the name of the victim, towards defensive attack and punishing, be it verbal or physical, and when the opportunity for punishment appears, then we’re more likely to dispense it, and often more harshly, if/when punishing the specific and identifiable victimiser of an specific and identifiable victim.

This would be due to neurologically imprinted and outwardly nourished cognitive processes shared by all humans. People possess three types of empathy: cognitive empathy, that is to share what the other thinks; then affective empathy, meaning to feel what the other feels too; and finally sympathetic empathy, which is a mix of the former two, conjoined with the impulse to take action and do something. And empathy is a finite quality, it has a limit and a defined breaking point. Such a limit to the ability to empathise is the so-called Dunbar Number effect, explained by anthropologist Robin Dunbar as a psychological phenomenon that restricts the amount of a person’s significant relationships to a certain number (which for him is 150 within a 100-200 range, but others have given different numbers), because the innate ability to handle meaningful and emotionally-fulfilling relationships is less optimal and falters past that limit, as the close network fades into the abstract, crowded mass of people. As a result, the amount of sympathy that death, cruelty, injustice and suffering evoke is inversely proportional to the magnitude of its effects, and it’s our knowledge of the affected person that has the major impact. Paul Slovic, who did some studies to confirm this, calls it “psychic numbing” and declares that the problem with anonymous statistics is that they don’t activate moral emotions, because the mind can’t grasp suffering on such a massive and abstract scale. And so, for example, people can be riveted easily when media show a child suffering, but empathy is turned off when the news talk of thousands of little ones suffering.

Applying this to bias in literature, historically the murder of the innocent and the weak as a vilification method to make the Bad/Evil One out of someone is a very ancient rhetorical technique that seems to have been always there, from the Old Testament to the rousing speeches of Classical playwrights to Shakespeare’s works and the modern examples in any Top Fictional Villains list. Regardless of the evolution of customs and ethics across epochs, victim identification by proximity remains constant for reasons of the stable cognitive traits earlier mentioned, an ages-tested effectiveness that accounts for its extensive employment. To create the perception of a character as a villain—or an anti-hero, depending—in the readership’s mind, or at the very least make a case for interpreting a scene as an indictment of the character as deeply-flawed, the ideal writing device is to have them inflict suffering on and/or kill an innocent. This is quite effective in writing because:

  1. The victim is innocent, an absolutely pivotal component for the effect to be present. Or they must be presumed to be guiltless. And if furthermore they’re defenceless, the intensity of loathing for the perpetrator is higher; which is why little children, women and the crippled are chosen by default.

  2. When the bad act resulting in the death or suffering happens on-page, whether in the perpetrator’s POV or the victim’s, we get to “witness” the act as it unfolds. Generally, this is the best option for maximum emotional impact, both because the character who suffers pain and the character who inflicts it are more memorable, and even when readers don’t necessarily feel what the character feels, the intensity of it intensifies the readers’ own feelings.

  3. Vividness and proximity matter more than magnitude. Due to the victim identification repercussions, how bad the deed is isn’t impactful by itself, for even if it isn’t comparatively as heinous or as sadistic as what happens to other characters in the same story, it will affect the reader nonetheless. For this reason, minor transgressions such as slaps, crude words and the like can matter a lot if directed at the identifiable victim the readers are partial to.

  4. The POV character’s reactions penetrate into the readers and influence their own reactions, often more than the narrative itself. This is especially true in three instances: when the deed is done off-page, because then we only have the POV’s post-facto reaction to build ours on; when the victim is a non-POV, because here it falls on the POV to pass judgement, and whichever path is chosen after the initial shock: vindictiveness, justice, forgiveness, indifference, etc., is likely to be shared by the readers; and finally, when the perpetrator is a non-POV, in which case the possibility of bias is so high as to be a certainty for most cases. Because, as there’s only one version and even when it’s true in essence, not getting to know the perpetrator’s motivations (be it selfish or understandable), essentially creates a deceptive appearance, and we judge the perpetrator’s motives on this apparent “proof.”

