By: Lewis Slawsky
There are many reasons that G.R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, has been such a tremendous popular and critical success. Here is just one reason, but a major one – A Song of Ice and Fire is an eminently political piece of literature.
Discussion is Coming!
Over the next few months, we are going to examine the political insights of A Song of Ice and Fire through a series of character studies. Join us!
The beating heart of the story is the seemingly endless number of political moves made by various parties as they seek power. This is the action that gives its name to the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones.
Now, A Song of Ice and Fire is not political in the sense of partisanship or ideology, although these things can indeed be found among the panoply of groups and individuals within the context of the books. This fact alone makes it a valuable work of literature, in these days of big party politics and entrenched partisan commitments. But A Song of Ice and Fire is political in the broader sense of politics – the series is concerned with how human beings choose to live together or how they are compelled to do so. It is concerned with questions of power: who rules, in what manner, on what basis, and what the effects of power are on both the rulers and the ruled.
A Question of First Importance
There is a point in the first book of Plato’s Republic, when Socrates has been speaking to Thrasymachus about justice and its relation to who rules, at which Socrates remarks that the question is one of the first importance, for, “it is not just any question, but about the way one should live” (Republic, Book I, 352d). Something similar could be said (with all due modesty) about Martin’s epic tale. Despite the fact that it is a work of fantasy, which takes place in a world of the author’s invention and in which there are active magical forces and strange creatures the likes of which do not inhabit our own world, the politics of it all are very human, and the politics are central to both the thought and the action.
The comparison with Plato is worthwhile for another reason. G.R.R. Martin is much concerned with power, and he does frequently seem like a hard-headed realist, a curiosity in the world of fantasy literature. When things like honor and justice arise in Martin’s books, it is often to frustrate our attachments to them. Honorable men meet bad ends in A Song of Ice and Fire, and justice is fleeting, if it is possible at all.
This might suggest that Martin is indeed a realist, to be distinguished from a so-called idealist like Plato, who speaks of honor and justice continually. But things are not so simple in either case. It should almost go without saying that justice is problematic for Plato, who spends an entire great dialogue, the Republic, discussing the subject without ever arriving at a final definition for it. And although G.R.R. Martin is interested in power, he seldom uses that language in his books. The characters in A Song of Ice and Fire pursue particular manifestations of power, not power itself. The inhabitants of Westeros and the lands beyond it want things like honor and justice, as they want husbands, wives, food, peace, safety, prosperity, and glory in battle. These and other things are what drive them, rather than some abstract force.
In this last regard, Martin, if he is a realist, does come to light as a student of Machiavelli, who despite being the originator of what we now call “power politics”, was also careful, in books like The Prince, not to replace the appearances, the things that human beings actually understand themselves to desire and pursue, with a broad category like “power”. The difference between Plato and Machiavelli lies not so much in one being more or less realistic, and the other being more or less idealistic, for both philosophers present human action as driven by particular aims and ends, and both problematize the nature of those ends and indicate that they are extremely difficult to attain. The real difference between them is to be found in what they regard as the highest goals to which mankind (or particular individuals) might aspire. For Machiavelli, it may be that there is nothing higher for human beings to achieve than a kind of political mastery, whereas for Plato, philosophy exceeds the bounds of the merely political. To which camp G.R.R. Martin belongs then is an open question, and to some extent must remain so until his epic tale reaches its conclusion. But important insights into the matter can nonetheless be achieved in the meantime, by paying close attention to the story that he tells and the characters that dwell within it.
The nature of G.R.R. Martin’s work thus invites us to learn something from it about political things, or at least to try. G.R.R. Martin himself might not be seeking to lead the reader to a comprehensive understanding of politics in particular and man in general, as Plato appears to have done with his dialogues or Machiavelli with his treatises. But Martin still has plenty to teach. What can the author of A Song of Ice and Fire tell us about ourselves? What insights can he furnish us with regarding our own nature, political animals that we are?
A Series of Character Studies
Our inquiry into the political theory of G.R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire will be divided into a series of discussions, each one focusing on a single character. We think this method fits the spirit of the books, and will help focus discussion. Read more about this.
First Up: Varys
The first character in our series is Lord Varys, The Spider and Master of Whisperers. A man of tremendous political wisdom, he has some of the most explicit insights into politics in the series.
Varys – A MACHIAVELLIAN BEAST
Varys – A Eunuch
Varys – HIS RIDDLE
Varys – Defender of the Realm
Other Articles in the Series
Discussion is Coming!
