“The most frequent representations of disability in works of fiction follow a set of assumptions that is probably shared by the majority of these fictions’ consumers. They indicate or assume that:
Disability is a state of lack/deprivation/want. The very term suggests that disability is not only a deviation from a norm but a diminishment of personal and social identity.
The disabled must conform to a certain set of narrative structures and psychological expectations outside of which she becomes illegible.
Disability is an unfortunate state of dependence upon others. The disabled are evaluated on how much they either a) triumph, to their limited abilities, over that condition or b) gratefully acknowledge the sacrifices of the more ‘autonomous.’
In order to keep the lines between the able and disabled body clear, disability is framed as relatively rare and exceptional (even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary).
[…]
A Game of Thrones, the first volume of George R. R. Martin’s enormous epic fantasy A Song of Ice and Fire, appeared in 1996. The sheer number of major characters that are or become disabled is unusual: Bran Stark is no sooner introduced than he is pushed out of a tower, a fall that shatters his spine and his dreams of becoming a knight. Hodor, his servant, is physically powerful but unable to say anything other than his name. Tyrion Lannister was born a dwarf and is additionally mutilated during an early battle, losing his nose. Varys, the eunuch, is the victim of a brutal castration. Jaime Lannister has his sword hand cut off as retribution. Arya Stark, during her apprenticeship at the temple of the Many-Faced God, faces a gamut of possible ‘disabilities’: as punishment/education for her taking it upon herself to deal out death she is deprived of her sight, and her training promises more to come:
We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.
With an epic of this scope and this many intermingled story lines, one that is still unfinished after five massive volumes, any argument about the role and purpose of a specific character is perilous. With that in mind, however, we can at least begin to discuss the effects of the number of disabled characters, followed by an analysis of two characters notable for their challenges to narratives of disability.
Martin is famous for shocking and horrifying his readers with swift and brutal reversals of fortune: Jaime Lannister’s attempted murder of Bran, Joffrey Lannister’s condemnation of Ned Stark, the notorious ‘Red Wedding’ massacre by the Freys. These events serve their pragmatic purpose in keeping the plot unpredictable; they also highlight the vulnerability of everybody in the refusal to spare characters usually protected from disabling violence in most fantasy series (romantic pairs, children, paragons of virtue). A brief comparison with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy should suffice: after a three-volume quest through battles, monster-filled mines, haunted marshes, caves of giant spiders, and Mordor itself, the body count for the Nine Walkers stands at one, a ludicrous number given the circumstances, and the only disabled character is Frodo, who loses a ring finger. Martin thus strips the buffer of fantasy by making his world just as arbitrary and dangerous as our own. Moreover, the variety of disabilities found in A Song of Ice and Fire forces the reader to confront the multifaceted nature of disability: disability as innate condition (such as Tyrion’s dwarfism or Hodor’s speech impediments), where the character is, from birth, subject to ableist discourse; or disability as sudden loss, as in the case of Bran or Jaime, where Martin at a swoop deprives them of the ability upon which their identity hinges: climbing in Bran’s case, and swordplay in Jaime’s. The reader is surrounded by the disabled as if by a ring of mirrors, in which she is forced to recognize herself as a potentially disabled being or lose the experience of textual immersion altogether. Once in this position, she is able to experience the ways these characters refuse to conform to the conventional tropes surrounding disability and launch an implicit challenge to ableist normative standards.”
Pascal J. Massie and Lauryn S. Mayer, “Bringing Elsewhere Home: A Song of Ice and Fire’s Ethics of Disability,” in Studies in Medievalism XXIII: Ethics and Medievalism (ed. Karl Fugelso)
