by James Lowder
MYKE COLE
ART IMITATES WAR
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in A Song of Ice and Fire
IT’S HARD TO ZERO in on what makes A Song of Ice and Fire so incredibly compelling. It’s one of the most celebrated and famous works in modern fantasy, on par with Tolkien, Jordan, or Sanderson. If there’s one specific area I like to hone in on, it’s Martin’s facility with character. Martin routinely steps into the mindsets of a wide range of characters who are nothing like him. We see through the eyes of Cersei, a haughty woman; Tyrion, a crippled dwarf; Bran, a broken little boy; Petyr Baelish, a politically connected schemer. The list goes on: eunuchs, mothers, blacksmiths, bastards, even animals and monsters. Each one fully realized. Each one authentic.
And each one suffering from intense trauma. Martin’s not very nice to his characters. Westeros is a rough place to grow up. Every single major character in the saga is horribly traumatized at some point, and that trauma is exacerbated as their stories evolve. It’s in that trauma, and how his characters react to it, that I see Martin at his best.
I’ve been to war three times and responded to two major domestic disasters. I’ve seen what serious mental and emotional trauma does to people firsthand. I never expected that experience to apply to a work of fantasy. But by the time I finished A Dance with Dragons, I realized with a start that Martin had captured the range of reactions associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). More surprising, Martin was portraying PTSD accurately, as it really happens, rather than the common misconceptions of the condition. Martin’s realization of traumatized characters dazzled me with its authenticity. He got an essential and often missed aspect of PTSD exactly right: sometimes traumatic experiences profoundly damage a character, but sometimes they enfranchise and strengthen the sufferer. These polar opposite, yet fully authentic PTSD reactions, are exhibited in A Song of Ice and Fire through two major characters: Arya Stark, enfranchised as a result of trauma, and Theon Greyjoy, destroyed by it.
Now, I should add a caveat here. I’m not a trained mental health professional. I’m a guy with some experiences as to how PTSD manifests. Experts might bridle at my interpretations, but the study and definition of PTSD is a new frontier in mental health. The phenomenon changes as the nature of battle and the warrior-lifestyle changes, and the speed of that change is faster than ever before. As of just a couple of months ago, military suicide rates were at an all-time high in the United States. In moving to help those who suffer from PTSD, we are building the plane as it flies.
To understand how this discussion applies to the characters, one has to understand what PTSD is and how it functions. It’s currently dealt with as an almost physical pathology. You’re examined, you’re diagnosed, you’re prescribed a course of treatment. You take home leave or bed rest. You respond to your meds or your course of therapy, and you go back to work, right as rain, as if you’d gotten over a patch of strep throat. Though a hat is tipped to the chronic nature of the condition, the emphasis remains on it as pathology.
PTSD and the Cooper Color System
But PTSD is far more insidious and enduring. To understand how it impacts victims, we are best guided by the color code created by Jeff Cooper, a US Marine and firearms instructor. His color system, originally intended to develop a “combat mindset” that would enable people to survive sudden, lethal confrontation, was first laid out in his book Principles of Personal Defense (1989) and later adapted in the seminal work by Ed Lovette and Dave Spaulding, Defensive Living (2000), which I, like many folks bound for Iraq and Afghanistan, read as part of my pre-deployment training.
The Cooper Color Code posits that most individuals, at least in relatively safe, peaceful societies as in the US and Europe, live in “Condition White.” They are blissfully unaware of danger. When a sudden exposure to trauma occurs, most people in Condition White will shift immediately into “Condition Black,” a defenseless posture of frozen panic or denial. People in Condition Black will often behave in self-destructive fashion, surrendering to attackers who clearly have no intention to take prisoners, retreating into disbelief (“this can’t be happening to me”), or simply going catatonic.
Cooper argued that Condition Black could best be avoided by training those in combat situations to live always in “Condition Yellow,” a relaxed but vigilant state where an individual maintains constant situational awareness. In Iraq, we called it “having your head on a swivel.” An individual in Condition Yellow is constantly thinking, I may have to fight at any moment, and is prepared to do so.
