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Episode 149: A CLASH OF KINGS, JON VIII: "Keep Your Sword Sharp" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2021-04-12 14:00:05 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the one hundred and forty-ninth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Keep Your Sword Sharp: An Analysis of ACOK, Jon VIII,” in which Qhorin Halfhand makes his last stand, but not before laying a heavy task on our boy Jonny Snow.
This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:
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Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
Question
Red Rahloo himself, a high lord patron, asks:
Who is the “anyway, here’s wonderwall” of the asoiaf world?
So, thank you Red Rahloo for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, free merch, access to the NotASlack at our two highest tiers and bonus episodes!
Absolutely! Our next patreon bonus episode coming in a few weeks is going to be a wrap-up of A Clash of Kings in which we attempt to talk about ACOK, theories, stuff in ACOK that tells us more about the endgame of ASOIAF and then talk about what we’re excited to cover in A Storm of Swords!
But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Jon, he and Qhorin Halfhand were running for their lives as the wildlings blew hunting horns as they pursued them. Let’s see if maybe one of them can make it out alive in this synopsis of ACOK, Jon VIII!
Synopsis
When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon knew their end was near.
It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I'm dead, as Bran's wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be?
I don’t know. Sometimes I have to stop myself and think that Jon is sixteen years old, and getting his mind around the fact that he’s about to die. I, for one, did not realize I was mortal until I was twenty-six.
The moon rises as the sun sinks as Jon gets a fire going. Qhorin stands over Jon and comments about how a fire can be as beautiful as a maid on her wedding day. This surprises Jon who thinks Qhorin wouldn’t talk of maids and wedding nights. Did Qhorin love a maid once or get married? Jon couldn’t ask that now. So, instead, he spreads his hands over the fire and lets the fire warm his fingers as Qhorin sits cross-legged near the fire. There were only two of them left in the Frostfangs.
In flashback, Jon had hoped that Dalbridge would hold the wildlings at the pass, but then they heard the horn, and they knew Dalbridge was dead. And then the eagle showed up overhead. Stonesnake had aimed his bow, but the bird had flown off as Ebben muttered about wargs and skinchangers as Jon stood right there.
They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Each time it seemed a little louder, a little closer. When night fell, the Halfhand told Ebben to take the squire's garron as well as his own, and ride east for Mormont with all haste, back the way they had come. The rest of them would draw off the pursuit. "Send Jon," Ebben had urged. "He can ride as fast as me."
"Jon has a different part to play."
"He is half a boy still."
"No," said Qhorin, "he is a man of the Night's Watch."
Ebben leaves as the moon rises, and Stonesnake went east before doubling back southwest to hide the trail. The days and nights then begin to blur as the watchmen sleep in their saddle and only stop to feed and water their horses before riding again. The three rangers move through the woods, ridges, traverse rivers and attempt to cover their tracks. But the eagle keeps watch over them. So, it was useless.
A shadowcat had shown up when they were scaling a ridge, and Stonesnake’s mare went into a panic and ran before breaking its leg. They ate the horse, and Ghost ate really well too. Qhorin made a porridge with the horse’s blood which tasted awful, but Jon ate it anyway.
There was no question of riding double. Stonesnake offered to lay in wait for the pursuit and surprise them when they came. Perhaps he could take a few of them with him down to hell. Qhorin refused. "If any man in the Night's Watch can make it through the Frostfangs alone and afoot, it is you, brother. You can go over mountains that a horse must go around. Make for the Fist. Tell Mormont what Jon saw, and how. Tell him that the old powers are waking, that he faces giants and wargs and worse. Tell him that the trees have eyes again."
He has no chance, Jon thought when he watched Stonesnake vanish over a snow-covered ridge, a tiny black bug crawling across a rippling expanse of white.
Each successive night grew colder, but Ghost stayed nearby. Jon could sense that. And Ghost provided company that Qhorin didn’t. Even dreams don’t keep Jon company up here. He has none.
Back to the present, Qhorin asks if Jon’s sword is sharp. Indeed it is. It’s Valyrian steel. Qhorin then asks if Jon remembers his vows. He does. So, Qhorin asks that they say the words together, and Jon agrees.
Their voices blended as one beneath the rising moon, while Ghost listened and the mountains themselves bore witness. "Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."
