Moon, Darkness and Night: Symbolic Motifs in Arya Stark’s Character.
The first moment that ties Arya’s identity to the moon is when Ned likens her and Sansa to the moon and to the sun, highlighting both their differences and their importance to him and to each other. Once Arya and Sansa are separated, these symbolic identities persist and each sister grows increasingly tied to her respective motif.
Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me.
A Game of Thrones - Arya II
The night the bird had come from Winterfell, Eddard Stark had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath surrounded the girls where they lay. “I dreamed of Bran,” Sansa had whispered to him. “I saw him smiling.”
A Game of Thrones - Eddard V
When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.
When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon.
A Game of Thrones - Eddard XV
Still in AGOT, Arya finds herself lost in the cellars of the Red Keep, and where anyone else would have died, she manages to find a way out. She overcomes her fear of the darkness and her fear of the dragon skulls. And when she emerges triumphant, the moon is there, waiting for her.
She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there was no place to go but forward. She found the wall again and followed, blind and lost, pretending that Nymeria was padding along beside her in the darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in foul-smelling water, wishing she could dance upon it as Syrio might have, and wondering if she’d ever see light again. It was full dark when finally Arya emerged into the night air.
She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the river. She stank so badly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the riverbank as she dove into the deep black waters. She swam until she felt clean, and crawled out shivering. Some riders went past along the river road as Arya was washing her clothes, but if they saw the scrawny naked girl scrubbing her rags in the moonlight, they took no notice.
A Game of Thrones - Arya III
Earlier in the chapter, during the daytime, Arya flees from authority figures: Myrcella and Tommen’s septa as well as some red cloaks. But at night, after her experience in the Red Keep’s cellars, she commands different guards without care for her appearance. The darkness seems to empower her.
They don’t know me, Arya realized. They don’t even know I’m a girl.
x
Maybe they wouldn’t recognize her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame.
x
The septa was screeching at her. Arya slid between legs as thick and white as marble columns, bounded to her feet, bowled into Prince Tommen and hopped over him when he sat down hard and said “Oof,” spun away from the second guard, and then she was past them all, running full out.
A Game of Thrones - Arya III
“I’m not a boy,” she spat at them. “I’m Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me my lord father will have both your heads on spikes. If you don’t believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon Poole from the Tower of the Hand.” She put her hands on her hips. “Now are you going to open the gate, or do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?”
A Game of Thrones - Arya III
The first time Arya encounters Nymeria after she and Jory drove her away in AGOT, it is nighttime, and Nymeria’s eyes are bright with reflected moonlight. This moment marks the beginning of Arya’s identity being tied to Nymeria specifically during the night. Her true self surfaces only at nighttime, while during the day she pretends to be someone else. Their nocturnal bond will grow even stronger as her wolf dreams begin.
She was making water, her clothing tangled about herankles, when she heard rustling from under the trees. Hot Pie, she thought in panic, he followed me. Then she saw the eyes shining out from the wood, bright with reflected moonlight. Her belly clenched tight as she grabbed for Needle, not caring if she pissed herself, counting eyes, two four eight twelve, a whole pack . . .
One of them came padding out from under the trees. He stared at her, and bared his teeth, and all she could think was how stupid she'd been and how Hot Pie would gloat when they found her half-eaten body the next morning. But the wolf turned and raced back into the darkness, and quick as that the eyes were gone. “Trembling, she cleaned herself and laced up and followed a distant scraping sound back to camp, and to Yoren. Arya climbed up into the wagon beside him, shaken. “Wolves,” she whispered hoarsely. “In the woods.”
“Aye. They would be.” He never looked at her.
“They scared me.”
“Did they?” He spat. “Seems to me your kind was fond o’ wolves.”
A Clash of Kings - Arya III
Once again, nighttime is reserved for her true self, expressed in her prayer and swordplay.
Every night Arya would say their names. “Ser Gregor,” she’d whisper to her stone pillow. “Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the sept and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and her names were the only prayer she cared to remember.
