A. S. Arya

Transcription

This is Arya Stark in Game of Thrones season one, in season three, in season five. What happened? And what’ll happen next? Let’s work it out. Arya is the daughter of Ned Stark and Catelyn Tully. At the start of the series she’s a scrawny little nine-year old girl, and a bit of a “wild” child, “fierce” and “willful”. While her older sister Sansa plays the part of a lady, dressing nicely, speaking politely, learning to sew and sing, Arya likes to fight and ride and explore. She doesn’t “want to be” “the highborn lady [she’s] supposed to be”, so she “never seem[s] to fit” – a bit like Jon Snow, who she has a “close” relationship with. Jon gives Arya her little sword, Needle, before going away to the Wall. Arya also “love[s]” her direwolf, Nymeria, but has to send her away after an incident with Joffrey, which also leads to the death of Sansa’s direwolf, under the orders of Queen Cersei, and the death of Arya’s friend Mycah, at the hands of the Hound, filling Arya with guilt and grief, anger and hate. At King’s Landing, Syrio Forel teaches Arya to fight, and to be strong, perceptive, agile, quick and fearless. So Arya trains, chases cats, overhears a very interesting chat, and eventually everything starts going wrong again. King Robert dies, Lannisters kill Starks, and Syrio seemingly sacrifices himself to save Arya. Arya kills a boy on the way out of the Red Keep, then lives rough in King’s Landing until she witnesses the death of Ned Stark. So in the first book and season of Game of Thrones, Arya’s friend, her teacher, and her father are all killed. She’s separated from her family, her direwolf and her life as a highborn. All her grief becomes hatred for the people who caused these things, she wants them dead, but is powerless to do anything against them. For now. Arya tries to return to the north with a group of Night’s Watch recruits. She assumes the identity of a boy named Arry, and makes friends with Gendry, Hot Pie and Lommy. But the group is attacked by Amory Lorch, forcing Arya and her friends to fight and flee – on the way Arya frees the mysterious Jaqen H’ghar. Arya and co. are captured by Gregor Clegane, Lommy is killed, and they’re taken to Harrenhal. Arya sees horrible things at Harrenhal. Murder, torture, rape. She’s meets many of the worst people in Westeros – Amory Lorch, Gregor Clegane, the Brave Companions, Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton. Arya starts to lose touch with her identity. Induction to Harrenhal is like joining the military or a cult. She’s stripped and scrubbed and has her hair cut, has the “pride” and “defiance” beaten out of her, and is worked hard. To survive in Harrenhal, she can’t be “wild Arya”, or “fierce” Arry. She becomes a “grey mouse girl”, called Weasel , “ke[eping] to the crannies and crevices … of the castle”. When Roose Bolton takes Harrenhal, she takes the name Nymeria, or Nan, and thinks she’s “not even [herself any more]”. One of the few things connecting her to her to her identity as Arya is her hatred for the people she wants dead. She thinks about them as she works, lists them in her “prayer” before sleep, constantly broods on killing and hate. Jaqen H’ghar turns up and tells Arya that since she saved him and his companions, he owes a sort of death debt, so he kills people for her. This “ma[kes Arya] brave again”, “a ghost instead of a mouse”. When Jaqen leaves, he gives her a coin, and the words “Valar morghulis” – all men must die. Arya escapes Harrenhal with Hot Pie and Gendry, killing a guard on the way out. So in this book, Arya moves closer to violence and hate, and begins to separate from her identity. At start of Book and Season 3, Arya is free from the horrors of Harrenhal. She rides for Riverrun, to find Robb and Catelyn, but she’s captured by the Brotherhood Without Banners, an outlaw group ostensibly fighting to “defend the realm”. She sees the trial of the Hound and the resurrection of Beric Dondarrion, and though the Brotherhood promise to take Arya to her mother, that never ends up happening. Hot Pie starts work at an inn, and Gendry joins the Brotherhood, leaving Arya feeling abandoned and betrayed. She wants people she can trust, a family, what she calls a “pack”, and she doesn’t find it with the Brotherhood, so she runs away, and is caught by the Hound, Sandor Clegane. The Hound takes her across the riverlands, trying and failing to ransom her off. They kill Freys and Lannisters together, and develop this wonderful complicated friendship. Arya hates the Hound for killing