But then there were no more words after that. Jon opens and closes his burnt fingers, praying that the old gods would give him strength when he dies bravely. He figures that he would be dead in a day or two at most.
The flames were burning low by then, the warmth fading. "The fire will soon go out," Qhorin said, "but if the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out."
There was nothing Jon could say to that. He nodded.
"We may escape them yet," the ranger said. "Or not."
"I'm not afraid to die." It was only half a lie.
"It may not be so easy as that, Jon."
He did not understand. "What do you mean?"
"If we are taken, you must yield."
Aghast, Jon says that Mance only spares oathbreakers, like Mance Rayder. Qhorin says they’ll spare Jon, but Jon absolutely does not want to do this. Fuck that. Qhorin is commanding Jon to yield. Still upset, Jon tries to protest, but Qhorin cuts him off.
"Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe. Are you a man of the Night's Watch?"
"Yes, but-"
"There is no but, Jon Snow. You are, or you are not."
Jon sat up straight. "I am."
"Then hear me. If we are taken, you will go over to them, as the wildling girl you captured once urged you. They may demand that you cut your cloak to ribbons, that you swear them an oath on your father's grave, that you curse your brothers and your Lord Commander. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Do as they bid you . . . but in your heart, remember who and what you are. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them, for as long as it takes. And watch."
What’s Jon supposed to watch for? Qhorin doesn’t know. Ghost saw the wildlings digging in the valley by the Milkwater. Jon needs to find out what the wildlings were after. That’s Jon Snow’s new duty. Reluctantly, Jon agrees, but Jon begs Qhorin to tell Jeor Mormont that Jon never truly broke his vow.
Qhorin Halfhand gazed at him across the fire, his eyes lost in pools of shadow. "When I see him next. I swear it." He gestured at the fire. "More wood. I want it bright and hot."
Jon goes to cut some more branches, somehow unaware that Qhorin is trying to tell Jon that he’s going to die. The fire sparks hot again, but then Qhorin tells him that it’s time to ride or die. Or ride and die. And where are they going? They’re doubling back. Qhorin is hoping the fire draws their eyes past them. Jon’s grateful for Qhorin’s idea as he very definitely does not want to turncloak.
They move cautiously, retracing their steps, moving up to a stream. They skirt around it, hugging the cliff sides. They pick their way past fallen rock, up towards a waterfall as the air fills with mist. They enter into the waterfall, but Jon realizes that there’s no way out. They get behind the waterfall, drenching themself in the process, and Jon realizes that Qhorin knew this place was here. Qhorin confirms as much, having learned about the natural hideout when he was Jon’s age from an older ranger. Qhorin seats himself and draws his sword as Jon takes off his wet cloak and lays down by the fire.
Sleep came at last, and with it nightmares. He dreamed of burning castles and dead men rising unquiet from their graves. It was still dark when Qhorin woke him. While the Halfhand slept, Jon sat with his back to the cave wall, listening to the water and waiting for the dawn.
The next day, Qhorin and Jon eat some horsemeat and saddle up. They emerge from the cave, hopeful that they won’t be spotted, but immediately they see the eagle perched up on a tree. Ghost gives chase, but the bird flaps away. Qhorin’s mouth hardens, and he turns to Jon.
"Here is as good a place as any to make a stand," he declared. "The mouth of the cave shelters us from above, and they cannot get behind us without passing through the mountain. Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?"
"Yes," he said.
"We'll feed the horses. They've served us bravely, poor beasts."
Jon gives his horse some oats and pulls his gloves tight to his hands, reminding himself that he is the shield that guards the realms of men. A hunting horn echoes around them, and Qhorin says the wildlings are going to be here soon and to keep Ghost close.
Jon sees the wildlings coming over a ridge a half mile away as Ghost does his silent snarl bit while Jon reassures him.
The hunters approached warily, perhaps fearing arrows. Jon counted fourteen, with eight dogs. Their large round shields were made of skins stretched over woven wicker and painted with skulls. About half of them hid their faces behind crude helms of wood and boiled leather. On either wing, archers notched shafts to the strings of small wood-and-horn bows, but did not loose. The rest seemed to be armed with spears and mauls. One had a chipped stone axe. They wore only what bits of armor they had looted from dead rangers or stolen during raids. Wildlings did not mine or smelt, and there were few smiths and fewer forges north of the Wall.