A Clash of Kings - Arya VI
Gendry was too stubborn to make one for her, so she had made her own by breaking the bristles off a broom. Her blade was much too light and had no proper grip, but she liked the sharp jagged splintery end. Whenever she had a free hour she stole away to work at the drills Syrio had taught her, moving barefoot over the fallen leaves, slashing at branches and whacking down leaves. Sometimes she even climbed the trees and danced among the upper branches, her toes gripping the limbs as she moved back and forth, teetering a little less every day as her balance returned to her. Night was the best time; no one ever bothered her at night.
A Clash of Kings - Arya IX
With the moon and stars lighting her way and the darkness as her friend, Arya is able to slip out of Pinkeye’s nose once he falls asleep to spend time in the kitchens with Hot Pie at night. She takes advantage of the freedom granted by the darkness by being as defiant as possible: from wanting to spit in Amory Lorch’s tarts (small and silly as it may seem, it is still an act of rebellion for a 10 year old girl who is a slave in all but name) and participating in a coup to escaping Harrenhall.
“Can I have a tart?” she asked. “You baked a whole tray.”
“I need a whole tray. Ser Amory is partial to them.”
She hated Ser Amory. “Let’s spit on them.”
Hot Pie looked around nervously. The kitchens were full of shadows and echoes, but the other cooks and scullions were all asleep in the cavernous lofts above the ovens. “He’ll know.”
“He will not,” Arya said. “You can’t taste spit.”
“If he does, it’s me they’ll whip.” Hot Pie stopped his kneading. “You shouldn’t even be here. It’s the black of night.”
A Clash of Kings - Arya IX
Each morning [Pinkeye] broke his fast with ale. Each evening he fell into a drunken sleep after supper, wine-colored spit running down his chin. Arya would wait until she heard him snoring, then creep barefoot up the servant’s stair, making no more noise than the mouse she’d been. She carried neither candle nor taper. Syrio had told her once that darkness could be her friend, and he was right. If she had the moon and the stars to see by, that was enough.
A Clash of Kings - Arya IX
After witnessing the northern prisoners arrive in Harrenhal and realising that Gendry would not help her free them, Arya retreats to the godswood to practice swordplay. Once she’s done, the moon lights up the weirwood, drawing Arya’s attention and making her feel the urge to pray for help. Then, her prayer is answered immediately when Jaqen appears.
Shoving her sword through her belt, she slipped down branch to branch until she was back on the ground. The light of the moon painted the limbs of the weirwood silvery white as she made her way toward it, but the five-pointed red leaves turned black by night. Arya stared at the face carved into its trunk. It was a terrible face, its mouth twisted, its eyes flaring and full of hate. Is that what a god looked like? Could gods be hurt, the same as people? I should pray, she thought suddenly.
Arya went to her knees. She wasn’t sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.
A Clash of Kings - Arya IX
In ASOS, Arya’s wolf dreams begin. Her connection to Nymeria grows stronger, helping her navigate the identity crisis she’s going through. Even if during the day she is Squab, the Hound’s daughter or no one, by night she becomes Nymeria, leading a wolf pack with the moon by her side.
Sleep came as quick as she closed her eyes. She dreamed of wolves that night, stalking through a wet wood with the smell of rain and rot and blood thick in the air. Only they were good smells in the dream, and Arya knew she had nothing to fear. She was strong and swift and fierce, and her pack was all around her, her brothers and her sisters. They ran down a frightened horse together, tore its throat out, and feasted. And when the moon broke through the clouds, she threw back her head and howled.
A Storm of Swords - Arya V
But if her nights were full of wolves, her days belonged to the dog.
A Storm of Swords - Arya XII
I’m not his daughter, Arya might have shouted, if she hadn't felt so tired. She was no one’s daughter now. She was no one. Not Arya, not Weasel, not Nan nor Arry nor Squab, not even Lumpyhead. She was only some girl who ran with a dog by day, and dreamed of wolves by night.
