For Game of Thrones fans, please don\u2019t read this until you\u2019ve seen Season 6, Episode 5 (\u201cThe Door\u201d).<\/p>\n
Normally stories about time travel dramatize the power of human agency, our potential ability to know and intervene in past events and therefore change the future. These stories seem to be about the struggle for human freedom, not being sentenced to an immutable Fate. (Some examples are Back to the Future or, on a more profound level, brilliant parables about slavery such as Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved or Octavia Butler\u2019s Kindred. Of course many other examples of time-warps in story-telling could be cited.)<\/p>\n
But warg time-travel in Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 5 (\u201cThe Door\u201d), suggested the other, scarier possibility of time travel: your Fate is already written and it can neither be changed nor understood by you until the moment when you must live out your destiny. Time travel can allow you to see your destiny but, like the Medusa\u2019s stare, such a vision will paralyze you.<\/p>\n
When the stable-boy Wyllis has his warg vision of the future (remarkably like an epilepsy attack), he repeats to himself the one phrase that embodies his adult Fate: he has to \u201chold the door\u201d against the White Walkers\u2019 armies of undead, allowing Bran and Meera to escape while sacrificing his own life. Though it\u2019s a heroic self-sacrifice, Wyllis\u2019 vision of his future is so traumatic that when he awakens from his vision he looses speech and understanding and can only repeat a cryptic or garbled version of his battle-cry. His one word is his Fate, and \u201cHodor\u201d becomes his name. Hodor appears to have no idea what that word means, much less what his future holds. Yet on some deep level he reenacts that future moment\u2019s pain again and again each time he says his name: we now have learned the \u201cmemory\u201d of his death is buried in his name. It\u2019s the revelation of that traumatic pain, as well as his heroic last stand, that made so moving the final installment of Hodor\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
Doesn\u2019t this kind of time travel seem deeply deterministic? Like the Greek parable of how the gods erased our memory of our future Fate and mercifully gave us Hope instead. Bran too may be traumatized by his warg visions, by the ways in which (in his dreams at least) he understands that he was responsible for Hodor\u2019s death. How Bran\u2019s guilt and painful knowledge will influence his future actions will be fascinating to see as Season 6 unfolds. (And of course we can\u2019t know from the books: the TV show\u2019s now gone off-script into a future that George R. R. Martin hasn\u2019t yet written.)<\/p>\n
*****
\nObviously many characters who believe they can seize and control their destiny prove to be deluded: consider Stannis. But Thrones also offers up numerous stories that tempt us to believe that heroism means remaking your identity, sacrificing yourself for others\u2019 needs, and changing the path of history\u2014Jon Snow and Daenerys, for instance, particularly now in Season 6 after they have both emerged reborn from apparent icy or fiery deaths. Yet even as we thrill with their new power and growing confidence, it\u2019s hard not to wonder whether their Fates too are already written and completely hidden from them. One of the reasons why we keep watching is to find out. <\/p>\n
With characters like Cersei and Tyrion, Sansa and Arya\/No One, the Fate\/Freedom conundrum is just as hard to parse. Being driven by revenge has given Cersei a powerful sense of purpose in Season 6. Or does her anger control her, though now she\u2019s better able to disguise it? Sansa\u2019s confrontation with Littlefinger\u2014one of the most powerfully written and acted scenes in all of Season 6\u2014certainly makes us feel that she\u2019s moved decisively past the delusions of her \u201cinnocence\u201d into an adult world where she will now be a clear-eyed leader. Her story too will be fascinating to see unfold. <\/p>\n
As will Tyrion\u2019s. Is his new confidence that his destiny is to bend the arc of history toward justice deluded or righteous? Both Grey Worm\u2019s and Missandei\u2019s skepticism at Tyrion\u2019s chutzpah (is there a Valyrian word for this?) certainly should give us pause.<\/p>\n
Arya\u2019s hidden Fate is perhaps the most ambiguous and intriguing of all, at least for those of us who believe characters don\u2019t have to have armies at their command to be important. All of the major characters in Thrones arguably have split identities\u2014but Arya\u2019s split self\/selves is really tricky to map. She\u2019s currently at least two people, not one: whatever future self or selves she\u2019s about to become, but also (despite her repeating\u2014like Hodor?\u2014that her new name is \u201cNo One\u201d) because it\u2019s clear Arya still retains and hides her Stark identity, her sense that she has her own revenge and reunion plot to pursue.<\/p>\n
*****
\nSo, do plots about time travel in Game of Thrones amplify our sense of human freedom and responsibility? Or do they pretty much shut it down, proving that our Fates are already written? Revealing glimpses of the past and future, do warg powers paralyze or free? <\/p>\n
At present, Thrones\u2019 plotlines and character tensions are ambiguous enough that we can\u2019t answer these questions\u2014and that kind of suspense is one of the marks of good story telling. But maybe too it\u2019s the job of good stories and their endings NOT to give us either\/or answers to the fate and freedom questions I\u2019ve said stories pose.<\/p>\n
I leave you with one last thought: when Bran returns to the distant past in \u201cThe Door,\u201d he doesn\u2019t intervene; he just watches and gains knowledge. It\u2019s when Bran wanders in his warg vision in the *present*\u2014accidentally giving away the presence of himself and his friends to the White Walkers\u2014that Bran does deadly damage, damage that in future he\u2019s going to have to try to repair. Or was that his Fate all along? What understandings of his (and our) freedom and fate will come through \u201cthe door\u201d at the end?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Game of Thrones fans, please don\u2019t read this until you\u2019ve seen Season 6, Episode 5 (\u201cThe Door\u201d). Normally stories about time travel dramatize the power of human agency, our potential ability to know and intervene in past events and … Continue reading