Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago (22 page)

BRENT HARTINGER

The Role of Freaks and Outcasts in A Song of Ice and Fire

WHO DOESN
’
T LOVE AN
underdog?

As humans, most of us seem to be instinctively drawn to outsiders, to the excluded. At least on some level, most of us sympathize with those who are denied even the
opportunity
to prove their full worth. We recognize that’s just not fair.

Writers know that audiences love underdog stories. From
Rocky
to
Rudy, Star Wars
to
Seabiscuit
, people never seem to tire of them. Besides, if the antagonist isn’t stronger than the protagonist, at least at first, there
is
no story.

But there are outsiders and then there are outsiders. The sprawling cast of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series includes a surprisingly large number of major characters who are considered social rejects, if not outright freaks, by the people around them: gender-nonconformists like Arya, Brienne, and Varys; at least two disabled characters, Bran and Donal; the overweight Samwell; Jon, a bastard; a number of gay men, including Renly and Loras.

And, of course, the series includes a dwarf, Tyrion: not the beard-wearing, underground-dwelling race of German mythology (and many other works of fantasy), but an actual genetic dwarf.

Indeed, of the series’ fourteen major point-of-view characters to date—Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Daenerys, Bran, Samwell, Brienne, Catelyn, Jaime, Cersei, Eddard, Davos, Theon, and Sansa—at least the first seven violate major gender or social norms. Until just the last few decades, individuals such as these have typically been treated as objects of scorn, ridicule, or pity—not just in most literature, but in the Western civilization that this literature has reflected. When these outsiders haven’t been stereotyped, they’ve been ignored.

It’s hard to say which is the deeper cut.

Women, meanwhile, have often been prescribed equally narrow roles in both life and literature: almost always defined by their relationship to a man. Like most women in history, Ice and Fire’s females might be considered outsiders by mere virtue of their gender. Even as a future queen, Sansa, for example, is completely powerless over her destiny.

A Song of Ice and Fire is set in a quasi-medieval setting where prejudices about these and other minorities couldn’t be much more brutal or bigoted. But the sensibility of the series is decidedly modern. Outsiders are
not
stereotyped or ignored. On the contrary, these characters are brought front and center, their perspectives presented as no less important than those of the more traditional ones.

In fact, maybe they’re
more
important. In the series, the experience of being a freak or a misfit seems to make a person more sensitive to the plight of others, and more heroic—or at least as “heroic” as one can be in the brutal, complicated lands of Westeros and Essos. Meanwhile, other characters start out as “insiders,” but end up as outsiders. The transition often changes their perspectives for the better.

Together, ice and fire make steam, and in George R.R. Martin’s masterwork, it’s mostly the freaks and outcasts who get burned. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have something very important to say about it.

It’s not like the fantasy genre hasn’t long had its share of outsiders.

In fact, you could argue that the whole genre is built on a very specific kind of “outsider”: the dispossessed king or exiled prince determined to reclaim his throne. From Odysseus and Rama to modern-day characters like Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Tarzan, they may start the story as outsiders, but they have greatness in their blood, and their rightful “throne” is just waiting for them to rise up and seize it.

Other famous fantasy outsiders may not be of actual royal blood, but they’re called to greatness anyway, compelled to complete some important quest to which they and they alone are uniquely suited. Only Frodo has the pureness of heart to handle the One Ring without succumbing to its darker temptations. And while the Pevensie children may seem at first glance to be unlikely heroes, they’re literally summoned by Aslan for greatness nonetheless—and they’re fulfilling ancient prophecies to boot.

The journey of the traditional fantasy hero is all spelled out in Joseph Campbell’s landmark exploration of myths,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
(1949): first, a “call to greatness,” then a consultation with a mentor, a Merlin or a Gandalf, who explains the quest ahead. Typically, all these fantasy “outsiders” also end up with a ragtag but stalwart band of other pseudo-misfits to help them achieve their destiny.

Let’s not forget all the useful magic items these heroes are also granted: rings of power or swords of destiny. Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné is but a frail, albino prince—at least until the magic sword Stormbringer transforms him into a mighty warrior (albeit at a heavy cost). And no matter which legend you believe as to how King Arthur comes to possess the sword Excalibur—whether he pulls it from a stone or receives it from the Lady of the Lake—both versions unequivocally declare him to be the choice of the gods to rule England.

