Episode 133: A CLASH OF KINGS, JON VII: "The Hills Have Eyes" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.

Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-third episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Hills Have Eyes: An Analysis of ACOK, Jon VII,” in which Jon gets some practical education from Qhorin Halfhand and some … weird education from his brother Bran.

Speaking of education, I hear that someone called my name. Hi everyone, this Stefan Sasse, host of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour! Sean T. Collins, with whom I have the honor of hosting this venerable enterprise, and I are on the cusp of entering our tenth year in podcasting about ASOIAF. We’re dinosaurs, is what I’m saying. In case you’re wondering about my accent, be warned that I’m German. ;) I’m a teacher by profession, nerd by passion, and I’m super psyched to be here today. Thanks for the invitation, guys!

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Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Queer Alex, Beyonce's Favorite Stan and Bastard of Chromatica, Rainbow Commander of the Theydes and Gentlethems, one of our small council patrons, asks:

Mance's goal was to get the free folks behind the wall. He bluffed that he would bring the wall down with his fake horn but as he didn't have it and ultimately wanted the protection the wall affords even if he did have, I don't think he would use it. So my question is, considering Mance was once a crow and would presumably know the personalities of LC Mormont and the other higher ups of the NW. Would it be possible for some sort of parlay to happen between Mance and LC Mormont? The NW sent Jon on a faux parlay so it would imply that the concept of negotiating terms and parlaying is something on the table. I mean it seems mostly like a plot necessity that the wildlings and NW exhaust themselves and their old guard so that Jon, Tormund, and Val can rise but what terms do you think Mance could have brought to LC Mormont to broker some sort of truce or at best refugee program for the wildlings fleeing from The Others?

I have this impression of Johnny Depp whenever someone uses the term parlay. For certain, that option is always on the table, and had Mance asked for a parlay, sure, LC Mormont would have obliged him. That’s just courteous, after all, and he doesn’t use it as a cudgel to assassinate Mance. But I struggle with the idea that that particular discussion would yield any dividends. LC Mormont isn’t the type to even take the idea of Mance owning the Horn of Joramun seriously, like Jon does. If we’re talking about a LC Mormont who survived the Great Ranging, that calculus changes, obviously, but the guy we meet in “A Game of Thrones” I have a hard time seeing negotiating with Mance. Even so, if we assume a changed LC Mormont after the Ranging, I don’t see him arriving at any kind of compromise with the wildlings short of total surrender. It takes the specific experiences and insights that Jon gains, and about which we’ll talk in the episode proper, to forge what will become the new Night’s Watch policy in ADWD.

So, thank you Queer Alex for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions that we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, merch, access to the NotASlack and bonus episodes like our just-released “The New World”: our patreon-only analysis of Ridley Scott’s 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. We were joined by LukeIsAmazing for that episode, and it’s available now for all Poor Fellow and above patrons over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF along with thirty-two other patreon-only episodes covering topics like our five-part analysis of TWOW, The Forsaken, the endgame of Stannis Baratheon, how GoT whitewashed Jon, Dany and Tyrion and so many other topics!

Absolutely! And as periodic-reminder: our next stretch goal is to attain 1250 total patrons. And after we achieve that, we’ll begin a multi-part series for all patrons on the first Dunk and Egg novella: The Hedge Knight. So, check us out!

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Jon Snow, he had scaled a mountain in the Skirling Pass with Stonesnake, killed his first man in combat and listened to Ygritte tell Jon a story of Bael the Bard before sparing her life. Put on the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack (you know I did as I wrote this synopsis) as Jon and the rangers run up and down mountains in this synopsis of ACOK, Jon VII!!

Synopsis

It was dark in the Skirling Pass. The great stone flanks of the mountains hid the sun for most of the day, so they rode in shadow, the breath of man and horse steaming in the cold air. Icy fingers of water trickled down from the snowpack above into small frozen pools that cracked and broke beneath the hooves of their garrons. Sometimes they would see a few weeds struggling from some crack in the rock or a splotch of pale lichen, but there was no grass, and they were above the trees now.

It’s like the surface of the moon crossed with Iceland. Cold, beautiful and lifeless.

Jon moves up a steep track which narrows at points, causing the rangers to move single file with Dalbridge in the lead, scanning ahead for any dangers. But at least good boy Ghost was alongside Jon, occasionally pausing if he heard something. The men and wolf make it to the highest point of the Skirling Pass, and Qhorin orders a halt to wait for nightfall before they proceed down the mountains into the valley of the Milkwater. Jon thinks that Qhorin’s order makes sense. He is a BAMF after all. Plus, it was wiser to move by night to obscure their movement. Besides, there was bound to be more watchers looking for them beyond the three they encountered in Jon VI.

So, the rangers get down to conducting their priorities of work within their patrol base (lil infantry terminology shout-out there for the ones in the know), setting security, feeding. And Qhorin conducts weapons maintenance, sharpening his blade. Jon judges this moment as the ripe time to confess what he did to Qhorin:

"My lord," he said, "you never asked me how it went. With the girl."

"I am no lord, Jon Snow." Qhorin slid the stone smoothly along the steel with his two-fingered hand.

"She told me Mance would take me, if I ran with her."

Qhorin says that Ygritte was telling the truth. When Jon says that Ygritte told him a story, Qhorin interrupts and says yup, Stonesnake told him that Ygritte told him the story of Bael the Bard. It was a story that Mance Rayder used to sing after he returned from ranging. He loved wildling music and their women. This brings Jon up short. Qhorin knew Mance? He sure did. Everyone knew him. So, if Qhorin knew him, did he know why Mance deserted?

"For a wench, some say. For a crown, others would have it." Qhorin tested the edge of his sword with the ball of his thumb. "He liked women, Mance did, and he was not a man whose knees bent easily, that's true. But it was more than that. He loved the wild better than the Wall. It was in his blood. He was wildling born, taken as a child when some raiders were put to the sword. When he left the Shadow Tower he was only going home again."

"Was he a good ranger?"

"He was the best of us," said the Halfhand, "and the worst as well. Only fools like Thoren Smallwood despise the wildlings. They are as brave as we are, Jon. As strong, as quick, as clever. But they have no discipline. They name themselves the free folk, and each one thinks himself as good as a king and wiser than a maester. Mance was the same. He never learned how to obey."

Jon decides that now is the time to fess up to what he did with Ygritte. So, he reveals that he let Ygritte go. Strangely, Qhorin doesn’t sound surprised by Jon’s confession. But he does ask why Jon did it. Well, to Jon, he wanted to be like his father Ned, look into someone’s eyes before taking their head. But when he looked into Ygritte’s eyes, he sprouted a chubby. No, wait. Not that. He, um, saw no evil in her. Yeah, there’s the ticket. But Qhorin asks about the other two that they killed, and Jon says they had to kill them, or they would have sounded the horn.

Qhorin agrees, and Jon continues, saying that Stonesnake has Ygritte’s knife and axe. Plus, she’s behind the rangers now without weapons and afoot. Qhorin, again, strangely agrees and says that Ygritte was not likely to be a threat to them now.

"If I had needed her dead, I would have left her with Ebben, or done the thing myself."

"Then why did you command it of me?"

"I did not command it. I told you to do what needed to be done, and left you to decide what that would be." Qhorin stood and slid his longsword back into its scabbard. "When I want a mountain scaled, I call on Stonesnake. Should I need to put an arrow through the eye of some foe across a windy battlefield, I summon Squire Dalbridge. Ebben can make any man give up his secrets. To lead men you must know them, Jon Snow. I know more of you now than I did this morning."

