Episode 167: A STORM OF SWORDS, SAMWELL I: "The Terror, Part 2" 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 sixty-seventh episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Terror, Part 2: An Analysis of ASOS, Samwell I” in which the slayer arises.

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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

Ser Darren S., a Sworn Sword patron, asks:

I’m starting my fifth reread of ASoS alongside your podcast (great job btw, good work) and I know Sam I is coming up soon. What I’ve noticed from my second or third time rereading the series is that the language that George uses for Sam’s terror filled push to find Craster’s Keep oddly mirrors other characters from throughout the series: Jon VI ACOK, Sansa V ASOS, Dany IX ADWD, Cersei II ADWD, and Dany X ADWD. In Sam’s chapter the language is "One and then the other. They took a step…” which George varies in the other chapters listed.

In each of these, the POV character is going through it: Jon is frightened of falling off the wall, Sam is experiencing sheer terror from being hunted by the Others, Sansa is fleeing the capitol, Dany going to her wedding to Hizdahr, Cerseii experiencing her walk of Atonement, and Dany through the grass sea. I suppose my question, because I’m not as eloquent as y’all: why does GRRM use a similarly worded phrasing (one step and then another) for these characters, and will we see this wording again in ADoS, say, during a certain Jon Snow chapter where he’s deliberating something VERY dramatic (which better end with him resolutely thinking “You know nothing, Jon Snow”)?

So, thank you Darren for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions 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, shout-outs at the start and end of every episode, weekly minisodes, bonus episodes like our upcoming special holiday episode which we’re pleased to announce will be all about Theon in ADWD!

And as tradition, our special holiday episode will be released early for all of our $5/above patrons and will be out for everyone at the end of the month! And that episode will be an overview analysis of Theon in ADWD which works as a preview of our next stretch goal: a multi-part analysis of Theon’s TWOW sample chapter.

On that note: we’ve decided yet again to revise our patreon goals. I always have lofty goals for our patreon, but I do realize with the long wait before House of the Dragon or The Winds of Winter, things might get slow. So, here’s how we’re planning on doing our stretch goal:

• At 950 patrons, we’ll do TWOW, Theon I (Part 1)
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As of the recording of this episode, we are at 909 patrons, or 41 new patrons shy of releasing the first part of our analysis of the Theon TWOW chapter. So, if you like what you hear on our regular episodes, enjoy all the holiday bonus content and want to hear us tackle the Theon TWOW chapter, consider becoming a patron today at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF!

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Samwell Tarly, he had fallen and couldn’t get up in the snow. Let’s find out if Samwell Tarly can rise to become the Slayer in this synopsis of ASOS, Samwell I, Part 2!

Synopsis

When the horns blew Sam had been sleeping. He thought he was dreaming them at first, but when he opened his eyes snow was falling on the camp and the black brothers were all grabbing bows and spears and running toward the ringwall. Chett was the only one nearby, Maester Aemon's old steward with the face full of boils and the big wen on his neck. Sam had never seen so much fear on a man's face as he saw on Chett's when that third blast came moaning through the trees. "Help me get the birds off," he pleaded, but the other steward had turned and run off, dagger in hand. He has the dogs to care for, Sam remembered. Probably the Lord Commander had given him some orders as well.

A rather generous interpretation of Chett’s motivations here, Sam. And that’s because you’re a good guy. You truly are.

Sam was terrified as he tried to put his fingers into gloves, and the ravens were shrieking. He manages to put the parchment pouch and messages he wrote. He opens a cage, and one raven flies right into his face. Two more also escape. He catches one raven, and puts a message onto the bird. The Fist sounds with shouts as he charges the bird to fly. He grabs another raven, and attaches a message to that raven too.

Samwell finishes getting dressed, buckling his sword belt on tight, grabs his pack and stuffs everything he can into it. Smallclothes, dry socks, oh and dragonglass arrowheads and the spearhead. He also gets the extremely inconsequential horn Jon gave him too. He grabs his writing instruments and ink, maps, a sausage for the road, and then he’s not sure what to do. He did his duty by sending the birds. Now what?

He remembered turning in a circle, lost, the fear growing inside him as it always did. There were dogs barking and horses trumpeting, but the snow muffled the sounds and made them seem far away. Sam could see nothing beyond three yards, not even the torches burning along the low stone wall that ringed the crown of the hill. Could the torches have gone out? That was too scary to think about. The horn blew thrice long, three long blasts means Others. The white walkers of the wood, the cold shadows, the monsters of the tales that made him squeak and tremble as a boy, riding their giant ice-spiders, hungry for blood . . .

So, Sam draws his sword and follows some Shadow Tower men to the wall, finding torches burning to his relief.

The black brothers stood with swords and spears in hand, watching the snow fall, waiting. Ser Mallador Locke went by on his horse, wearing a snow-speckled helm. Sam stood well back behind the others, looking for Grenn or Dolorous Edd. If I have to die, let me die beside my friends, he remembered thinking. But all the men around him were strangers, Shadow Tower men under the command of the ranger named Blane.

"Here they come," he heard a brother say.

"Notch," said Blane, and twenty black arrows were pulled from as many quivers, and notched to as many bowstrings.

"Gods be good, there's hundreds," a voice said softly.

"Draw," Blane said, and then, "hold." Sam could not see and did not want to see. The men of the Night's Watch stood behind their torches, waiting with arrows pulled back to their ears, as something came up that dark, slippery slope through the snow. "Hold," Blane said again, "hold, hold." And then, "Loose."

The arrows whispered as they flew.

It’s so hard not to quote this entire passage, because it’s fucking amazing. Alas.

The NW brothers cheer, but then someone says the wights aren’t stopping. They quickly come upon the men as Samwell realizes he’s backing away from the ringwall. He flashes back to the present, thinking how the snow was warmer than what he experienced that night with the Others all around them. He just needs to rest.

A horse passes by Samwell, and then a man and a horse pass Samwell. Sam wishes he had a horse to carry him, but there were too few mounts left after the Battle of the Fist of the First Men. And the few horses remaining were carrying the food, torches and wounded. And Sam wasn’t wounded. He was just fat and weak. A craven.

He was such a coward. Lord Randyll, his father, had always said so, and he had been right. Sam was his heir, but he had never been worthy, so his father had sent him away to the Wall. His little brother Dickon would inherit the Tarly lands and castle, and the greatsword Heartsbane that the lords of Horn Hill had borne so proudly for centuries. He wondered whether Dickon would shed a tear for his brother who died in the snow, somewhere off beyond the edge of the world. Why should he? A coward's not worth weeping over. He had heard his father tell his mother as much, half a hundred times. The Old Bear knew it too.

Back to the metal battle. Mormont appears on horseback, orders fire arrows to be shot into the wights. He notices Samwell there and tells the boy to get back to the ravens. When Sam says he got the ravens away, Mormont’s all like, awesome. But get gone. Mormont might need to send more birds. Get the ravens ready. The LC turns and then orders more fire.