A Storm of Swords - Arya XII
Arya is Braavos. She is the bastard child who ran away from home, whose people are the mongrel folk, the sons of slaves, whores and thieves. And it comes as no surprise that it was Moonsingers who guided people to Braavos and founded the city.
“The Moonsingers led us to this place of refuge, where the dragons of Valyria could not find us,” Denyo said.
A Feast for Crows - Arya I
[The Temple of the Moonsingers] was one of those that Arya had spied from the lagoon, a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk glass windows showed all the phases of the moon.
A Feast for Crows - Arya I
The door to the underworld Arya is entering has a carved face of the moon, watching her. It makes her feel almost at home, but it is no real moon, and it is no real home.
At the top she found a set of carved wooden doors twelve feet high. The left-hand door was made of weirwood pale as bone, the right of gleaming ebony. In their center was a carved moon face; ebony on the weirwood side, weirwood on the ebony. The look of it reminded her somehow of the heart tree in the godswood at Winterfell. The doors are watching me, she thought.
A Feast for Crows - Arya I
Just like at Harrenhal, the night allows her to be her true self: she practices her needlework even at the House of Black and White and her wolf dreams never stop.
Though her duties left her little time for needlework, she practiced when she could, dueling with her shadow by the light of a blue candle. One night the waif happened to be passing and saw Arya at her swordplay. The girl did not say a word, but the next day, the kindly man walked Arya back to her cell. “You need to rid yourself of all this,” he said of her treasures.
A Feast for Crows - Arya II
Standing there with the flagon in her hands, she dreamed she was a wolf, running free through a moonlit forest with a great pack howling at her heels.
A Feast for Crows - Arya II
The first time she’s allowed out of the House of Black and White, it is at night, and she is overjoyed to say the least. She even repeats Arya’s prayer, even though the kindly man had forbidden her to. Nighttime, once again, is when Arya belongs to herself.
That night she left the House of Black and White. A long iron knife rode on her right hip, hidden by her cloak, a patched and faded thing of the sort an orphan might wear. Her shoes pinched her toes and her tunic was so threadbare that the wind cut right through it. But Braavos lay before her. The night air smelled of smoke and salt and fish. The canals were crooked, the alleys crookeder. Men gave her curious looks as she went past, and beggar children called out words she could not understand. Before long she was completely lost.
“Ser Gregor,” she chanted, as she crossed a stone bridge supported by four arches. From the center of its span she could see the masts of ships in the Ragman's Harbor. “Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” Rain began to fall. Arya turned her face up to let the raindrops wash her cheeks, so happy she could dance. “Valar morghulis,” she said, “valar morghulis, valar morghulis.”
A Feast for Crows - Arya II
Cat of the Canals is the closest Arya has come to being Arya Underfoot again since Mycah’s death. Though she is still not Arya, this identity is deeply connected to her real self, from her name to her personality.
But when the moon is black, Arya must shed this self and become no one once more. Her identity being tied to the moon is more than symbolic now: whenever the moon is not up in the sky, she mustn’t exist.
“All men must serve.” And so she did, three days of every thirty. When the moon was black she was no one, a servant of the Many-Faced God in a robe of black and white. She walked beside the kindly man through the fragrant darkness, carrying her iron lantern. She washed the dead, went through their clothes, and counted out their coins. Some days she still helped Umma cook, chopping big white mushrooms and boning fish. But only when the moon was black. The rest of the time she was an orphan girl in a pair of battered boots too big for her feet and a brown cloak with a ragged hem, crying “Mussels and cockles and clams” as she wheeled her barrow through the Ragman's Harbor.
A Feast for Crows - Cat of the Canals
Just as Dany wakes from a dream of the house with the red door and Cersei from a dream of herself seated high on the Iron Throne, Jon’s dream at the start of his ruler arc signals where his story is heading.