But just how much are these characters really outsiders? Sure, these boys and men of privilege have usually lost some of their standing in the world, and they learn valuable lessons by trying to get it back. That said, they’re still almost always boys and men of privilege.

This paradigm made sense in its time. After all, most of these tropes date from a pre-Enlightenment era when attitudes about minorities and outsiders were so entrenched that it was difficult to even
conceive
of a hero as anyone other than a boy or man of privilege. It was just
obvious
that big problems could only be solved by just such a person. And let’s face it: it was men of privilege who were invariably financing and disseminating these stories, too.

Still, if the protagonists in these tales are outsiders at all, it’s usually only due to circumstances, not as a result of anything innate about them. Meanwhile, the perspectives of
true
outcasts, those who were considered freaks and outcasts by their actual nature, were ignored. Ironically, they were excluded even from the story of the outcast.

Basically, few authors bothered to ask a very obvious question: if the hero has a thousand faces, why are almost all of those faces male? And straight? And of average height? And of average weight? And why do they always follow the accepted gender norms?

Times have changed. George R.R. Martin isn’t the first contemporary author to ask questions about exactly who should be front and center in the story, not by a long shot. A significant portion of late-twentieth-century fiction is devoted to exploring the perspective of the outsider by nature, the “other.” Yet even today, popular entertainment focuses overwhelmingly on the slender, the heterosexual, the average-heighted, the conventionally-abled, and the traditionally gendered. This is even truer in the fantasy genre, which has only very recently started seriously exploring stories beyond the one about the exiled prince or the Chosen One seeking to claim his legacy.

Despite their “outsider” sensibility, or maybe
because
of it, the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series have found mainstream success in a way that few such fantasy projects have before.

Take Bran Stark. He’s young, confident, and adventurous: a classic fantasy hero. But his bravado leads to disaster when he impetuously climbs a forgotten tower and peeks in on Jaime Lannister having incestuous sex with his sister Cersei, the queen. Determined to keep their relationship a secret, Jaime throws Bran from the window, intending to kill him, but actually only permanently disabling him.

In most fantasy epics, this would be the end of his storyline. After all, Narnia is not wheelchair accessible (neither, for that matter, is Westeros). For Martin, though, this is literally just the
beginning
of Bran’s story: he is thrown off that ledge in only his second point-of-view chapter.

Then there’s Samwell Tarly, who isn’t called by the gods or destiny to do anything. He has no mentor stopping by to detail a task ahead and no artifacts of great power are bestowed upon him. On the contrary, in the world of Westeros, Sam is specifically excluded from “greatness” because of his body type: he’s fat. He is, in fact, the eldest son in the Tarly family, but his father declares him unfit for leadership because of his lack of physical prowess and offers him a deal: renounce his inheritance and “take the black” as a member of the Night’s Watch, thereby allowing his younger brother to become the family heir, or soon suffer an unfortunate “hunting accident.”

Brienne of Tarth, meanwhile,
is
an exceptional warrior, capable of matching even the mighty Jamie Lancaster in combat. The Tarly family would be proud to have her—except for the fact that Brienne’s great skills don’t conform to what is considered acceptable for her gender. It doesn’t help that she also has traditionally masculine features. So she too is rejected, considered a freak by her family and treated with scorn and ridicule by almost everyone else, disparagingly called “Brienne the Beauty.”

Brienne, Samwell, and Bran may all be noble-born, but there is something in their very natures, something they did not choose and cannot control, that makes each of them not quite fit for their status. They’re disappointments, even freaks, to their families and cultures.

Martin sees them with a much more sympathetic eye. Indeed, their stories are so valid and interesting that he elevates them to point-of-view characters. Becoming disabled, for example, leads Bran to begin experiencing visions. By the time of
A Dance with Dragons
, Bran has even developed his skills as both a greenseer, or prophet, and a skinchanger, capable of viewing the world through the eyes of animals.

In other words, his becoming disabled
wasn’t
the end of his story. On the contrary, it’s the moment when his story just started to get good.

Much has been made of the shocking realism in A Song of Ice and Fire. People die prematurely and in horrible ways, women are casually raped, and everyone suffers—a lot. Things stink in Westeros, in more ways than one. But the most shocking aspect to Martin’s realism may be this lavish attention he pays to the freaks and outsiders. Throughout the series, these characters matter. Their statuses grant them unique perspectives that are different from the majority, from those who are not excluded, and those perspectives prove important to both the structure of the novels and the workings of the plot.