Post by stdaga on Nov 19, 2019 16:31:18 GMT
But, true backstory or not, her role may be completely different from Arya. We just don't have enough to put either one together. But I don't think the objective of Arya's training is consistent with what she is being told.
My impression is that the father didn't bring the waif to the HoBaW to die, but as part of his payment to the Faceless Men so they would kill his wife, her step-mother. It seems redundant to have both the mother and the father want the girl dead. If he brought her for healing, perhaps they did save her life, and that she might have eventually died without intervention. Of course, who knows if that story is correct or how much it's been altered. But if it's true, then the poison that the waif drank that made her stay eternally youthful might have had a near death effect on the girl. I find that Arya has had a near death experience, so perhaps that is something that is important in the training to become a faceless man. Like the veil between the world of the living and the death is thinner, the path partially crossed already, and that makes some sort of transition easier.
I would agree that it feels like Arya is being tricked or manipulated in some way, that watch she is being told or taught isn't quite accurate!
A little like Tywin, except with leeches!
Sometimes I want to tie the waif to the Bolton's, but her backstory doesn't seem to fit as we don't have any female Bolton's that I know of, and in that same way, sometimes I want to fit Domeric to the HoBaW, because there are some similarities that tie the Bolton's and HoBaW, namely the skinning of humans and the possibilities of wearing those skins.
We don't get much story on Arya's other playmates at Winterfell, but we know she was close to Jon. In a way, he was part of a pack that was different than Sansa's pack of mean girls. And then Arya spends time with Mycah, also a step to forming her own pack, but fate stole Mycah from her as well. Arya is also young, and even young wolves must fight their way through the ranks, I would think. Somehow, I find I will be interested to see what and how Arya's role might change when she becomes a woman who has flowered. Does that change something for these Stark/wolf girls? I also wonder if Arya's ability to be an alpha through her dreams of Nymeria in some way helps her hold off her own need to be an the leader of her own pack at this time?
But she is smart and clever. Once survival was at issue, she became a useful team member. Delicacy, wittiness, and emotional agility were not particularly useful skills after she left KL.
I am sure she can sew just fine if she wants to, but she really has no interest in it. We hear that she is better at household accounts than her elder sister, so I think she could apply herself if she wants to. I do wonder if we might get some hints of her sewing skills, with an actual needle, related to her time as Mercy. Mercy works in an acting troop and actors need someone to help with costume repairs and prop pieces. Can Arya/Mercy fill this role, or perfect her own skills at this time. Every step she has taken in the HoBaW seems to be preparing her for another role, or at least the next role in her path. I guess I should reread that Mercy chapter, although I do wonder how much it might be altered by time Winds is published, if it's ever published.
I just reread Arya's chapter that falls just after Cat's last POV chapter. There are some interesting things that are similar. The boom-boom-boom of a drum stands out to both Cat and Arya, long after the rest of the music stops playing. Arya is also aware of the solo howl of a lone wolf, although it stands to reason this was after both Robb and Grey Wind are dead. I am basing that on Sander's saying that the Frey's would have killed Robb before they opened their castle and let their warriors out to slaughter the northern troops. Even seeing the massacre, Arya runs away from the Hound and tries to get to the castle gate. She runs though the mud and into the water of the river, and so when she is knocked out cold, she falls into the very same water that will carry her mother down the river. We have discussed the possibility of water as part of the catalyst for Catelyn's resurrection, and Arya also bathed in this same water. Almost her last thoughts were of getting to her mother, "Maybe we can save her..." and weirdly enough, even in death, Catelyn, bathed in the same water that Arya is bathed in, is somehow saved. She is not herself, but in some way she is saved from death.
And if Arya has cheated Death of Catelyn Tully Stark, what might be the role she needs to pay to pay Death back for stealing from him? Do the people in the House of Black and White know in some way that Arya could have used Nymeria and some power within her self to turn Catelyn into UnCat? Is that some of the power or ability that the House of Black and White could want with Arya, an ability to touch and raise the dead? Hello Night Queen imagery again!
Just a though on that booming solo drum that both Catelyn and Arya seem to hear during the Red Wedding. I really question that it's a real drum. By this point, all the terrible music or even the well played Rain's of Castamere song has ended and there is just one, loud, pounding drum. But is it a drum or a heart beat, and whose heart beat could it be? This reminds me of the Dany's visions in the House of the Undying. The feast of the dead is near the beginning and the blue heart near the end, but that blue heart is interesting. "Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light", and "her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt". Slow and ponderous... from Dany. From Cat we get "the drum beat slow and sonorous, doom, boom, boom" and "the drum went boom doom boom doom boom doom". That difference in the drum tone seems more like a heart beat, closing of valves in the heart, usually called S1 and S2, a "lub" and "dub" heart sound. I think Cat was hearing a heart and not a drum at all, the same as Arya hears, and that Dany is probably hearing this same heart beat in the House of the Undying. I wonder if this Robb's heart beat they are all tuned to? I suppose that's a bit crazy, but it's some heart beat, I am sure of it, and Robb seems to be the one who is dying from all three POV's.
