divorce enthusiast

DAERON II THE GOOD

"In the time of King Daeron, a man need not be afraid to speak his mind..."

© Kyle Koth about Daeron II

This essay was written as a response to tagged commentary on my post about Bran that said:

“because warging into Hodor is so unethical and it freaks me out”

Before I start, I want to make it clear I’m not writing this response from a place of anger. Nor do I think that the commentator believes that Bran is a bad person.

This is just a springboard for a conversation that I’ve wanted to have for a while now, and this seems like a good prompt to start it. So let’s have that conversation.

It’s good that skinchanging Hodor freaks you out. That is the author’s intention.

The point that I’m going to reach before this essay is over that if you weren’t freaked out a lot sooner, you should have been. We all as readers should have been. Specifically, freaked out by the way Bran is guided on his journey by forces who are implacable and show a remarkable lack of concern about the suffering that it inflicts on him and his friends, and the fact that the reader expects to vicariously live out wish-fulfillment through that journey. The fundamental critique that GRRM has written is not of Bran’s morality but the reader’s; and in particular the type of reader that has reacted to each step in Bran’s magical growth with “wow cool! This warging stuff is awesome”, and then whoops, got the reality check in ADWD that when you break a child’s body and will and then give him inconceivable magical power as a consolation prize, he will be totally out his depth. The inevitable result is that the child does things with that power that we as adults find horrifying, and rightly so.  The primary moral failing here is the hypocrisy of the reader’s expectations about Bran’s “destiny” and the very structure of the Hero’s Journey.

“No one must ever know.”

Bran knows that what he is doing is wrong. Where this conversation often stumbles and starts to go into pointless (and pedantic) circles, is that those criticizing Bran do not really stop to question the kind of “wrong” at hand, and the difference between what we as adults mean by “wrong” and what Bran, as a 10 year-old child, understands that word to be. It is as stated in the narrative, an “abomination”: a violation of human rights and bodily autonomy, a concept enshrined in our cultures and education. Moral reasoning of this kind, called postconventional by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, comes about in late adolescence, the last of a series of stages of cognitive and emotional development:

He proposed a sequence of six stages, depicting a progression of judgments. Stages 1 and 2, grouped into a “pre- conventional” level, were primarily based on obedience, punishment avoidance, and in- strumental need and exchange. Stages 3 and 4, grouped into a “conventional” level, were based on role obligations, stereotypical conceptions of good persons, and respect for the rules and authority legitimated in the social system. Stages 5 and 6, grouped into a “post-conventional” level, were based on contractual agreements, established procedural arrangements for adjudicating conflicts, mutual respect, and differentiated concepts of justice and rights. Kohlberg proposed that mutual respect and concepts of justice and rights as part of an autonomous system of thought do not come about until, at the earliest, late adolescence and usually not until adulthood. (Child and Adolescent Development: An Advanced Course; 2008)

Kohlberg’s ideas are not without dispute of course in terms of the exact ages as to which these levels exist and how they develop in a child, but no child psychologist would ever propose that a 10 year-old could ever be able to think at the post-conventional level.

Bran is developmentally, biologically incapable of understanding the concepts of human rights and autonomy without the guidance of a caring adult who would also compel him to stop by force of authority, let alone coming up with these moral concepts on his own. This is reflected in the way that he talks about skinchanging Hodor:

“No one wants to hurt you, Hodor, he said silently, to the child-man whose flesh he’d taken. I just want to be strong again for a while. I’ll give it back, the way I always do.”-Bran, ADWD

Other times, when he was tired of being a wolf, Bran slipped into Hodor’s skin instead. The gentle giant would whimper when he felt him, and thrash his shaggy head from side to side, but not as violently as he had the first time, back at Queenscrown. He knows it’s me, the boy liked to tell himself. He’s used to me by now. Even so, he never felt comfortable inside Hodor’s skin. The big stableboy never understood what was happening, and Bran could taste the fear at the back of his mouth.-Bran, ADWD

Bran thinks that he is simply taking something that does not belong to him and hurting another person in the process, i.e. that he is being selfish, because that is the limit of what his mind can conceive of, and naturally for a child at this age he justifies the ends with the means. His friend should “share” his body and strength because he needs it, and believes that “giving it back”, as though it were like any material object, somehow makes amends. Bran is not a morally grey character as a result because he, as a 10 year-old child, is not capable of making the same morally grey choice that an adult can. He is only being egocentric in the way that almost all children at that age are, and it is partly from that egocentricity that he makes the decision to skinchange Hodor.