So, Sam headed back to the bird very fast. He writes messages ahead of time and starts writing the messages as he listens to the battle. And fuck it, this shit is so good. I’m just going to read from the book for this:

Attacked amidst snow and cold, but we've thrown them back with fire arrows, he wrote, as he heard Thoren Smallwood's voice ring out with a command of, "Notch, draw . . . loose." The flight of arrows made a sound as sweet as a mother's prayer. "Burn, you dead bastards, burn," Dywen sang out, cackling. The brothers cheered and cursed. All safe, he wrote. We remain on the Fist of the First Men. Sam hoped they were better archers than him.

He put that note aside and found another blank parchment. Still fighting on the Fist, amidst heavy snow, he wrote when someone shouted, "They're still coming." Result uncertain. "Spears," someone said. It might have been Ser Mallador, but Sam could not swear to it. Wights attacked us on the Fist, in snow, he wrote, but we drove them off with fire . He turned his head. Through the drifting snow, all he could see was the huge fire at the center of the camp, with mounted men moving restlessly around it. The reserve, he knew, ready to ride down anything that breached the ringwall. They had armed themselves with torches in place of swords, and were lighting them in the flames.

Wights all around us, he wrote, when he heard the shouts from the north face. Coming up from north and south at once. Spears and swords don't stop them, only fire. "Loose, loose, loose," a voice screamed in the night, and another shouted, "Bloody huge," and a third voice said, "A giant!" and a fourth insisted, "A bear, a bear!" A horse shrieked and the hounds began to bay, and there was so much shouting that Sam couldn't make out the voices anymore. He wrote faster, note after note. Dead wildlings, and a giant, or maybe a bear, on us, all around. He heard the crash of steel on wood, which could only mean one thing. Wights over the ringwall. Fighting inside the camp. A dozen mounted brothers pounded past him toward the east wall, burning brands streaming flames in each rider's hand. Lord Commander Mormont is meeting them with fire. We've won. We're winning. We're holding our own. We're cutting our way free and retreating for the Wall. We're trapped on the Fist, hard pressed.

Good Lord. That is amazing writing.

A Shadow Tower man staggers to Sam and dies as Sam writes that the battle is lost. Everyone is lost. But Sam doesn’t want to remember the battle. He wants to remember his sister or Gilly. But then Grenn is there, trying to wake Samwell Tarly, telling him he needs to get up. Sam says he wants to rest. He’ll catch up with them soon. No. Sam is going to freeze or the Others will get him unless he gets up and moves.

The night before they left the Wall, Pyp had teased Grenn the way he did, Sam remembered, smiling and saying how Grenn was a good choice for the ranging, since he was too stupid to be terrified. Grenn hotly denied it until he realized what he was saying. He was stocky and thick-necked and strong-Ser Alliser Thorne had called him "Aurochs," the same way he called Sam "Ser Piggy" and Jon "Lord Snow"-but he had always treated Sam nice enough. That was only because of Jon, though. If it weren't for Jon, none of them would have liked me. And now Jon was gone, lost in the Skirling Pass with Qhorin Halfhand, most likely dead. Sam would have cried for him, but those tears would only freeze as well, and he could scarcely keep his eyes open now.

But then a tall brother with a torch stops, and Sam feels the warmth on his face. He tells Grenn to leave Sam there, but Grenn refuses. Samwell will get up. The ranger moves on as Grenn tries to pick Samwell up to no avail. Frustrated, Grenn kicks Sam and tells him to get up. NOW! Instead, Samwell falls over and curls up in a ball. Hurt, Samwell thinks Grenn was his friend, and friends don’t kick their friends. He just needs to rest, sleep, and then he’ll very definitely get up and get moving. Or he might die a little.

"If you take the torch, I can take the fat boy."

Suddenly he was jerked up into the cold air, away from his sweet soft snow; he was floating. There was an arm under his knees, and another one under his back. Sam raised his head and blinked. A face loomed close, a broad brutal face with a flat nose and small dark eyes and a thicket of coarse brown beard. He had seen the face before, but it took him a moment to remember. Paul. Small Paul. Melting ice ran down into his eyes from the heat of the torch. "Can you carry him?" he heard Grenn ask.

"I carried a calf once was heavier than him. I carried him down to his mother so he could get a drink of milk."

Sam tells Small Paul to put him down and stop carrying him like a baby. He’s a man of the Night’s Watch, and he just wants to die. Grenn tells Sam to shut up and think about happy things: his sisters, Aemon, food or sing a song. Aloud? Er, no. In your head, Sam. But Sam can’t remember any of the hundred songs he used to know. What about The Bear and the Maiden Fair? Please, no. Sam would prefer not to think of bears given that the last one he saw had been undead with no hair and rotting flesh. So, Grenn tells him to think of ravens instead.

Small Paul frowned. "Chett said I could have the Old Bear's raven, the one that talks. I saved food for it and everything." He shook his head. "I forgot, though. I left the food where I hid it." He plodded onward, pale white breath coming from his mouth with every step, then suddenly said, "Could I have one of your ravens? Just the one. I'd never let Lark eat it."

"They're gone," said Sam. "I'm sorry." So sorry. "They're flying back to the Wall now." He had set the birds free when he'd heard the warhorns sound once more, calling the Watch to horse. Two short blasts and a long one, that was the call to mount up. But there was no reason to mount, unless to abandon the Fist, and that meant the battle was lost. The fear bit him so strong then that it was all Sam could do to open the cages. Only as he watched the last raven flap up into the snowstorm did he realize that he had forgotten to send any of the messages he'd written.

Horrified, Samwell starts squealing “no!” And this sends him back to the Fist of the First Men in another flashback. The horns were blowing as the order came down to get on their horses. Sam tried to chase the ravens around, but they evaded him.

After that . . . he remembered the dead coming over the stones with arrows in their faces and through their throats. Some were all in ringmail and some were almost naked . . . wildlings, most of them, but a few wore faded blacks. He remembered one of the Shadow Tower men shoving his spear through a wight's pale soft belly and out his back, and how the thing staggered right up the shaft and reached out his black hands and twisted the brother's head around until blood came out his mouth. That was when his bladder let go the first time, he was almost sure.

Samwell runs and arrives at the fire on the other side of the camp. Ser Ottyn Wythers was there on his knees staring until a horse kicked him in the face. Archers were loosing fire arrows at the wights, and some of them exploded in flame, but more kept coming behind. And then Samwell sees the massive bear, and the archers run out of arrows. Then Sam was on a horse as the horns blow. He kicks the horse, and the horse rides.

In the midst of carnage and chaos and blowing snow, he found Dolorous Edd sitting on his garron with a plain black banner on a spear. "Sam," Edd said when he saw him, "would you wake me, please? I am having this terrible nightmare."

More men were mounting up every moment. The warhorns called them back. Ahooo ahooo ahooooooooooooooooooo. "They're over the west wall, m'lord," Thoren Smallwood screamed at the Old Bear, as he fought to control his horse. "I'll send reserves . . . "

"NO!" Mormont had to bellow at the top of his lungs to be heard over the horns. "Call them back, we have to cut our way out." He stood in his stirrups, his black cloak snapping in the wind, the fire shining off his armor. "Spearhead!" he roared. "Form wedge, we ride. Down the south face, then east!"