The off-stage/non-POV option leaves more room to a writer for subversion than when it happens to be on-stage/POV, which is still possible provided it applies certain counterweight measures. In GRRM’s books, only one of the three cases when a character acquires a villainous reputation through murder of a child occurs in present-time in a POV: the throwing of Bran out the window from the tower at Winterfell in AGOT Bran II:

Bran’s fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before you fall.”

Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked him up to the ledge. “What are you doing?” the woman demanded.

The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. “How old are you, boy?”

“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in the man’s forearm. He let go sheepishly.

The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.

Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet him.

Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn.

From this incident, a couple things stand out: On the pro, it’s Bran’s second POV, we already know a fair bit about this boy and what we know is that he’s a sympathetic sweet boy, and facts like that he’s daydreaming about what a great Kingsguard knight he’d wish to be add to the tragedy of being maimed by a Kingsguard knight. On the contra: we don’t have a POV by Jaime, and what we know of him from others is unflattering; plus he willingly and consciously put himself at risk of discovery for engaging in incestuous adultery in a foreign castle. The knowledge of the reasons Jaime had for throwing Bran out the window that comes later is contrasted with the fact that the woman and children he’d be protecting with this crime are also more crimes of his, which makes this a very complex moral issue. To cement the bias, the first version we hear from the guilty duo comes from Cersei, who claims to have never wanted Bran to be thrown, just intimidated into silence, and blames all on Jaime’s impulsiveness. Thus, by the time we get to read about his version, it’s too late to completely revert this perception: we already know fairly accurately what happened and why, we spent two whole books in the victim’s head reading about the painful post-traumatic mourning of the child, we see the consequences of that action blow off, and Jaime’s initial apparent lack of repentance and attempt at latching blame on Bran by insisting the boy wasn’t innocent as he’d been spying on them in his first chapters in ASOS pre-maiming are damning too. In other words, readers are wholly and deeply identified with the child victim. It appears impossible to modify that somehow. Yet it’s done nevertheless through the humanising of Jaime after he loses the hand that caused the paralysis of Bran.

But there’s a catch: having Jaime lose his hand by itself isn’t as effective a tool for reverting the negative perception. Following the principle that the reaction of the POV or victim counts greatly for the readers, Bran’s side of the tale is annulled by means of depriving him of any memory of who did that to him. The fact that Bran doesn’t remember it was Jaime and his weak clues are quickly shooed away by the Three-Eyed Crow make it possible for Jaime to gain in sympathy through his own POV unhindered by a counterbalance POV of his victim. We don’t get to read what Bran’s reaction would be, we can’t be certain whether he’d react with hate or with forgiveness, no idea on how it’d affect him to know. Therefore, authorial plot reasons for erasing Bran’s memory notwithstanding, the end result is that the beneficiary of this writing method was Jaime at the cost of Bran, as his “redemptive” arc in ASOS wouldn’t have had the same impact with Bran’s memory intact. For this reason, it should be interesting to read the child’s thoughts when he finds out whether by recovering his memory or through use of his powers.

Theon’s murder of the two miller’s boys is another interesting study with unique characteristics the other examples don’t possess, that bring it closer to the A Million is a Statistic analogy than the others, because it’s the only one that actually has anonymous victims. Those two boys are faceless and nameless, never glimpsed on-page and not described in detail or called by their names. This is also the only case in which the perpetrator has a POV that reveals in present-time all his emotions and his motivation for the crime, which are selfish and convey revulsion, and also brings to view in-world reactions like Maester Luwin’s quiet distress and Asha’s scorn:

“Well, I’m no great warrior like you, brother,” She quaffed half a horn of ale and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I saw the heads above your gates. Tell me true, which one gave you the fiercest fight, the cripple or the babe?”

Theon could feel the blood rushing to his face. He took no joy from those heads, no more than he had in displaying the headless bodies of the children before the castle. Old Nan stood with her soft toothless mouth opening and closing soundlessly, and Farlen threw himself at Theon, snarling like one of his hounds. Urzen and Cadwyl had to beat him senseless with the butts of their spears. How did I come to this? he remembered thinking as he stood over the fly-speckled bodies.

Only Maester Luwin had the stomach to come near. Stone-faced, the small grey man had begged leave to sew the boys’ heads back onto their shoulders, so they might be laid in the crypts below with the other Stark dead.

“No,” Theon had told him. “Not the crypts.”

