#pointy end

“He has Lightbringer. He talks of heads upon the walls of Winterfell. He knows about the spearwives and their number.” He knows about Mance Rayder. “No. There is truth in there.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong. What do you mean to do, crow?” Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … “I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said.

The quotes following Arya are the only ones that are taken from the letter, tying his line of thought back to the present. The fact that Ramsay knows about Mance's identity and the secret rescue plan is highly significant to Jon because it seems to prove the veracity of his claims, at least in part. And what Ramsay claims to have done is to lock up Mance in a cage and skinned and beheaded the six spear wives. He repeats twice that he wants his bride back, before making a list of all his other desired captives and threatening to eat Jon's heart.

Arya is - as far as Jon knows at this point - his only surviving sibling, his little baby sister, and his rescue plan failed and but she is reportedly on the run.

The sequence of "I skinned these women - and I really really really want my bride back" is ratcheting up the threat level, the repetition is giving the impression that it's ringing in Jon's ears while he comes to the decision he was battling in the beginning of that paragraph: whether to openly - treasonously - break the neutrality of the Watch or not.

And not surprisingly, Jon does the most Stark thing possible: try to rescue his little sister, the Watch, the wildlings and the North - by destroying Ramsay.

At the end of the chapter, the Watch bites back. And we get the personalized, grieving, Arya-related quote we didn't get in his memory slide show earlier.

“Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

The pointy end quote shows up three times: when he learns of Arya's impending wedding before he chooses to try and save her. It shows up again while he is anxiously waiting for news from Mance.

And it shows up here.