something i think is really interesting about sansa’s povs is how “active” her brain is, despite how little she says sometimes. from the beginning of the books her narrative is filled with overeagerness & language like “it’ll be splendid / wonderful / glorious / fantastic / etc.” & it seems like she’s so overwhelmed with splendor that her mind keeps processing it & commenting on it.
we later see her filled with what she thinks is rage, saying thinks like “i hope this will happen, i hope that will happen,” in a kind of repetitive manner ( “i hope he [janos slynt] falls and shames himself, she thought bitterly. i hope ser balon kills him.” ). this sometimes mimics her descent into confusion, such as after joffrey’s death when the bells are ringing & she keeps repeating her thoughts as if they were tolling with the bells ( “the bells were ringing, slow and mournful. ringing, ringing, ringing. they had rung for king robert the same way. joffrey was dead, he was dead, he was dead, dead, dead. why was she crying, when she wanted to dance? were they tears of joy?” ).
her povs present us with a LOT of this rhythmic language that is meant to signify her “raw thoughts.” she’s a very emotional person & her language mimics that -- when she is stressed, she repeats herself, highlighting her mental state at the time.
but she also does this when she thinks elinor is being naive ( “they are children, sansa thought. they are silly little girls, even elinor. they’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers were before joffrey cut her father’s head off. sansa pitied them. sansa envied them.” ) & to reaffirm her strength ( “be brave, she told herself. be brave, like a lady in a song.” ), so this linguistic repetition isn’t necessarily tied to her mental state. it might just be how her brain works. sansa has a very active mind, since it seems to be the one thing she has control over even as a political prisoner, & she uses it quite actively. while the more obvious incidents of repetitive thought occur when she is emotionally distressed, i think that sansa has a natural intelligence that keeps her mind turning frequently.
arguably, some of her thoughts don’t seem very “intelligent,” especially when she talks about how pretty & splendid things are in king’s landing, but the fact that her mind doesn’t shut down or alter the way she processes thoughts after ned’s death is a testament to her mental resiliency. what she learns throughout the series is how to better use her mind, to question things, & to analyze people like littlefinger ( “he saved alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. but she was sansa too… and sometimes it seemed to her that the lord protector was two people as well. he was petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle… but he was also littlefinger, the lord she’d known at king’s landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in queen cersei’s ear. and littlefinger was no friend of hers.” ). her thoughts still seem repetitive & choppy, but it’s because her mind is working hard to process them, like she’s used to.
anyways i will mention this in my emotional / mental state meta when i finally finish it but i've always thought her repetition was interesting linguistically.
izzy806
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