Qhorin drew his longsword. The tale of how he had taught himself to fight with his left hand after losing half of his right was part of his legend; it was said that he handled a blade better now than he ever had before. Jon stood shoulder to shoulder with the big ranger and pulled Longclaw from its sheath. Despite the chill in the air, sweat stung his eyes.
The wildlings stop ten yards below the cave mouth, and a dude dressed in all sorts of animal and human bones approaches. Qhorin addresses him
"Rattleshirt," Qhorin called down, icy-polite.
"To crows I be the Lord o' Bones." The rider's helm was made from the broken skull of a giant, and all up and down his arms bearclaws had been sewn to his boiled leather.
Qhorin snorted. "I see no lord. Only a dog dressed in chickenbones, who rattles when he rides."
Lol, #owned. Rattleshirt hisses and his horse rears up, rattling the dude. Rattleshirt declares he’s going to add Qhorin’s bones to his armor after he boils off his flesh and uses his skull as an oatmeal bowl. Qhorin challenges Rattleshirt to attack then, but he’s not taking the bait. Sure, the wildlings have them outnumbered 14 to 2, and the wildlings have 8 dogs. Jon and Qhorin can fight or run, but they’re toast either way.
"Show them," commanded Rattleshirt.
The woman reached into a bloodstained sack and drew out a trophy. Ebben had been bald as an egg, so she dangled the head by an ear. "He died brave," she said.
"But he died," said Rattleshirt, "same like you." He freed his battleaxe, brandishing it above his head. Good steel it was, with a wicked gleam to both blades; Ebben was never a man to neglect his weapons. The other wildlings crowded forward beside him, yelling taunts. A few chose Jon for their mockery. "Is that your wolf, boy?" a skinny youth called, unlimbering a stone flail. "He'll be my cloak before the sun is down." On the other side of the line, another spearwife opened her ragged furs to show Jon a heavy white breast. "Does the baby want his momma? Come, have a suck o' this, boy." The dogs were barking too.
"They would shame us into folly." Qhorin gave Jon a long look. "Remember your orders."
Rattleshirt orders archers forward, but then Jon tells them to stop. He’s yielding.
"They warned me bastard blood was craven," he heard Qhorin Halfhand say coldly behind him. "I see it is so. Run to your new masters, coward."
Jon’s face goes red as he descends to join Rattleshirt who says they don’t want cravens. But then an archer pulls off her sheepskin helmet, revealing herself to be Ygritte. She says he’s not craven. He’s the bastard of Winterfell. But Rattleshirt just wants Jon to die, and he doesn’t trust him.
On a rock above them, the eagle flapped its wings and split the air with a scream of fury.
"The bird hates you, Jon Snow," said Ygritte. "And well he might. He was a man, before you killed him."
"I did not know," said Jon truthfully, trying to remember the face of the man he had slain in the pass. "You told me Mance would take me."
"And he will," Ygritte said.
But Rattleshirt still wants Jon dead. He orders Ragwyle to kill him, but the spearwife tells Rattleshirt that Jon should prove his new allegiance.
"I'll do whatever you ask." The words came hard, but Jon said them.
Rattleshirt's bone armor clattered loudly as he laughed. "Then kill the Halfhand, bastard."
"As if he could," said Qhorin. "Turn, Snow, and die."
Qhorin’s sword comes for Jon, and Longclaw is suddenly in Jon’s hand. The swords meet as Jon fights back against Qhorin, but Jon is easily outmatched by Qhorin as he slows and starts weakening under the force of sword cuts. But then Ghost bites Qhorin’s calf, and Jon plants his foot and swings his sword.
The ranger was leaning away, and for an instant it seemed that Jon's slash had not touched him. Then a string of red tears appeared across the big man's throat, bright as a ruby necklace, and the blood gushed out of him, and Qhorin Halfhand fell.
Ghost's muzzle was dripping red, but only the point of the bastard blade was stained, the last half inch. Jon pulled the direwolf away and knelt with one arm around him. The light was already fading in Qhorin's eyes. " . . . sharp," he said, lifting his maimed fingers. Then his hand fell, and he was gone.
He knew, he thought numbly. He knew what they would ask of me. He thought of Samwell Tarly then, of Grenn and Dolorous Edd, of Pyp and Toad back at Castle Black. Had he lost them all, as he had lost Bran and Rickon and Robb? Who was he now? What was he?