**I will say that Dany's vision blue beating heart could tie to Drogo just as much as to Robb, probably it's more likely a tie to Drogo.
We don't really know what happens with Arya after the hound brains her with the axe. We don't know how much time has passed, how long she was out, or what kind of dreams she had at that time. But she still wasn't satisfied that Cat could be dead until she dreams of Nymeria pulling the body out of the river. Then she knows. Arya also interestingly describes a place inside of her that is a hole, a place where her heart should have been. Another connection to a heart, which does beat like a rhythm drum in our bodies. Some of the dreams we hear of seem to be of Nymeria and her pack, she was the leader (she could be Nymeria or Arya in the dreams, it's unclear), a pack that will never leave her. She has several thoughts related to packs she has tried to belong to during this first chapter after the Red Wedding, she thinks of Hot Pie and Gendry, she thinks of Beric and his men, she thinks of the Hound, but accepts that none wanted to be part of her pack, that they either wanted to leave her or to use her. She compares herself to being as stupid as Sansa, and in some ways, there is a similarity in the hopes.
Then comes the time that in her dreams, Arya smells her mother, or Nymeria smells something. I had talked at the start of this thread that I wonder if it's actually part of Robb and Grey Wind in Catelyn that Nymeria is smelling, but in some way, Arya is quite connected. More than I had initially thought. While it was Robb and Cat and Grey Wind who were killed inside the Twins, it is Arya, a blood connection, that is right outside of the Twins, and able to connect in some way to a sad wolf howl and the drum that might be a boom/doom or lub/dud of a heart beat. Arya wants to save her mother, and by her strength of will, by her connection with Nymeria, she is able to do that. Able to drag Cat's remains (and what ever else is tied to her remains) from the water, where Nymeria/Arya begs her to rise and run with a pack (this is the wolf connection I see, the Robb/Grey Wind, because Cat never ran with the wolf pack before) and allows Beric and Thoros to find her and through some magic, she is able to rise. Arya seems satisfied to know that Cat is dead, but in a way, could Arya be connected to a risen Lady Stoneheart? I am beginning to wonder. Stoneheart is quite vindictive and that is how Arya thinks. She must get this from her mother, but perhaps that is something of both of them connected in one being. Arya has her list, UnCat seems to be killing every Frey around (although I still argue that part of Robb lives on in Catelyn's remains and is helping with this vengeance). But now I am wondering about Arya. She and Sander mercy kill the Piper archer, who plainly tells of the Frey's betrayal and murder of so many northmen, but he also connects this action to House Bolton's flayed man sigil. So far, Stoneheart hasn't sought any revenge on a Bolton, but I think it's coming, and I hope Roose, the immortal skin-stealing creeper shits himself before he dies!
I think I am kind of sounding like I am spouting gibberish, but GRRM seems to work in three's in this story. Complicated relationships of three-somes. I had thought Robb/Grey Wind/Catelyn, but now I am wondering if we have something of Robb/Catelyn/Arya with Grey Wind and Nymeria serving on the periphery.
Later in this chapter, when all of the people that the Hound wants to take her to (Lysa in the Eyrie and the Blackfish at Riverun) Arya tries to convince the Hound to take her to Jon at the Wall. She still recognizes that she has family left and she is trying to seek him. Even when seeking passage later at Saltpans, it's Jon she seeks, but it's Braavos she get's. She never thinks of Sansa in all of this, I don't think.
But there is a Sansa connection. While rereading this chapter I reread when Arya pulls the stuffing/guts out of some childs' doll and this reminded me of Sansa later pulling the head off of Sweetrobin's doll. There is some rage and blood in these Stark girls, and I can't wait for them to get some revenge. At this time, Arya is mistaken for the Hounds daughter and during Sansa's episode, near the end of this same novel, she is in disguise as Baelish's daughter, but I think they are plainly the daughters of House Stark, and perhaps vengeance is their role.
Yes, Sansa has been mostly used as a pawn, but Arya is also, to some extent. Even Jeyne Poole is a stand in pawn of Arya. And perhaps GRRM is showing us that medieval women where often pawns and had little, if no, agency of their own. Even Cersei is a pawn and most of her power was underlying, and that is why she jumped on the chance to take a more active role in power while serving as Joffrey's and Tommen's regent. The one time Sansa tried to do something on her own, she ended up screwing her father over, all the people from Winterfell and her little sister, too. But she is being taught so much about political maneuvering and about lying, that I hope the next time she tries to use power on her own, she does a better job than the first time. I hope this time she helps her family.