"My lord, the south slope's crawling with them!"

"The others are too steep," Mormont said. "We have-"

LC Mormont’s horse screams and almost throws Mormont from it as Sam pisses himself. The bear then comes into view with bright, blue eyes that Jon noted previously. Ser Thoren Smallwood charges the bear, swings his sword and takes off most of the bear’s head, and then the undead bear takes off all of Smallwood’s head.

"RIDE!" the Lord Commander shouted, wheeling.

They were galloping when they reached the ringwall. They jump over the ringwall, and they rush down the hillside as everyone fights desperately at all the wights attacking.

And Samwell Tarly sobbed, clutching desperately to his horse with a strength he never knew he had.

Samwell Tarly was in the middle of the flying spearhead as the column plunges into mass of undead humanity which grab for them, kill horses and attack. But then Samwell finds himself outside of the battle until a fellow “brother” jumps up and kicks him out of the horse, steals it and gallops off. Sam chases until he trips over roots and falls. He weeps until Dolorous Edd finds him.

That was his last coherent memory of the Fist of the First Men. Later, hours later, he stood shivering among the other survivors, half mounted and half afoot. They were miles from the Fist by then, though Sam did not remember how. Dywen had led down five packhorses, heavy laden with food and oil and torches, and three had made it this far. The Old Bear made them redistribute the loads, so the loss of any one horse and its provisions would not be such a catastrophe. He took garrons from the healthy men and gave them to the wounded, organized the walkers, and set torches to guard their flanks and rear. All I need do is walk, Sam told himself, as he took that first step toward home. But before an hour was gone he had begun to struggle, and to lag . . .

Sam realizes that they’re going much slower than desired, and even if Small Paul was super strong, he was carrying Sam through heavy snow. Horsemen pass with torches in hand. They tell the party that they’re falling behind. They tell Grenn and Paul to leave Sam for the wights. But Paul is stubborn. He was promised a bird. Not really, Sam thinks, and the torch bearers move on.

It was a while after when Grenn stopped suddenly. "We're alone," he said in a hoarse voice. "I can't see the other torches. Was that the rear guard?"

Small Paul had no answer for him. The big man gave a grunt and sank to his knees. His arms trembled as he lay Sam gently in the snow. "I can't carry you no more. I would, but I can't." He shivered violently.

The wind moves through the trees, and Sam looks for the torches but doesn’t see anything besides Grenn’s torch. And if that torch burned out they would be alone.

But that was wrong. They weren't alone at all.

OH FUCK. OH SHIT.

The lower branches of the great green sentinel shed their burden of snow with a soft wet plop. Grenn spun, thrusting out his torch. "Who goes there?" A horse's head emerged from the darkness. Sam felt a moment's relief, until he saw the horse. Hoarfrost covered it like a sheen of frozen sweat, and a nest of stiff black entrails dragged from its open belly. On its back was a rider pale as ice. Sam made a whimpery sound deep in his throat. He was so scared he might have pissed himself all over again, but the cold was in him, a cold so savage that his bladder felt frozen solid. The Other slid gracefully from the saddle to stand upon the snow. Sword-slim it was, and milky white. Its armor rippled and shifted as it moved, and its feet did not break the crust of the new-fallen snow.

AIRHORNS AIRHORNS AIRHORNS

Small Paul unslung the long-hafted axe strapped across his back. "Why'd you hurt that horse? That was Mawney's horse."

Sam groped for the hilt of his sword, but the scabbard was empty. He had lost it on the Fist, he remembered too late.

Okay. FINE. I’ll do some synopsizing. But this is amazing stuff.

Grenn tells the Other to get away as he pokes it with flames, but then the Other’s sword slashes the torch, and the fire falls into the snow. Grenn throws the stick at the Other, and then Paul charges in his his axe. Samwell begs the Mother for mercy and for the Father to protect him. His finger grab the dagger.

The wights were slow, but the Other was quick. It dodged Paul’s axe, spun around the big man and its crystal sword impaled Paul. Paul’s blood smokes, and he tries to reach out to kill the Other with his hands, but he falls. Paul’s weight pulls the sword from the Other’s grip.

Do it now. Stop crying and fight, you baby. Fight, craven. It was his father he heard, it was Alliser Thorne, it was his brother Dickon and the boy Rast. Craven, craven, craven. He giggled hysterically, wondering if they would make a wight of him, a huge fat white wight always tripping over its own dead feet. Do it, Sam. Was that Jon, now? Jon was dead. You can do it, you can, just do it. And then he was stumbling forward, falling more than running, really, closing his eyes and shoving the dagger blindly out before him with both hands. He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man's foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse.

When he opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.

YES OH YES!

Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."

Samwell says that it’s obsidian, dragonglass. Sam giggles and cries and then vomits into the snow. Grenn gets Sam to his feet, checks Paul to see if he’s alive. And then closes his eyes. Grenn grabs the dagger. And Samwell says Grenn should keep it as he’s not a coward like Sam.

"So craven you killed an Other." Grenn pointed with the knife. "Look there, through the trees. Pink light. Dawn, Sam. Dawn. That must be east. If we head that way, we should catch Mormont."

"If you say." Sam kicked his left foot against a tree, to knock off all the snow. Then the right. "I'll try." Grimacing, he took a step. "I'll try hard." And then another.

And that is the absolutely amazing, heart-soaring, beautiful end to the synopsis of part 2 of ASOS, Samwell I! I won’t bullshit about how much you might have hated this chapter, because I know you didn’t. So, please gush for hours

Depth

Last week, we talked about the experimental structure of this chapter, how it conveys Sam’s mindset and how George carefully conceals the actual inciting incident so as to make it all the more frightening. This week, we tunnel to the core of Sam I to learn the terrible truth, like flipping over a rock to reveal the bugs squirming around underneath. George still cuts back and forth between the past and the present, but less frequently, cutting off any chance of escaping the terror. Now we fully get to understand what has reduced Sam to such a shambling wreck in the present...which makes the ending, when he does the most heroic thing ever, all the more satisfying. ASOIAF doesn’t get better than this, horror doesn’t get better than this--hell, stories don’t get better than this.

Have you heard the theory that ASOIAF is a nihilistic story set in direct contrast to LOTR? Every time you hear someone say this, please point them to this chapter. I’ve cited George’s statement that the ending to ASOIAF will be bittersweet over and over again. But I think this chapter is the end of ASOIAF in miniature. There is a lot of psychological bitterness in Sam’s memories of the Fist of the First Men and even greater bitterness when he hears his father’s voice telling him to just die. And then there’s a lot of bitterness in Small Paul’s death. But all of that bitterness is vital to the sweetness by chapter’s end in Samwell’s triumph in killing an Other, and then vowing to try really hard to stay alive. I think we wouldn’t experience that catharsis at chapter’s end unless we had all that bitterness leading up to the triumph. We need hopelessness first to make triumph that much greater. So, let’s get right into that darkness with Sam’s memories of the Battle of the Fist of the First Men.

