A Feast for Crows

At first glance Arya’s murder of Dareon appears under-motivated. It is true that he deserted the Night’s Watch, abandoning Arya’s half-brother Jon. Yet this hardly seems to warrant his death. This is especially true since life on the Wall consists of “hard beds, salt cod, and endless watches” (580), combined with chastity and constant cold. However, there may be a deeper reason. Arya may be frustrated that Dareon, in deserting, would not be able to take Arya to the Wall as she had hoped. More fundamentally, the murder may be rooted in jealousy over the fact that Dareon can say, “I am done with darkness” (580) and escape a dreary past toward a colorful future as a singer.

In contrast, Arya remains trapped. Despite moving to a new city, changing her persona, and repeatedly claiming “I am no one” (583), memories of her past seem to make a genuinely fresh start impossible. This is shown most clearly in her recurring dreams. The first of these is a positive dream that she is a wolf and part of a pack. The second is a more disturbing one where, looking for her mother, “she could hear her mother screaming, but a monster with a dog’s head would not let her go save her” (570). Clearly these dreams allude first to her being part of the Stark family, and second to the death and murder of her mother. Much as she tries to change her identity and suppress awareness of this trauma, it irrevocably colors her present. Her murder of Dareon can be understood as another desperate attempt to erase her connection to this event. But in doing so and being driven by revenge, she simply reaffirms its power over her. This is something the priest in the House of Black and White realizes when, after the murder, he says “our friend Arya […] has returned to us so unexpectedly” (585). Arya’s subsequent blindness can be seen as a metaphor for an inability to understand the nature of this cycle or to come to terms with the truth.

Cersei in also caught in a toxic cycle rooted in trauma. As a child she received a prophecy that she would be replaced as queen by someone “younger and more beautiful” (610), and that “the valongar shall wrap his hands around your pale white throat and choke the life from you” (611). This event and its portents haunt her adult life. It is the subject of a recurring dream and the root of her anxiety about Margaery and brother Tyrion. Like Arya, Cersei attempts to deal with this angst through violence. Rather than confronting its deeper meaning—that crowns and beauty are transitory and death is inevitable, even for the powerful—she tries to forestall a more literal interpretation of the prophecy. First, she devises ways to have Margaery destroyed. Second, she offers money for the head of any dwarf resembling Tyrion, whom Cersei interprets to be the “valongar” or monster in the dream.

This latter policy results in the grotesque spectacle of men bringing various dwarf’s heads to her, none of which is Tyrion’s. Yet like with Arya, these actions merely confirm her thralldom to the past and the prophecy. She invests this prediction with life by trying to prevent it and, ironically, in her destructive obsession creates the very monster she tried to destroy. Ultimately, she requests a medicine “that will not let me dream” (612). Her anxiety over the past is so grave that she attempts simply to kill and anaesthetize awareness of it. The efforts to kill Tyrion and Margaery, rather than seek reconciliation with them, is an expression of this psychologically regressive process.

Not all the characters in A Feast for Crows remain trapped by their pasts. In some instances, it is possible for individuals to come to terms with and move beyond restrictive or oppressive personal histories. One example of this is Sam. By taking the boat to Old Town to train as a maester, he defies his father who forbid him to take up such an “unmanly” role. He also sleeps with Gilly on the ship on the way there. Although Sam is initially wracked by guilt for breaking the vows of chastity he made for the Night’s Watch, a conversation with another Summer Islander woman on the ship changes this. She explains the Summer Islands’ less repressive attitude toward sex compared to Westeros, adding that vows of chastity are irrational and unhealthy. Sam is able to envisage a new future with Gilly in Old Town while still acknowledging past commitments.