“But why, my lord? Surely they cannot harm you now. It is where they belong. All the bones of the Starks—”

“I said no.” He needed the heads for the wall, but he had burned the headless bodies that very day, in all their finery. Afterward he had knelt amongst the bones and ashes to retrieve a slag of melted silver and cracked jet, all that remained of the wolf’s-head brooch that had once been Bran’s. He had it still.

“I treated Bran and Rickon generously,” he told his sister. “They brought their fate on themselves.”

Yet the miller’s boys still remain a statistic by virtue of their anonymity that precludes emotional investment in them for themselves. This becomes a scenario in which these boys are overshadowed by the two Starks they are passed off as, given that Greyjoy’s other victims—Bran and Rickon—have had enough time on-page for the readership to form an attachment to them and have already endured enough tragedies to elicit sympathy; more importantly: unlike with Jaime, there’s a counterbalance POV from Bran showing the other side, thereby “broadcasting live” what Brandon thinks and feels about the perpetrator he grew up with. Which would account for why Theon’s actions towards the Stark family are more likely to be judged harsher than towards the peasant boys.

In the third case, Sandor, we again have a distinctive feature: both victim and perpetrator are non-POVs, so both are by necessity filtered through the POVs connected to this murder, and therefore readers will absorb the POVs’ reactions to it in absence of reading at least one of the involved viewpoints. To complicate matters, no POV was near to witness the killing of Mycah; it happens off-page and the victim is a minor enough background extra as to have been tagged as a statistic if not for GRRM’s efficacious use of literary countermeasures. Those were:

  • The butcher’s boy isn’t anonymous. He has a name and a face due to Sansa and Arya respectively. From hearing the younger girl say things like “Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford,” we know that the boy is her friend and that she loved playing with him along the slow-paced trip to King’s Landing; and thanks to the elder girl, we saw him onstage in AGOT Sansa I at the fight by the Trident, wherein we saw him be hurt and be terrified of the Crown Prince.

  • He is killed by and because of unsympathetic non-POVs. Not only have we verified that the boy is innocent of the charges, which heightens our sense of injustice, but we’re also aware already from before that Joffrey and Cersei are horrible people of whom not even the only Lannister POV in the first book thinks highly. So, too, is their Hound perceived as such by association atop of his own acts.

  • His death elicits revulsion from a POV. In the wake of the prescribed technique that a main character’s reactions will influence our opinion, Lord Stark is the one that gets to see first the dead body and gauge the morality of the perpetrator, in AGOT Eddard III:

He was walking back to the tower to give himself up to sleep at last when Sandor Clegane and his riders came pounding through the castle gate, back from their hunt.

There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped in a bloody cloak. “No sign of your daughter, Hand,” the Hound rasped down, “but the day was not wholly wasted. We got her little pet.” He reached back and shoved the burden off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned.

Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find for Arya, but it was not Nymeria after all. It was the butcher’s boy, Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above.

“You rode him down,” Ned said.

The Hound’s eyes seemed to glitter through the steel of that hideous dog’s-head helm. “He ran.” He looked at Ned’s face and laughed. “But not very fast.”

  • The butcher’s boy has a POV champion. The killing could’ve been one more unjudged and unavenged Lannister crime against smallfolk in-universe and easily slid into becoming a statistic if this hadn’t been developed as an expanded plotline, and a way to ameliorate the characterisation of both Sandor and Arya. The latter’s is the reaction following Ned’s, and given her closeness to the victim, it resonates with the readership. We get to read the whole long process towards becoming Mycah’s champion, from her father’s rueful thoughts that she “was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy” to her own recounting of the over-exaggerated version she got in AGOT Arya II . . .

They’d let the queen kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he’d cut him up in so many pieces that they’d given him back to the butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig they’d slaughtered.

From her guilt-ridden talk with her father in the same chapter . . .

Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I was trying to learn, but . . . ” Her eyes filled with tears. “I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on her all at once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me . . . ”

Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his chest. “No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the Hound’s door, him and the cruel woman he serves.”

. . . to the spat with her sister in AGOT Sansa III, the point where we see the initial reaction evolved into a desire for retribution:

Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. “Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them.”