Jon is dragged to his feet by the wildlings. They ask who he is, but Ygritte answers. He’s Jon Snow of Winterfell, Ned Stark’s blood. None of that matters to Rattleshirt who still wants Jon dead, but Ygritte says that Jon yielded. Another wildling says Jon killed Qhorin Halfhand too. Nope, that was Ghost’s work according to Rattleshirt, and Rattleshirt is very definitely upset that Jon killed Qhorin when Qhorin was Rattleshirt’s kill.
Ragwyle mocks Rattleshirt for not seeming all that eager to kill Qhorin, but Rattleshirt changes topics and says he doesn’t like Jon, because he’s a warg and a crow. But Ygritte says they’re not scared of wargs. Everyone else besides Rattleshirt agrees, and Rattleshirt reluctantly yields.
They burned Qhorin Halfhand where he'd fallen, on a pyre made of pine needles, brush, and broken branches. Some of the wood was still green, and it burned slow and smoky, sending a black plume up into the bright hard blue of the sky. Afterward Rattleshirt claimed some charred bones, while the others threw dice for the ranger's gear. Ygritte won his cloak.
"Will we return by the Skirling Pass?" Jon asked her. He did not know if he could face those heights again, or if his garron could survive a second crossing.
"No," she said. "There's nothing behind us." The look she gave him was sad. "By now Mance is well down the Milkwater, marching on your Wall."
And that is the synopsis for ACOK, Jon VIII! Kind-of a moody chapter which is another way of saying it’s a Jon Snow chapter. What did you think, ser?
Depth
The other climactic chapters of ACOK are about bloody battles, political transformations, narrow escapes from castles and cities. Not so with Jon VIII: a chapter about two men wandering the wilderness, knowing only that they are hunted. The sudden switch to minimalism is appropriate. It reflects how Jon and Qhorin are out of options. Their backs are against the wall (so to speak). It’s a bleak chapter, but also bracing and galvanizing in its focus. Everything is boiled down to their decisions, their will. What do their oaths mean, here at the end of the world and the end of their lives?
There’s a kind of pattern with the conclusion of Jon’s arcs in each book in the series. There’s a question of loyalty and vows, the Bryonic deep currents of emotion Jon feels about the decision he is facing, but he still is just to go through with the decision until he’s pulled back by people from carrying out what he wants. ACOK follows this pattern, but unlike Jon’s other arc conclusions, this one has our sad boy ordered to fake-turncloak on his vows and pretend to be someone else. The oft-quoted line that George likes to quote is Faulkner’s The human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about, and this chapter is perhaps not the true starting point for Jon Snow for his conflict (you can trace that back to AGOT), but it’s the point where his identity conflict is shaped to bound forward to ASOS, ADWD and beyond.
- Picked off one by one
- Tyrion XV last week found him wandering through dreams of the dead. As Jon VIII opens, our fave bastard is preparing to join the ranks of the fallen:
- ...Jon knew their end was near. It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself.
- George starts the chapter with just Jon and Qhorin Halfhand, gradually filling in the gaps so we understand what happened to the other men
- Structuring the chapter this way adds to the sense of doom and dread. It’s as if they never had a chance; it was always going to end like this
- Jon VII ended with Squire Dalbridge making his brave last stand, sacrificing his life for his brothers and the cause of the Night’s Watch
- One by one, they are all forced to make the same choice. Qhorin sends Ebben to ride for the Fist of the First Men while they draw off pursuit. It doesn’t work. The wildlings hunt him down and kill him. He died brave, the wildlings say, but he died all the same. That’s the reality they’re facing
- They’re up against not only their pursuers, but their harsh environment. Their enemies kill Ebben; Stonesnake is taken out of the group by nothing more than a chance encounter with a starving shadowcat. The last time Jon sees him, he’s a black bug against an endless expanse of white, emphasizing how small and powerless these hardened veterans are now
- No matter what they do, no matter how they use their skills, they are marked for death. The eagle is watching: a black dot of destiny in the sky
- Steven Attewell wrote about how expertly George fuses sorcery with espionage in this scenario. The eagle is being possessed by the spirit of a dead man, but that mystical power is being used by the wildlings for a grounded military purpose: tracking the Watchmen
- George has said he doesn’t like how often magic in fantasy functions as a lazy way to erase the playing field. It’s more interesting when magic is embedded into the playing field as one of many tools to use
- ACOK is about both political and magical expansions, and these Watchmen are on the knife’s edge between both worlds
- It’s interesting here that Qhorin doesn’t command Jon to use magic and skinchange Ghost to scout ahead or fight the wildling pursuit party or disrupt the pursuit in any way.