• First flashback
  • As Sam sinks into the snow, accepting death, all the internal barriers fall away and he remembers at length what went down at the Fist
  • George drags us back to the moment we left off, at the end of the Prologue: the third horn blast signaling the Others
  • When we last checked in with Chett, he was pissing himself from fear, and Sam tells us he’d never seen someone look so afraid
  • Sam begs for his help with the birds, but Chett runs off; Sam assumes he had his own orders, and anyway, he has to care for the dogs
  • This is ironic on multiple levels. The reader knows that Chett was just about to slit Sam’s throat; if anything, the Others saved Sam from Chett!
  • I love that even as George finally unveils his otherworldly apocalyptic monsters, he reminds us that our greatest enemies are each other; as with Randyll, Chett is a threat to Sam’s safety before the Others ever show up
  • And like Randyll, Chett thought Sam was useless, thinking that Sam’s weight made him disgusting, his aversion to violence made him weak
  • But now here’s Chett, running away from a fight, and here’s Sam, trying his best to do his duty despite the fear freezing him like the cold
  • The only time you can be brave is when you’re afraid; these are the choices that reveal yourself, and Chett turns out to be the coward here
  • He was so certain he would escape the Fist, but he’s killed and revived as a wight, forced into bondage by an army far worse than the Night’s Watch
  • The dramatic irony continues as Sam assumes that Chett has orders from Mormont, who Chett also wanted to kill, and that Chett will take care of the dogs, who he’s actually been starving to turn loose on the horses!
  • Despite being treated like shit by most people, Sam still can’t even imagine Chett’s level of alienation and resentment
  • Sam just doesn’t have a hateful bone in his body; his response to a world that seems to have no place for him is to curl up into a little ball and blame himself, rather than fire indiscriminately into the crowd as Chett does
  • Perspective is everything. We can’t access objective truth because we can’t ever get outside of our own heads--storytelling mirrors the acts of empathy and imagination, in which we make the attempt to find truth
  • You can see George making that argument in the very form of the chapter, how the massacre is cut up into jagged shards of memory
  • It’s as if the event itself was so terrifying that it shattered not only Sam’s ability to think about it, but George’s ability to write about it
  • Even when we finally get access to what Sam saw at the Fist, it comes in fragments. After all, Mormont ordered him away from the front line
  • His duty was to write messages to send back to Castle Black. You were talking last week about Sam as George’s self-insert and this is some of the strongest evidence for that: Sam is literally the author of the battle!
  • The build-up to the battle is so tense -- even if we know what’s going to happen at the end of it.
  • An important storytelling aspect that George gets so right is the build-up. And he accomplishes this by having Samwell away from the battle itself.
  • Like I think about how much less effective this scene would have been had Jon Snow still been with the Night’s Watch.
  • Jon would have been with LC Mormont riding around from place to place or maybe on the front line itself.
  • But Samwell in the rear allows George to capture the mounting tension and dread.
  • We feel the rising action in Samwell’s perspective, because we’re stationary, behind the main line.
  • It’s also night outside, and Sam can’t really make out anything of
  • George writing from Sam’s perspective allows the experience to feel auditory even as it comes out on the page.
  • He starts with the simple messages he wrote out beforehand in the event of a wildling attack, the worst thing LC Mormont could see coming
  • Sam sends them off, but they seem almost quaint now, insufficient in the face of what’s happening. The world has changed around them
  • Those letters are like an older draft of the story of the Fist of the First Men, one that’s being overwritten by a new story, a horror story
  • The wildlings have been replaced by the Others, and whatever their in-universe origins might be, where the Others are really from is stories
  • You can see that in how Sam thinks about them: the phrases he heard in stories. White walkers, cold shadows, hunting humans atop ice spiders
  • They told the same stories in Winterfell. It’s what connects us all, north and south, trueborn and bastards. Winter is coming; death is coming
  • So as in the Prologue to book one, the fear of the Others is George’s focus, even more than the Others themselves
  • Fear is the mind-killer, a self-fulfilling paralytic in which the terror of death is what gets you killed because it shuts down your responses
  • But fear also inspires the imagination; narrative codifies this process through repetition and familiarity. Ask any campaign manager about it
  • Have the bedtime stories prepared Sam for what’s waiting in the darkness, or have they actually made it worse by firing his imagination?
  • To fight off the fear within, Sam takes comfort in the sight of a bunch of big bearded guys with axes and spears. He follows them like a child might follow a parent, thinking--assuming--that they’ll keep him safe
  • But just as Sam’s own tough military dad was the source of danger rather than safety, these Shadow Tower strangers can’t hold the darkness back
  • Sam sees them fire their arrows, hears them cheer...and then the cheer fades, and takes that sense of security with it
  • This scene is so effective at communicating the feeling that everything will be okay until it’s not
  • When Samwell shows up, the stalwart men of the Night’s Watch stand with swords and spears in hand, waiting.
  • It gives you this false sense that everything is going to be okay. The men are standing up and ready to throw back the wights and walkers.
  • But the smart reader takes a look at this and thinks, Wait, there’s something wrong about all of this.
  • These men are here holding weapons that won’t defeat the enemy. We know that the swords, spears and unlit arrows won’t defeat the Others or wights.
  • Only fire can defeat the wights, and only dragonglass or possibly Valyrian steel can stop the Others.
  • These brave men might as well be holding toy swords for all the good those weapons are going to do.
  • And the Night’s Watch knows this! Mormont was there when the wights attacked him back in AGOT. They know what will stop the wights.
  • But they stand there, ready to throw their lives away despite knowing better.
  • And then the arrows go, everyone cheers and then they realize that the wights are still coming.
  • I love that line about Samwell backing away without realizing it. His subconscious realizes that he’s in danger of getting hit again. And his body reacts without conscious thought.
  • You can’t hold the dead back, any more than Sam can hold his memories back. It’s the powerlessness that makes it so terrifying, the zombies as inevitable as winter, hence Sam shaking like the last leaf on the tree
  • He thinks of himself as a coward again; it makes me sad and angry to read how thoroughly he’s internalized his father’s hatred, to the extent that Sam thinks Randyll was right to send him away under threat of death
  • Sam thinks he’s unworthy, not only of his father’s sword and castle, but of love, which ought to be a universal human birthright
  • His self-loathing has reached a practically suicidal pitch, and under the surface, I think this is a chapter about suicide
  • Sam begins the chapter deciding to die, and ends the chapter deciding to live, in large part because of his friends. As strangers die around him on the Fist, all he can think of are his friends; he wishes he could die with them. That’s the power of love right there: it can’t stop death, but it can take away our fear of death, which is the most we can achieve
  • Sam never got that love from his dad, so he thinks that when he dies, no one will mourn him. It’ll be like he was never alive at all
  • “A coward’s not worth weeping over,” Randyll told his wife, which sums up his whole mindset. He denies Sam’s feelings, and in order to justify that abuse to his wife, he denies her feelings as well. The Others exemplify that heartlessness, taking it in a more mystical metaphysical direction
  • Sam thinks that LC Mormont feels the same way; as I said earlier, I think that’s only half true. He gets a heroic introduction in the battle, suddenly appearing on his horse to order his men to give them fire
  • Mormont thinks that Sam can’t function on that level, and sends him back to the ravens for his own good. So unlike Randyll, he believes Sam can play a role. Sam decides to write out a bunch of different scenarios
  • He’s once more in the position of the author. Like George, he’s gardening a variety of narrative paths that the battle could take
  • The artist both reflects reality and creates a new reality. This part of the chapter is about that give-and-take process: the battle is chaos, enveloping in flashes and fragments, and Sam has to synthesize that into a coherent narrative to send back to Castle Black