Mycah, and goes on and on about how she’s gonna kill him, or run away, but she never does, even though she gets lots of opportunities. The Hound says he only keeps Arya around so he can sell her off, but even after that fails and she’s not worth anything to him anymore, he stays with her. Why? Arya and the Hound are very very similar. They’ve both suffered, both been forced to serve terrible men doing terrible things, both feel betrayed by their siblings. They’re both cynical and angry and “hateful”. They hate Joffrey, they hate Cersei, they hate Gregor, they hate cowards, they hate liars. They both use literal disguises that hide their faces – and they use symbolic disguises in that they both act tough, threatening people, boasting about killing, acting like they need no one, and killing makes them happy, when in truth, they are afraid, they feel pain, they cry. They have no families to speak of, no homes, nowhere to go. They say they don’t care about each other, but clearly they do. They have no one else. So when Arya refuses to give Sandor the gift of mercy, maybe that was spite for killing Mycah. But maybe, Arya couldn’t bring herself to kill her only friend. Anyway. With no one and no reason left to stay in Westeros, Arya sails to Braavos, clinging to the last thing she has left – her will to kill the people in her prayer. In Braavos, Arya uses Jaqen’s coin to join the Faceless Men, a cult of assassins who worship death. To truly become a Faceless Man, Arya must let go of her identity, of her “hopes and dreams, [her] loves and hates … [of] all that makes [her] who [she is]”. Arya must become “No one”. Arya works sweeping floors, and cleaning corpses. Under the name of Cat she spends time in the city, learning the language, and the Faceless Men teach her to lie. She’s later made blind, and given the name Beth, in the books not so much as a punishment as part of her training, to develop all her senses. After her sight is restored she’s taken to the Hall of Faces, which the Faceless Men use to assume false identities. Arya becomes “The Ugly Little Girl” and Mercy. Arya is ordered to kill an insurance man, which she does, in the books, but she also kills some targets of her own. She kills Dareon, a Night’s Watchman who’s breaking his vows, and kills Raff the Sweetling, one of Gregor Clegane’s men, from her list. In the show it’s Meryn Trant instead, but the kill is similar. So that’s Arya’s story so far. In these first five books and seasons, she’s gone from a sweet kid to a vicious assassin. She’s lost everything. Her family, her friends, and her sense of self. What will happen next? Where can she go from here? She’ll obviously probably be doing some killing, and the people on her list are the obvious targets. But they’re all down south, involved in other stuff. Where Arya really wants to go is north, to the Wall, to Jon. Arya and Jon think of each other all the time. Arya only goes to Braavos cause the ship can’t take her to Jon, and much of Jon’s story in Dance is about Arya – the plot with Mance, the decision to ride south. Of course, Jon is stabbed pretty bad, but there’s strong evidence he’ll be resurrected by Melisandre – who in the show, meets Arya and tells her they’ll meet again. Anyway maybe the Faceless Men, as worshippers of death, disapprove of Jon’s resurrection, and send Arya to have him killed a second time. Maybe Arya will wear the face of Jeyne Poole, who, in the books, is used by the Boltons as a fake Arya to marry Ramsay, so Arya may impersonate the person who impersonated her. It’s implied that Faceless Men aren’t allowed to kill people whose names they know, though, so Arya might only be sent to kill Jon if Snow goes by Azor Ahai or King Jonathon Starkgaryen the First or whatever. But the point – is – imagine the drama of Arya being sent to kill Jon. It could be the big test of whether Arya truly is no one – could she bring herself to kill her beloved brother, the last of her family that she knows of? Could she truly let go of her identity as Arya? The answer is probably no. The kindly man says “[he doesn’t] think [Arya] can” become no one, that beneath all her names, all her identities, there’s still some Arya there, and it looks like he’s right, Arya says as much herself. She doesn’t kill for the Many-Faced God, she kills to avenge her friends and family. And she keeps Needle. “Try as she might … she [cannot] rid herself of Arya”, can’t become no one. So will she go back to being Arya? What’s left to go back to? Arya’s “home [is] gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon”, plus tree-boy Bran and unicorn-island Rickon. And what’s even left of Arya? She’s been Horseface, Underfoot, Arry, Lumpyhead, Lumpyface, Weasel, Nan, Squab, Salty, Cat, Blind Beth, “The Ugly Little Girl”, Mercy… and each one has worn away at her identity. Like “the kindly man” says, there is an Arya beneath all this, but this Arya is so… broken. She says she has a “hole inside her where her heart had been”, that “The hole will never feel any better”. Arya is extremely tough and adaptable, but she’s an eleven-year-old girl. Her family and friends have been butchered before her, she’s seen murder and worse at Harrenhal, her best friend is “the worst shit in the Seven Kingdoms”, and she joins a literal death cult. She’s deeply traumatised, part of why she tries to forget her life as Arya is to dissociate from her suffering. After all she’s been through, Arya can hardly function like a person, let alone become the noble lady she never wanted to be in the first place. She can’t trust, she can’t relax, all she knows is killing and survival. She can’t return to a normal life as Arya Stark. But she can’t truly be “no one”, either. Who or what can she be? Arya is connected to the old gods, the “nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood”. She feels them guiding her steps, and when she prays to them in Clash, she hears a response. She hears her father’s voice repeating “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives”, she is reminded that she has “The wolf blood”, and she hears a “great pack” of wolves, “calling to [her]”. Arya is closely associated with wolves throughout the series. People call her a “wolf girl” and a “wolf bitch”. She sees wolves, she hears wolves, she howls to wolves and they howl back. She thinks of herself as a wolf. In fact, Arya is a warg, someone who enters the minds of animals, like Bran enters Summer. She wargs a couple of cats in Braavos, but mostly wargs her direwolf, Nymeria. She has wolf dreams, meaning while she sleeps, her mind becomes one with Nymeria, who now leads a “great pack [of] hundreds of … mankill[ing wolves]” around the riverlands. Arya wolf dreams all the time, more and more as the series goes on, and this forms a new identity, different to Arya and different to “no one” – she calls herself the “night wolf”. And this is what she wants. Arya wishes and prays to be made into a wolf. And there actually is a way that could happen. We know from the prologue of Dance that when a warg, like Arya, dies, they may live a second life by having their spirit leave their body and become one with their animal. If Arya dies, her spirit could become one with Nymeria. There’s plenty of foreshadowing that Arya may die. Ned compares Arya to her aunt Lyanna, who had “The wolf blood”, was “willful, and dead before her time”. Jon jokes that after winter, “they will find [Arya’s] body with a needle still locked tight between [her] frozen fingers”. And we’ve heard over and over from Arya and others that “valar morghulis” – all men must die. George R. R. Martin has said that the ending of his series will be bittersweet. The death of Arya would be tragic, but it’d be sweet in that Arya would finally have what she’s wanted all this time. Cause in one sense, Arya’s story is about a killer’s quest to take revenge on evil men, but it’s also the story of a kid trying to find a family, what Arya calls a pack. This is what Arya’s been chasing all this time, it’s why she sticks with Hot Pie and Gendy even when she’d be safer alone, why she stays with the Hound, when he murdered her friend, maybe even why she joins the Faceless Men. There’s no denying that Arya is a killer, but she also wants a pack, at least as much as she wants blood, and becoming Nymeria could give her both. She’d be “swift and strong, running down her prey with her pack at her heels”. Arya dying and becoming Nymeria would fulfil Ned’s words of “the lone wolf [dying], but the pack [surviving]”, it would solve Arya’s identity crisis by becoming the “night wolf” rather than Arya or “no one”, and it would give a beautiful bittersweet ending to a story of loss of identity and death. A working title for the final instalment of the series was A Time for Wolves. You can almost see the epilogue, the closing moment of the series, after all the misery maybe we’ll see Arya, as a direwolf, running with her pack across the snow. So feel free to comment what you think will happen to Arya, and subscribe to Alt Shift X for more videos on Game of Thrones and more. Thanks.