The biggest fantasy series right now, and easily the biggest since J.R.R Tolkien first uttered “Hobbit,” is George R.R. Martin’ s A Song of Ice and Fire. From the Wall to King’s Landing, the series is epic in scope, rich in history, deep in character, and drenched in blood. Despite my appreciation of Martin’s transcendent storytelling, I have never been able to get past the copious amounts of blood, gore, and human cruelty that suffuse this beloved series. I realize that it is my own sensitivities that prevent me from enjoying this once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece, but I cannot help but ask: Why so much blood?
What is it about the darker side of human nature that fascinates us about this kind of storytelling? Why so many beheadings? Why so many human monsters? Don’t we have this kind of stuff in our world already? How is this ‘escapism?’ These are rhetorical questions meant for discussion only, I in no way mean to preach that this kind of storytelling is bad or even at all negative.
Why do we enjoy (perhaps the wrong word, but I hope my intent is clear) reading about these truly terrible and violent things from which, if we were faced with them in real life, we would (ok, most of us, I hope) recoil from in horror? Is it fascination at cruel, amoral behavior? Is it shock value? Bread and circuses? Mere curiosity? Is it something deeper that reaches all the way back to our violent beginnings as a species? All of this? None of this?
Violence and bloodshed are, of course, not new to fantasy fiction. Take this passage from one of the founding fathers of the sword and sorcery genre, Robert E. Howard:
“In an instant he was the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and lashing clubs. But he moved in a blinding blur of steel. Spears bent on his armor or swished empty air, and his sword sang its death-song. The fighting-madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood.” – Excerpt from The Queen of the Black Coast, 1934
Um, ouch? This passage clearly defines the brutal nature of the world of Howard’s Conan tales. The scene described is horrific and bloody, but it nonetheless brings a thrill to the reader with vivid description and masterful use of the language. Tolkien, too, captures the brutal nature of conflict and battle. The Battle of the Five Armies, Helm’s Deep, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields are filled with vivid depictions of death and violence as men battle for existence against the forces of darkness.
Despite the brutality of battle in the worlds of Hyboria and Middle-Earth, the violence there is typically confined to the battlefield. G.R.R. Martin pushes it to another level by bringing the violence home. Quite literally. From the moment a young boy is shoved out an open window, it becomes clear that no one is safe in Martin’s world. Beheadings, torture, rape, mutilation, and animal cruelty run rampant throughout this world. Yet this series is beloved by millions of readers, most of whom (I hope) find such acts to be reprehensible.
So I ask you, Faction readers: What is it about this that draws us? What repulses us? Is it in any way because of the violence that GRRM is so popular? Despite it? Is it a factor for you? How can I get past it?! Ok…that last part is my problem, not yours, but you get the idea.
Do you read Martin at all for the violence, or is it what, like me, keeps you away? Where does this fascination with brutal violence come from?
Of course there are no easy (if any) answers, but it forms the basis of fascinating discussion, and I look forward to hearing what the community has to say! This is the fantasy epic of our time. What does that, if anything, say about our world today?
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
I suspect there are many reasons. In my case it is this: extreme, blatant, ultimate cruelty epitomises evil and we need to see our heroes up against the very worst, so that when/if they prevail the sense of accomplishment is felt all the more keenly. The sad fact is, no matter what kind of horrors we create, real life can usually trump us, and in real life the heroes do not often prevail.
Who likes my creepy mask? 😉
For me it is about honesty. The real world is a cruel, violent and sometimes disgusting place. If you went back into time or into an undeveloped world (when/where most fantasy novels are set) then you’d find that darkness only gets darker.
We have grown up with very strict rule and our generation outlaws the killing of others strongly. However, you only have to go back a few hundred years to find certain technicalities that would allow you to kill. A few more hundred years before that and killing people over minor disputes wasn’t all that uncommon. You add war against rival nations into that mix and you can see how the brutal honesty in fantasy makes sense.
Good writing puts you there – makes it real. The literary equivalent of 1950’s Hollywood with tights-clad men folding bloodlessly around fake swords won’t put me there.
And why should the realism be confined to set-piece battles? In times where men literally butcher each other on the battlefield … are they really going to be sweetness, light, and fair play as soon as the organised conflict is paused and it’s time for R&R?
As you point out it’s not that modern a trend – Moorcock was getting as brutal as his tales required back in the 60’s/70’s – Howard in the 30’s. People don’t read fantasy because they get off on descriptions of blood flowing – they read fantasy for the thrill and imagination of the story. But if we censor hard-edge story into child-approved soft-play … then few readers are going to buy into it.
Oh, I am no friend of censorship, just want to make that VERY clear.
Heroes are measured by their enemies. The more horrific the enemy, the greater the challenge (and maybe greater the need) to bring them down.
I know reading the latest Martin tome, I was really hoping some of the monsters were going to learn that even in Westeros, what goes around comes around.
Where was my plate of pie….