The main hub for the series. All articles in the series will be indexed here.
The Argument and the Action
Why we think a character by character approach is appropriate. Read here.
(Image: Symbols of the Seven Noble Houses by twipzdeeauxilia, distributed under a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence. Via Flickr.)
confusing that you refer to ‘power’, as an abstract force but consider ‘honor’ and ‘justice’ as concrete motivations. seems like you are reifying certain concepts and making a point that to do so with others is incorrect.
An interesting point.
But the distinction made, I think, was between things that people (and the characters in the books) actually long for, or desire, on the one hand, and categories that purport to reduce all of these things to one underlying force, on the other.
Honor and justice describe a distinctive aspect of things that people actually want, in a wide variety of cases. Power usually refers to some behind-the-scenes force which ignores or abstracts from the distinctive aspects of various desires.
Surely, honor and justice are not “concrete” in the sense of some mutton and a flagon of blackberry wine. But they are nonetheless objects of desire.
One could say that “justice” and “honor” generalize amongst various particular such objects. And that is fair enough. When one man is wrongly accused of a crime, for instance, he wants justice in a form different than, say, someone who wants to help the underprivileged. But this is true of any generalization – when a man wants an apple from his fridge, he wants a particular apple, more so than apples as such.
We can still speak of wanting apples, or wanting honor. We can probably still speak of wanting power too. But expressing all or most human political longing in terms of longing for power tends to distort the character of the actual longings, be they tangible, like food, or intangible, like honor.
One of the things GRRMartin has stated is he wants to display humans endeavors in relation to an unfeeling uncaring NATURE represented by the Others & Winter Arriving in which ALL semantics of political philosophical debate mean nothing if not used to combat or come to terms with it in harmony or victory. Our dealing with Climate Change danger to our survival due to our very behavior and actions on the planet that are POLITICAL and based on philosophies/beliefs that ignore our detrimental behaviors.
Thanks for the comment, Megan.
I agree that Man vs. Nature is one of the underlying themes of the series. I’d also like to see further articles or comments fleshing the matter out here at Political Animal.
That said, I’d make a couple observations:
1) It is not clear to me that the Others fall into the category of “unfeeling uncaring nature” so much as into the category of contemptuous and murderous super-nature. The Others do seem to care, at least for destroying human life. They have intent. And while one might say that in GRRM’s world they are part of nature, this would have the consequence that nature there cannot be understood as simply uncaring and unfeeling. If they are to be understood as supernatural, on the other hand, then we’ll have different problems, which I’ll touch upon in the next point.
2) The gods of GRRM’s world in ASOIAF seem to me very much active and concerned to some degree with the affairs of humanity. Perhaps nature there is still indifferent to humanity (particularly in the example you mention of the impending long winter), but this then points us to the following question: is nature more powerful than the gods, or are the gods more powerful than nature? If we answer positively to the first part of the question (and we might), then the issue ultimately has very little to do with human action or cooperation, for nature will always overwhelm those things, as it will overwhelm even the gods. If we answer positively to the second part of the question, however, then the meaningful response to threats posed by opposing nature still seems unlikely to consist in human action or cooperation – it would more likely consist in pious living and appeals to the gods.
Isn’t this largely true of our own world? The view that the dangers posed to us by nature can be overcome by human action and cooperation generally amounts to a conquest of nature, even though nature is always bigger than us. I don’t mean to say, of course, that there aren’t more and less responsible ways to live in regard to nature, but one does have to keep these things in perspective. And we also have to make decisions about the power of gods, or the absence thereof.
One further note – I’m not sure that the prospect of overwhelming nature renders all human “philosophies/beliefs” and “semantics of political philosophical debate” futile. After all, nature threatens to obliterate other animal life as surely as it threatens to do so to humanity. Should all the foxes then just lie down in the forest and wait to die, as opposed to continuing to do the things that foxes do to fulfill themselves as foxes, despite the fact that these activities will never consist in a mastery of nature?
If human beings are political (and/or somehow philosophic) by nature, then perhaps the best thing we can do is continue our political and philosophical activities in the time that we’ve got. GRRM seems, in my opinion, to regard human beings as highly political, and although he presents forces beyond them that threaten them with harm and destruction, I’m less certain that he means to say that their natural activities thereby “mean nothing”. He spends an awful lot of ink and energy describing those activities for such to be the case.
Thanks again for your post, and I hope to read more on the subject.
That s not to limit such an ancient pantheon, of course. But it does seem as though the ancient cultures of the First Men shared a similar or same set of gods, long before the children imposed their own.