“Fly or Die“

The decision to skinchange Hodor was slowly built up in the narrative. Bran does not come into the power to take another living creature’s bodily autonomy by accident, or even willingly. Rather it the consequence of the very process that we, the reader, with all our experience with heroic stories of the magic king are trained to cheer on. The process by which a child is trained and forced to take on a dangerous level of power is ultimately the cause, and it is this narrative form that GRRM deconstructs. Bran skinchanges Hodor because that is the conclusion a child would draw from the lesson that those around him have drilled into him: power will heal him, so “fly or die.”

Bran is dragged, kicking and hollering, into the destiny that the Old Gods have chosen for him, and every step of the journey, beginning with his fall from the tower, is basically a bait-and-switch. Bran is promised, or is allowed to believe for a time, that the next step will make him “strong” and give him his pride back, only to discover that he has learn more.

The reader is trained, however, to cheer this on based on prior experience with hero stories. The tension between the hero’s “refusal of the call” on the one hand, and the necessity of learning these abilities, and the unavoidable eventuality of his “destiny” on the other is the conflict of the narrative that we entirely expect. Because of this, we dismiss the fears of the likes of Maester Luwin, who says that the “wolflings have grown into dangerous beasts,” and has them locked into the godswood. As Bran feels increasingly depressed and powerless because of his paralysis and separation from his family, we come to sympathize with his fantasies and hope for their eventual reality:

“If I was a wolf, I could find Arya and Sansa. I’d smell where they were and go save them, and when Robb went to battle I’d fight beside him like Grey Wind. I’d tear out the Kingslayer’s throat with my teeth, rip, and then the war would be over and everyone would come back to Winterfell.”-Bran, ACOK.

Magical power is made more alluring to Bran with the same methods as it is made alluring to us, building on prior expectation. In Bran’s case, it is the songs and stories of knights such as Symeon Star-Eyes and the mystical Children of the Forest:

So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights.

Maester Luwin and his skepticism is part of the “stone chain” that Jojen saw in his greendream that was holding Bran back from “flying.”

From his first bonding to Summer, Bran was being handed a dangerous amount of power for anyone to possess, let along a 7 year-old boy. Varamyr Sixskins, while also a child, used his warging to murder his own brother, and then later to deny his mentor Haggon his second life. Comparing Bran’s development as a skinchanger to Varamyr makes clear the difference between them in regard to how they generally treat their fellow human beings, and the kind of person Bran will likely be as an adult.

After Varamyr is to taken to Haggon, the elder man teaches him with gruffness but not without kindness how to survive in the forest and takes care of the boy. Haggon does this for no other reason than for the sake of sharing his knowledge and passing it onto the next generation:

Haggon taught me much and more. He taught me how to hunt and fish, how to butcher a carcass and bone a fish, how to find my way through the woods. And he taught me the way of the warg and the secrets of the skinchanger, though my gift was stronger than his own.

Haggon also teaches Varamyr a set of clear moral laws that are sacrosanct:

Abomination. That had always been Haggon’s favorite word. Abomination, abomination, abomination. To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all. Haggon was weak, afraid of his own power. He died weeping and alone when I ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his heart himself. He taught me much and more, and the last thing I learned from him was the taste of human flesh.

And Varamyr ignores every single one, and even betrays his mentor by denying him his second life. From the beginning, Varamyr seeks out power where Bran has it forced upon him by circumstances:

When I am grown I will be the King-Beyond-the-Wall, Lump had promised himself.

He uses his power to force villages pay tribute, raping women and killing the brothers that come to avenge them.

