Arya has a simplistic understanding of morality. That’s reflected in her rationale when she witnesses horrors, commits them, and passes judgement on others for the horrors they’ve committed. She recites the list of people she wants to kill and I notice the questionable reasons why Arya thinks they deserve to die.
Arya watched and listened and polished her hates the way Gendry had once polished his horned helm. Dunsen wore those bull’s horns now, and she hated him for it. (ACOK Arya VI)
The Hound is on Arya’s list for killing Mycah, and Arya doesn’t give any consideration to The Hound’s position. The Hound was in fact doing his duty to his rulers.
After some notably unpleasant, unfriendly but fatherly moments between Sandor and Arya, she gains a greater understanding of him. For a compassionate and empathetic person, that is all it takes. Arya’s sympathy for Sandor is out of her control, and she doesn’t like it. Compassion complicates something that was once uncomplicated.
To Arya, Sandor was the image of an evil murderer and an ugly brute who just. Keeps. GETTING AWAY WITH IT! He should have been punished a long time ago for what he did to Mycah at the Trident. He should have died screaming in the wildfires of Blackwater Bay. He should have lost the damn trial by battle against Dondarrion. He should have been run down, captured and killed by Thoros after the Hound stole her away from her new makeshift family.
By the time Arya and the Hound approached The Twins, I got the feeling that there was almost a grudging gratitude. For all of the Hound’s gruffness, he did reunite her with her mother and brother, at the end of the day. Sandor kept her fed, warm, and safe, even if his motivations were selfish and his methods harsher than necessary.
Arya’s intrinsic morality was beginning to develop into a greater understanding and respect for the complicated nature of good and evil. And then, the Red Wedding violently smothered any chance of that happening. A kid her age isn’t equipped to deal with that cruel twist of fate, and so she regressed back to fundamental emotions. It’s the Hound’s fault, she reasons. He should have saved her mother. He should have fought!
The Hound’s lessons to Arya were demonstrated as much as they were spoken. The world is a shit place where only the heartless survive. Every breath the Hound takes is a testament to the truth of that. She has watched him slay innocents, kinder and better men than him. Even the gods had every opportunity to cast him down. Yet here he is, still alive beside her while all the others feed the worms.
The man squinted down at the parchment. “Writing. What good’s writing? You
promised gold. Knight’s honor, you said.
“Knights have no bloody honor. Time you learned that, old man.” The Hound gave
Stranger the spur and galloped off through the rain. (ASOS Arya IX)
The Hound’s philosophy by example has never rang so true to Arya as it does after the Red Wedding. Arya’s greater understanding of morality is clearly present in her, but it’s like she suppresses it because she is conditioned by life to believe that suppressing compassion is the appropriate thing to do. Compassion is nothing but a weakness that will get her killed, she thinks. Nobody is reliable and nobody can be trusted. Not Sansa who betrayed her to Joffrey. Not Harwin who betrayed her to the Brotherhood. Not Thoros who failed to rescue her from the Hound. Not Gendry who meant to abandon her to the Brotherhood. Not the Hound who left her mother and brother to die.
I think Arya’s conflict is between love and hate, roughly speaking. Martin’s inspiration to write ASOIAF came in part from a poem by Robert Frost called Fire and Ice.
And would suffice.
It seems to me that Arya’s conflict rings strongly with that poem. I think Arya needs to reconnect with her caring and compassionate side before she is corrupted too far beyond redemption. She’s adopting a good and evil world view. She’s forgetting the value of mercy, trust, friendship and people. Increasingly, she stands in contradiction to the story’s deepest themes about human life and good and evil. The main theme of the story hangs over Arya like an executioner’s sword.
Arya is my favorite character.
These two passages really highlight the change that is happening in Arya over the course of the story.
Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don’t always go off, either. Sometimes it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people.” (AGOT Sansa I)
Sometimes in their wanderings they glimpsed other people; farmers in their fields, swineherds with their pigs, a milkmaid leading a cow, a squire carrying a message down a rutted road. She never wanted to speak to them either. It was as if they lived in some distant land and spoke a queer alien tongue; they had nothing to do with her, or her with them. (ASOS Arya XII)
Arya wasn’t taught Ned’s code of justice, so I don’t think she’s necessarily a carrier of it. But here’s something Arya did learn from Ned.
Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories. (AGOT Arya II)
Apples and Dragons 