I’m with the author on this–the violence/torture/incest keeps me away from certain series. It’s not that I can’t handle violence–I used to be a huge Terry Goodkind fan, and didn’t mind the violence if it was part of the story. But I quit reading when characters became violent just for violence’s sake, and grew increasingly prone to torture/rape just out of sadistic pleasure. As a writer myself, I know that authors write what they daydream about, and it’s obvious that TG fantasizes about sadism. I haven’t read much of GRRM and I’m likely not to for that reason–not so much for the violence/beheadings (which were a legitimate part of the Medieval world) but for the over-the-top sadistic violence and incest.
Don’t get me wrong–I think it’s fine to characterize ONE character by these traits, to make him/her a villain. Even then it should be done artfully (as with anything in writing), with just enough to give us the idea and then a little to remind us as the story progresses. But when the majority of the villains are sadistic/incestual/cruel, that just implies lazy characterization on the part of the author.
So if it’s an author’s preference to write with a lot of violence,cruelty, etc., fine. It’s their right as an author to tell the story in their own way (hopefully the way they’d want to read it), and they will always find some people who enjoy it. But I can guarantee they’ll have lost at least one reader in the process.
Y’see, I think perhaps you are missing the point – I don’t mean this in an insulting way, let me be clear about that.
The detailed portrayal of violence in some fantasy writing is one thing – but a much wider question is this – why does so much of popular science fiction and fantasy revolve around war?
Looking up at my bookshelves, I’ve got Joe Abercrombie (war), Richard Morgan (war), David Gemmell (war) and Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion series (oh yeah, war!)
Are we obsessed with war? Do we revel in slaughter? I think the average person in modern day society, certainly in the “developed world” experiences almost no violence throughout their entire lives. Perhaps a schoolground scrap, maybe a fight outside a pub… but very few of us would ever experience anything close to the kind of brutal slaughter perpetrated by men (and women) with swords, maces and spears hacking at each other from close range.
It appears to me that this is, in part, the sort of escapism that fantasy offers. I have other stuff on my shelves that don’t involve war.. Scott Lynch for example, but that doesn’t mean that the Lies of Locke Lamora is free from violence and suffering.
is this escapism into violent alternative worlds the simple expression of a repressed part of our animalistic selves? Is reading the brutal slaying of a man in a George R.R. Martin book any different to sitting down at the games console and playing Call of Duty? I;d wager that they are two sides of the same coin – like it or not, violence is “thrilling” and “scary” and part of the escapism that we apparently crave.
What that says about our day to day lives in this modern, “developed” and “civilised” society is another, much more complicated debate
The real world is far worse than anything imagined. At least in fantasy fiction, good hopefully will triumph over evil. But I actually think GRRM only appears more violent because we actually care about what happens to the characters. Mindless violence like in Conan can pass you by but with GRRM, Abercrombie and Brett, I really care about the people they write about.
I definitely like ice and fire despite the violence. I find the violence to be sometimes very disturbing but the story is just that good that I read on. It’s also that only something that will cause such an emotional response in me like the rage at a boy being pushed out a window is really good literature. A good book for me is a book that make me scream in triumpe but also cringe in terror..
I see that you like brent weeks, which I find interesting since parts of “shadows edge” seemed pretty brutal and disturbing to me
Shadow’s Edge definitely had its moments for me! The actions of the Godking (and Roth in book one) bothered me for a while afterwards. I actually stopped reading for a few weeks in the middle before choosing to push forward.
What held me in that series was Kylar…knowing that he would ‘punish’ the villains. Martin has offered me no assurances in that regard, which makes it harder to push forward.
I wonder if it’s still kind of escapist in the sense that we know it’s not real, so we can look through our proverbial fingers and think about it in a more detached way. When you see it on the evening news, it IS too close to home–too real–and we might tend to say, “ew, I’m not going to think about that.” But when we read, we know it’s not real, so it’s okay to sort of think about it and ruminate on what’s acceptable and where moral lines should be drawn.
But I will say–A Dance with Dragons pushed me to the very edge in a few places. I can tolerate a lot in my fiction if I think it has a purpose, but Ramsay Snow’s shenanigans were… painful to read, to say the least. I felt a little like Martin kind of decided he would see how evil and irredeemable he could make someone. But maybe it was more of a foil thing–like, he made us hate Theon Greyjoy, and now when we see how poorly Theon was treated by Ramsay, we could sympathize with Theon again. In order to make us sympathize, he had to find someone worse than Theon.
Just some thoughts…
I’m with Overlord, Mark Lawrence, and Shack: Martin’s violence is very realistic, human, and therefore honest. In fact, much of it is (as others have pointed out) very true to the characteristics of the real-world Medieval societies ASOIAF is patterned on. Even the fantastical elements (dragons, etc.) feel very real, though human cruelty is far more prevalent.
For me, all of this works because it is so very human. Naturally I abhor cruelty and violence of the very type that Martin depicts; nonetheless, it makes the story that much more gritty and gripping. Now, it’s interesting to note that earlier in the series, many of Martin’s POV characters were *not* the ones guilty of these cruel acts, at least in general. Characters like Ned, Daenerys, and Jon Snow were very sympathetic.
Of course in “Feast”, Martin introduced Jaime and Cersei as POV characters. While I was less enamored of “Feast” as compared with the previous three books, nonetheless I think this was a bold and brilliant move: giving us the POV of these characters allowed Martin to explore them as people. I think for me, Cersei remained one of those characters that you ‘love to hate’, while Jaime actually became much more interesting and yes, to some degree, more sympathetic.
