Mikey Mike

Eric Lee Johnson

Cat Nap (Cat sleeping on porch), 1950s

this passage from jon xiii, adwd is one of the most crucial and carefully constructed passages necessary for understanding jon’s character. his themes, values, motivations, and the people who have cemented themselves in his worldview all come to a head in this moment.

for context, jon has just received ramsay bolton’s letter informing him that his plans to steal “arya stark” had failed. mance and the spearwives have been captured, stannis is supposedly dead, and, most dammingly, “arya stark” has escaped her marriage. ramsay threatens jon and the night’s watch, promising to cut out jon’s heart if he does not return “arya” along with several other people. remember that jon had already associated arya with his heart when melisandre first proposed rescuing her, because this is a connection that informs how he will proceed.

tormund asks jon what he means to do. jon flexes his sword hand and george runs him through the major formative phrases and relationships in his arc before the breaking point. the passage follows a deliberate pattern: an important phrase, warning, lesson is followed by the memory that embodies or challenges it.

the night’s watch takes no part.

words that belong not to him, but the watch’s doctrine, jeor mormont’s warnings, and the institutional framework jon has been trying to operate in and uphold. here he can’t summon l his own resistance; instead it’s the dogma of the institution he recites, attempting to suppress the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him. george marks his first line of defense against collapse with borrowed language, suggesting that his resistance doesn’t rest in a conviction he can fully claim as his own.

the ensuing action is jon opening and closing his fist, the burned hand that acts as an unforgettable reminder of the true battle and struggle he has learned to be paramount. it recalls the wight attack, the ever looming presence of the others, the coming eternal winter. the realm will not care about one little girl when the threat of humanity is at its doorstep, and the watch is desperately unprepared to handle it. yet this reminder does not sway jon. his heart still prevails.

what you propose is nothing less than treason.

this warning echos jon’s first desertion attempt in AGOT, when he sought to join robb’s war against the lannisters and avenge ned. it is immediately followed by jon thinking of robb with snowflakes melting in his hair. the last trace of innocence that belonged to them both.

now there is treason against the watch. treason against his vows, responsibility, and the identity jon has spent months crafting as lord commander. the last time jon felt this pull of family over duty, he stopped himself, chose the watch, and robb died anyway. what then, has that loyalty accomplished? it’s not lost on the reader that robb’s own death came through betrayal. both robb and jon struggle as leaders isolated by responsibility, surrounded by followers who they miscommunicated with, and decrescent loyalties that eventually fracture. here, george reminds us of the real consequences of the choice that jon is about to make. but the heart is all that matters.

kill the boy and let the man be born.

abandon childish attachments. your only family is the watch now. become the man who can face winter.

but what follows is memories of bran and rickon and sansa in moments of domesticity. memories of spring that will never come by again. bran climbing before the fall, rickon’s laughter and joy before family is ripped away from him, sansa with lady before lady’s murder. jon remembers them as they were when they were most fully themselves, lives suspended in a past sacrificed to duty.

maester aemon’s advice was meant to make this burden bearable, to give jon the strength to do what duty demands. but it could not spare him from the grief of losing the family he had already renounced. jon returns to these words as he makes his greatest decisions, trying to let go and grow into the lord commander the realm requires. he cannot help them, he has a new purpose now.

yet the boy never fully dies. the memories remain, still exacting their price. they wounded him, but they didn’t break him because he had already done the work of resolving to be the man his duty demanded. and still, the heart shines through. he cannot let go. but can the man find the courage to forswear what he had committed?

you know nothing jon snow.

ygritte’s words function differently from what came before. they’re not an institutional creed, or accumulated family memory, but as the voice of someone who loved him and died. they challenge his certainty rather than his duty.

and then there’s arya, her hair tangled as a bird’s nest.

ygritte’s words arrive attached to arya’s image in reason. arya, who jon saw so much of in ygritte. the memory of jon’s lost love is linked to the memory of the sister whose imagined suffering immediately overwhelms every principal that has restrained him. he knows nothing about where this feeling is taking him. he knew nothing when he loved ygritte. he knew nothing when he chose duty over her. he knew nothing when she died in his arms.

now he imagines a similar cold fate awaiting arya if he does not act. the responsibility he feels for both of their tragedies intersects with the guilt, fear, and love to collapse into one single image: ramsay bolton, who makes cloaks of the skins of women. ramsay bolton who wants his bride.

at this, jon can no longer hold the line.

the arguments for obligation, the grief of loss and resignation to duty, buckle at the thought of his beloved sister in the clutches of a man who brutalizes women for sport. ramsay’s words, “i want my bride back” hammer through every defense jon has built in his arc.

the night’s watch takes no part. what you propose is nothing less than treason > i want my bride back.

kill the boy and let the man be born > i want my bride back.

you know nothing jon snow > i want my bride back.

arya is the final image in the sequence, the heart that ramsay has swore to cut out, and thus, jon makes his decision, the only decision he believes he could make, and love as the death of his duty to the watch. the heart is all that matters.

in the passage, we explore one of jon’s defining internal conflicts: love versus duty, and the price he is willing to pay when he abandons one for the other. more importantly, we learn of the price jon is not willing to pay.

george guides the reader through the core lessons that have shaped jon snow. the life of loyalty he surrendered to the night’s watch in order to guard the realm. the impending threat of the others and the mythical long night. the need to grow up and make impossible, and even morally dubious choices for the better of the realm and the watch. the life lived beyond the wall and westeros’ political web, confronted with the lived experiences of those once believed to be enemies, a life unconfined by vows and borders.

we see the many voices that taught jon how to bear that burden, and what can exist outside it. he recalls the memories of home and the past that tether him to his humanity, his lost family, his lost love, and the relationships that continue to define him.