I’ve always been attracted to grey characters. That’s what I try to write because I think those are real characters, those are real human beings. A Game of Thrones is written entirely in a series of extremely tight third-person viewpoints. So I’m not using first person but I’m still focused. Each chapter has the name of an individual character be it Tyrion, Arya, Ned, whoever it is. And during that chapter you’re inside his head. I never go omniscient. So you’re only seeing the things that he sees, you’re hearing the things he hears. If something has happened in the next room or even behind his back he’s not necessarily aware of them so you’re not aware of them as the reader. And you’re hearing the thoughts of that character. (—George R. R. Martin, 2015)
ASOIAF is written entirely from a first-person, limited point-of-view. Because of that, everything on the page is presented in the way the POV character perceives it. No less and no more.
“The seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of it.” (AGOT Arya IV)
“Men see what they expect to see,” Varys said as he fussed and pulled. (ACOK Tyrion III)
“Men see what they expect to see, Alayne.” (AFFC Alayne I)
“Men see what they expect to see.” (ADWD Melisandre I)
That means that all of their biases, prejudices and misunderstandings remain intact. Part of the reader’s job, I gather, is to identify where the POV is wrong in order to see the “bigger picture” that constitutes a more canonical interpretation of the story.
So Martin is playing with the slippery nature of truth. In doing so, he’s drawing attention to the idea that the best truth humans can ever produce is a result of a negotiation between all possible interpretations. Whatever negotiated interpretation holds up across the most angles of analysis, or rather, whatever interpretation proves to be the most functional in the context of all other interpretations we consider canonical, then we’re justified in calling that interpretation “the truth.” Tentatively. Until somebody finds some interpretation even more functional.
For example, it was once the truth that Earth was the center of the universe. It’s provable from at least some angles of analysis, such as when we stand on Earth’s surface, look up at the sky and observe familiar objects circling around us. It turns out to be a pretty functional truth too because most of us will never encounter an error with that understanding in our daily lives. It won’t prevent me from going to the grocery store. So geocentrism is true in some interpretation. That is, until some nerd with a telescope found a more useful truth.
When I pick apart the story, a lot of what I’m doing is trying my darnedest to find a negotiation between as many different interpretations as seem partially valid to me. For example, Daenerys isn’t clinically crazy by modern standards. The “crazy” interpretation is mostly wrong but partially valid when I take it apart:
The characters in the story use the word “mad” as a synonym of “crazy.” The characters in the story also lack our modern advancements in understanding of all the different types and degrees of craziness. Therefore, in the context of the story, moods as common as anger, depression or paranoia can and are validly called “madness.”
I have to constrain myself to interpretations that “seem partially valid to me” because my attention is limited. I can’t look everywhere at once. For example, it might be true that the Mother of Mountains is made out of marshmallows. I could analyze whether or not the Mother of Mountains is made out of marshmallows but it seems pretty silly and my intuition says that it probably isn’t made out of marshmallows and that the whole analysis would be a waste of time. But make no mistake that this author in particular is taking our expectations about stories and using them against us. (IE. The hero of the story isn’t allowed to die.) And Martin is not only doing that once in a while, or exclusively to significant degrees. He’s doing that all the time, all over the place, in degrees big and small.
So I guess the marshmallow analysis is forthcoming.
Truth is a matter of perspective. Right or wrong, east or west, hero or villain, justice or revenge, sword or knife, everything in ASOIAF is a matter of perspective. (Even though truth isn’t only a matter of perspective. We still have to be able to reach agreement with other people about the truth.)
And suddenly there was a knife in the girl’s left hand, a blade as skinny as she was. (AFFC Samwell III)
A majorly overlooked consequence of having everything soaked in relativity like this is that the interpretations of non-POV characters actually matter! All those crappy little side characters can be right, and they often are, even when our POV characters say they’re wrong. In ASOIAF, the side characters cannot be treated by the reader like furniture. At least, not if I want to get a peek at the bigger picture.
Isn’t that totally fucking nuts? Isn’t that hard to imagine? There are thousands of side characters. But as far as I can tell, it seems to be true. For me, this is when the story really comes to life. It’s when I’m sitting there wondering about the psychology and motivations of, I don’t know, Boros fucking Blount. Part of me feels like I’m crazy and like I need a new hobby. But then I actually find something in there! I sometimes find some piece that fits together with some other distant piece, and when I put them together they make each other make sense. And the only reason I found it was because I stopped to give a shit about Boros Blount in a way that nobody ever gave a shit about Boros Blount before.
It sounds stupid, but sometimes I will describe ASOIAF as an exercise in empathy. The more characters whose shoes I can put myself into, the more of the story I get to see.
The woes of Boros Blount and other tertiary characters may be mostly obscured from my vision because my vision is limited to that of the POV characters. The POV characters may not take the suffering of tertiary characters into their calculations. And the reader, being predisposed to agree with the POV characters, may not take the suffering of tertiary characters into his calculations either.
But the woes of tertiary characters are absolutely calculated in the premises, by the author, which shine through in the final negotiated interpretation. Martin calculates them because one of the premises, I think, is that all human life is equally valuable. If I thought the life of Unnamed Red-shirt #8517 didn’t matter in ASOIAF, I’m in for a surprise.
A low rumbling growl echoed off the rock. Shadowcat, Jon knew at once. As he rose he heard another, closer at hand. He pulled his sword and turned, listening.
“They won’t trouble us,” Ygritte said. “It’s the dead they’ve come for. Cats can smell blood six miles off. They’ll stay near the bodies till they’ve eaten every last stringy shred o’ meat, and cracked the bones for the marrow.”
Jon could hear the sounds of their feeding echoing off the rocks. It gave him an uneasy feeling. The warmth of the fire made him realize how bone-tired he was, but he dared not sleep. He had taken a captive, and it was on him to guard her. “Were they your kin?” he asked her quietly. “The two we killed?”
“No more than you are.”
“Me?” He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You said you were the Bastard o’ Winterfell.”
“I am.”
“Who was your mother?”
“Some woman. Most of them are.” Someone had said that to him once. He did not remember who.
She smiled again, a flash of white teeth. “And she never sung you the song o’ the winter rose?”
“I never knew my mother. Or any such song.”
“Bael the Bard made it,” said Ygritte. “He was King-beyond-the-Wall a long time back. All the free folk know his songs, but might be you don’t sing them in the south.”
“Winterfell’s not in the south,” Jon objected.
“Yes it is. Everything below the Wall’s south to us.”
He had never thought of it that way. “I suppose it’s all in where you’re standing.”
“Aye,” Ygritte agreed. “It always is.” (ACOK Jon VI)
Updated Apr 13, 2022 – Reach agreement.
Updated Jun 11, 2022 – Martin quote
Apples and Dragons 