Game of Thrones: Is Jon Snow depressed?

Who wouldn’t have Posttraumatic stress disorder in his position? You don’t just get stabbed in the heart by the boy you took under your wing; stabbed in various internal organs, lungs punctured, arteries severed, to the point where you can only attempt to gasp your last dying gasp and come out of that whistling Dixie.

Those wounds would kill anybody. So most people who went through that would not deal with the emotional trauma it causes. Because they’d be dead.

Jon Snow got the best of both worlds: he got killed. He died. And then he came back and dealt with the trauma. He hasn’t been the same since.

Everybody looks at Jon like some hero, but what happened when he found his five year old brother—ok, more like 14, but still—Rickon was being held captive by a psychopath who enjoys flaying people and feeding them to dogs? What was his first response?
Was it: WE must rise up and rid the North, our ancestral home of the scum that is Ramsay Bolton!!!

No.

Was it: This cannot be borne!!!

No.

It was How can we even be sure it’s Rickon? His first instinct was to avoid doing what needs to be done.

Yes, Jon’s depressed. He’s horrified by death. He’s horrified by life. He’s horrified of killing. He’s horrified of being killed. He’s horrified of his loved ones being killed. He’s horrified of having to do something about it. He just wants to go far, far away. He wants to go to the Summer Islands and spend his days drinking coconut water and having orgies. He’s only doing anything at all because Sansa guilted him into it.

He killed four men, including a boy. He’s not a murderer. Normal human beings get depressed when they do this kind of thing a lot.

Jon Snow needs THERAPY. Big time.

He definitely doesn’t want to die. But if he does die, what is even worse than death is dealing with the trauma of whatever caused it.

I find his newfound caution most realistic thing about the whole resurrection, actually.

Written June 13

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