"And if I had slain her?" asked Jon.

"She would be dead, and I would know you better than I had before. But enough talk. You ought be sleeping. We have leagues to go, and dangers to face. You will need your strength."

Jon knows that sleep would not be easy up here, but he knows he has to try. So, he calls Ghost over to him, but the direwolf just stares at him and heads off to hunt instead. So, Jon pulls his cloak over himself and passes out, dreaming of direwolves.

The dream Jon has is from the POV of Ghost. Ghost knows instinctively that there are five direwolves now instead of six, and he feels empty and incomplete as a result. Ghost considers all of this as he lifts his head to the sky growing dark. He howls, hoping to hear a direwolf respond. But it’s nothing but lonely, blowing snow.

Jon?

The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .

A weirwood.

Well, things are about to get completely normal from here on out, right? No.

The weirwood grew from solid rock and was skinny compared to the weirwoods Jon had seen. But it was still growing. GhostJon circles the weirwood and comes to the red eyes of the weirwood. He sees that the tree has three eyes. Did Bran always have three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This is some normal direwolf and tree convo. Very normal.

Ghost sniffs at the tree and smells the wood and the boy. But there were other smells too. Earth, stone and … death. Ghost’s fur bristles, and he bares his fangs. The tree responds that he’s not afraid of the dark. No one can see him in the darkness. But he can see everyone else. You just need to open your eyes. The tree then very normally reaches down and touches Ghost.

And then Ghost flashes to another spot: on the mountains overlooking a deep cliff into a valley below. Ghost sees the end of the valley, blue with a great lake ringed by snow capped peaks. And there were thousands of men down in the valley. Some were digging into the ground. Others were preparing for the war shit. But the camp was haphazard, unplanned with tents and shelters thrown up at seeming random with people and animals all over the grounds.

This is no army, no more than it is a town. This is a whole people come together.

Hmmm, the Jon Snow ASOS and ADWD wildling arc, hmmm.

Then GhostJon sees what he thinks is a mound moving. But it ain’t a mound. It’s a big ass beast with a snout for a nose with a massive thing riding it. Not a man. Something else. But then GhostJon feels a gust of cold. He looks up, fur bristling as a shrill scream splits the air as freedom blots out the sun.

"Ghost!" Jon shouted, sitting up. He could still feel the talons, the pain. "Ghost, to me!"

Ebben appeared, grabbed him, shook him. "Quiet! You mean to bring the wildlings down on us? What's wrong with you, boy?"

"A dream," said Jon feebly. "I was Ghost, I was on the edge of the mountain looking down on a frozen river, and something attacked me. A bird . . . an eagle, I think . . . "

Dalbridge says he dreams of pretty ladies in his dreams when he dreams. But Qhorin is all business. A frozen river, yes? Stonesnake adds that the Milkwater flows out of a great lake from a glacier. And then Jon recalls the things he saw, realizing that it was giants who were riding the mammoths. As he tells this story, he feels phantom pains where Ghost was attacked by the eagle.

Qhorin orders Jon to tell him everything, But Jon decides to recite a key line from Nelly’s 2010 song “Just a Dream” by stating that it was just a dream. But Qhorin knows better. It was a wolf dream. And then Qhorin connects what Jon saw to what they heard from Craster. So, Jon is forced to tell the story, and when he’s done, no one, not even Dalbridge is smiling.

"Skinchanger?" said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me? Skinchangers and wargs belonged in Old Nan's stories, not in the world he had lived in all his life. Yet here, in this strange bleak wilderness of rock and ice, it was not hard to believe.

"The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?"

Dalbridge, our comedy relief, asks if his dreams can be true as well?  Maybe he can get his women? But Ebben is more serious, saying that he’s been in the Watch since he was a boy and never saw anything but the bones of giants. He wants to see living giants with his own eyes. But Stonesnake says maybe they should try not to get seen by giants.

But the rangers move out after sunset, moving towards the massive twin peaks called Forktop, because George wants us to know that he’s not ripping off Tolkien. He’s honoring Tolkien’s memory with these Jon chapters. As they approach, Jon feels fear, wondering if the eagle would find them and whether Ghost was safe. And he wonders about the weirwood with Bran’s face who smelled like death. That was weird, right?

The sun dips behind Forktop as twilight settles over the Skirling Pass. The weather grows cold, even as the rangers begin their descent down the mountain, picking their way past boulders and heaps of rocks. And Ghost did not appear, tearing Jon up inside. But he can’t call out for Ghost or risk alerting the wildlings or other things to their presence. So, he stays quiet.

"Qhorin," Squire Dalbridge called softly. "There. Look."

The eagle was perched on a spine of rock far above them, outlined against the darkening sky. We've seen other eagles, Jon thought. That need not be the one I dreamed of.

Uncharacteristically optimistic of Jon here, but okay. Ebben starts to get an arrow ready, but his spotter Dalbridge says that they’re out of range. No one likes the eagle watching them, but really what choice do they have. Qhorin orders the rangers on as Jon is screaming inside for Ghost.

Thankfully, Jon sees a flash of white. He thinks it’s snow at first, but then the patch moves, and Jon rushes over immediately. Ghost lifts his head at Jon’s approach, and Jon removes his gloves to tend to Ghost and his wounds. There was blood across the direwolf. Qhorin appears then asking how bad it is. Ghost limps to his feet. So, pretty bad. Qhorin tells Ebben to get water and for Stonesnake to give some of his wine over. Finally, he tells Jon to hold the direwolf still.

Qhorin washes the dried blood from Ghost’s fur, and then pours the wine onto the wounds. Ghost doesn’t like this, but Jon holds the direwolf firm and murmurs soothing words at the wolf. Finally, they wrap the wounds in a strip from Jon’s cloth.

"Do we press on?" Stonesnake wanted to know.

Qhorin went to his garron. "Back, not on."

"Back?" Jon was taken by surprise.

"Eagles have sharper eyes than men. We are seen. So now we run." The Halfhand wound a long black scarf around his face and swung up into the saddle.

The rangers look at each other, but no one argues. They mount and turn back to home. Ghost paddles along after Jon. They ride through the night through the same broken ground they came from as the wind howls around them. Darkness envelops them so completely that they sometimes dismount and lead their garons by hand through the night. Ebben thinks torches might be a good idea, but Qhorin says they can’t do that, lest they be seen. The sounds of shadowcats stalk the night, and Jon thinks he sees yellow eyes once staring at them.

In the black hour before dawn, they stopped to let the horses drink and fed them each a handful of oats and a twist or two of hay. "We are not far from the place the wildlings died," said Qhorin. "From there, one man could hold a hundred. The right man." He looked at Squire Dalbridge.

The squire bowed his head. "Leave me as many arrows as you can spare, brothers." He stroked his longbow. "And see my garron has an apple when you're home. He's earned it, poor beastie."

He's staying to die, Jon realized.

God, that scene with Dalbridge is just a moment, man. Like, an extremely minor character, and you feel something for him staying to die.

Qhorin tells Dalbridge to feather that eagle a bit more, and then Jon watches as Dalbridge scrambles up the path to the heights.

When dawn broke, Jon looked up into a cloudless sky and saw a speck moving through the blue. Ebben saw it too, and cursed, but Qhorin told him to be quiet. "Listen."

Jon held his breath, and heard it. Far away and behind them, the call of a hunting horn echoed against the mountains.

"And now they come," said Qhorin.

And that is the cliffhanger to Jon Snow’s story in ACOK and the end of our synopsis! Quite a chapter: mixing the adventure elements from Jon VI with the spooky magic blood tree stuff from a host of other Stark chapters. What did you gentlemen think?

Depth

As we said in our episode on Jon VI, there are clear parallels (and contrasts) between Jon’s chapters in the Frostfangs and Theon’s chapters in Winterfell. In both cases, we get a set of three chapters in which our POV strikes out into enemy territory and watches their pack dwindle, forcing them to choose where they stand at the end. Like any middle child in a trilogy, Jon VII has the hardest job--no clear beginning like the fire on the mountain in Jon VI, no clear ending like Qhorin’s death in Jon VIII. Instead, it’s a series of small scenes that build tension and deliver revelation in different ways. Theon V has this same bits-and-pieces quality to it. The major difference is the tone: Theon V is a literal nightmare, while Jon VII alternates between wonder and terror. You never know where you stand as you go through this chapter; on reread, that’s the appeal!

For me, Jon VI and Jon VII build something like the combined fulcrum point of his arc. Whereas before, Jon had a relatively mundane hero’s arc story, peppered with a hint of the supernatural and of course aided and abetted by Martin’s superior writing style, these two chapters are where the shutters are thrown wide open and Jon’s story becomes interesting in its own right. I will talk about this in some length soon, but for that, you’ll need to strap in as I put on my literature teacher hat. But between the Tom-Clancy-compatible story of a crack commando team behind enemy lines, we actually get a good chunk of the machinations of the magical meta-plot, just shrouded enough in mystery and weird metaphors for the first-time reader not to pick up, and the foundations of Jon’s arc in ADWD.

Just in case we’ve forgotten since the last couple of Jon chapters, George reminds us in this chapter that Jon’s story is a magical one too. So far, we’ve mostly seen Jon act in the realms of men and react against magic like the wight attack. But here, George embeds Jon as a magical being in communication with other magical beings (namely Bran but also Orell the Eagle, or is it Eagle the Orell: question for the philosophers, really). And the form of magic we see within Jon is his ability to warg. The surprise we get from Qhorin and his fellow rangers at this revelation, then, parallels how Jojen and Meera react to Bran telling them about his wolf dreams. But it’s important that the initial surprise is followed by acceptance. Much as Dalbridge is valued for his archery, Stonesnake for his mountain climbing, Ebben for his torture(???) and Qhorin for his leadership, Jon’s ability gets instant acceptance by his fellow ranger. The adults make Jon part of the team and consider his skill useful. What more could a fourteen or fifteen year old boy who wants to be the hero of the story want?