He also justifies his actions with a level moral reasoning that is quite beyond anything Bran could as a 10 year-old boy, when he even shows remorse at all, which Varamyr never does in the case of his brother’s murder:

That was as a wolf, though. He had never eaten the meat of men with human teeth. He would not grudge his pack their feast, however. The wolves were as famished as he was, gaunt and cold and hungry, and the prey … two men and a woman, a babe in arms, fleeing from defeat to death. They would have perished soon in any case, from exposure or starvation. This way was better, quicker. A mercy.

In his final moments, he faces the moral judgement of the Old Gods, and tries to blame them for what he has done, when it was by his own will that he came to be as powerful in adulthood as he ultimately was:

Varamyr could see the weirwood’s red eyes staring down at him from the white trunk. The gods are weighing me. A shiver went through him. He had done bad things, terrible things. “That was the beast, not me,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “That was the gift you gave me.”

Varamyr has every way of knowing that the things he had done and were doing were wrong, and in that way had everything that Bran lacks from the time of his departure from Winterfell. Bloodraven teaches him none of the sacred laws that Haggon espoused or even mentions that eating the flesh of man while in an animal’s skin is wrong, and neither Jojen or Meera seem to be aware of them or mention them (and are barely into any kind of adulthood themselves). Quite the opposite, everyone around him encourages to explore his magical gifts as much as possible and says nothing of limits. There is even the possibility that the Singers know he is skinchanging Hodor, and have decided to just allow it to happen. While inside Summer’s skin, Bran senses that a warg is within One Eye when he fights him. Wouldn’t the greenseers and Bloodraven also sense that Bran while he is in Hodor’s body? He passes by greenseers as while skinchanging Hodor:

One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak.

Was the Singer trying to speak to him? And to say what? Morever, couldn’t the Singer simply tell Bloodraven what Bran was doing? This brings up some disturbing possibilities, one of which is that both Bloodraven and the Singers know what Bran is doing, and have decided to let him do it. For what purpose exactly, I can barely fathom. It might be this is simply another way for them to have Bran stretch the limits of his magical abilities, which they themselves don’t yet fully understand. Perhaps they intend to eventually tell Bran to stop after they feel it’s gone far enough. If that means that Bran will live his adult life in guilt over what he has done to his friend and servant, then so be it.

Whatever the case, Bran is not just a boy acting in a context where there is no moral limit over what he should use his magic for; there’s not even the suggestion that there are limits at all. His essentially kind and thoughtful nature, in addition to his youth, makes him the perfect instrument for the design that the Old Gods and his ancestor, Brandon the Builder, have made him the centerpiece of. His young mind cannot conceive of moral limits on its own, and unlike someone like Varamyr, who developed grand personal ambitions and was willing to commit atrocity to fulfill them, Bran only every uses the powers handed to him, whether by a mentor or by circumstance. Just as important as his natural giftedness is that Bran is malleable and fairly easy to control. He will continue on his path more or less until something or someone compels him to stop, and they need only to say the word to make him do so. Bran has always obeyed his teachers, snark or bitterness aside. Even as of ADWD, Bran can be compelled to do exactly what he said he would never do because of his natural gentleness:

Bran wept like a little girl when the bright blood came rushing out. He had never felt more like a cripple than he did then, watching helplessly as Meera Reed and Coldhands butchered the brave beast who had carried them so far. He told himself he would not eat, that it was better to go hungry than to feast upon a friend, but in the end he’d eaten twice, once in his own skin and once in Summer’s.- Bran, ADWD

Summer is the first living creature whose body he is taught that he can and should take at will for his own purposes. Jojen teaches him to have mastery of his warging ability, and to consciously direct what he does while inside Summer’s skin, telling him, “When you join, it is not enough to run and hunt and howl in Summer’s skin.” Bran thinks bitterly about this, saying, “At Winterfell he wanted me to dream my wolf dreams, and now that I know how he’s always calling me back.” To have the strong body of a wolf is not enough; he must have the power of the warg, and Jojen promises that more wonders are possible if he goes to the Three-Eyed Crow: “You could be more than me, Bran. You are the winged wolf, and there is no saying how far and high you might fly… if you had someone to teach you.” Bran’s ultimate decision to go search for the Three-Eyed Crow is driven by a search to have pride and meaning in is life, and power, first lordly and now magical as well, is what is offered:

If they stayed here, hidden down beneath Tumbledown Tower, no one would find them. He would stay alive. And crippled.

