Part of what I enjoy about the epic TV show Game of Thrones is the way the story plays with our expectations. We watch the heartbreaking scene in which the young tomboy Arya Stark witnesses the betrayal and execution of her honorable father. When she vows to avenge him, we cheer her on. That’s how it seems the story should go. That is how we want the story to go because we want this good and innocent girl to find some measure of justice and restitution for the slaying of her good and innocent father.
And that is how the story did go … sort of. It’s giving us what we thought we wanted, but that turns out to be not quite what we really wanted to see. As the years have gone by, we’ve watched as young Arya has turned into a creature of vengeance. She may get her revenge, but that may mean she cannot remain either good or innocent.
Or think of poor Theon Greyjoy. I didn’t expect that that is how I would ever come to think of him. Back when he first betrayed his adopted family and did all sorts of horrible, awful things, I just wanted to see him punished for his crimes. I wanted to see karma come back around to bite him. Hard. When a Book Reader friend assured me that, yes, Bad Things were in store for wicked, disloyal Theon, I said, “Good.” And I was looking forward to them.
Until those Bad Things started to happen. Really, really Bad Things, without end. And again, what I thought I wanted the story to be turned out not to be what I wanted the story to be.
For those who aren’t watching the show or reading the books and aren’t familiar with the story, what happened was that Theon Greyjoy met this guy:
That’s Ramsey Snow, and he’s a monster. He’s smiling in that picture, and that can’t be good, because the only thing that makes Ramsey Snow smile is hurting people.
We don’t need to talk about the details of what Ramsey Snow does to poor Theon Greyjoy. What we’re shown is horrifying. What’s implied but not shown is even worse. And it never stops. It is, as best as Ramsey can manage, perpetual conscious torment.
Now poor Theon isn’t Theon anymore. He’s “Reek” — the sub-human name Ramsey has given him as a sub-human, broken, haunted creature.
“I deserved this,” Theon/Reek said in last night’s episode of the show. But he didn’t. He doesn’t. No one does. He surely seemed to deserve … something. He was a rotten, awful, no-good man who did really horrible things to innocent people. But the punishment has been out of proportion even to his many serious crimes.
And what would it mean to agree with him? To say that he deserves his torment would be to approve of the methods and the malice of his tormentor — it would be to say that Ramsey Snow is somehow an agent of justice, of good. It would be to say that Ramsey Snow is right, and to smile along with him.
And again, for those unfamiliar with this show and this story, let me reiterate that this is not an option. Ramsey Snow is a strong contender for the worst person in a story filled with truly awful people. He is a monster who delights in pain. His greatest joy, his proudest achievement, is the Hell he has created for poor Theon.
All of which is to say, of course, that I do not believe that God is anything at all like Ramsey Snow.
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