Re-reading Song of Ice and Fire

Chapter 1, Arya
Summary
Arya is travelling King’s Road with Yoren and the Night’s Watch recruits. When one of the boys (Hot Pie) tries to take the Needle from her she gives him a heavy beating. Yoren stops her and takes her into the forest to punish her. He tells her that Ned was supposed to join them on the Wall, but Joffrey ordered him killed.

Quotes

Yoren had plucked some from the streets with promises of food for their bellies and shoes for their feet. The rest he’d found in chains. “The Watch needs good men,” he told them as they set out, “but you lot will have to do.”

Yoren was looking at her. “You hurt?”
Calm as still water, she told herself, the way Syrio Forel had taught her. “Some.”
He spat. “That pie boy’s hurting worse. It wasn’t him as killed your father, girl, nor that thieving Lommy neither. Hitting them won’t bring him back.”
“I know,” Arya muttered sullenly.

Commentary

Arya is still in shock after seeing her father executed, but unlike Sansa she’s not suppressing her anger with the world’s injustice. She takes it out on the first boy that crosses her. The bloody beating she’s giving him is only a way of releasing her feelings. Yoren knows this and reminds her that it’s not the Hot Pie that killed her father.

Arya starts on a very dangerous path that may eventually lead her to dark places. In the words of Master Yoda: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Arya is moving from fear to anger and will soon be on her way to suffering, to hurting people.

Tags: Arya

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