- And as we talked about in Jon VII, Qhorin is aware that Jon is a warg and skinchanger.
- So, why not use the same magic that Orell is using to aid in their flight?
- Obviously, the first part of it is that Qhorin is a man of the Night’s Watch and uses the tools he’s comfortable with: ranging, scouting, fighting, etc.
- Qhorin wouldn’t know how to educate Jon in using his wolf.
- The second part is that this is Qhorin Halfhand (and George) training Jon on how to be a ranger.
- Like you were saying: magic isn’t a cheat code to get through a difficult level of the game in ASOIAF.
- To stay in the video game metaphor, Jon can’t level up until he does the hard thing: running, sleeping in the saddle, building fires, trying to stay alive.
- Recently, I had the chance to talk with Radio Westeros about Young Griff, and I talked about how everyone props this kid up to be amazing because he’s been trained.
- However, the training YG has is within a safe classroom environment.
- Not so with Jon. Jon’s training as a ranger, the leadership lessons he learns from Qhorin have to be earned the hard way.
- The overall problem is that Jon doesn’t have a magical mentor figure the same way that Bran has the Three-Eyed Crow and Jojen Reed.
- So, in the long-term, Jon is getting his training in the practical ways to survive in the wilderness and in the basics of leadership and ranging.
- But he isn’t getting training on utilizing his warging abilities, and that will signal some problems down the road.
- Still, Qhorin is providing valuable mentorship to Jon.
- That’s reflected in Qhorin’s leadership. The warning he sends with Stonesnake isn’t about the wildling threat so much as the old powers:
- “Tell Mormont … that he faces giants and wargs and worse. Tell him the trees have eyes again.”
- Along the same lines, the duty he lays on Jon isn’t to kill Mance or disrupt his political plans. It’s to learn if Mance found magic to break the Wall
- This is the emergence of the complex dynamic that will dominate Jon’s story in ASOS and ADWD. In the face of the Others, the war between the Watch and the wildlings is absurd, a mutual suicide pact. The wise on both sides know it--Qhorin here, and Mance and Dalla in ASOS:
- "If I sound the Horn of Winter, the Wall will fall. Or so the songs would have me believe. There are those among my people who want nothing more..."
- Tyrion XV last week found him wandering through dreams of the dead. As Jon VIII opens, our fave bastard is preparing to join the ranks of the fallen:
"But once the Wall is fallen," Dalla said, "what will stop the Others?"
- But that revelation alone is not enough to wipe the slate clean. There are still longstanding grudges; there are still cultural gaps to cross; there are still individual crises that could spin out of control and doom both sides
- Again, George wants magic to enhance the drama of his storytelling, rather than reduce it. Here, rather than disrupting the elemental thrill of the chase, it adds an extra layer of gravity to it. As Qhorin says, there is more at stake than just their own little fire, their own little lives. If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires (and lives) go out...and that’s not because of Mance!
- It can be hard to remember the big picture because of how intimately this chapter is written. Nothing but the scraping of hooves and the whistling of the wind. Just the sun setting behind one peak and the moon rising above another, day after day. It feels like the last act of a Western, when the bloody bill comes due. Qhorin is so silent he may as well already be dead
- Jon thinks back to his other pack, his other family: the Starks of Winterfell. He has been sundered from them, just like his fellow Watchmen who have died one by one. Will the wolves howl for me, he wonders, wherever they are? What will my life have meant if I die out here?
- “Even dreams cannot live up here,” Jon says. Not true, as it turns out: Bran opened Jon’s third eye in his last chapter, so he dreams of “burning castles and dead men rising unquiet from their graves,” which describes what’s happening at both King’s Landing and Winterfell
- But Jon can’t make sense of any of that, so it only deepens his sense of isolation. This chapter is a crucible designed to break him down
- These hard-bitten, tough men are having a hard enough time evading wildlings and their magic, but nature has a role to play here as well.
- So much of this chapter reminds me of the chase scene from The Last of the Mohicans where Hawkeye and a small band of survivors from Fort Edward as they’re pursued by Magua and his band of Mohawk warriors.
