Overall, Id say show Arya hews pretty close to Book Arya's course. Perhaps more so than almost any major character.
But there are some differences.
The first issue is age. Book Arya is nine at the beginning of the series and not-quite-twelve at the end of book five.
Show Arya starts off as eleven(I believe) and, though the show has a far hazier timeline, characters talk about 'years' having passed.
As a result she looks perfect in season one: by season five she's looking a bit too adult and, er, busty.
Overall both characters get to the same place mentally but book Arya goes through much much more trauma to get there.
And she has more agency from the get-go.(The show really has a problem with female agency, unless it's won with brute strength a la Brienne or illustrates their rather dumb'power is power' theme.)
Book Arya is far more traumatized than the show Arya
She sees much worse at 10 years old than the 12? 13? 14?year old show Arya does.
She just goes through much worse to get to the point where becoming a Faceless Man assassin feels like her most viable option.
- ON her nightmare journey north to Winterfell, she sees evidence of atrocities, aftermath of atrocities, she witnesses atrocities. Not in the show.
- She sees dead bodies, whole villages slaughtered. She sees dismembered mothers dying. Not in the show.
- During the attack which leaves Yoren and most of the recruits senselessly slain, she actually fights and kills or injures several of the attackers. Not in the show.
- She's forced to subsist on insects and worms while she struggles to take charge(with Gendry) of a group of children who wounded(Lommy), stupid(Hot Pie) or too young (Weasel)to really do anything. (not in the show)
- After being captures she sees Lommy Greenhands getting killed and witnesses several days worth of senseless torture and murder. (this happens in the show.)
- The two year old Weasel is lost in the forest. (doesn't exist in the show.)
- She witnesses horrible torture(unspecified and thus more horrific in the books.) This happens in the show.
- On the march north she witnesses atrocities: nightly rapes, horrific brutality,, the casual murder of a three year old boy and his mother, the bisection of a woman who's been repeatedly gang-raped. (this doesn't happen in the show.)
AT this point becomes a sheep. The spunky, feisty Arya? Subsumed by fear. Spunky feisty show Arya never really goes away.
- At Harrenhal, in the show, she gets a pretty cushy job as Lord Tywin's cupbearer. She banters with him and considers murdering him. Not in the books.
- In the books, she's forced to scrub stairs and is regularly beaten.
She becomes a mouse. Inobtrusive, invisible. And she hates it.
- In the show, she uses her last deathwish from Jaqen H'ghar to gain her escape.This is a marked departure from the book, where she uses her last wish to free some northern prisoners, and then later finds out, in a bitter twist of irony, that they were to be freed all along.
Thus, GRRM's genie-with-three-wishes fairy tale is completely changed.
- In the books she manages her own escape, cutting the throat of a man to do it and swiping three horses for her herself, Gendry and Hot Pie. She doesn't need a man to help her escape in the books. This is a pretty big departure.
So at this point, she has witnessed far more horrors at the end of book two, and killed more people than she has at the end of season 2.
Her season 3 and four arc largely follows the same path as the book.
- Only she's part of the Brothers without Banners for far, far longer than in the show; and she sees a number of horrible things due to the war that she misses in the show; including battles, people with eyes gouged out and ''manhoods" cut off languishing in tiny bird cages; she sees battles and hangings.
- The Red Wedding is really the main traumatic event that pushes her over the edge in the show; in the books, it's just the latest and most crushing event in a long, long, long line of traumatic events.
- She kills a Frey soldier after the Red Wedding in the show. Doesn't happen in the book--she's already killed a lot more in the show.
Overall, the end result is basically the same: the only thing is, I feel that Arya in the book has experienced much much more horror and trauma, more psychological twisting as her personality is constantly submerged and damaged; and she has more agency of her own in the books and needs less protection from men.
- And she's a warg in the books. She enters her stray direwolf several times in the books, when sleeping. In one notable scene she even, in wolf-form, kills the men hunting her after her escape from Harrenhal.This is a connection she has with her past, her true self, with Arya Stark, thus explaining the fact that doesn't submit wholly to the brainwashing techniques used by the Faceless Men. Thus far in the show we've seen no sign of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment