Rolling Stone Interview with Martin. Spoiler Alert

[svalbard]

Not too sure if this has being posted already. I thought this was a pretty good interview and gives a nice insight into Martin's thoughts on writing fantasy.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140423

http:// http://m.rollingstone.com/movies/news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140423

 

[Boaz]

SPOILER ALERT for AGOT, ACOK, ASOS, AFFC, and ADWD.

From the fourth page of the interview...

There are some people who read and want to believe in a world where the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and at the end they live happily ever after. That's not the kind of fiction that I write. Tolkien was not that. The scouring of the Shire proved that. Frodo's sadness – that was a bittersweet ending, which to my mind was far more powerful than the ending of Star Wars, where all the happy Ewoks are jumping around, and the ghosts of all the dead people appear, waving happily [laughs]. But I understand where the other people are coming from. There are a lot of books out there. Let everyone find the kind of book that speaks to them, and speaks to what they need emotionally.

By the end of the journey, the characters (protagonists and antagonists both) should probably not be the same as when the story began. GRRM discussed Jaime and the possibility of redemption earlier in the interview. Jaime's changed, but so have Tyrion, Sansa, Arya, Jon, Dany, Sam, Theon, Brienne, Jorah, Cersei, Barristan, Bran, Victarion, Asha, and Pod. The ones who haven't changed are either already dead (Drogo, Eddard, Robert, Lysa, Tywin) or who are the most capable and committed players (Varys, Balish, Illyrio, Euron, Melisandre, Doran).

And did GRRM just give us the bittersweet ending? Frodo saved the Shire... in fact, he saved all of Arda. But he was so injured in the process that he lived in miserable pain, both physically and psychologically. And since he was not the obvious captain of the Scouring, he was ignored and forgotten by the Hobbits. He saved the Shire, but he was not to enjoy it.

Tyrion's chain and his command of the defense of King's Landing against Stannis easily compares to Frodo's experience. Tyrion was immediately forgotten by the people. In fact, like Frodo, he was little more than tolerated by most people in the first place. His missing nose and horrible facial scar are constant reminders of what it cost him to protect his people. But this is not the end of the story... the battle happened in the second of seven books.

And then we learned in the third book that Jaime already did the same thing!... but has been slandered and hated for it ever since. Aerys was a monster... by all accounts. Even Barristan admits that Aerys was insane at the end. Actually, he called it a "taint."

On page three of the interview... The interviewer's remarks are in bold.

I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what's the answer then? [Martin pauses for a moment.] You've read the books?

Yes.
Who kills Joffrey?

That killing happens early in this fourth season. The books, of course, are well past the poisoning of King Joffrey.
In the books – and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal – the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa's hairnet, so that if anyone did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because that's an interesting question of redemption. That's more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don't know. That's what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate.

Aerys II is called the Mad King. He arrested Eddard's father and older brother. He executed them in a sham trial. He then called for Eddard's head as well. Presumably, Aerys also turned a blind eye when his son kidnapped and raped Eddard's sister. But what was Eddard's reaction when he learned that Jaime had killed Aerys? Did he say, "Gosh, thanks!" or "I've wanted him dead for a long time." or "You've stolen my vengeance." No, Eddard despised Jaime for breaking his vow. Tell me, if one of Hitler's guards had shot Hitler in February or March of 1945, instead of letting Hitler rule until committing suicide on April 30), and said to Generals Zhukov or Eisenhower, "It's done."... would either of them have despised him for breaking his vow? I imagine they'd have said, "It's about time one of you came to your senses." They might have given him a medal.

So why didn't someone slap Barristan for not stopping Aerys? Why didn't someone blame him for not forcing Aerys to abdicate? I don't want to live in Littlefinger's world of political expediency, but I don't want to be locked into protecting tyrants like Barristan and Eddard did because of their honor.

Jaime stopped Hitler, uh... I mean Aerys from dropping the big one on his own capital. Jaime saved tens of thousands of lives. And has lived with nothing but derision and scorn from lesser men for the rest of his life. Now, Jaime has done shameful things and committed great sins repeatedly, but the kingslaying was not one of them. I await the development of his story with great anticipation.

Anyway... back to the bittersweet ending...

Jon has been stabbed... multiple times. Dany wants to reign on the Iron Throne, but is barren. Will one or both of them save the Throne, save Westeros, save the World only to be dismissed and forgotten... too broken and too misshapen to live in the new world? This already seems what has happened to Bran.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I loved this interview - the questions, and the way GRRM answered them.

Especially the ones on moral relativity:

Ned Stark beheads the Night Watchman, and later, when Ned's son Robb beheads another man, those killings take a toll on the two Starks. It's not easy for them to do it. It weighs on them.
As it should, I think. Taking human life should always be a very serious thing. There's something very close up about the Middle Ages. You're taking a sharp piece of steel and hacking at someone's head, and you're getting spattered with his blood, and you're hearing his screams. In some ways maybe it's more brutal that we've insulated ourselves from that. We're setting up mechanisms where we can kill human beings with drones and missiles where you're sitting at a console and pressing the button. We never have to hear their whimpering, or hear them begging for their mother, or dying in horrible realities around us. I don't know if that's necessarily such a good thing. You see this same moral struggle all through history. It's always the question, when you're at war, do you do whatever it takes to win, or do you actually maintain your own moral standard and ideals? Should we be waterboarding people? What if we get valuable information that saves our lives? Well, even so, aren't we compromising ourselves? But if it prevents another 9/11, is torture worth it? I don't know, but it's a question worth asking. Do you commit horrible crimes to stay alive so your side should win? A major concern in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones is power. Almost everybody – except maybe Daenerys, across the waters with her dragons – wields power badly.
Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I've tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.

and

You're a congenial man, yet these books are incredibly violent. Does that ever feel at odds with these views about power and war?
The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that's become the template. I'm not sure that it's a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that. World War I is much more typical of the wars of history than World War II – the kind of war you look back afterward and say, "What the hell were we fighting for? Why did all these millions of people have to die? Was it really worth it to get rid of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that we wiped out an entire generation, and tore up half the continent? Was the War of 1812 worth fighting? The Spanish-American War? What the hell were these people fighting for?"
There's only a few wars that are really worth what they cost. I was born three years after the end of World War II. You want to be the hero. You want to stand up, whether you're Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin, or the American saving the world from the Nazis. It's sad to say, but I do think there are things worth fighting for. Men are still capable of great heroism. But I don't necessarily think there are heroes. That's something that's very much in my books: I believe in great characters. We're all capable of doing great things, and of doing bad things. We have the angels and the demons inside of us, and our lives are a succession of choices. Look at a figure like Woodrow Wilson, one of the most fascinating presidents in American history. He was despicable on racial issues. He was a Southern segregationist of the worst stripe, praising D.W. Griffith and The Birth of a Nation. He effectively was a Ku Klux Klan supporter. But in terms of foreign affairs, and the League of Nations, he had one of the great dreams of our time. The war to end all wars – we make fun of it now, but God, it was an idealistic dream. If he'd been able to achieve it, we'd be building statues of him a hundred feet high, and saying, "This was the greatest man in human history: This was the man who ended war." He was a racist who tried to end war. Now, does one cancel out the other? Well, they don't cancel out the other. You can't make him a hero or a villain. He was both. And we're all both.

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