I think she’s more John Brown than Abraham Lincoln. But yeah, I like that she’s idealism rubbing up against practicality.
I think she’ll get it. She’s just a kid, really. And of the generation born during Robert’s Rebellion, she’s doing pretty well.
Moderator’s Note
For those who are curious at my absence at the start of the thread and my apparent unwillingness to act, I apologize. I was in Denmark on holiday over the weekend and didn’t check in because my phone provider’s data cap over there ran to $10 for 20Mb. I would have removed the post if I had been there in time. Now it’s a moot point.
My apologies.
- Gukumatz
In the real world special knives were carried specifically to give mercy to mortally wounded people.
From: Misericorde (weapon) - Wikipedia
If real world people on battlefields thought they were a good idea, I’m okay with deferring to them.
Then you should also be okay with deferring to Arya’s decision. She’s the one in that battlefield.
Also, your own cite doesn’t say this was a universal practice. ItAnd it also says that they were used offensively.
Certainly. But was it rotten enough to mercilessly let him lie and suffer as he begs to be killed?
Of course it wasn’t universal. But seriously think about it. You’ve been stabbed through the stomach with a slow bleeder. You’ll never get better, and you’ll die, in that field from sepsis, dehydration, or wild dogs. Maybe three our four days from now.
There are no ambulances. No one is going to drag you to their home, mop your brow and hold your hand. You’re going to lay, where you are, with burning pain until your body can’t fight to keep you alive any more.
Or, you can feel a pinch, some warmth and then lose consciousness in a few seconds, and die a couple minutes after that.
Being against a mercy killing in that situation is horribly cruel. Which, I think, is why Arya did it. That was her method of crossing him off her list.
Sounds like she has the right idea, if its indentured servitude. A virtual slave with a fixed duration. But is she merely postponing the idea of at will labor.
Declan
I still don’t think it was because he didn’t like them (though that might have made the decision easier). Letting them live could have been far more dangerous than killing them, considering who they work for.
That’s all from Clegane’s point of view. You can’t necessarily extrapolate Arya’s POV from that.
No matter how badly someone else wants to die, I don’t think I could use a knife to finish him off. Now that’s not exactly the perspective that Arya is working from, but there’s plenty of ground between those two positions.
Maybe it’s cruelty, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just. Maybe it has to do with emerge role if killing and death that is developing in Arya’s viewpoint. Who gets to be killed? When is killing justified?
It’s not obvious to me that she does what she does as a matter of being “cold.” I seed. If it’s as simple as saying that she wishes he suffer, then that’s the opposite of cold–that’s vengeful.
It’s worth noting that The Hound violated guest right. That farmer sheltered and fed him and in return The Hound assaulted and robbed him.
Mance Rayder also offered Jon food and shelter, and was skeptical that Jon would violate the custom for an assassination attempt.
Going back to The Hound, he also robbed and intended to murder that innocent pork merchant last season.
The Hound is a really tragic figure. He’s known nothing but violence his whole life, and he recognizes the hypocrisy and brutality of the world he lives in. As a result he’s a bitter, rage filled, unhappy man.
Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of the Hound. There’s a lot of parallelism in the show (Theon/Jaime, Jon Snow/Ramsay Snow etc), and that episode ended with the clegane brothers kept alive with no closure. Or maybe I just want to see the Hound fight the Mountain far too bad…
I agree. He had a glimmer of something honorable and noble in his soul - but only a glimmer, and it was never dominant. If he hadn’t grown up with a sadistic psychopath as a brother, or if he had grown up in a world were violence wasn’t the most effective means for a guy like him to get ahead in life, he may have turned out very different.
And in the end when Brienne asked “who’s going to protect her, you?” he said yes.
Would it have been okay for Tyrion to kill his father if he were a Half-Dragon Potato?
Um, what?
As I said very early in this thread, Arya may have killed the Hound out of mercy (or not. I’m not convinced she’s so cold that she could easily kill a person she’s grown close to for whatever reason) if he had not went on and on about what a huge dick he was. He thought he was making her angry enough to kill him but making someone angry at you is not the way to go about asking for mercy.
Only if the arrow could lift him across the room.
Are you new to these threads? I was being silly and referring to some off the wall previous discussions about half-dragons and potatoes. But I guess whether Tyrion was justified in killing his father or Arya was justified in not killing the Hound are not quite as crazy off the wall arguments as those previous ones but I still think they’ll be going on for several pages.
We better be careful not to fill this discussion thread with discussion about the show.
I don’t remember him actually saying “yes”(he probably did) but that was certainly a big moment. The Hound mentally was on a redemption arc. I think he saw in Arya someone to respect and love and who was worthy of his protection… she wasn’t a “cunt” like everyone else he’s dealt with.
Arya did not reciprocate. She would not forgive his sins.