  • He hears Dywen cackling “burn, you dead bastards, burn,” a fierce surge of hope that Sam translates into his letters: maybe he’ll get to report a hopeful outcome. Anything is possible in the present moment
  • Sam’s messages collapse together as their position collapses, with rumors and descriptions flying all over the place, possibilities in flux
  • But the reader already knows how this ends. We have to sit with our dread, watching as Sam’s hope inevitably dies
  • Call it fate, call it doom, call it whatever you want: it’s the knowledge that the universe is indifferent to our survival. The choices narrow, and Sam’s more positive letters look like projections, wish fulfillment narratives
  • A huge shape rears up out of the darkness. Some Watchmen think it’s a giant, others think it’s a bear. The latter turn out to be right, but part of the terror is not knowing: the subconscious shadow of death, the Stranger
  • I feel like this is also George recognizing that he’s not a veteran and that his understanding of combat is entirely secondhand
  • He’s reflecting on that through his writing process. Like Sam, he sees fighting from a distance, in bits and pieces, and tries his best to convey both a strategic and emotional understanding of what he’s seeing
  • And he does a really great job of communicating what’s happening at the Fist!
  • Part of why I think this works so effectively is that this scene feels not so much like a battle and more like a football game that goes horribly awry.
  • The Castle Black Night’s Watchmen gain an early lead over the White Walker wights, scoring some early touchdowns.
  • It looks like it’s all-but-over. The Watchmen have won.
  • But then the tide of the game starts to shift. They’re only winning. And then they’re holding their own. The score evens. The Patriots overcome a 28-3 deficit to tie the game.
  • Outside of the way this feels like a football game gone awry, another detail that struck me is how one of those Shadow Tower men that Sam thought he would be safe to be with, staggers forward and dies in front of Sam.
  • Like I was saying last week, it’s not going to be the people we would expect to be at the front leading the charge, fighting the battles, winning the war.
  • It’s going to be the Samwells as opposed to the Qhorin Halfhand wannabes who will survive this and face the real apocalypse.
  • The limitations of the POV, and how it makes the zombie attack more frightening rather than less, reminds me of Max Brooks’ World War Z
  • The book has lost some of its luster after the mediocre movie adaptation and books like Robocalypse that mimicked the epistolary structure without any of the insight or emotions
  • But I still love World War Z, in part because it doesn’t just depict a descent into conveniently total chaos. It shows institutions and cultures responding to the zombies--changing in some ways, staying the same in others
  • One of the most famous setpieces from World War Z is the Battle of Yonkers, a snafu of the highest order in which a horde of zombies out of New York breaks the U.S. Army, told from the POV of an infantryman
  • He doesn’t hate the zombies. Why would he? They don’t even know what they’re doing! His anger is for the commanders who put him there
  • He says that they don’t have the luxury of claiming to have been surprised. The zombies have been around a while; they’re three months into widespread public panic at this point, they’re trying to quell it
  • Similarly, LC Mormont knows damn well that there are worse enemies than wildlings up here, but hasn’t prepared for them
  • Todd’s overall argument is that his commanders were fighting the last war: “those generals who spent their nard-drop years training to defend West Germany from Ivan.” Cold War tactics fail against the walking dead
  • Same deal in Westeros: Mormont can’t let go of the war against the wildlings because that’s all he knows. Old dog, meet new tricks
  • Todd compares the Battle of Yonkers to Little Bighorn, which has significant implications in both strategic and moral terms, both of which resonate with what’s going on in Sam’s chapter
  • Strategically, Brooks is comparing Todd’s commanders to Custer, and that same arrogant overextension applies to the Night’s Watch
  • Morally, this frames the zombies as the return of the repressed in terms of the colonization of the Americas, and you could say the same about the Others vis-a-vis the Children of the Forest. Take all the grief and anger in “Last of the Giants,” weaponize it, and that’s how you get white walkers
  • But Todd also concludes that what really defeated them wasn’t incompetence or arrogance. It was fear: the oldest weapon of them all
    • ...you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day. Break their spirit, that’s what every successful army goes for, from tribal face paint to the blitzkrieg to...what did we call the first round of Gulf War Two? “Shock and Awe.” Perfect name, “Shock and Awe!” But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t?
  • Or as Tywin put it:
    • ...the battle is over in the instant one army breaks and flees. No matter that they're as numerous as they were a moment before, still armed and armored; once they had run before you they would not turn to fight again.
  • The wights will never surrender because they can’t. They will never break, and that fact in turn breaks those who try and fail to fight them
  • Though I am a realTM historian (not really, just have the undergrad degree), one of the things I’ve always been fascinated by is alternative or speculative history.
  • What would happen if, say, you placed a Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit into Rome during the time of Augustus.
  • Why, that’s just the plot of a series of reddit posts by James Erwin who crafted the story Rome, Sweet Rome imagining what would happen if you placed Marines against Roman legionnaires.
  • I won’t spoil the plot of the story - and it is in development by Warner Brothers for a hopeful future movie - but the results are interesting!
  • Part of the draw of ASOIAF for me was in the smash cut of a medieval political and military drama into a zombie apocalypse.
  • But when you put a medieval army in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, I love that genre-bending shit.
  • The Prologue established the dynamic with three medieval soldiers confronting ice demons.
  • Samwell I blows that dynamic up a whole lot larger with a full force of three hundred Spartans Night’s watchmen against thousands of wights.
  • I think your point about the leadership of the Night’s Watch adapting the tactics of what they are familiar with.
  • But these aren’t Targaryen loyalists at the Trident or Greyjoy reavers at Pyke: the enemies of Jeor Mormont.
  • It is good that Mormont rode up, yelling about giving them fire. But y’know, maybe you tell them that before they waste a batch of arrows?
  • But that’s picking a nit. The larger point is that there is no victory here. They could fire all of their fire arrows at the wights, and it would only slow the inevitable.
  • The Night’s Watch is going to lose this battle.
  • Of interest is that the Night’s Watch chooses to fight this battle in the first place rather than run at first sight of the wights.
  • The contrast is the wildlings led by Mance Rayder.
  • Despite having thousands of warriors, hundreds of thousands of bodies, the wildlings are running for the Wall.
  • Obviously, this is because the wildlings have now had probable years of experience in fighting the Others and the wights.
  • But the Night’s Watch should really know better.
  • This is a smaller example of a larger phenomena: the Night’s Watch has lost all of its institutional knowledge of fighting the Others and the wights.
  • They don’t know their enemies’ capabilities, skills or tactics. This came as a result of them seeing the wildlings as their true enemy, rather than the Others.
  • As Mormont will say in Samwell II:
    • “The Night's Watch has forgotten its true purpose, Tarly. You don't build a wall seven hundred feet high to keep savages in skins from stealing women. The Wall was made to guard the realms of men . . . and not against other men, which is all the wildlings are when you come right down to it. Too many years, Tarly, too many hundreds and thousands of years. We lost sight of the true enemy. And now he's here, but we don't know how to fight him.”
  • And so they stand and fight and most of them die.
• Grenn and Small Paul
  • Sam doesn’t want to die dwelling on these horrible memories. He tries to remember something good. All his good memories are of women: his mother, his sister, and Gilly, of course
  • This is pretty telling! The main source of Sam’s bafflement and dismay at the world is other men; women have always been more accommodating
  • This is in part because Sam is interested in many activities that are coded feminine--dancing, baking, etc
  • But it’s also because the men around him have been brought up with a ruthlessly competitive, kill-or-be-killed worldview
  • We often see in ASOIAF how this worldview hurts women and children victimized by those men. These rigid gender roles, however, also hurt individual men, the men who won’t or can’t live up to them
