GoTTalkPod. Not your father's ASOIAF pod.

The Bridge of Dream chapter (Tyrion Five from A Dance with Dragons) delves deeply into a number of the key themes in the series. These include the subjective nature of reality, the non-thought of received ideas, and the unreliability of language/communication. These issues are central to the human experience, and their treatment in this chapter makes the case for a moral reading of the text. This...

Feast reminds me of MLK Jr's revolution of values. But whereas he was concerned with race, class and militarism, Feast is concerned with gender, class and militarism. And just as MLKJ aimed to transform society by changing individual beliefs and behaviors, Feast too it is explicitly concerned with personal transformation. The book begins with the question, have you decided what you are? The ne...

Welcome to the Covid edition of the pod. Apologies for the scratchy voice, but what can a guy do? In this episode, we pay our usual homage to Plato and Dante, but we also take one of our patented digressions, this time into twentieth century existentialism. You heard it right--we do an extended riff on Sartre's play "No Exit," which is the origin of the phrase "Hell is other people." It's the last...

In Brant Two, GRRM digs deep into his bag of tricks and comes up with...twincest! But this pair of identical twins couldn't be more dissimilar--they disagree on literally everything, except for maybe the need to silence Bran. Speaking of which, Jamie looks to add "kidslayer" to his list of honors/epithets.  But let's not make the mistake of having the incident at the very end of the chapter o...

Plato's Republic is the Mother of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. Arya One is the Midwife.  Contrary to popular belief, Arya One is not some throwaway text between two vastly more consequential chapters. In fact, it lays out the central moral and ethical questions that power the entire series. That's because Arya One is George's answer to Book V of Plato's Republic, the massively infl...

Great things sometimes come in small packages. Arya One is a short little chapter that is easy to overlook. People will call it a palate cleanser or the pause that refreshes between two blockbuster chapters, Cat Two and Bran Two, either side of this one. But with the benefit of the re-read, with the ability to see the entire scope and ambition of GRRM's work, it is clear that this chapter presents...

Did I tell you that every scene in the series has a double or a triplet? Well, here's one of those doubles--Catelyn Two is the double of the Prologue. If we agree that the series is about the problem of the eyes, about Joyce's parallax and the ineluctable modality of the eyes, and about Plato's cave and how we perceive reality through our eyes, then George has to keep hitting that theme. Beyond th...

Did I say Cat One and Dany One were a pair? Well, Jon One and Dany One are a pair! Believe that Jon and Dany are destined to be Westeros' new power couple? Well, the links are established beginning in this very chapter. Dig in to find out what a feast in Winterfell has to do with Daenerys Targaryen. And if that's not enough to entice you inside, how about a heaping helping of Dante, Joyce and Socr...

Woot woot! Weeks after publishing a special episode dedicated to showing Plato's influence on the series, we get confirmation. Arianne II from the pre-released Winds of Winter material includes a direct reference to Plato's cave, confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that George is intentionally linking his work to those past greats. Of course it is in that line--we knew it was based on tons...

Did I say Joyce's parallax is a central issue in the series? Well, this chapter gives us some key evidence for that statement. Words, lines and scenes are doubled, offering two interpretations or takes of the same event or thing. If you're going to write thousands of pages of text using the point of view structure, you have to show that points of view differ, that they matter. George does some of...

George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire provides a modern take on Plato's Republic. There, I said it. George takes the themes of Plato's masterwork and sends them marching across our pages in the form of zombies and dragons, eunuchs and lost little girls. Certainly the most famous portion of the Republic is the Allegory of the Cave. It's five pages of Plato's metaphysics and epistemology--or it's abo...

Dany One is the bizarro-world version of Cat One. Why is that? Here we deconstruct the ways in which Cat One and Dany are opposites, mirror images of one another. And then we ask ourselves, why did George do it that way? What are the implications for our reading of the remainder of the book? The series? Some will tell you the symbols of Cat One are there for worldbuilding. That's true. But mo...

Woot woot! Enter the hero--Daenerys Targaryen!  Welcome to GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. Dany One is everything that the preceding chapters are not. In this chapter, Robert is the usurper, Viserys is the rightful king; children have no parents and no home; slavery is illegal but it nevertheless exists; all the traditional signifiers of power...

Welcome to GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. Catelyn One occupies an important location in the physical and emotional geography of the book, sandwiched as it is between Bran One and Dany One. The series is about kids maturing, and we can't talk about kids without mothers, so Cat's role here is to provide the motherly presence that has been lacking in...

GoTTalkPod honors Joyce and GRRM in the same pod! Two great epics, unified by many of the same themes. Come along for the ride and see how George structured Dany's storyline around Joyce's notions of usurpation, metempsychosis and children maturing. Get in!  ***Major Spoilers*** Roughly 11:30 of intro/context for folks not totally up to speed on both Joyce and ASOIAF Comparisons and analysis...

Welcome to GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. Now our watch begins in earnest--we are into the novel proper with Bran 1/Chapter 1!!! Please tackle the prior episodes for a sense of our angle of approach. We're less interested than other pods in the literal events of the novels; rather, our focus is primarily on the literary evolution and meaning availa...

Welcome to GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. We kick off our virtual book club at the very beginning of George RR Martin's series, with book one, A Game of Thrones Prologue re-read and analysis from an academic litcrit perspective. What does that mean? To paraphrase George's obvious literary hero, Dante, we will be looking beneath the veil for th...

Welcome to GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. We lay out the rationale for a literary critical analysis of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. As widely read as the series is, as deeply plumbed as it is on pods and YouTube channels everywhere, the series still offers profound insights little discussed almost anywhere else. What do you want? Home...

GoTTalkPod! Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire Book discussion and analysis. Looking at the influence of Dante on the series. Arya's entire plot line? Winterfell? King's Landing? Battle of the Blackwater? Check, check, check and check. All inspired by Dante. Lady Stone Heart? Yup. Braavos? Uh-huh. 35 minutes of rambling about Dante proper, followed by 35 minutes of Stark-related MAJOR SPO...