• Deeper into stone and sky
  • Jon VI ended on a raw emotional note, Jon choosing mercy and letting Ygritte go. Jon VII doesn’t return us to that issue right away
  • Instead, George lingers in the shadowy atmosphere of the Frostfangs: narrow canyons, icy waterfalls, a very different world from King’s Landing
  • The common denominator is that life does not belong up here. They see some lichen, some weeds, but no grass, and they’re above the treeline
  • Jon felt a spark of humanity between himself and Ygritte, but he’s in the domain of death, the winds of winter blowing out the fire of life
  • One could almost make a song out of that. ;)
  • The harsh necessities of survival in the wild, in a world at war, demand you set your heart on fire, living only by sacrificing what you were living for
  • Jon’s own aching bleeding heart is on trial throughout this chapter, his empathy stretched to its breaking point across borders of culture, species, and spacetime itself. Can a man be good in this unforgiving world?
  • Yet on reread, it becomes clear that the wasteland imagery is something of a headfake. The Frostfangs are full of eyes; they’re just hidden from our own, and those of the Watchmen. Gradually, they reveal themselves
  • As Jon notes, the shadowcats have to survive on something, and where there were three wildling watchers, there are probably more unseen
  • Above them all loom the blue eyes of the white walkers, unseen but forever felt. Being above the treeline takes on a greater significance when you consider that the weirwoods are the eyes of the old gods. Yet divine sight persists up here, as we see with Jon’s dream and Orell’s eagle
  • Whether you’re talking magic or military, it’s all about observation, analysis, and action, the tools of espionage shot through with ethical concerns. It applies to us as well, reading the half-hidden clues we’re given like the characters read the environment and their own visions. Jon and the reader both have to realize that they’re not alone up here…
  • This is all just a very solid build-up for the larger story. I’m reminded - structurally only, of course - of “The Expanse”, which has been written by two friends of Martin’s inner circle. In that story, crack experts on their fields are firmly planted in a grimdark story of survival in the cold darkness of space - only for something to come up, remnants of an entity much older and mysterious, “being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own”, as it’s put in “The War of the Worlds”. While I don’t recall a phrasing just like that, one can imagine looking up the clear, crisp night’s sky in the Frostfangs and intensely focus on the vast emptiness that’s there between the stars, where the “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic” lurk and “regard this earth with envious eyes”, “slowly and surely” drawing their plans against humanity.
  • Last week with Stannis, the Tolkien imagery of Stannis and his army as Sauron and his army was more oblique, but in these Jon chapters, it’s hard not to miss George taking a more direct leaf from JRR Tolkien.
  • Rangers in distant, remote lands scouting ahead for the enemy, expertly executing ambushes while being watched by an enemy bird, pursued down the mountain by wargs and then Ebben/Gandalf making a final stand to buy the fellowship time to escape?
  • Yeah. That’s some Tolkien.
  • But even though George was drawing inspiration from some of the Tolkien’s plot-points and character archetypes, I think the greater Tolkinesque inspiration on these chapters comes through the environment, the setting.
  • These chapters where Qhorin, Jon & co attempt to navigate the Skirling Pass up in the Frostfangs remind me of the fellowship’s attempt to move through the Red Horn Pass/Gate beneath the slope of the Caradhras Mountain.
  • Twisting paths where the men are moving through boulders and ice and snow to get to a location as the moon and stars shine above. Those atmospherics read like George’s homages to Tolkien.
  • Where ASOIAF and LOTR differ, though, is in how men relate to nature. Or how nature relates to them.
  • Contra the movie, it wasn’t Sauruman who was throwing storms at the Fellowship when they attempted to get through the Caradhas Mountain. It was maybe Sauron’s long arm in calling down storms from the north according to Gandalf, maybe some weird voice up in the mountain according to Boromir or most-likely: the mountain itself attempting to throw them off of itself per Gimli.
  • In Tolkien’s world, nature has emotions and serves as a character within the story, but in George’s world, nature is cold and uncaring.
  • To bring it back to the plot and character aspects: unlike the Dunedain rangers who are at war with evil in the form of Sauron, the Night’s Watch isn’t at war with pure evil. They’re at war with their fellow man in the form of the free folk.
  • So, it’s fascinating that George ends up making Qhorin the NW figure in Jon’s story who crystallizes this point for our young hero.
• Qhorin’s leadership seminar
  • The squad arrives at a “wind-carved arch of grey stone” marking the highest point of the pass. From here, it’s a literal and symbolic descent
  • Stonesnake immediately goes to sleep. He’s used to catching a snooze whenever and wherever he can, and has nothing to trouble his dreams
  • This is - I’m once again pulling my literature teacher hat out here, bear with me - a tried and tested formula in war stories, whether they come more in the heroic Tom Clancy variety or the grizzled anti-war tones of Erich Maria Remarque. It’s the latter’s seminal work, “All Quiet on the Western Front”, where I draw my basic comparisons to war from, having never served myself. Remarque also remarks (heh) on the ability of the common soldier to catch some sleep whenever possible. Maybe Jeff can illuminate us whether in the days of fortified camps and green zones this is still as true for the common grunt as it was in the trenches.
  • I’ll have you know I was out there in the shit at the Afghan combat outpost, buying Afghan kebab at the village market in the outskirts of Kabul. Real war shit.
  • I kid. Yeah. Anyone who has issues with insomnia would be temporarily cured of it by spending a week in a combat zone or even in a rigorous training environment.
  • There is nothing that exhausts the human body like constant physical activity, and Stonesnake going into a deep sleep as soon as he went horizontal is absolutely true to the experience of any soldier in all of human history.
  • Jon, on the other hand, is troubled by what happened with Ygritte. It fits perfectly that he’d address this issue at the peak of the pass; it’s as though Jon has completed his climb toward truth, and must now share it
  • Jon summons his courage and goes to confess the truth to Qhorin. He notes that Qhorin never asked; he was waiting for Jon to have the nerve
  • Jon calls Qhorin “my lord” and Qhorin corrects him. I am no lord, Jon Snow. This establishes an even playing field. As Jeff said in our episode on Jon VI, the Halfhand thinks of himself as first among equals
  • I also want to draw attention to the fact that Qhorin names him “Jon Snow”. As you remarked in your episode on Jon VI, the rangers all go by first names or nicknames. There’s a certain power in names, and seldom is Jon called by his full name without any intention behind it. The way Qhorin uses it here is perfectly neutral. No mockery, no reminding him of his bastardy, it’s basically a hidden request to “name himself”, to make a name of his own.
  • But it’s also a reminder that we’re not in Kansas anymore. Jon has to let go of the social structure that demands you call people “my lord,” the inverse of Arya being reminded by Roose Bolton to call him “my lord”
  • We are in wildling territory now, and just as gender roles are different up here, so too is political power. Qhorin’s power does not come from a title
  • Rather, as he says, knowledge is his power: knowledge of his men, the environment, and the enemy. Jon must internalize this knowledge
  • It’s not easy letting go of everything you’ve been taught. Jon instinctively calls Mance “Your Grace” in ASOS, because that’s how he was taught to talk to a king. But Mance is a different kind of king than, say, Robert
  • And Mance, not Ygritte, is the first conversation topic between Jon and Qhorin. As in Jon VI, George is building up Mance in our minds through his reputation before we meet him, as with Stannis, Euron, JonCon, etc.
  • Jon says that Ygritte claimed Mance would’ve welcomed Jon if they’d run off to him together. Qhorin does not deny it. He easily could have!
  • He could’ve told Jon “no, that wildling girl was a liar and the wildling king is a barbarian savage who would eat you alive and boil your bones for soup”
  • Qhorin confirms Ygritte’s truth. She did not lie; you could have run off to Mance. Qhorin wants Jon to understand the wildlings, as Ygritte did. She told a story to connect their peoples; Qhorin knows that story well
  • Why is that? Because Mance used to sing it, and as it turns out, Mance and Qhorin used to be best friends. This is a significant revelation
  • It recasts this squad and their mission in a new light. They seem perfectly efficient, a well-oiled machine, everything in its right place. But they are in fact incomplete. They are four when they should be five
  • Mance is missing. These men have a personal stake in the mission after all. One of their flock has strayed: a collective failure that shames and haunts them. We were not enough for him, our band of brothers
  • So far, Mance Rayder has been described purely as a mysterious military threat. Now, we start to understand him as an individual, through the lens of those who loved him, the community he could not stay part of
  • Why did Mance desert the Night’s Watch? This question will dominate his first appearance in the series come ASOS. The answer he gives there encapsulates this entire cultural conflict, yet still seems insufficient
  • There are many reasons he could have done so; some seem germane to the man himself, others seem like pure products of rumor and bigotry
  • Was it for a woman? Qhorin acknowledges that Mance loves the ladies. Was it for a crown? Qhorin acknowledges that Mance is very independent
  • But Qhorin believes there is a deeper issue that transcends and connects the rest. Mance belonged out here, in the wild. This is where he came from. This is his home. We tried to make the Shadow Tower home, but it wasn’t. As Qhorin admits, Mance was taken as a child. A changeling in a re-education camp, an experiment to make a wildling a Watchman
  • The conditioning broke, and Mance flew home. Everything else that makes him different, Qhorin believes, is a symptom of that root cause
  • Mance is now a child of two worlds, like the son Bael the Bard supposedly fathered on a daughter of House Stark. Will he unite them, or divide them?
  • He was the best of us, Qhorin says, and the worst as well. The eternal mystery of how a man can be both: the human heart in conflict with itself
  • Qhorin directly addresses the anti-wildling bigotry that is taken as a given by many other officers of the Night’s Watch. He dismisses it as folly
  • The wildlings, Qhorin tells Jon, are people! Like you and me. If you prick them, they will bleed. Their souls are made up of the same stuff as ours
  • As Ygritte said: we all come from mothers, and the songs they sing us might not be so different. It makes me think of JFK’s words:
    • “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.”
  • Common humanity is the core of not only individual empathy, but political deprogramming on a collective scale: how we unlearn hating each other
  • Forced past the cloak of alienation and myth, Jon has encountered the [O]ther and realized they are kin. So wait...why are we at war, again??
  • Qhorin has immersed himself in the world beyond the Wall, coming to understand his enemy as well as he understands himself
  • Yet this has not convinced him to prioritize peace, any more than LC Mormont being attacked by zombies changed his mind about Mance
  • Qhorin still believes, as he tells Jon, that the reason they are at war with the wildlings is that wildling culture is antithetical to discipline. Without discipline, you have no law, no strong and stable authority, no society
  • As we talked about during our Jon VI episode, this is clearly not the case. That one wildling went for his horn first! Moreover, the very fact that the wildlings are all gathered here in dangerous territory suggests that Mance has established his own form of discipline. So too have the Thenns
  • No cultural norm applies universally, and no culture is a monolith. They are all mosaics, built upon fragments of meaning like the Bael saga
  • Certainly, the wildlings en masse do not function as a cohesive military unit, and they do prize independence and individuality
  • Rather than interrogate those virtues and see how they might be made to serve the greater good of humanity, Qhorin dismisses them out of hand
  • Why? Is Qhorin an unreasonable man, victim to the very same bigotry he decries? Perhaps! He’s a colonial officer at the end of the day, here to imprint not only military dominance but cultural hegemony in Westeros
  • Exactly. All that empathy that Qhorin has for the wildlings is built on a common humanity. It’s a good start to recognize his foes as humans as opposed to beasts, slaves or at the very best: Craster the Collaborator.
  • But it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t stop Qhorin from having Ebben torture men to death to ascertain information. It doesn’t stop the mission to find out what Mance Rayder is digging for in order to stop him.
  • It’s like we were saying with Robb in the Westerlands: do you think it makes much of a difference to the wildlings that Qhorin has more empathy for them than other rangers as he’s running them through with his sword?
  • Qhorin might be the most effective ranger and leader in the Night’s Watch, but what ultimately distinguishes him from Bowen Marsh who wants to prevent Tormund and his band of wildlings from coming south of the Wall in ADWD?
  • Not much! It’s part of the institutional culture of the Night’s Watch to consider the wildlings the enemy, because traditionally, the wildlings were the traditional enemy as seen in the tale of Bael the Bard and his invasion of the North from Ygritte’s epilogue to her story.
  • But the war between free folk and Watch is not the war that truly matters as Qhorin acknowledges later in the chapter:
    • "The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again.”
  • You’re so close, Qhorin, but yet you continue on, because it’s just business. Orders. Duty. History.
  • This single paragraph in which Qhorin talks about how the wildlings are alike the people south of the Wall, only lacking discipline, also mirrors the complete story of the wildlings in the first three books. Only fools despise the wildlings, yet it’s those fools that Jon meets first in AGOT, of whom he learns who the wildlings are. Before, he only had Old Nan’s stories to go on, basically. In ACOK, he learns that they’re brave, strong, quick, clever. Even more so than the Watch at times, in fact, which is why Jon is forced to join them. And then, in ASOS, he sees the lack of discipline bring their doom, not once not twice but thrice in the triple battle of Castle Black and the Wall and Stannis’s relief.
  • Jon’s story, then, is to move past the institutional badassery of Qhorin Halfhand. It’s to go beyond recognition that the wildlings are men too. It’s that they’re worth saving and protecting
  • As Jon says in ADWD:
    • "I am the shield that guards the realms of men. Those are the words. So tell me, my lord—what are these wildlings, if not men?"
  • That said: back here in ACOK, the reason for Qhorin considering the wildlings enemies is not exactly academic or purely ideological.
  • But I think what’s really going on here is more personal. Mance’s desertion is an open wound on Qhorin Halfhand’s soul, the one chink in his armor
  • Qhorin cannot face the idea that Mance left because there’s something wrong with the Night’s Watch, something missing that Mance could only find in the wild: freedom. If that’s true, then Qhorin has dedicated his life to a corrupt institution; he deserved to lose his best friend
  • So instead, Qhorin argues that there is a fundamental flaw with wildling culture, one that had its claws in Mance before Qhorin ever met him
  • If this is just Mance’s nature, then Qhorin doesn’t have to feel guilty about him leaving. If this is just the way of the wildlings, then Qhorin doesn’t have to feel guilty about waging war on people he’s come to know well
  • Love hurts, as Cersei says. Qhorin opened his heart to Mance, which made it all the more painful when Mance couldn’t return the favor
  • A couple chapters from now, Jaime will argue that the demands of duty are the problem. They are unfair, even absurd. Qhorin reaches the opposite conclusion. Duty is sacred; the fault is in you if you cannot obey
  • This is major problem in any institution. When the demands you put on its members are so high that they’re almost impossible to reach, you might beget a culture that just accepts that and builds it into its own DNA. We as a community oftentimes refer to Martin’s background as a lapsed Catholic, but I mean, come on: is there any institution that represents this problem as well as the Catholic church, putting incredibly high demands of self-denial on its own clergy, making them exalted from the common people they serve, and then seeing them fail all the time? How easy is it for such an institution to cover up the failings, from Mole’s Town to the false meritocratic ideal presented in the very opening chapter of the series? We all have our blind spots, and Qhorin’s for sure is not to put this into context.
  • Mance never learned to obey; I learned all too well. That’s why I’m up here hunting my best friend, knowing there’s no world that can hold both of us
  • And just in case it wasn’t clear that all of this is actually about Jon himself as well as Mance, Jon steps in to make the comparison explicit
  • I never learned to obey, either. I didn’t kiss Alliser Thorne’s boots; I ran away from Castle Black; I talked to Gilly at Craster’s Keep
  • I, too, feel like a child of two worlds, caught in between, forever forced to choose. Where is my home? Where do I belong? Who am I, really?
  • Mance’s spot in this squad was left open like a missing tooth. Jon has taken his place. Not only has he taken Mance’s role in the squad, he is carrying out Mance’s story within his own, only now realizing it
  • All of that will pay off more in ASOS. Now the conversation shifts from Mance to Ygritte. Qhorin correctly interprets Jon’s comment about never learning to obey. You spared Ygritte? As he says, he doesn’t know that’s the case. But by acting unsurprised, he draws the truth out of Jon
  • What interests Qhorin is not the what, but the why. Jon finds it difficult to confess, in part because he’s a moody teen, but also because what he has to say undercuts this entire war. She was my enemy, but she wasn’t evil, and it would violate everything I learned from my father to kill her
  • Qhorin does not push back on any of that. Instead, he opens Jon up to further critical inquiry. Ygritte isn’t evil...but neither were the other two!
  • Why did they deserve to die, if she didn’t? Qhorin is testing Jon’s evolving empathy, trying to see if it only counts for a sympathetic attractive lady
  • Jon points out that the context was different. If the wildlings had seen the Watchmen, their lives would be at risk. Ygritte, however, is now unarmed and without a horn. She’s on foot, behind them. She is no longer a threat
  • Qhorin agrees. This was the conclusion he was leading Jon to, and it’s why he didn’t technically give the order to execute Ygritte
  • For all that Qhorin is the embodiment of discipline, he is not actually interested in controlling other people, even his subordinates
  • Rather than enforce the execution of Ygritte upon Jon, Qhorin said only that Jon needed to do his duty, and let him decide what that was
  • That’s some exemplary mentoring! It’s more deft and effective than any tutelage Jon has received so far from any of his other father figures
  • There are, however, still blind spots here that Jon will have to struggle with after Qhorin forces Jon to kill him in a duel at the end of the book
  • First of all, the only reason Ygritte became unthreatening was that Jon spared her in the first place. That instinctive empathy is something Qhorin doesn’t really have an answer for, because he still feels it for Mance
  • Secondly, while it’s good that Qhorin respects Jon’s independence, there’s something chilling about how little he cares what happened to Ygritte
  • Whether she lived or died was immaterial to him; all that mattered was learning more about Jon. And Qhorin wanted to learn more about Jon not out of love, but so as to better deploy him as a pawn in this endless war
  • He said it back on the Fist of the First Men: why do we wear black cloaks if not to die, built-in funeral shrouds? He spends his men, one by one
  • There’s a clear military logic to it, but Qhorin never questions the status quo that logic supports. Qhorin is not cruel, yet neither is he humane
  • As much as Jon has to learn from him--survival skills, espionage gambits, how to know your men--Qhorin is a cautionary tale about fighting too long
  • And here we arrive at the meat of what I want to talk about and why I asked to be included for these Jon chapters specifically. In the beginning, I posited the thesis that Jon VI and Jon VII pose as the fulcrum of his entire story, and while we’ll surely talk about Jon’s warging abilities and all that in a minute, I want to pull our attention to this much more mundane part of the plot. And if you think there’ll be another lesson on a work of literature incoming, strap in, you’re right.
  • The work of literature I’m specifically referring here is “Faust”, by none other than the hallowed German writer Johann Goethe. You may have heard of Faust before, him of the Faustian bargain. To give you a quick overview, the legend of Faust has been in the German conscience for some six hundred years or so. At least, that’s the time where it was first written down, it surely is older.
  • Faust, in the original telling, is an alchemist who makes a pact with the devil, gains everything he wished and then some, and then he gets drawn into hell. There’s a subtle moral about not making deals with the devil, in case you missed it.
  • However, such obvious storytelling was going out of style in the late 1700s, and it was surely below a mind like Goethe’s. The man has the same stature in German literature as Shakespeare has for English, to give you some context, and he decided to take on the story. And he gave it a unique spin that helps us to put these two Jon chapters in context.
  • See, Goethe’s “Faust” starts not with the alchemist, but rather in heaven with God and Mephisto (he’s not the actual devil, but rather a subordinate evil spirit, testing humanity). Mephisto complains about humanity, them being boring and stupid and base, whereas God sees the good in humans. So Mephisto proposes a wager: If he can turn Faust off the path, surely God will admit that he, the clever Mephisto, was right? God, magnaminously, agrees, not without reminding us that Mephisto’s power is consigned to Earth. No garnering of souls.
  • Mephisto then goes to Earth, tries to impress Faust with some magic tricks and is instantly called out. Faust is intrigued - he really wants to gain some knowledge that’s not attainable with mortal means - but he’s not sure what to make of Mephisto. Here, chance intervenes. Mephisto asks Faust to allow him to leave the house, and Faust is surprised. Why not just walk out?
  • Well, Mephisto explains (I’m quoting a translation here, the German original rhymes): Devils and ghosts are bound by this condition: The way they entered in, they must come out. Allow In the first clause we're free, yet not so in the second.
  • Faust, being an astute observer, now becomes the Jon Snow of our story, as he exclaims: In hell itself, then, laws are reckoned? Now that I like; so then, one may, in fact, Conclude a binding compact with you gentry?
  • And this is pretty much what’s happening in these two chapters, even though it will be some time until Jon fully realizes it. In my metaphor, hell itself is the wildlings. Not because they’re hell, but because even with them, laws are reckoned, compacts with “you gentry” can be made.
  • And this is the foundation that Jon’s entire arc in “A Dance with Dragons” rests upon, the one insight that sets him aside from anyone else in the Watch. Wildlings themselves aren’t wild barbarians, they are people, people following a set of rules. These rules might not be the one that people in Westeros follow, rules they gave themselves. But rules nonetheless.
  • Martin generally likes rules and explores how they form societies. From the honor system to patriarchy, from the rules of stories to the breaking of taboos, religious systems to mundane lordship.
  • Keep your eyes open in “A Storm of Swords”, as to how often Ygritte will emphasize these rules to Jon. The “parlay” of Johnny Depp’s is nothing against it. As Jon will come to learn, and really, on a deeply felt level, understand, wildling society follows rules.
  • And when a society follows rules, binding compacts can be made, gentry or no.
  • Jon doesn’t yet understand this here, of course. But his encounter with Ygritte in Jon VI and the confirmation by Qhorin Halfhand in Jon VII are the very foundation on which all of this later rests. As does my case here. Back to you guys.
• A dream that was not a dream
  • Qhorin tells Jon that they’ve talked enough and he needs his sleep, a hint from George that we’re about to enter a different side of the story
  • Jon usually snuggles with Ghost while he sleeps. It’s comforting, offering both literal warmth and warm feelings inside. It’s his family, his pack
  • Ghost is a little slice of home Jon takes with him wherever he goes. But in truth, this alien territory is where Ghost comes from, just like how Mance was only going home again when he left the Shadow Tower
  • The familiar and the unfamiliar interweave in these Frostfang chapters. Ghost runs off rather than comfort Jon; he’s needed by the unfamiliar forces, the dreamworld luring Jon in to transform him body and soul
  • As soon as Jon falls asleep, his soul follows Ghost. What is Ghost feeling? Lonely. There were five direwolves where there should’ve been six, like how there are four men in the Shadow Tower where there once were five
  • Lady is dead, the symbolic sacrifice of innocence to the game of thrones, and the rest are scattered. Grey Wind is fighting in the Westerlands, Nymeria is hunting in the Riverlands, and Summer and Shaggydog are hidden even from the reader right now. The pack has been separated
  • That ache reflects Jon’s own, separated from his siblings. It’s also the same alienation experienced by exiled characters ranging from Dany and Jorah to Jon Connington, sanded down to the primal feelings of a direwolf
  • Ghost howls into the forest. It’s not a literal forest (he’s above the treeline, remember), but the primeval forest, representing mysterious origins
  • So the only response is the blowing snow--as in Snow, Jon’s placeholder identity. Other than that, he hears only the echo of his own howl of pain
  • This is a moment that doesn’t receive enough attention, because Ghost is otherwise mute, but he howls here.
  • Whether it’s an actual howl is an interesting question, but I think it’s more intended to represent Jon/Ghost’s internally screaming at the loneliness they feel and experience.
  • The lone wolf dies, the pack survives is a theme for #TeamStark, and here it’s a quite literal loneliness of Jon and Ghost separated out from the packs far from home.
  • Man is not meant to be alone. We live in a community, and that ache of loneliness is a universal emotion, felt by man and wolf and expressed as a scream into the void.
  • Ghost--and therefore Jon--is alone in the world, ignorant of his parentage and cut off from his siblings...or is he? Suddenly, he hears a response
  • Jon/Ghost immediately knows it’s Bran/Summer, turning around to look for a gray wolf. The shout is silent, but it expresses Bran’s humanity, his soul
  • Bran’s soul, however, does not take the form of a wolf in this dream. His astral avatar is now a weirwood, because Bran has opened his third eye
  • It’s a bittersweet transformation. By freeing the Winged Wolf, Bran killed the Winged Wolf to become the tree. Kill the boy, let the man be born
  • Indeed, Bran is not a static image here, a painterly backdrop like the Winterfell heart tree upon its introduction waaaay back in AGOT Catelyn I
  • He is a cinematic image in motion, a young tree sprouting miraculously from barren rock and aging into maturity before Jon/Ghost’s eyes
  • Again, we are not literally in the Frostfangs in this portion of the dream. The barren land here is metaphorical: it stands in for spiritual decay
  • The loneliness Ghost experienced is countered by the rebirth of family, a tree defiantly growing in the domain of death. Such are Bran’s new powers, connected as he says to the third eye opened by the crow
  • His identity is fluid like Jon’s. Ghost smells “wolf and tree and boy,” the three-headed dragon motif filtered through Bran’s specific arc
  • This is what it means to grow up, and so another set of three smells emerges: earth (birth), stone (adulthood), and death (self-explanatory)
  • Ghost recoils in horror. Is Bran dead? Yes and no, which is exactly the kind of character he is: a resurrected god-king, the face of nature’s cycle
  • The dead world cloaks Bran, keeping him safe as he prepares his powers to remake the world of the living; Bloodraven reinforces this in ADWD
  • Tree-Bran says no one can see him, but he can see them. That’s a motif throughout his story, connecting him to the reader, a godlike observer
  • Bran passes this power along to Jon via Ghost, opening Jon’s third eye so he can access divine sight, as Ygritte metaphorically opened his eyes
  • We’ve been talking all through ACOK about the magical mentor characters who embody the age of wonder and terror
  • Bran has Jojen, Arya has Jaqen, Stannis has Melisandre, Dany has both Quaithe and the warlocks. Jon hasn’t had this kind of mentor figure
  • As such, the magical elements in his ACOK storyline have remained on the periphery, the product of signs and rumor. Jon hears about white walker activity at Craster’s Keep, but doesn’t see it. Ghost guides him to the hidden artifacts at the Fist of the First Men, but he doesn’t know how to make use of them (yet). Qhorin says Mance is seeking supernatural power in the Frostfangs, but no one has any idea what it could be
  • That slow burn has been building up to this dream, in which the restraint gives way and George plunges both Jon and the reader into pure sorcery
  • Bran briefly becomes Jon’s magical mentor figure, opening his third eye and allowing him to break the borders of spacetime, transporting Ghost
  • This is a vastly under-appreciated scene, and I think we have to consider whether this is Bran as he is or Bran as he will be.
  • The imagery of Bran in the weirwood in the dark with death around him alludes to Bran under Winterfell as we’ll find out at the close of ACOK
  • Bran himself will remember speaking with Jon in a dream under the crypts:
    • Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon.
  • But some of the other imagery doesn’t necessarily match. So far, Bran has only been able to warg Summer, and he won’t learn how to speak through weirwoods and heart trees until ADWD.
  • (It’s possible this may be an early taste of Bran’s ability)
  • Here, Bran is in the face of the weirwood tree and speaking about being in the dark -- in the crypts of Winterfell, yes. But also in the dark of Bloodraven’s cave perhaps?
  • The smell of death could be what’s enfolding Winterfell now with Theon, Osha and the direwolves killing people, or it’s the crypts themselves housing the bodies of the dead Starks.
  • It’s also the bones of a thousand dreamers in Bloodraven’s cave from ADWD.
  • IMO, this is both present-day Bran as well as time-traveling Bran Stark. Yes, the theory that I used to think was a bad theory is likely what’s occurring here.
  • We got a small taste of this in ADWD with Bran going back in time to watch Ned Stark in front of the heart tree of Winterfell and being able to be heard by Ned albeit faintly.
  • That moment was very early in Bran’s training, and his powers will grow. So, I imagine in an early Bran chapter in TWOW, we’re going to see this scene from Bran’s perspective.
  • And it’s all moving forward to Hodor/Hold the Door.
  • Bran’s ability to tele-communicate is a major problem in story-telling terms. If Bran can warg into practically anything and communicate via the TreeNet(™), this will be a major obstacle for many plots. Therefore I’d expect some serious limits on Bran’s ability to communicate. It’s basically like the hyperdrive in Star Wars. If I can go to light speed at all times, many dangers aren’t really any. Therefore, limits must be placed on this ability. The difficulty is doing this consistently. Martin is a smart enough writer to see this problem coming, so I’d expect said limits.