- Hell, the chase scene even ends behind a waterfall. I see you like movies too, George.
- The parallel here is that Hawkeye and Qhorin bear some similarities: they are experts in their craft and living off the land.
- They are foreigners to this wilderness. The wildlings can navigate better and use their tools more effectively.
- But the most limiting factor is nature itself. Qhorin could be the greatest ranger (perhaps he is), but the Frostfangs will slow them all down, horses will lame, people will die.
- In Jon VI, Jon marveled at the beauty of this alien, icy world, even watching a shadowcat stalking its prey.
- But here, that natural beauty conceals the danger underneath.
- Now that Jon can no longer marvel at the beauty, because he’s running his ass off, the mountains, snows, ice and shadowcats are threats to Jon’s life.
- And all of those natural threats are leading to the inevitable failure of Qhorin and Jon to shake their pursuers.
- When we talk about George thumbing the narrative, the Red Wedding and Ned’s fall from power take center-stage.
- But nature here is acting as one of the impediments for Jon and Qhorin to get away when before it was aiding Jon and co in moving deep into the Frostfangs.
- Hell, it almost reads like George had nature ambush Jon here -- luring Jon in with its natural beauty and then trapping him here.
- George is clearly thumbing the narrative to have Jon and Qhorin end up at the cave, for Jon to fake-turncloak and to set up his wildling arc in ASOS.
- The duty of the Watch
- On reread, it’s clear that Qhorin was planning on Jon turning his cloak all along, as soon as that eagle first appeared. He hints as much to Ebben, who assumes that his role is the least dangerous one, and begs Qhorin to send Jon instead. It’s a heroic impulse: spare the youngest among us
- Jon is still half a boy, Ebben argues. Qhorin counters that Jon is a man of the Watch, who “has a different part to play.” Revealing word choice...
- The irony, of course, is that Ebben is the one who dies. Jon spends the first chunk of this chapter girding himself up inside to die bravely as well
- But as Qhorin tells him, it may not be so easy as that. Easy? Yes, easy! Qhorin believes that death is not the most terrifying thing about life
- A heroic death like Jon envisions is painful, but over quickly, and there’s a simplicity to it. What Qhorin wants Jon to do instead is not so simple: live on as an adult, trying to reconcile his human heart in conflict with itself
- As Qhorin himself said: in order to lead men, you have to know them, an echo of what Ned told his sons. He sent Ebben and Stonesnake away based on what he knew of them. He has been learning about Jon this whole time, and now he is putting what he has learned into practice
- He knows that Jon is brave and takes his duty seriously, but also that he is merciful and empathetic. He saw Ygritte as his fellow person, not a foe
- Such a man can convince the wildlings he is theirs now while also holding true to his Watch vows in secret. Qhorin sees Jon as his ideal spy
- Jon protests, because this is a dishonorable move. It feels cowardly in comparison to the other Watchmen, who faced death without flinching
- He swore a vow. He just repeated that vow. Now he’s being asked to disavow the Night’s Watch and join those who killed his brothers
- In a way, Qhorin is also asking Jon to give up yet another family -- one where he’s been accepted as part of.
- Considering how Jon was made to sit at the squire’s table during Robert’s feast, it’s clear that Jon was an outsider in the castle he grew up in.
- Now here, he’s been personally selected by Qhorin Halfhand to take part in the ranging, and his skills have been put to use.
- He’s become an equal and peer to the best of the Night’s Watch. He’s been made to feel special, and that’s what any coming of age boy wants
- And now Qhorin wants him to give all of that up for the greater good of safeguarding the realm from Mance Rayder and the wildlings.
- It’s almost like Jon’s been soaring through the skies, thinking he’s hot shit, a part of a crack team of rangers
- But Qhorin isn’t so interested in burnishing Jon’s legacy or making him feel like a part of the team.
- There’s certainly an aspect of what Qhorin does in empowering Jon to be a leader, but the mission supersedes the leadership training, and the mission is calling for Jon to act dishonorably.
- In response, Jon is aghast, because he knows what Qhorin is really asking him to do: become an outsider again with the wildlings and the Night’s Watch.
- His entire personality was shaped by that outsider role he occupied in Winterfell, and it presses on him still.
- Recall the final conversation piece from ACOK, Jon I where Mormont asked Jon how it would feel to be a Night’s Watchmen while his brother got to be a king. What was Jon’s response to that?
