Wight animated by fire

Discussion of the first 5 books in George RR Martin's ASOIAF series
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Chilli
Posts: 100
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:40 pm

Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:44 am

Quote from interview Time with GRRM http://time.com/4791258/game-of-thrones ... interview/ :
"And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing."

I didn't realise Beric was a wight. I thought he was still alive minus some physical problems. Does that mean Jon is also a wight by fire? In the show I think he certainly is alive.

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Flayed Potatoes
Posts: 207
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:31 pm

Thu Jul 13, 2017 4:28 pm

Chilli wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:44 am
Quote from interview Time with GRRM http://time.com/4791258/game-of-thrones ... interview/ :
"And poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing."

I didn't realise Beric was a wight. I thought he was still alive minus some physical problems. Does that mean Jon is also a wight by fire? In the show I think he certainly is alive.
He's definitely functioning well in the show. The main difference between book Jon and book Beric is that Jon is a warg. So warging in Ghost might actually preserve him.

Everyone is freaking out over this quote on reddit. I don't know what to say.

What are all your thoughts?

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Wimsey
Posts: 80
Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:11 pm

Sat Jul 29, 2017 9:33 am

Chilli wrote:
Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:44 am
I didn't realise Beric was a wight. I thought he was still alive minus some physical problems. Does that mean Jon is also a wight by fire? In the show I think he certainly is alive.
No. Beric is like this because of how many times he's been killed and revived. In Beric's own words, he has noticed that there is a little less of him each time. It might also be important that Beric suffered some truly traumatic deaths, such as a spear through the head.

Jon probably would become like Beric if Jon is killed and revived several more times. However, I doubt that this is going to happen for one simple reason: parallelism. Jon is one of the two most important protagonists in the story. Stories are created by how protagonists evolve. Jon's death and rebirth are basically a parallel between what happens to Daenerys (assassination attempt to Dothraki purgatory to Queen in the East), Tyrion (death sentence to drunken desolation & enslavement to Hand of the Queen), Bran (letting the Night King destroy the Weirhub to lost escapee to Three Eyed Raven) and Arya (punishment and blinded beggar to hunted to Faceless Woman). There is something of a Phoenix Motif here: from the figurative ashes of their former selves, something harder and more determined is emerging. Basically, the boy or girl is killed and the man or woman is born.

Jon's revival is going to be like this in the books, too. He will lose something: his naive belief that heroic actions will lead to acceptance, that old passions can give way to reasoned argument, and that noble words mean the same thing to everybody. He will also learn the cruel lesson that there is nothing after life: and that is going to further harden him. (This is perhaps the #1 flaw in the "his mind will hang out in Ghost," even exceeding the fact that the books provide no proper set up for it!) Jon will not magically metamorphose into something, either: the story needs the bastard boy trying to prove that he can be just as good as everyone else to continue being the story.
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there."
A. P. Chehkov

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