  • The wolf ends up overlooking the valley on the other side of the Skirling Pass, a gorgeous panorama in all the colors of an autumn afternoon
  • Here, at last, we see more than signs of life. We see life itself, a roaring rushing torrent of it, the wildling camp as a microcosm of the entire world
  • As Jon says when he wakes up, he had no idea there were this many people north of the Wall. He is breaking past propaganda and bigotry to see the real thing, magical sight allowing for Jon’s political evolution
  • Jon sees people drilling for war, but also digging in the ground, caring for their animals, sprawling out with their possessions in all directions
  • There is no clear encampment, no sharp lines of tents and ditches for Jon’s third eye to follow. This has implications beyond the culture of the Free Folk--it’s about how you deal with foreign sights that challenge your perspective. Jon cannot make sense of what he’s seeing without changing
  • And Jon changes. He understands what all this chaos means when taken together. This is not an army. This is a people come together. This is a mobile nation, like the khalasars united under the Stallion (aka Dany)
  • That’s such a crucial moment for Jon’s arc going forward, the shock of empathy he experienced on an individual level with Ygritte ramped up to a colossal scale. He no longer sees the wildlings purely as a military threat, but as part of the realms of men he has sworn to defend
  • George underlines that connection by having Jon confuse the glacier for the Wall at first. South of the Wall, north of the Wall, they become one in Jon’s eyes; there’s no difference between the people in those lands
  • That revelation, however, does not automatically dispel all the alienation that has built up between this people-come-together and Jon’s own
  • As soon as he makes this connection, he spots a giant astride a mammoth. A high fantasy sight of wonder and terror, something beyond ordinary human comprehension crashing into our world of tree and stone
  • Regarding the giants and the mammoths, I’m reminded very strongly of Samwise’s fascination with the mummakils in “The Lord of the Rings”.
  • So there is still culture clash at work; Jon’s evolution of himself and the world is only just beginning. George emphasizes the threat with the eagle’s sudden attack, heartstoppingly quick, like a martial arts film
  • A shadow blots out the sun and strikes, imagery reminiscent of Stannis’ nightmare children and Drogon’s attack at Daznak’s Pit in ADWD
  • It’s an almost Zen moment, wherein the secular and spiritual worlds are linked in a moment of violence that triggers transcendent rebirth. Jon killed Orell in the physical world, but his soul strikes back on the astral plane, launching Jon out of his shamanic vision quest. Ghost is left behind...
  • This is one of the parts where I remember I was utterly lost as a first-time reader. Much like Bran’s initial dream in “A Game of Thrones”, the insertions of magic come suddenly and unexpectedly for someone not tuned in to what the story is actually about. On reread, something like the call to “go to sleep” stick out as markers, but you fly past that as a first-time reader until you’re really tuned in. The wild images that Jon experiences in Ghost’s skin are then only that, wild images, an intrusion by the magical plot, which for many readers is just an unwelcome distraction from the Game of Thrones at this point, much like Jon’s story in general. It’s structural importance becomes apparent in hindsight.
• Magical intelligence gathering
  • Orell’s attack shocks Jon back into the physical world. He shouts for Ghost, and Ebben silences him. You want to get us all killed???
  • ACOK, as I’ve said many a time, is about the intersection between political and magical power. Jon just experienced an overdose of magical power
  • Yet the implications of what he saw have more to do with the politics, the military matters, and it’s on those terms that Qhorin presses him
  • It’s a complex relationship between Jon’s divine sight and the empirical evidence-based hive mind of this unit in action, but it works
  • At first, Dalbridge makes light of the situation, comparing Jon’s dream to his longing fantasies of women, the life he left behind
  • When Jon starts mentioning details, however, the Watchmen link it to their canon of expertise. A frozen river, you say? Well, Stonesnake knows that the Milkwater flows from a lake at the foot of a glacier
  • Qhorin wants to hear more. Jon is confused, calling it only a dream; his panic was the normal transition from dream to waking, and it’s over now
  • But Qhorin calls it a “wolf dream.” Remember, he mentioned Jon’s direwolf upon meeting him, and made sure that Jon brought Ghost along
  • Qhorin is familiar not only with the Starks, but with the skinchangers among the wildlings, like the one who just attacked Ghost via his eagle
  • As such, he seems to have recognized the latent warg in Jon, just like Varamyr Sixskins will. He invested in that resource, and now it’s paying off
  • His men are thinking along similar lines. Ebben is the first to bring up skinchanging. As Qhorin says in a movie-trailer voice: the world is changing. Mormont said so. The dead are walking, the trees have eyes
  • Yet Qhorin’s focus is not on the mechanism by which Jon’s third eye has been opened, nor the sudden empathy Jon has gained for the wildlings
  • Rather, it’s on how this vision is going to affect his mission over the next few hours, the next few miles, one step and then another
  • There’s a wistfulness to Dalbridge hoping for his dreams about women to come true, and Ebben wondering if he’ll get to actually see giants
  • All of a sudden, these hardened men are children again, experience stripped away by the purity of Jon’s divine sight
  • But just as Jon had to wake up and put his vision to work for the mission, these men will give their lives for that mission, their dreams unfulfilled
  • And this is testament to Qhorin’s character here. He seamlessly blends the magical and the military side of things like no other character we’ve met so far. He dies too soon to allow us (or Jon) to tap into this fountain of knowledge, but from the time we spend with him, this ability is clearly counteracted by his blind spots. He is a soldier, through and through, and while he, in comparison to the “fool” Thoren Smallwood, has a much clearer understanding of what they’re facing, for him, this is all still framed in the struggle between Watch and wildlings. He has no sense for the uncaring eyes observing him; Ygritte’s hints and all the other signs of the greater danger fly past him. For simple plot reasons, this is another factor in why he needs to die, since he’s another obstacle for Jon to become Lord Commander. And LC Qhorin would never allow the wildlings through the Wall, and would likely lose against the Others.
  • Yup. Benjen disappears, then Qhorin and his men die in ACOK, then a whole host of rangers die at the Fist or on the march back, leading to Jon’s rise as LC. George does a great job of seeding Jon’s leadership arc in his training and in the vacancies created by NW attrition.
  • The rangers set out again as darkness falls. The light of truth and vision is fading, and with it goes life. Jon’s afraid that Ghost is dead, a true ghost
  • The sun sets with no sight of the wolf. Jon can’t cry out for him, for the same reason they couldn’t take Ygritte along: others might be listening
  • And indeed, this is when the eagle shows up, flying out of Jon’s trippy dreams into his waking world of stone. Dalbridge spots it, of course, his hunter’s eye staring down Orell’s third eye, military v. magic again
  • Jon knows rationally that it could be a different bird, but at another level, he knows better. Ebben knows it’s too far to hit it with an arrow, but he can’t stand its gaze. The theme of seeing and being seen defines this chapter. Jon’s vision has led to them being spotted by the enemy
  • In retrospect, Qhorin clearly knows immediately in this moment that they are all doomed. Yet he does not blame Jon--rather, he goes out of his way to preserve Jon’s life and his life alone. And before that, he drives them on to find Ghost. It is only after Jon gets his wolf that Qhorin turns back to run
  • This is because Qhorin has seen the practical utility of Jon’s supernatural bond. If Jon is to complete his mission, he will need Ghost. It is because of Ghost that Jon is able to kill Qhorin, and it is because Jon kills Qhorin that the wildlings allow him to join them. Qhorin is sealing his own doom
  • He doesn’t know it, but he would do it anyway if he did. There is nothing Qhorin Halfhand will not do in order to fulfill his duty
  • At the end of the chapter, he sends Squire Dalbridge to his death to slow the wildlings down. And Dalbridge does it without a moment’s hesitation
  • The only demand he makes in exchange for his life is that someone feed his horse. It’s his last connection to life outside his dreams of lost women
  • He will only be the first to die. The next morning, they see the eagle following them, and hear a horn in the distance. Once again, Jon’s chapters in the Frostfangs are a precise inversion of Theon’s chapters in Winterfell. Theon hunts man; Jon and his companions are being hunted
  • Deep movie guy voice: The hunter has become the hunted, and I’m reminded of how close the Night’s Watch and wildlings are to each other even through the use of horns to signal friend or foe.
  • Like you were saying, Dalbridge is the first one to sacrifice himself, and though I usually abstain from reading Steven Attewell’s analyses of these chapters beforehand (we are merely, the Attewell tribute podcast), I had a strong memory of him writing about these NWbrothers as samurai brothers and finally gave in.
  • And in his analysis of Jon VIII (the final Jon chapter in ACOK), he quotes Tsuromoto Tashiro’s book Hagakure: a book about the spiritual life of a warrior/samurai in which Tashiro writes:
    • The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance.
  • The way a samurai dies is exactly what Dalbridge does. It’s not even a debate for Dalbridge, not even a resigned sigh. Hell, he doesn’t even need an order. He immediately understands what Qhorin is asking him to do and snaps to his duty, only asking that his horse is taken care of after he dies.
  • That’s real heroism in a war setting. And the Romans of the Republican era would have awarded Dalrbridge with the Civic Crown for saving a comrade in battle.
  • And it’s another lesson that Jon learns high up in the Frostfangs: his life isn’t worth all that much when the greater whole of humanity is at stake -- or at least four other Night’s Watch rangers.
  • Unlike Stannis (ding), Jon has learned that if it’s one life against a million, it’ll be his life on the line just as Dalbridge (and then Ebben, then Stonesnake then Qhorin himself) sacrifice to save Jon.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

