ive been thinking about this a bit and i feel like i have some very different feelings towards certain things and strongly disagree with the implications present in the ways i see them discussed. i do not like to simplify these themes to âvengeance/punishment bad wahhâ, because it does not at all feel complete enough to convey my true feelings, or the themes of the text itself for that matter imo, but like⌠ofc i personally cant read things like cerseiâs walk of shame, where she is punished, humiliated, and dehumanized through the one thing she was unfairly condemned for her entire lifeâ jaimeâs brutal maiming and torture where he is humiliated, fed things like horse piss which he forces down because he is so thirsty before vomiting it back up, gets repeatedly beaten unconscious, and is nearly driven to passive suicideâ theonâs excessive physical and mental torment that would take too long to list that breaks him entirelyâ and even a man as deeply evil as vargo hoat (who is not at all three dimensional) having his hands and feet and arms and legs cut off, be cannibalized, and even be forced to eat parts of himself, causing the pov character that swore to enact brutal vengeance on him to feel ill and repulsed once he finds outâ and experience much, if any, catharsis, personal feelings about these characters aside. asoiaf is a series where the author pretty often deliberately places us inside the heads of bad people that have done terrible things, who some readers may feel a certain hatred for, as they are put through torment. not to make the reader feel good and satisfied about it, but to present it as something that should not really be a thing that we revel in, and encourage us to be critical about what is even gained through what they are going through. even a morally dark antagonist without a pov like joffrey and his death was meant to have elements of tragedy. during, tyrion notes that he is a young boy with fear in his eyes that he had never seen in the eyes of his father. whether you feel a certain way about it (and i am not arguing that you are morally flawed for not sympathizing with a fictional character, this isnât real life, i am just discussing themes that i am identifying), the goal was not really to provide us with a feel-good âjustice at last!â emotion through the brutally violent death of a 13 year old boy. it makes me genuinely wonder how some ppl come away with the idea that this series is intended to be a celebration and glorification of punitive justice. i am not saying justice in general is not a huge theme, and some catharsis, especially for victims, over the death/defeat of their abusers & tormenters is present in the text as well, understandably so, because it can mean safety. take pia smiling through broken teeth when jaime has her rapist executed and presents his head to her while setting a precedent with gregorâs men. some people need to die, and deserve it, but what does that look like? who decides it? why? by contrast, the instance of jaime actually feeling good when he hangs a bunch of random outlaws reads as something more tied to his current relationship to the self and certain selfish desires at this point in his story than real justice, and it is further elaborated upon and taken apart in the book. anyway, all these questions are present and the answers are not near as simple as i often see them made out to be.
it doesnât feel like to me that most things that can be interpreted as enactments of punitive justice or moments of karma are these epic events that should just make the reader blindly cheer and applaud, or even feel good about. there is a reason that some things go awry (like with oberyn), and it isnât cynicism. there is nuance, and not in a way where victims are condemned for fighting back, or a pacifist ideology is idealized. there just really isnât a glorification of brutal punishment, âeye for an eyeâ vengeance, and the needless causing of suffering. same with a blind upholding of duty and law based around flawed feudalistic constructs. and all these things should not even be conflated. not to mention that punitive justice exists also in a way where it is connected to institutions. take the faith and organized religion for example. the whole process is interrogated: what is sin? what sins are being punished? how? why? and what are the actual effects? be it jaimeâs and brienneâs conversations/interactions with a bunch of different tertiary characters in affc, or cerseiâs punishment in adwd. at the end of the day, she is punished for her body, for being a woman. she does not suffer âconsequencesâ for her actual wrongs and the suffering she causes. she doesnât really learn anything, and it will all just make her spiral more. the whole concept of punitive justice gets focused on especially with theonâs entire identity being withered away through torture. he experiences so much torment that there comes a point where he is robbed of his mind and agency. what does the âcriminalâ learn? how can a person change in these circumstances? what is the point, and why should we feel good about this? he is not even really âpunishedâ for his crimes, and certainly not by people with any moral high ground over him, he is just being brutalized. same is the case with jaime in asos: it is a bad person being brutalized by men even more vile than he is, and they are not doing it because they want to deliver any justice to his victims. also, though the maiming does kickstart crisis with him specifically, it is not the determining factor when it comes to his reformation. this story is not actually saying that people can be, and should be, tortured into becoming better people, and if they canât the solution is to just axe them. there is nuance, sure, mercy is not something everyone is entitled to in all circumstances. sometimes âmercyâ towards certain evil people will lead to the enablement of the suffering of others, even entire populations. there are certainly circumstances where compromise isnât an option. but, again, i dont think george is ever holding back on actually interrogating the moral quandaries when it comes to identifying cycles and ending them, and he is for sure not treating every single aspect of these conflicts as black and white. even tyrion murdering his father, who purposefully does have a very ironic and humiliating death scene, which is important thematically, doesnât end in easy and feel-good catharsis, especially for tyrion, which doesnât equal âoh, tywin should be forgiven and sparedâ.
all of this is also why i do not really see how events like the fall of house lannister (first of all, we know it is gonna include the likely very brutal deaths of two innocent small children), red wedding 2.0, valonqar etc would be these grand and glorious moments of justice and pay-off, treated as just the good guys finally getting an epic W. they will very likely be filled with tragedy, so i am genuinely curious about where these expectations for this kind of catharsis come from
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