Here’s where PTSD is particularly nasty. It isn’t really a “disorder” as modern medical experts understand it. It’s a shift in perspective. Being forced into Condition Black and being trained to live in Condition Yellow are both highly traumatizing. Both shift your worldview, often permanently. Both become hard-coded into personality, changing the individual in ways they never expected. Sometimes, amazingly enough, for the better.
But still, traumatizing. It’s easy for people to understand the Condition Black shift—an individual forever frightened of the world, seeing the veil ripped away and the horror of mortality revealed in all its stark reality. Such individuals manifest aspects of Condition Black throughout their peacetime lives. They are frozen, frightened, numb. They can be catatonic, either naturally or through the anesthetizing use of drugs and alcohol. The self-destructive behaviors of Condition Black can also manifest in coping mechanisms after the trauma has passed. Sufferers may lash out at friends and family, engage in addictive behavior, sink in a mire of self-pity. Cooper discusses Condition Black in terms of its immediate impact in a combat situation, but it has enduring effects as a part of PTSD and how those who have experienced trauma deal with the aftermath throughout their lives.
The same is true for those living in Condition Yellow. It, too, is a coping mechanism that endures long past the initial trauma. I cannot walk down a street without wondering who is behind me, who is around each corner I pass. I can’t sit comfortably in a restaurant or café unless I am facing the entrance, my back to a wall. My hands automatically fly to my “workspace”—in front of my face where I can see my pistol slide to work the action—whenever I hear a car backfire. I check locks and alarms obsessively. A homeless man grasped my elbow from behind once to get my attention. I almost flattened him. Some would say these effects are minor. I assure you they’re not. Constant heightened vigilance is absolutely exhausting, physically and mentally. Over the years, it digs grooves in you.
With such a shift in perspective, a personal holocaust usually ensues, as the PTSD sufferer’s pre-trauma worldview is revealed to be false. Illusions of security, which often form the bedrock of people’s daily lives, are ripped away. Most of us are able to work and play without thinking about what threats loom all around us, about how quickly and cheaply our lives can be snuffed out. With the realization of the immediacy of threats, the basis on which we construct our lives is razed.
And what is razed must be reassembled.
Here is where PTSD can enfranchise as well as cripple. A host of factors play into how the PTSD sufferer constructs a new life. Many permanently shift into Condition Black, rebuilding on a foundation of horror and withering fear. Others, and I’d argue fewer, move into Condition Yellow, scarred, but equipped to face future traumatic events. PTSD sufferers often slide on a scale between the two extremes of Conditions Yellow and Black, sometimes oscillating between them day by day. But for the purposes of illustrating their manifestation in Martin’s epic, extremes are helpful.
Arya Stark and Condition Yellow
“Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people.”
—A FEAST FOR CROWS
While Condition Yellow is still a traumatized state, it is an enfranchised one. Those who react to trauma by moving into Condition Yellow engage what some would consider positive coping mechanisms, such as hypervigilance, coldhearted decision-making, rapid reactions to dangerous situations, extra at
tention to personal safety, commitment to training and lifestyle decisions that ensure readiness for future traumatic events.
I don’t want to understate that these are coping mechanisms. A person in permanent Condition Yellow is traumatized and suffering from PTSD. It’s not usually a happy place to be, but in terms of external perception, it is one that is more likely to ensure the “success” of the sufferer in terms of their long-term survival.
Arya Stark, like so many in war, is yanked from relative security while still a child. Raised as the scion of a noble house, one of the most privileged positions a person can enjoy in the brutal world of Westeros, she witnesses her first horrible murder at the tender age of nine. It is the slaughter of the peasant boy Mycah, whom she defended against Prince Joffrey’s torments. The death goes hand in hand with the loss of one of the family’s precious direwolves and Arya’s separation from her own wolf, Nymeria. Perhaps most significantly, it is casual, unjust violence perpetrated by an enemy with power but little conscience. Mycah and Lady are killed almost as an afterthought, with nearly no effort being made to do what is just in the presence of the overwhelming power of the Iron Throne.
That is precisely the sort of veil-rending experience that can bring about the shift in worldview so common in those who suffer from PTSD. A little girl, raised with illusions of justice and safety, must suddenly confront the reality of her world. Those in power, often with a thoughtless flick of the wrist, can destroy those things we hold most dear. It isn’t long before trauma builds on trauma, as Arya witnesses the destruction of her family and the brutal execution of her father. Yoren may cover her eyes, but she knows what is happening.
But Arya is the daughter of Ned Stark, raised by men-of-war who have been in Condition Yellow since the Battle of the Trident and almost certainly much earlier. When Arya resists the role of court lady that her sister Sansa so readily accepts, the men of her family respond with surprising adaptability. They bring her, reluctantly and as gently as they can, into their warrior world.
The gifting of Needle and her training by the Braavosi fencer Syrio Forel are perhaps the most symbolic of Arya’s entry into Condition Yellow. While the wages of war are not yet fully upon her, she is being slowly hardened to a dangerous world. The physical instruments of combat are real, tangible coping devices. Arya will later come to rely on her internal strength, but initially, the sword and the training to use it represent the budding seeds of her new outlook on life. Arya best displays her commitment to Condition Yellow and her departure from the traditional female role in her world in the scene where Jon Snow reminds her that the best swords all have names. “Sansa can keep her sewing needles,” Arya replies, in her television incarnation. “I have a Needle of my own” (“The Kingsroad”).
The razing of worldview and reconstruction of perspective happen quite literally for Arya. She reacts to her trauma by abandoning her identity and reinventing herself from the roots up no less than ten times, assuming identities ranging from her wolf Nymeria, into whose skin she can slip, to Arry, an orphan boy and street urchin, to Beth, the blind beggar who ultimately carries out her first assassination for the Faceless Men. In this case, the measure is also practical, as she is the heir of a noble house, easily recognized and relentlessly hunted.
Arya’s trauma rips her world away. Cast out on the streets of Flea Bottom, she recreates herself as capable, warlike, alert. Surrounded by death, she dedicates herself to its study; murdering, impulsively at first with the King’s Landing stable boy, then deliberately and with decreasing difficulty, first through Jaqen H’ghar, and later by her own hands and Nymeria’s teeth. Her raison d’etre, which had once been balancing her adventurous ways with the traditions of her home and family, is replaced by her chanted prayer: the list of names of the victims she swears to avenge herself upon: “‘Ser Gregor,’ she’d whisper to her stone pillow. [. . .] ‘Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.’” (A Clash of Kings).
Arya emerges from the crucible of her trauma horribly changed. Even by the harsh standards of Westeros, her childhood has been ripped away. She is shaken to her roots.
Still, the coping mechanisms she develops to grapple with PTSD strengthen her. She is more capable and powerful than she was before the incidents that transformed her. By the close of A Dance with Dragons, she is well on the path of establishing herself as a dedicated and able professional assassin: street-smart, intuitive, remorseless, and deadly.
Condition Yellow has become integrated into Arya’s character. She is enfranchised: no less traumatized for the transformation, but no weaker either.
Theon Greyjoy and Condition Black
“Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him.”
—A CLASH OF KINGS
Those in Condition Black generally engage coping mechanisms that most external viewers would perceive as negative. Those who move into permanent Condition Black as a result of PTSD are actively self-destructive, usually in one of two ways. Some freeze up, go catatonic, and fail to react to future traumatic events, essentially letting the world have its way with them. Alternately, those in Condition Black may actively engage in self-destruction through means of compulsive behavior such as drug, alcohol, or sex addiction. Detached from a world that has come to terrify them, they may engage in suicidal levels of risk-taking or push away loved ones who try to help.