“It’s not the same,” Sansa said. “The Hound is Joffrey’s sworn shield. Your butcher’s boy attacked the prince.”

And at the end of the road, the culmination of the process is that Arya decides she wants to kill all those who wronged those that matter to her, starting the death prayer in ACOK Arya VI, and including the Hound specifically for Mycah:

Arya watched and listened and polished her hates the way Gendry had once polished his horned helm. Dunsen wore those bull’s horns now, and she hated him for it. She hated Polliver for Needle, and she hated old Chiswyck who thought he was funny. And Raff the Sweetling, who’d driven his spear through Lommy’s throat, she hated even more. She hated Ser Amory Lorch for Yoren, and she hated Ser Meryn Trant for Syrio, the Hound for killing the butcher’s boy Mycah, and Ser Ilyn and Prince Joffrey and the queen for the sake of her father and Fat Tom and Desmond and the rest, and even for Lady, Sansa’s wolf. The Tickler was almost too scary to hate. At times she could almost forget he was still with them; when he was not asking questions, he was just another soldier, quieter than most, with a face like a thousand other men.

Every night Arya would say their names. “Ser Gregor,” she’d whisper to her stone pillow. “Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.”

All four factors contribute in tandem, but the third and fourth are by far the most important when it pertains to bias formation because of the non-witness POVs involved. With regard to this, there can be no doubt that GRRM does consciously use writing methods to evoke certain reactions in his readership, to which he’s alluded in interviews like the opening quote in this write-up, and when he said the following: [http://web.archive.org/web/20001005212114/eventhorizon.com/sfzine/chats/transcripts/031899.html]:

When I write a POV, after all, I am trying to put you in that person’s head so you will presumably empathize with them, at least while reading the chapter.

In view of this, the structure of Eddard’s account is of particular interest to analyse its genesis, not only because it mirrors a similar scene in which he also jumped to hasty conclusions on sight without knowing the circumstances yet (the killing of Aerys), but also because the abrupt ending of the scene right after the Hound’s words is very eye-opening: GRRM puts the full stop after the “‘He ran.” He looked at Ned’s face and laughed. “But not very fast’” line without giving the reader a chance to find out what Eddard said after, or whether he ever did, what Sandor said or did after, etc. So as a direct product of this deliberate cliffhanger, the details that stick are those that shocked the most, like the cleaved-in-half state of the boy’s body, Eddard’s judgemental stance and the Hound’s laughter.

Standing on that foundation, Arya’s reaction keeps it vivid and current throughout her POV from Book I until the Hound “dies,” and because the author doesn’t go point-counterpoint like with the other two child-killer characters, her view of the killing predominates. For a while at least, because Martin didn’t let it lie with any of the three cases and provided with details that would allow moving past initial bias. His intention when writing the “redemptive” arcs was, in his own words, to explore the concept of forgiveness and whether a person can be forgiven [http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1405], about which he explains:

One of the things I wanted to explore with Jaime, and with so many of the characters, is the whole issue of redemption. When can we be redeemed? Is redemption even possible? I don’t have an answer. But when do we forgive people? You see it all around in our society, in constant debates. Should we forgive Michael Vick? I have friends who are dog-lovers who will never forgive Michael Vick. Michael Vick has served years in prison; he’s apologized. Has he apologized sufficiently? Woody Allen: Is Woody Allen someone that we should laud, or someone that we should despise? Or Roman Polanski, Paula Deen. Our society is full of people who have fallen in one way or another, and what do we do with these people? How many good acts make up for a bad act? If you’re a Nazi war criminal and then spend the next 40 years doing good deeds and feeding the hungry, does that make up for being a concentration-camp guard? I don’t know the answer, but these are questions worth thinking about. I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then?

We can safely assume that the Hound is amongst those “many of the characters,” and that the road trip across the Riverlands and the Vale with Arya did serve to explore the topic in his own arc as well as hers, using Arya in the triple role of champion of the victim, judge and executioner. And this is why details like her three chances to kill him and hesitating before first stab, thinking of him by his first name after a while in his company, taking him off her death prayer, and needing to resort to childish rationalisation when leaving him to die are of utmost significance in our future analysis, because of their antithetical function when taken into account in conjunction with his actions and words during that period.

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