- “Be troubled and keep my vows.”
- Now, Qhorin is telling Jon he has to go beyond simply being troubled by his outsider status.
- He has to play at discarding his vows. For the greater good.
- Qhorin thinks about right and wrong differently. In his view, honor is not the overall backdrop. It’s a tool for the mission, like any other
- If Jon is willing to surrender his life to keep others safe, he should be willing to surrender his values as well. What does it matter?
- Qhorin has sacrificed his humanity to his duty, his legend, and he expects the same of Jon. He tortures prisoners without hesitation, after all. But George also shows us a glimmer of the man inside the myth:
- Qhorin came and stood over him as the first flame rose up flickering from the shavings of bark and dead dry pine needles. "As shy as a maid on her wedding night," the big ranger said in a soft voice, "and near as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can be."
He was not a man you'd expect to speak of maids and wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding?
- A fire in the darkness becomes a metaphor for the transience of love: how quickly those fires go out along with our youth. Qhorin never stops and smells the roses. His life is lived for others, not his own simple pleasures
- Qhorin knows he is weaponizing Jon’s youthful innocence, and he knows the cost of that. He does it anyway because he believes to his bones that it is right for the Watchmen to sacrifice themselves for Westeros
- The cloak itself is not important. Cut it to ribbons if the wildlings say so! What matters is the cause for which the cloak stands. It’s an important lesson for Jon about the performance of values versus living on them
- It struck me how Qhorin’s wistful statements about the beauty of a fire as beautiful as a maid on her wedding night lead Jon to ask no follow-up questions.
- That unwillingness to follow up with those in authority positions over Jon doesn’t just exist here north of the Wall
- In Winterfell, Jon was unable to ever ask Ned about his mother, the man Catelyn had said that Ned must have loved fiercely
- But Jon couldn’t broach the topic with Ned, because of the awkwardnesses of living in Winterfell as the acknowledged bastard of Ned Stark.
- But you can see where Jon’s backstory and upbringing leads Jon here to where he can’t talk with Qhorin for fear of rocking the boat.
- Jon has to overcome being a wallflower, and that will unfold in slow-burn style as the narrative progresses.
- Of course, that Qhorin hints at loving a maiden and perhaps being married in his past leads to theories about Qhorin having a secret identity: Arthur Dayne being perhaps the most popular theory out there.
- I think the issue with those types of theories is not that George has a huge backstory in mind for Qhorin Halfhand.
- It’s rather that George wants to allude - not hint - at Qhorin having a life before the Wall.
- But Qhorin probably received the same charge that Jon received, and he took it very much to heart.:
- "Your duty is here now," the Lord Commander reminded him. "Your old life ended when you took the black."
- Qhorin did have a life before the Wall, but he has abandoned this in favor of his samurai-like code of dying in defense of the realm.
- But Qhorin knows that his life is about to end, and at the end of things, Qhorin is feeling nostalgic.
- But he’s given all of that up in favor of the code, and this is something that Jon has to resist going forward.
- Who Jon was as the Bastard of Winterfell, as the son of Ned Stark, as having a family he cared about: Jon can’t forget them on the Wall in favor of becoming a duty-robot.
- At the same time, as we’ll talk about in ADWD, Jon leans too hard towards his family at the expense of his duty: saving “Arya”, framing his march on Ramsay within the confines of his family.
- My wonderment is how Jon will balance family and duty come TWOW.
- Last stand
- Having laid out what he expects of Jon if they are trapped, Qhorin does his level best to spare Jon that fate, trying one last time to escape pursuit
- Qhorin draws upon both his survival skills and the institutional memory of the Night’s Watch to lead Jon to a hidden cave behind a waterfall
- The Halfhand represents the Watch at its most competent. His tactics give Jon hope, and the reader as well: maybe they can still escape!