Theon Greyjoy, on the surface, has a similar upbringing to Arya’s, with its attached illusions of safety. But there is one key difference: Theon lives as a hostage—but ostensibly a member—of the Stark family in exchange for the good behavior of his own kinsmen, the Greyjoys of the Iron Isles.
While Arya is coaxed into Condition Yellow by a wary and loving family, Theon is ripped from his warlike kin and thrust into a setting that is soft by comparison. The Starks are certainly warlike, but life in Winterfell is a far cry from life on the Iron Isles, where every aspect of existence from birth on is imbued with the trappings of war. Yet Theon is mistrusted by the people who hold him hostage. He is given no succor, no gentle coaxing into preparedness against the slings and arrows of life. He lacks the cushion of a gift like Needle and a patient and gentle fencing master. For Theon, the slide to Condition Black begins early.
Theon’s life in Winterfell is framed by constant reminders that he lives at the mercy of his captors, contingent upon the good behavior of his own clan. He is treated even worse than the bastard Jon Snow, who lacks even his noble blood. Robb Stark reinforces his outcast status after Theon bravely saves Bran’s life. “Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy,” Robb says of Theon’s decision to use his bow to fell Bran’s assailant, even though the shot was perfect and the boy was unharmed. “I ought to chain you up in the yard and let Bran take a few practice shots at you” (A Game of Thrones).
The signs of Condition Black manifest early in Theon’s narrative. Many who suffer from PTSD engage in addictive, self-destructive behavior. Martin represents this with sex, in Greyjoy’s case, painting him as a whoremonger of some renown. Like an addict, Greyjoy uses sex not so much as a source of pleasure but to assuage a compulsion. He recalls tumbling the miller’s wife “a time or two” in A Clash of Kings and that there was “nothing special” about her, displaying a lack of satisfaction in the act. Sex also appears to be a way for Theon to grasp some shred of personal power when, as a hostage, so much has been stripped from him. This is reflected in the adulterous nature of some of Theon’s conquests, and in the way he takes pleasure in demeaning his former paramours, such as Kyra. After embarrassing her publicly, he confides to Robb Stark, “She squirms like a weasel in bed, but say a word to her on the street, and she blushes pink as a maid” (A Game of Thrones). He then tries to launch into a detailed tale of a sexual encounter before Robb cuts him off.
The self-destructive nature of Greyjoy’s sex addiction is further expanded on when his sister Asha seduces him as a means to humiliate him. When Theon is sent on embassy to his fo
rmer home, he doesn’t recognize his sister, and so attempts to court her. Asha, who recognizes Theon and his weakness, plays along and only later reveals herself as his sister. Her deceit is also the final blow in a string of rejections by his own family, rebuffs that leave him utterly adrift: his Ironborn kin declare him soft and weak from too many years in Winterfell. They despise him. The Starks, in turn, have shown they will never fully trust him and are all too willing to use him for their own political ends. Ned Stark reminds readers of this when he warns his wife that a close watch be kept on Theon because, “If there is war, we shall have sore need of his father’s fleet” (A Game of Thrones). The goal is not to keep him safe, but to keep him secure as a bargaining chip.
After his rejection by his biological family, Greyjoy’s self-destructive impulses spill their banks. Some may argue that Theon’s seizure of Winterfell is the bold action of a man intent on standing alone and proving his worth to a family that judges men by their feats of arms. I see it more as the spiteful lashing out of a child wounded by everyone around him, all those he loves and might love. This is classic Condition Black: Theon engages in highly risky behavior, flailing in reaction to trauma he cannot handle. Arya’s choices are deliberate, empowered. Theon’s are reactive, driven by his inability to reconcile the real world with the one he thought he’d lived in.
Theon mostly vanishes from A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, though there are some hints as to what may become of him when a piece of his skin is delivered to Catelyn Stark at the Red Wedding. This gruesome token is an indication of what is occurring offstage: Theon’s shift into Condition Black becoming permanent under the continuous torture he is suffering at the hands of Ramsay Bolton. When Theon reappears in A Dance with Dragons, his transformation is complete.