  • We saw that with Alliser Thorne, who was running the risk of getting Sam seriously injured or even killed with his contemptuous training methods. These, too, are bad memories Sam can’t replace with good ones
  • Only Jon crossed the line to help Sam, and that act of kindness ripples down to save him now
  • Grenn, of all people, forces Sam to keep going, and stays with him almost at cost of his own life. Grenn was one of those fighting Sam at first
  • Jon showed Grenn a different way, and it made an impact on him. So unlike the other Watchmen passing Sam by, Grenn refuses to leave Sam there. Unlike Randyll, unlike Alliser, he sees the worth in Sam
  • And even if he didn’t, they’re brothers, and they owe each other this. To let the devil take the hindmost is a moral victory for the devil
  • Living comes with pain; Grenn’s friendship takes the form of a boot to the ribs, because sometimes friendship means helping people out of self-destructive behavior. Dying is seductive because it’s so easy; there’s a quiet horror to Sam thinking that he wants to just “maybe die a little”
  • Another man passing by tells Grenn to give up on him. Once they stop, they’re dead, and Sam will only drag Grenn down with him
  • Small Paul saves the day, trading his torch for Sam: the two sparks of life surviving in this frozen hell, cooperation and compassion persisting
  • This is really moving, because Small Paul was part of the mutiny--working for Chett, the guy who came very close to slitting Sam’s throat
  • But Paul wasn’t really interested in killing like Chett or Lark the Sisterman. He just wanted to escape, and then to be left alone with his new pet bird
  • As an aside, I love that Small Paul basically gives away the mutiny here, but Sam and Grenn are too exhausted and distracted to make sense of it
  • Paul’s love for animals hints at a kind heart, and we see that here with him rescuing Sam. He even compares Sam to a calf he carried once
  • For Sam, though, this is just another humiliation. He’s been infantilized and is now only a burden. Compassion can be painful to receive if you don’t believe yourself worthy of it. What would Dad think of him now?
  • Grenn tries to distract Sam with songs, which captures the relationship between storytelling and the violence we’re dealing with here
  • As with Sansa, the songs are a surface layer which obscures bleak and uncomfortable realities
  • Grenn’s trying to bring Sam back to innocence, but it doesn’t work. The songs of his childhood are no solace, because now when Sam hears the song about the bear, he remembers the one on the Fist
  • This might be the most hideously intrusive of all Sam’s flashbacks: a bear with no hair on its rotted flesh, the opposite of the one in the songs
  • It’s everything he was lied to about, an emblem of the suffering inflicted on the natural world and all the life in it in the name of unlimited power
  • It’s the big scare of the chapter, and George teases it here just before unleashing it in full
  • I think it’s a lovely note that Samwell wanting to cry about Jon possibly being dead, same as Jon wondering about whether Sam was dead in our last Jon chapter.
  • And I love how Sam and Jon influence each other and the parties around the two -- like Grenn.
  • Grenn is such a badass in this part of the chapter. He refuses to leave his friend, refuses to adapt the social darwinian survival of the fittest.
  • And though Sam thinks that Grenn is only nice to Sam because of Jon, sad boi isn’t present here.
  • This is Grenn showing us that people can change, his own kick in the ribs from Jon back in AGOT was more metaphorical than the ones that Grenn gives Samwell here, but it was no less powerful.
  • But despite how strong Grenn is, how strong his will is to save Sam, he simply doesn’t possess the strength to get Sam to his feet.
  • Enter Dunk’s maybe descendant Small Paul who picks Sam up and carries him.
  • Now, as you might know, #IWorkOut. Paul carrying Samwell for as many steps as he does is quite the feat.
  • This isn’t a farmer’s carry. This is utilizing immense upper and lower body strength as well as cardiovascular endurance to walk, carrying a large body with him.
  • As Samwell will note in the next chapter, Sam weighed more than Paul did. So. Wow.
  • That’s an intense amount of strength, and I’m amazed by it and wish to know Paul’s workout routine.
  • Still, the fear that Samwell is feeling is felt by others like Grenn. He knows they’re being pursued.
  • So, he tries to get Samwell to shut up. Think of nice things, sing songs in your head.
  • But Samwell doesn’t like Grenn’s jukebox choice: The Bear and the Maiden Fair. Brings up recent terrors.
  • The Others have enslaved a bear, and the poor beast is a horror to look at and has been dead and enthralled for a long time given the rotting flesh and the lack of hair.
  • And yet the Others don’t even give the animal kingdom the ability to rest when they’re dead either. They march on, charging and killing at command.
  • In fact, back in the day, I remember a certain tumblr writer with a hashtag of #RememberTheBear, and that’s always stuck with me, but we’ll get to that.
• Second flashback
  • Now George plunges us headlong into what happened, and once again it starts with the horns
  • This time, it’s the Night’s Watchmen signaling each other to mount up and ride for it. But for Sam, this is just as terrifying as the horn blast that signaled the arrival of the Others
  • This is confirmation that they’ve lost, that none of his protectors will ever keep him safe, that all his Dad’s rules don’t hold back the darkness, and absolutely nothing is in between Samwell and death
  • It’s the triumph of fear, the end of all the stories, and so Sam lets go of narrative, sending the birds flying away without any of his messages
  • In the moment, it felt like a failure, like he’d written all those words for nothing. But really, how would he describe what he saw next?
  • What Sam saw was the earth giving up its dead. Hundreds of them, freezerburned bodies that moved without life, without purpose, without reason to have come back to life but to drag you down with them
  • That’s the reason he is this way now. We’ve reached the heart of the image factory, the terror that is gripping Samwell Tarly
  • The visceral horror of the undead, the sheer mockery of life itself, finally breaks down the narrative, reducing it to slurry, a stream of images
  • It’s the end of all things, and as with the Red Wedding, which also has this sense of pulling the story structure down around and into itself, George pauses for individual grace notes, portraits of people with nothing left
  • Ottyn Wythers is the last gasp of the old guard, sitting dumbfounded in front of the fire until a horse kicks his face in. So it goes
  • Dolorous Edd is reduced to a cartoon image of the Watch, a lone man in black with a sad black banner as the winds of winter blow. Edd’s always got a joke. That’s his whole thing! But now? Edd’s only joke is that this can’t possibly be real. This has to be a nightmare
  • Where’s the leadership of the Watch in all this? Smallwood still wants to fight; the Old Bear knows it’s over and they have to retreat
  • And that’s when the bear shows up. What a monolithic horror image this is! More than anything else, this is what broke Sam. This is the worst of all the memories haunting him as he struggles through the snow
  • It’s so monstrous and gross, an inversion of nature: the bear is dead, as Sam thinks, pale and rotting, yet it keeps coming, an imitation of life
  • There’s nothing more frightening than death, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Part of the reason we tell stories is to reassure ourselves that death is not the end. The flipside of that, though, is the terror of death not being the end. This bear got to live again, but it’s a total nightmare
  • The natural world has turned against the Night’s Watch, and there’s a ghastly irony to it being a bear specifically given the Mormont sigil
  • Remember what Illyrio tells Tyrion: you Westerosi think you really are your symbols. Put you in a cage with a lion, you’ll see the difference real quick
  • This is the culmination of LC Mormont’s overextension, his overlooking the threat of the Others in favor of the war against the wildlings
  • The icon of his family, the image that stands in for his name, his very identity, has returned from the grave to claim him and his men
  • In the face of this terror, Thoren Smallwood finds his courage. Throughout the story so far, he’s been framed as one of the worst Watchmen: racist against the wildlings, arrogant in terms of tactics, dismissive of other views
  • Now his perspective has been rendered moot. Nothing he believes in seems to matter any more. So he gives his all, one last time
  • George writes Thoren’s last stand as blazingly heroic, the furious culmination of the imagery: the red and orange flames reflected on his sword contrasted with the blue eyes of the bear, fire and ice together
  • For just a second, Thoren is Azor Ahai, the Warrior of Light with his sword of fire standing against the darkness. And just as quickly, it’s all over
  • I love how simply and brutally George writes this: Thoren almost takes the bear’s head off, and then the bear takes his. Death comes quickly; all we can do is stand up for each other. No chance, and no choice
  • It also feels like a leitmotif of Ser Waymar Royce’s last stand.
  • Waymar was unlikable throughout the AGOT Prologue, but when the Others came, he stood his ground like a member of the Night’s Watch.
  • And then like the Waymar, he charged the Other. You almost wish Thoren would scream “For Robert” or some such!
  • I like how you put it as a “grace note.” Most of these guys don’t have a moment of likability for the entirety of the story
  • But in death, George gives them a moment of grace, where they are given a small moment of humanity restored in them.
  • It’s a nice thing George does for dirtbags, and I appreciate it.
  • As in a dream, Sam is just somehow on a horse. He doesn’t remember how. He can’t take control; all he can do is hold on for dear life as they ride. He loses the horse just as randomly. It’s pure chaos now
  • No matter how bad dreams get, there’s at least the release of waking up. But when Sam wakes up from this one, he’s still here, in the snow, and things are somehow going to get worse before they get better
• Death of the Author Other
  • The entire chapter builds up to the Other. This is its red carpet; this is its raison d’etre, its reason for being, in-universe and in the narrative
  • We’ve seen its claw marks all over Sam, the lethal terror of its oncoming, the subterranean dread of its passage. It is the endgame of power, the host behind the blue eyes of the bear and all the other zombies on the Fist
  • It’s the focus of all this chapter’s fear, its arrival the payoff for all the tension. We only saw the wights during the battle; the Others, presumably, were behind the scenes like the puppetmasters they are
  • As throughout the chapter, the question becomes what we do in the face of that. What worth our fragile human bodies and feelings next to death?
  • Small Paul is so tender, first to Sam and then to the horse the Other is riding. Why’d you hurt that horse, he asks the Other?
  • On one hand, this seems such an inadequate response to the sight of a horse covered in frost with its guts hanging out
  • On the other hand, Paul is cutting to the core of it: why did the Other hurt that horse, and that bear, and all those people?
  • That’s what I was talking about with #RememberTheBear back in the day. As in the Prologue, the Other is presented as the emissary of the natural world and a perversion of it at the same time. It emerges from the trees and doesn’t even break the crust of the snow beneath its feet. As George described the Other to artist Tommy Paterson, their armor is camouflage, reflecting the natural world around them like a still pond
  • But look what they do to life. They’re guilty not only of mass murder, but of enslavement on a level the masters of Slaver’s Bay could never imagine
  • George also described them as elegant. The Other is all graceful movements like a dance, contrasted with the slow ugly lurches of the wights--that’s how it sees all humanity. It’s an elf, it’s a cat chasing mice, it’s a knight mowing down peasants
  • Yeah, on this read, I really felt like I was seeing Loras Tyrell or Jaime Lannister or some other individual performing a elegant fight sequence.
  • Death is like a dance to the Others, to some knights, it’s a thing of beauty to see, even as it spills blood and steals life.
  • Their last defense against it is fire, but the Other snuffs out Grenn’s torch with its glowing blue sword: ice meets fire, the titular phenomenon of the story. It’s like we’ve accessed the metaphysical core of everything
  • Paul charges, a burly berserker with his ax, but the Other is light as snow on the wind, and slides its crystal sword through him like a shiv
  • All Paul can say is “oh.” It’s the sudden revelation of mortality. No one will intervene; there is no mercy; you’re not going to wake up before you hit the ground. It’s the end of the line, which is what this chapter is about
  • “Oh.” It’s exactly what Quentyn thinks when Dany’s dragons set him on fire. Ice and fire, out of balance and out of control, us caught in between
  • Sam’s fear keeps growing; he prays to the Mother again, and now the Father. But Sam’s true father never protected him, never loved him as he should’ve. Sam hears his father’s voice now, merging with Alliser Thorne and Rast, all one bully calling him a craven, a baby who can only cry
  • It’s some bleak shit! Hard to imagine things getting any worse! But when you hit rock bottom, it means you’ve got nothing left to lose
  • Even as Paul dies, suffering for the kindness he showed Sam, he wrestles the Other’s sword out of its hands, making it vulnerable for a moment
  • It’s Sam’s moment to act. But it’s not the insults in his head that motivate him. Randyll thought his harsh techniques would build Sam up, but he was wrong; all they did was break him down
  • The insults don’t work, prompting only nervous giggling from Sam as he  imagines what a foolish zombie he’ll look like
  • It’s some bitter gallow’s humor: even in death he’d be ashamed of himself! That’s his true enemy, and it’s Jon’s voice that overcomes it, cutting through the insults from the others to tell Sam he can do it
  • No one else ever told Sam that. Only Jon believed in him. That’s how you help people be the best they can be, and that’s what Sam needs now
  • Sam has to close his eyes to see, trusting intuition, doing nothing but rushing forward with the dagger, and that turns out to be enough
  • This struck me so hard, because combat and killing is not quite as ordered as it seems in movies and TV shows.
  • A lot of it is pure dumb luck and chaotic violence that causes the other … person to die.
  • Samwell stumbles forward, charging blindly, the dagger pointed out, and he makes contact with the ice.
  • I love the detail that the sound is like cracking ice. It’s the way that David J. Peterson was going to portray the language of the Other.
  • And in a way, I don’t think this is simply the impact of the obsidian dagger into the Other itself.
  • Rather, I think this is the Other screaming in pain in his own language.
  • Remember how the Other language was described in the AGOT Prologue:
    • The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake,
  • And now the impact creates a “sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man’s foot.”
  • To me, that’s the Other vocalizing the pain of dying, of real death, rather than the obsidian dagger going into its flesh. It’s the Other’s “Oh” moment before he screams.
  • And shriek he does.
  • But that’s really only the audible side of it. The visual piece is even more awesome.
  • The death of the Other is one of George’s great visual spectacles, like the birth of the dragons in reverse
  • It’s miraculous, scarcely believable, something both divine and alien: blue blood hissing, the Other’s fingers smoking where it touches obsidian
  • It melts like the wicked witch, or Gremlins exposed to the sunlight: a monster-movie ending for this self-contained horror story
  • Its flesh turns to mist, and even its milky bones dissolve. That which seemed the most powerful being in existence a moment ago has now completely fallen apart like a house of cards
  • Sam Tarly has struck back against the domain of death, the world that told him he’d never be good enough. After such a grim chapter, with the apocalypse unfolding all around him, the triumph is all the sweeter
  • And he did it with the dagger Jon gave him, now “wreathed in steam as if it was alive and sweating,” one of the trippiest images in this bad trip of a chapter. It’s as though the dagger has become the dragon it’s named for
  • Yet despite steaming, the dagger is now cold to the touch, as if it’s absorbed the essence of the Other
  • After all, speaking of Jon Snow, he’s the result of ice and fire coming together. Maybe this is a sex scene in a way, reflecting how Lyanna (ice) absorbed Rhaegar’s fire and then died for it
  • But of course, Rhaegar and Lyanna left behind a child. There’s nothing left of the Other: no progeny, no love, only death
  • Sam doesn’t want the dagger. He still doesn’t want to fight and deal death. But he’s wrong when he calls himself a craven. He has proven otherwise as Grenn says: the first in thousands of years to kill an Other
  • Sam has brought the Dawn, pink light filtering through the trees; this represents the end of the Long Night. It’s always darkest before the dawn
  • Life finds a way. What I really love about how this chapter ends, though, is that George doesn’t indulge in sentimentality
  • No angels descend to provide Sam the Slayer with a chariot to spur him on his way. Randyll’s not here to see what his son has accomplished
  • Instead, we’ve come full circle, right back to where we began: Sam taking one step, and then another. That’s all any of us can do: keep going, decide to live another day no matter how hopeless it all seems
  • I’ve been talking about a lot of reference points for this chapter, mostly in terms of horror, but the sheer bleakness also pushes us into existential territory, finding meaning for ourselves in a meaningless world
  • So in its final moments, this chapter reminds me not of Stephen King nor World War Z, but Samuel Beckett: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Those birds without messages will arrive at Castle Black; Aemon writes about them in his letter to Dragonstone that Davos reads.