In his wolf dream, the moon, sung to by Nymeria, tries to draw Ghost’s attention as he runs from her as fast as he can. Arya is woven throughout Jon’s plotline in ADWD, even when she shouldn’t be. Jon is not meant to focus on her while a horde of zombies is at his doorstep, yet he does, and ultimately he dies because of it. His subconscious, embodied in Ghost, recognises this and tries to flee, while the moon’s increasing insistence mirrors Arya’s growing influence over Jon: from a simple letter, to sending Mance Rayder to rescue her, to helping Alys Karstark, to a not-so-simple letter that ultimately pushes him to desert.
The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
“Snow,” the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.
A Dance with Dragons - Jon I
Further in ADWD, in this quiet, almost dreamlike scene, when Melisandre is trying to convince Jon to let her help his sister, Jon himself associates the moon with Arya.
“Every man who walks the earth casts a shadow on the world. Some are thin and weak, others long and dark. You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall.”
Jon glanced over his shoulder. The shadow was there, just as she had said, etched in moonlight against the Wall. A girl in grey on a dying horse, he thought. Coming here, to you. Arya.
A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI
After she murders Dareon, the Kindly Man gives her a poison that blinds her, forcing her to navigate the world in darkness. Once again, when she sleeps, the moon and her wolf pack are present, reinforcing her identity as Arya. She can only be her true self at night, something she has come to recognise herself, and because of this, she gives herself the moniker of “night wolf” as small reminder of who she really is.
Her nights were lit by distant stars and the shimmer of moonlight on snow, but every dawn she woke to darkness.
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
She was the night wolf. But only when she dreamed.
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
“For the night is dark and full of terrors,” they prayed.
Not for me. Her nights were bathed in moonlight and filled with the songs of her pack, with the taste of red meat torn off the bone, with the warm familiar smells of her grey cousins. Only during the days was she alone and blind.
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
Blind Beth is only allowed out of the House of Black and White at night. While it may seem that being Blind Beth and being no one makes little to no difference, the name Beth is connected to Arya’s identity. Just as Cat of the Canals could not exist without the moon because she reflected Arya’s true self, Blind Beth emerges only at night because she is tied to Arya’s childhood.
Beth did her begging at a different place every night.
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
The difference between Blind Beth and no one becomes even clearer with the cat that Beth skinchanges into. The cat come to her at night, helping her discover a third thing she did not know before going out and revealing that it was the kindly man who was beating her, ultimately prompting him to restore her sight.
Blind Beth was able to skinchange into a cat, tying her further to the actual Arya beyond her name, while no one could never.
“And who are you this morning?” she heard him ask, as he took his seat at the head of the table. Tap, tap, she heard, then a tiny crackling sound. Breaking his first egg.
“No one,” she replied.
“A lie. I know you. You are that blind beggar girl.”
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
Maybe on the morrow she would tell him about the cat that had followed her home last night from Pynto’s, the cat that was hiding in the rafters, looking down on them. Or maybe not. If he could have secrets, so could she.
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
Even in TWOW, the moon is as closely tied to her identity as her own brother.
There had been blood in [her dream], though, and a full moon overhead, and a tree that watched her as she ran.
The Winds of Winter - Mercy
Just as with Blind Beth, Mercy emerges only at night, sleeping through the day in her flat, lost in wolf dreams. And just as Cat of the Canals and Blind Beth were reflections of Arya’s true self, Mercy is the same: her name echoes a friend she made during her time as Cat of the Canals, while mercy itself is one of the most important aspect in Arya’s arc.
Her true name was Mercedene, but Mercy was all anyone ever called her . . .
The Winds of Winter - Mercy
Ask for Merry. Meralyn is her true name, but everyone calls her Merry, and she is.
A Feast for Crows - Cat of the Canals
“What hour?” Mercy called down to the man who stood by the snake's uplifted tail, pushing her onward with his pole.
The waterman gazed up, searching for the voice. “Four, by the Titan’s roar.” His words echoed hollowly off the swirling green waters and the walls of unseen buildings.
The Winds of Winter - Mercy
Braavos was a good city for cats, and they roamed everywhere, especially at night.
The Winds of Winter - Mercy