For those of you who have read Abercrombie, consider Sand dan Glokta. Personally, he was easily my favorite character in the entire series (and I loved it, so that’s really saying something). Moorcock’s Elric is another great example. In fiction other than fantasy, I’m a huge fan of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. The point is that even characters who do terrible things can be very, very fascinating–in fact, for me at least, they can be some of the most memorable characters in fiction.
Why does this work? I don’t think I can answer that question entirely, even for myself. I think part of me is fascinated by these characters because they’re not *simply* cruel and brutal: they do terrible things, but they’re very complex. They may be conflicted (Sand dan Glokta is a great example), and/or they may actually have a kind of honor or other redeeming characteristic (Elric). Honestly, I think getting into Jaime Lannister’s head in “Feast” helped me to understand him as a much more three-dimensional character: he wasn’t simply ‘that guy who murdered the Mad King, fucked his own sister, and pushed Bran out the window’, he had a much more complex inner thought life, with goals and motivations like any other compelling character.
Ultimately, these kinds of characters speak to the darker side of humanity. There’s a kind of honesty in that (even if I would never condone, much less do, the things that they do), something you just don’t get with the more ‘noble’ characters. Anyway, just a few of my thoughts.
I’ve always felt there are two types of fantasy stories; the ones where maidens fair are captured and no harm befalls them, and then they’re rescued; and the ones where that maiden will never be the same again after what’s done to her before the rescue (or until she snaps, finds a sword, and starts handing out some old fashioned justice).
Personally I prefer the latter type of fantasy, as I think it’s more interesting, compelling and honest. As much as I love Lord of the Rings, the peril in it is distant, forboding certainly, but not immediate. Game of Thrones has that peril right in your face, and characters are in both immediate and distant peril. Knowing what is likely to happen to them in the short term, while suspecting what may happen in the long run if nothing is done to stop it.
It makes sympathising with a character, even one you previously hated, that much easier when you see how they suffer. People have a tendency to side with the underdog, so it makes sense that violence and torture can be used as a method of making the reader side with a particular character. Martin is a master at this, and does it beautifully in all the Thrones books. It’s the story I read for, but I do love to fall for Martin’s machinations and smile at how he manipulates me from one page to the next.
And no matter how violent a story may be, it never bothers me, as I know far worse has, does and will happen in the real world. Fiction can shine a light on it, and even people who normally turn away may well face it in that setting, which can only be a good thing in my opinion. There’s nothing worse than pretending it never happens.
Personally, I’ve never been one to shy away from violence in all it’s blood, guts and gorey nature. However, when posed the question, why it is present in all the a fore mentioned works several points come to mind.
I don’t think it has much to do with creating a feeling of great sympathy with our heroes and heroines because they then have an equally evil adversary to come up against, indeed I think the greater stories will always blur the lines between good and evil and cause the reader to raise these sorts of questions within themselves. The passage chosen by Jesse in his article introduces us to both sides of the battle, the first sentence as violent as the rest of the paragraph, however they’re depicting opposing characters.
I also don’t like the line, “How is this ‘escapism?’” – sorry, but to me great escapism requires one to not simply remove themselves from their situation, but in doing so to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of what they are escaping from. The violence we’re talking about helps to do that – it roots great fantasies and other popular genres in a grand parallel to reality, thus striking a chord in all our hearts as more real.
What it is that makes violence so real is also, like many others commenting on the article have noted, the fascination we have with war. As sadistic and barbarous as that may seem, war is the epitome of great drama and there are reasons why the epic stories revolve around war and violence. From modern works like A Song of Ice and Fire to many of Shakespeare’s works, and you can track this back as far as the Greek plays or ancient stories like Beowulf? War excites the human abstract and furthermore hits the nail on the head of our adrenalin glands.
There is a rush of adrenalin that is released from violence and action and whilst the intellectual side of these stories can be appreciated by our rational side, there is a sadistic, perverse barbarian lying within the pleasure seeking side of our minds that only war, blood and guts can release. It’s simply buried further down in some than others.
I have never been one that’s big into violence. However, when I started writing a book about seven years ago, all this violence just started pouring out of me. Pure and simple, I think it was therapeutic because I was abused as a kid (and again as an adult).
But I’m a gal, so I am wired differently than the male writers who do it for another reason. Reading Game of Thrones, I’m not as struck by the violence as I am while watching the show. My mind edits it, you know? I think that’s only natural. Even the sex is more violent in the show than it is in the book.
Until I started processing the emotional cost of writing/not writing this kind of thing, personally, I couldn’t watch the battle scenes of most movies, even historical stuff like Braveheart. I still have no desire to watch most horror. It’s just too much–it messes with the psyche, as my husband says. I close my eyes during the beheadings in Highlander, and that’s one of my favorite movies of all time!
I think it all depends on what your experiences are. I rough up my kids, I played roller derby for a few years, I did martial arts–I am not a wimpy girl *at all*. But because of my upbringing, I am not into gratuitous violence at all.