George pulls a swerve on us here regarding Bran’s fate. We will be told via Tyrion next week that Theon killed Bran and Rickon; the week after that, we’ll be with Catelyn as she reacts to the news. And then the week after that, we get another Theon chapter, at the end of which he reveals that the dead boys are not the Starks. Here in Jon VII, we are shown the truth: Bran lives, down in the stony death’s domain of the crypts. For the first time reader, though, this is quick and ambiguous enough not to register as such.

With Season 8 in mind, Ghost howling alone in the forest north of the Wall feels like direct foreshadowing of Jon’s fate to live a life of exile, separated from his pack (his brothers and sisters). But perhaps he’ll still have the ability to talk with King Bran through the weirwoods.

Theory/Discussion

Several months back, we praised GoT for adapting Theon Greyjoy for Season 2. But today, we come not to praise the Thrones Show. We come to bury it. So, really, how badly did the show fuck up in adapting Qhorin Halfhand and Jon’s run through the mountains arc in Season 2?

I remember this vividly as the first real catastrophe of the show. I don’t want to relitigate it here in its entirety, but D&D started on a very sensible basis - keep the magical meta-plot out - and really fucked it up from there. Budgetary constraints might also have played an issue, but they do not excuse the problem with Ygritte running away, Qhorin getting captured, and the general fucking around with no clear purpose that this plotline serves in season 2, after which Jon has managed to actually regress. Treading water with Jon’s storyline is a topic that season 4 and 5 will return to, with varying success. But here, the seams start to fray.

[Insert your comments]

I’d also like to take a moment and discuss the Hero’s Journey for a minute. At this point, it’s been condensed into a cliche, but I think it’s relevant to have a look at it again through the eyes of Jon’s arc. It’s not exactly a secret that his story isn’t the most engaging of all POVs in AGOT and the first half of ACOK, and this is often chalked up to its very generic hero’s journey thing. Mentor figure, magic sword, mysterious origins, it’s all there. So what makes Jon so much more interesting when we first meet Ygritte?

Just imagine for a second this plot doesn’t happen. Jon stays on the Fist. What are you looking forward to? If Jon stays at the Fist, given his plot armor at that point, the whole damn ranging would have to succeed in some way. It would be a boring story. This whole Qhorin mission throws a wrench into that, injects UNKNOWABILITY into Jon’s plot. From now on, we’re into the Unknown (insert Frozen 2 voice).

I think what Martin does here is not so much deconstructing the Hero’s Journey as to reconstruct it, as he so often does. We can see here an attempt in giving it meaning and weight. So, you ventured out into the Great Outdoors. You met different civilizations. Now what? It turns out that your enemies are not white-clad stormtroopers that you can fell by the dozen, but real people. They have their own culture and understanding. What do you do with that, hero?

Of course, the answer is incredibly complicated, and a huge part of Jon’s journey, aside from climbing the Wall, warning his brothers, defending said Wall and preparing for the apocalypse and all is to realize that there might not even be such a thing as “an answer”, but there’s a myriad of them. If you are a hero, are you a hero for everyone? If you fight for humanity, do you fight for all humanity? Even the ones you really, really don’t like? In other words, should Luke have tried to evacuate the Death Star service personnel before blowing the damn thing up?

Jon will grapple with these questions throughout ADWD, and ultimately, he will fail as he cannot bring himself to accept that he has to be the hero for Ramsay Snow as well. But he goes a lot further than most.

Conclusion

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