- But when they emerge back into the daylight, the eagle is waiting. Magic has won the day, yet Qhorin still uses his wiles to position Jon and himself in an ideal defensive spot, so the wildlings can’t surround them
- The hunting party finally comes into view. They have the Watchmen outnumbered 7 to 1, but Jon takes note of their poor arms and armor
- George will expand on this dynamic in ASOS and ADWD. The wildlings have the advantage of numbers, but lack the resources to resist Stannis
- The source of this disparity is the Wall itself; as Qhorin said, people are made of the same stuff on either side of it. The only available means of addressing that disparity has been violence. As Davos says in ASOS, Watch policy is to execute anyone who dares trade with the wildlings
- While George’s sympathy in the big picture is clearly with the wildlings and those south of the Wall who stick up for them, the drama comes from the complications that inevitably arise on an individual level
- Qhorin, as Jon reminds us one last time, is a living legend, and the wildlings are led not by the likable Mance or Tormund, but by Rattleshirt
- He’s neither a terrifying berserker nor a noble guardian of the soil. He’s just a petty asshole, because petty assholes are a universal constant
- What makes life north of the Wall different isn’t that there are no tinpot tyrants like Rattleshirt. It’s that there is an established culture of resistance
- When Rattleshirt wants Jon dead, even after he kills Qhorin, the other wildlings stick up for him. South of the Wall, he’s probably dead meat, but up here, his mercy for Ygritte pays off when she speaks on his behalf
- Jon has to fit into this new culture while also following Qhorin’s orders to report back to the Watch eventually. Qhorin helps Jon sell it by insulting him: saying that his bastard blood means treachery, convincing the wildlings that Jon is a genuine oathbreaker. Qhorin is probably also trying to get Jon angry, because he’s going to need adrenaline to win the fight
- As Jon thinks: Qhorin knew what the wildlings would ask of him. Qhorin gave his men’s lives away one by one, and now gives up his own
- He’s the ultimate mentor, challenging Jon to take him down and replace him at risk of his own life, barely winning the duel by using his warg skills. As Ned told Bran, the only time you can be brave is when you’re afraid
- This is why Qhorin keeps asking Jon if his sword is sharp. Qhorin wants to die a clean death, as he lived, his legend intact: the last samurai
- Jon, meanwhile, is once more caught between worlds. As you said earlier, that’s the state he’s left in at the end of each of his storylines in each book
- That’s the question that defines Jon’s story: who are you? No, really? What family, what pack, can you be a part of? At the end of book one, he gave up his Stark family; he thinks about them in this chapter. He gave them up for the Watch. Has he lost the Watch now? Who is his new pack?
- It’s the wildlings, of course. They drag him to his feet; Ygritte and others save his life from Rattleshirt, and take Qhorin’s possessions for their own
- In the next book, they will take him to Mance...who is no longer behind them, as Ygritte reveals to Jon. He’s marching on the Wall at last
- I remember reading this the first time and getting so excited. The wildling threat has been built up so much in these first two books
- Now at last we have arrived. We’re going to explore the wildling camp and meet the King-Beyond-the-Wall. And yet the beginning of ASOS will remind us once more of the threat of the white walkers
- Everything is more complicated and dangerous for Jon as well as everyone beyond the Wall; thankfully for us, it makes for great storytelling
- Yes! I was so excited when I got to the end of Jon’s story in ACOK. We were going on a brand new adventure with Jon.
- Of the “Next time on ASOIAF” endings in ACOK, I like Jon's best.
- We’re finally going to meet Mance Rayder: a character who had been built up since the third chapter in AGOT with Ned saying he may need to call the banners to confront Mance Rayder.
- And we were going to confront a new culture and find out who the wildlings really are, stripped of how everyone else in Westeros regards them.
- More importantly, Jon had been with the Night’s Watch for so much of his story.
- This represents a brand new epoch in Jon’s story, where he has to establish himself somewhere new.
- And this also elevates Jon’s identity crisis and struggle to greater heights, and we wonder who Jon Snow will be when he has to put aside his black cloak.
- The answer to that question will be revealed in full in ASOS, and boy am I excited to get to Jon’s story there.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Qhorin tells Jon that he’ll inform Jeor Mormont that Jon never broke his vows the next time he sees them? Yeah. That’s definitely foreshadowing that Jeor is going to die, and they’ll talk in Night’s Watch heaven … or hell .
The using a skull as a drinking bowl/oatmeal bowl is repeated in ADWD when Mors Umber declares he’ll take Stannis as king if he provides Mance Rayder’s skull to him.
Theory/Discussion
Will Stonesnake return to the story?
Conclusion
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- Join us next week for ACOK, Bran VII the final chapter in ACOK (so sad!), in which Bran emerges from the crypts of Winterfell to find devastation and hope awaiting him. And we’ll be joined by none other than Manu from the Podcast Sans Frontieres!