The Other chops the flame off Grenn’s torch, and it goes out, preventing Chett from burning Small Paul’s body, and sure enough, Paul turns up as a wight at the abandoned village in ASOS, Samwell III

Theory/Discussion

Jeff, what do you think of LC Mormont as a general here?

• It is a mixed bag.
• On one hand, LC Mormont acts decisively in fighting back and deciding to break contact in the middle of contact.
• That’s very difficult given that no one has radios to coordinate this.
• And despite the chaos of it, he gets his men clear of the attack and keeps some of them alive.
• In and of itself, that is a victory.
• The tactics, meaningless as it ultimately becomes, are done well — funneling the wights against the wall and attempting to mitigate the force disparity by slowing them against a wall and using the elevation advantage to keep the wights at bay.
• However, I’m a little annoyed with Mormont as I talked about earlier that he wasn’t riding up and down the line telling everyone to arm themselves with fire arrows and torches.
• And they had time! The horns blow three times, and Sam is able to move up to the line from his position prior to the arrival of the wights.
• Moreover, there’s a larger annoyance — this was an unwinnable battle from the start.
• The NW knew they were outnumbered. They knew they couldn’t prevail. So, why did they try?
• Again, this is the honorable practice of chivalric warfare.
• Mormont would rather put up a fight against impossible odds than do the smart thing and beat feet for the Wall.
• Moreover, despite the fact that they successfully broke contact, there didn’t seem to be a deliberate plan in place for how they were going to withdraw from the Fist.
• This was entirely ad-hoc, and the LC is lucky he didn’t lose his entire force.
• Still, I do have to give props for Mormont organizing the force after the Fist.
• The NW could have fled in a disorganized rout and then been utterly annihilated piecemeal by the Others.
• In organizing the march, posturing the force towards an orderly retreat with a line of movement, redistributing supplies and putting the wounded on horses, Mormont saves the lives of some of his men for the time being.
• But some of them are not going to last long. There’s a mutiny afoot, and that’s going to culminate in Sam II.
• And that brings up the whole strategy of the Great Ranging.
• In my own personal reading, I just finished The Afghanistan Papers by Washington Post National Security reporter Craig Whitlock in which Whitlock went through a ton of classified  “Lessons Learned” reports from military and civilian personnel who served in Afghanistan.
• The book painted a bleak picture of how soldiers, diplomats, aid workers and others lied about American progress in defeating the Taliban and stabilizing the country.
• And there was a myopic focus on the tactics of defeating Taliban insurgents on the battlefield rather than having a strategy on winning the war or really having any strategy or long-term thinking about Afghanistan.
• Hell, the US couldn’t even define whether Afghanistan’s focus was counter-terriorism, counter-insurgency, nation-building, counter-narcotics, etc. And that was for the entirety of the war.
• With that reading fresh on my mind, I don’t think Mormont really had any cognizant strategy of what to do north of the Wall.
• A mission which started with the objective of finding Benjen Stark that morphs into crush the wildlings and kill Mance Rayder that becomes a survive the apocalypse mission goes quite poorly.
• The tactics of the battlefield aren’t terrible. The strategy of what they were doing was atrocious.
• The mission creep was real, the objectives were murky, the endstate was nebulous. The result was the nearly complete destruction of the NW’s fighting ability.
• So, I award Mormont no points and may God have mercy on his soul.

Conclusion

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