Bran realized he was crying. Stupid baby, he thought at himself. No matter where he went, to Karhold or White Harbor or Greywater Watch, he’d be a cripple when he got there. He balled his hands into fists. “I want to fly,” he told them. “Please. Take me to the crow.”- Bran, ASOS

And realistically, staying in Tumbledown Tower is not an option either, given the coming invasion; the Three-Eyed Crow certainly would have something to say about it. Even in the Cave, he dreams of what he has tried to use his powers to do since the beginning: reunite with his family,

He wished Robb were with them now. I’d tell him I could fly, but he wouldn’t believe, so I’d have to show him. I bet that he could learn to fly too, him and Arya and Sansa, even baby Rickon and Jon Snow. We could all be ravens and live in Maester Luwin’s rookery. That was just another silly dream, though.-Bran, ADWD

That he skinchanges Hodor is not a departure from this structure, where power is promised as a solace in a bait-and-switch manner, but the conclusion that most children in this situation would make, and especially one who is so young that they are developmentally incapable of understanding the concept of individual rights and bodily autonomy. And it begins from instances of necessity, first where Bran uses it stop Hodor from drawing the attention of the wildlings while in the Broken Tower, and then to fight the wrights. Then it evolves to using Hodor’s body to explore the caves or when he is “tired of being a wolf” (note that the novelty of the magic has to some extent worn off. He finds it progressively less fulfilling for its own sake). Bran is not any less of a good person, or any more morally compromised than he was in ACOK/ASOS. He is missing what every child would need but what he lacks in the situation in the Cave: a loving adult to guide him. Maester Luwin had to remind Bran that the Walders were not his to send away and that it would be wrong to do so, and to teach him the courtesies and acts of charity a lord needs to make. Bloodraven is a wise teacher, but he does not appear to deeply care about Bran or his friends beyond that they fulfill their roles. Notice his lack of comment about Jojen’s decline and seemingly looming death. Bloodraven was always a man who justified the means with the ends, first as Hand and now as mentor. Jojen’s, Meera’s, and Hodor’s lives have always been expendable if that’s what it takes for Bran to become the Rebuilder.

Bran’s narrative deconstructs all our positive notions about “destiny” as it exists in heroic myth by showing the cruelty that is inherit in forcing a young person, and a young child at that, to take on powers and roles that they do not want for the sake conflict and narrative. To do so is to put them in a position to make choices that they cannot appreciate the full consequences of.

Conclusion

Bran’s actions in ADWD act more as a subversion of the outcome the reader had been anticipating rather than an indictment of his moral judgment, in much the same way that the Purple Wedding was not meant to be an occasion to celebrate Joffrey’s death. When Bran asks the Three-Eyed Crow if his powers can “fix” his legs, this is directly parallel to the reader’s expectation that magical abilities will somehow serve as a consolation prize for suffering, being separated from his family and his disability, and the chapters that follow shatter those illusions, whether by direct answer or by ghastly demonstration of seeing that illusion pushed to its greatest extent. Only reunion with his family will ever give him any degree of happiness. Magic is the means, not the end to that ultimate goal, just as wolfish strength and cunning is to Arya or playing “the game” is to Sansa. And whereas Bran is young boy incapable of understanding the full meaning of what he is doing, the reader is an adult with every reason to see that structure of the hero’s myth is an inherently cruel one. Bran has violated Hodor’s human rights, but that it is not the equivalent, or even upon the same moral spectrum, as the crimes against humanity we see adults make in ASOIAF: Tywin’s atrocities in the Riverlands, Cersei sending victims to Qyburn’s experiments, Robert Baratheon physically and sexually abusing his wife; Jaime attempting to murder a child to protect a relationship that he knew was dangerous from the beginning. Bran stumbles from the pedestal of the “sweet boy…easy to love”, not in spite of what we love about his story or its promised wish fulfillment, but because of it.