Watching JustWrite's videos on 'What Kind of Hero is Batman' on Youtube got me questioning what kind of Hero is Sandor. He feels Romantic, maybe leaning Byronic in some sense but not un-idealistic. What do you think? How about predictions on his arc based on these terms?
I’m a subscriber to JustWrite. If you haven’t discovered it already, I would also recommend Lessons from the Screenplay for quality content along those same lines. Great question by the way. For everyone else, here is part 1 and part 2 of JustWrite’s Batman videos.
Sandor is definitely Romantic with strong Byronic leanings. Moody, introspective, impassioned, psychologically tormented, self-destructive, cynical, an outsider who is at war with society’s hypocrisy, etc. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” was said of Lord Byron. Sandor was written to give a similar impression: deeply troubled and abrasive, yet also sympathetic and philosophically challenging for Sansa. Not to mention, GRRM also understands the cool factor and sometimes sex appeal of that type of character in the literary tradition. Knighthood is Sansa’s gold standard for goodness and excellence, but Sandor hates and rebels against that institution for reasons Sansa can understand and sympathize with. Despite his worst traits, she also comes to view him as a protector, ally, and someone trustworthy to unload on. By understanding the inner workings of his complicated nature, she feels connected to him. The songs never made room for someone like him to exist, but the novelty of the unconventional non-Ser that frustrates and confounds her is, shall we say, highly interesting. He’s definitely kept her up at night thinking. The Byronic type just works well in a young girl’s coming-of-age story for her to meet and conquer a daunting and unpredictable masculine force of nature.
At his core, Sandor is a jaded idealist. This is the point where he and Sansa are in full agreement: that the ideals of knighthood, the vows, the powers granted to the title, the honor of service, should be taken seriously and should mean something in truth. Only one who was once a wholehearted believer in knighthood could have been so deeply wounded by it failing him. He carries that same unflagging contempt for it well into his adulthood. Where Sansa and Sandor differ is how one should live their life in response to a flawed, uncaring, and unjust world. Sandor sees violence and becoming hard-hearted as the only way to protect oneself and survive. While I think GRRM does enjoy employing the Byronic hero in some ways, he’s also showing us it’s kind of wretched and immature way to be. For all his blustering as if he possessed some great philosophical insight, what Sandor does most of the time is stand on the sidelines and deride everything he thinks is lame like an insufferably pessimistic, teenage know-it-all. Sandor characterization abounds in empty threats and macho posturing. I mean, his espoused irrefutable “truth” is capably dismantled by a twelve-year-old demonstrating that the ideals of knighthood still matter when one chooses to live by them. GRRM is not cynical.
As for predictions for Sandor’s arc based on these terms, the Romantic/Byronic hero theme is a major underpinning of my Winds prediction essay on Shadrich, Morgarth, and Byron. Part V gets into the specifics of Sandor’s connection to Lord Byron and his Byronic traits.
I also present the case that his story also contains elements of the folk hero as also mentioned in part II of the video essay. In ASOIAF, GRRM has created in-universe folk hero figures (both real and fictional) like Pate the Pig Boy, Wenda the White Fawn, and the Kingswood Brotherhood. These are heroes that appeal to the smallfolk and merchant classes, unlike the chivalric heroes for the nobility. They either lampoon the powerful and privileged classes or tear them down from their ivory towers. It’s the satisfaction of schadenfreude, and we readers have been waiting for Littlefinger to get his comeuppance, right? IMO, another (better) trickster character is the most well-matched adversary for Littlefinger, there to steal his prized possession from under his nose -- as an unconventional ally to Sansa, not an enemy. I’m pretty much 100% certain that “fox-faced” Ser Shadrich is based on the real-world medieval trickster character, Reynard the Fox, which I explain in the essay. GRRM has sprinkled in enough references to Reynard and other characters/elements from his beast epics for it to be mere coincidence. There’s a purpose to it. The gravedigger persona seems to bear a little resemblance to the character Isengrim, who is a wolf in monk’s robes that isn’t really pious at all. Not that any reference should be taken as an exact one-to-one equivalency, but GRRM does cherry-pick things from other sources that he likes and reworks them for his own story. It’s familiar enough that we should get the basic idea behind it, but we should always be keeping our eye on the story he’s telling first and foremost.
If I can just get around to actually writing it, I have a good deal of notes already made for a companion essay on Sandor’s other in-universe folk hero comparisons. Without going too far down a rabbit hole, let me just highlight one of my main points. Sandor becomes Spotted Pate the Pig Boy when he impersonates an ignorant “poxy peasant” hauling a cart of salt pork to fool a knight that actually knew him so he can smuggle Arya into the Twins. Pate the Pig Boy stories always end well for the hero:
Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of a thousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout who always managed to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, and pompous septons who beset him. Somehow his stupidity would turn out to have been a sort of uncouth cunning; the tales always ended with Spotted Pate sitting on a lord's high seat or bedding some knight's daughter. -- Prologue, AFFC.
Pate’s adversaries are exactly the kind of people a Byronic Sandor rails against: “the High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like bladders with their honors.” What makes Pate’s victories so sweet and satisfying is that he achieved them without the benefit of lofty education, wealth, social status, beauty, or martial skill. He is simply so underestimated that -- plot twist -- his “stupidity” is actually a cover for his cunning. No matter if tricksters aren’t exactly above-board in their methods, Pate’s a good guy, and he’s upending a system that would keep people like him down. The outbreak of fighting at the RW prevented Sandor from successfully delivering Arya, but then again, his motives at the time weren’t exactly unselfish or “good-hearted.” This is where his redemption arc comes in and how I think all these themes weave together for his re-entry into the story.
What I think GRRM is trying to do is shift Sandor away from the darker aspects of the Byronic/Romantic hero and his adolescent coping mechanisms through his redemption arc. It stands to reason after his humbling and therapeutic stint on the Quiet Isle, he will be reborn as more of a traditional hero, finding value in those knightly ideals again and aspiring to live by them. It’s a choice, one that he need not be anointed to make. Brienne exemplifies that. Nor does he have to adopt a completely different personality. He can still be intense, brooding, and highly critical of an unjust system. It’s just a matter of abandoning the cynicism and replacing it with empathy. He can turn his bite on those who truly deserve it and protect the weak.
There is a lot of other evidence (just look through my Sandor Clegane meta tag) of where his trajectory is most likely headed that meshes well with the hero types and tropes. It’s important to me not just to speculate from a single point, but how everything fits into the big picture, how it serves his character and the POV’s. That’s one of my major pet peeves with a lot of predictions and theories. Even if they aren’t factually off the rails, they tend to have a total disregard for established themes and plot. I know some folks think I’m kinda out there, but I do try to make sure everything I say is in agreement with what we already know, citing textual evidence on all my points. I hope my answer satisfied.
